It was both of us, and Tom too, a strange little threesome that I soon learned refused to fit together. At first, I had made a concerted effort. When I was given an assignment by my professor to learn how to use a view camera—the weight of the piece requiring more than one set of hands—I invited Lucy to join Tom and me as we hauled the equipment around campus, Tom joking he was both subject and subjected. Lucy accompanied us only the once, when we spent nearly an hour lugging it to the edge of campus, to what we laughingly christened the End of the Universe, that stretch of land at the entrance to Bennington, and which dipped, low and jagged, as dangerous and threatening as the End of the World was not.
“I pity the man unfortunate enough to drive off into that,” Tom had said, smiling back at us as he leaned against the rail, waiting for me to set up the camera and begin.
Lucy had stood, tersely, staring out into the woods, and even though I had begged her to let me take her photograph as well, she had remained silent, so I wondered, in the end, whether she had heard me at all.
Later, as we walked back to campus, Tom had tried to talk with her, about literature, about what she was working on in her courses. “I’m jealous you’ve got Professor Hyman here,” he said. “I would love the opportunity to take a class with him. Have you signed up for any of his yet?”
She had turned to him, her gaze steely and hard. “No. But then, I suppose I’d rather take a class with his better half.”
Tom was silent after that.
I tried to talk about it with her once, not long afterward—to try to dispel the strangeness that had stolen over us, between us. But she had only turned away, her face closed, guarded. I suspected she meant to punish me—for my relationship with Tom, a closeness that not only did not involve her, but which, oftentimes, left her alone. And though I felt guilty, I was confused by her odd behavior, knowing that if the situation were reversed, I would not have been so cold.
“There’s something not right about her,” Tom said one evening late into the spring as we lay, hidden from the Commons Lawn, just beneath the End of the World, waiting for the sun to begin setting.
“Oh, don’t be cruel,” I had protested, pushing against his shoulder—protective, even still, of my odd roommate. It was true that I did not condone her behavior, that I was just as embarrassed as Tom was likely offended by it. And yet, I could not help but pity her too—for those long afternoons she now spent alone, trapped in the library, for those nights we passed, silent and held apart from each other.
“I’m not,” he said, pulling me closer with a laugh. “I promise.” He grew quiet then, and as I leaned up against him I could feel the rise and fall of him, could smell the scent that was uniquely his—something like sun and sand and bit like laundry that had been left out for an afternoon. I moved closer. “It’s just,” he began, “it’s just the way she looks at you.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?” When he did not respond, I turned to look up at him. “How does she look at me?” I demanded.
He looked away, as if embarrassed, as if he were hesitant to say the words aloud. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try,” I said, desperate to have the answer.
But he only remained silent.
I turned, feeling a shudder run through me. I was quiet then, pressed up against his warmth, feeling as though I would never be warm. Together, we watched the sun set in front of us.
ONE MONTH AFTER I MET TOM, things began to disappear.
IT WAS LITTLE ITEMS AT FIRST. A tube of lipstick that I couldn’t locate. A necklace that went missing for a few days, only to turn up in a spot I knew I had already checked. A scarf that I could not remember wearing and that appeared in the laundry bin, ready to be washed. I thought nothing of it at first, and later, when I realized it must be Lucy, I only assumed that it was how sisters lived—borrowing things from one another without asking, the mutability of their wardrobe and accessories an unwritten law between them.
But then one day in early May, I walked into our room and found her standing in front of the mirror, wearing my clothes. I blinked. It wasn’t simply one item—a scarf or a sweater—it was everything, from head to toe. I recognized my ivory dress with the eyelet fabric and Peter Pan collar, a smart beaded cloche that my aunt had purchased for me the previous winter. Lucy was standing, her head tilted to the side, watching herself in the mirror as she pulled at the waistline in an attempt to adjust the fit, but the dress hit strangely on her body, as if she were trying on clothes that had once been worn by her younger self.
It took a few moments before her eyes met mine—before she realized that she was no longer in the room alone. “I’m sorry,” she said, quickly removing the hat. Her face had turned a deep crimson.
“No, don’t apologize.” I smiled, trying, and failing I suspected, to dispel the strangeness of the moment. We had not spent much time together lately—I was either in the darkroom or with Tom—and the moment seemed rendered somehow more strange, more unsettling, by our distance. “You’re free to borrow it whenever you like,” I finished quickly.
Despite my words, she hurried to remove the clothing. She placed the hat on my bed, looking more angry than embarrassed, I thought. The dress she lifted from her body, quickly and with such force that I worried she might tear the seams. It was all over in a matter of seconds, and once more Lucy stood before me in one of her own outfits, her face blazing with an emotion I could not quite interpret.
In the end, I thought it best to ignore the incident, turning from her and taking a seat behind my desk, arranging and rearranging my books until the tension in the room settled and then passed, as if nothing had happened at all.
BUT THEN, TWO WEEKS LATER, as Lucy readied herself for the morning, I found myself startled by the item she had clasped around her wrist: my mother’s charm bracelet, that thin piece of once-gleaming silver that had now worked itself to a tarnished gray. It was nothing valuable, of course, and yet, I still counted it among my most prized possessions—a fact that Lucy well knew. I had spent hours, after my mother’s death, studying the charms. A small couple, the girl in red, the boy in blue, preparing to ski. A bubble gum machine, with tiny little colored beads serving as the candy. A violin. I knew each and every one by heart, had memorized all their intricate details, particularly in those moments when the weight of the truth, the reality of never seeing my mother wear it again, sat heavily on my chest.
As I watched it dangle from Lucy’s wrist, my heart began to pound, and I saw spots in my vision—like little twinkling stars, bright lights that crowded and fought for space in front of my eyes. I blinked. I told myself that she did not mean anything by it, that surely she had just forgotten about what I had told her, about just how special the bracelet was to me. But then I paused, trying to recall—a conversation, a brief mention, anything I had said or done throughout the years we had lived together, only to find that it was all becoming too blurred, too confused in my mind.
“I’d be grateful if next time you could ask.” The words left my mouth and I tasted something bitter and hurried to swallow.
Lucy stopped. She held a notebook in one hand, the other—the one with the bracelet—hung limply at her side. She was silent for a moment. “Ask about what, Alice?”
I turned to face her, chiding myself for feeling nervous. After all, the bracelet was mine, had once belonged to my mother, and was one of the few things that I had left of her. There was nothing wrong with asking Lucy to get permission before taking it from my jewelry box, I told myself. “It’s nothing, really,” I said, feeling the heat as it burned my cheeks. “It’s just, the bracelet. I don’t mind, honest, it’s just, if you could ask next time.”
Lucy continued to peer at me with that same queer expression. Her hand had moved to the doorknob but it froze then, as if she couldn’t decide whether to respond to my request or leave the room without deigning to answer at all. Finally she dropped her hand and said, “I don’t understand.”
“My bracelet,” I replied, stammering over the first word. I pointed to her wrist.
A small laugh escaped from her then. “Alice,” she said, “don’t be silly.”
She was staring at me, her dark eyes boring into mine. I squirmed under their gaze, feeling as though I were the one who had done something wrong, as though the stolen object dangled from my wrist and not her own.