Only If You're Lucky(9)

I take one last glance at the picture, guilt washing over me. It’s pretty obvious, now, what I’m doing here. I’m trying to replace her. Eliza is my phantom limb: an amputation that still hurts me, haunts me, despite the fact that she doesn’t even exist. She is the dull, constant throb that wakes me in the night and doubles me over; sometimes, in those early morning hours, I forget she’s even gone. I’ll click open my eyes and reach out to the side, half expecting to feel her warm body beside me like during those summertime sleepovers. My fingers dragging their way across my comforter, searching for the familiar feel of her—but then, every time, I find it cold and empty, the pain increasing until it’s so unbearable I think I might faint.

I know now that if I’m ever going to move on, if I’m ever going to be whole, I need something to take her place. Someone else who can slip into her skin; who can give me everything she once did—or, rather, someone who can show me who I am without her. Because the truth is, I’ve only ever been Eliza’s best friend, ever since that first day in kindergarten when we clicked so easily. And even though we were opposites—me, brainy and bookish, and her, wild and alive—I was the yin to her yang, the quiet sidekick who talked reason into her ear when she got the sudden urge to do something stupid. I used to think that her standing next to me was the contrast I needed to stand out on my own, but I know now that was never the case. Instead, she was simply something I could cling to; a safety blanket that felt familiar and warm.

While nobody else ever remembered my face, knew my name, when I walked into a room with her, I saw it click: the recognition, the respect. Eliza’s friend.

“Coming!” I yell, standing up before propping the photo onto the mantel.

That’s why, when Eliza died, it felt like my identity did, too. Her death erased us both completely and I wonder if that’s the reason why I feel so drawn to Lucy. Why my eyes always gravitated to her when she walked down the hall or lay out on campus. Why I agreed to any of this. There are certain similarities between them and I wonder now if I had sensed them all along, my subconscious pulling me toward the closest thing I could find to my friend. After all, being loved by Eliza was like a sudden hit of adrenaline—a gateway drug, something addicting and freeing that left you craving your next hit the second she stepped away. And if Eliza was adrenaline, that makes Lucy something even more. Something more addicting, more dangerous.

Something I probably shouldn’t be dabbling in—but at the same time, something impossible to refuse.





CHAPTER 6


AFTER

I plop down on my bed with an exaggerated huff. Detective Frank is gone, finally, and I want to take advantage of the precious time to think.

I glance around my room, taking in all the subtle changes that have taken place over the nine months since I’ve made this space my home: the pictures cluttering up the mantel are with Lucy, Sloane, and Nicole now, our lips pursed in puckery pouts and our cheeks smashed together with too much force. Most of them were taken in the early days: those sweet weeks of summer when we were just getting to know each other. Those first few months when everything was fine. You can tell by how different we all look, Nicole especially, her cheeks still baby-round and not the concave craters they would slowly shrink into. Then there’s the string of Christmas lights hung up around the walls that I never bothered to take down; the cigarette burns visible on the floor, little black dots peppered across the hardwood from when Lucy was too lazy to grab an ashtray. All of the evidence of the life I’ve built in this house. The person I’ve become.

That person is almost unrecognizable to the person I was when I first stepped foot in here—though, I suppose, that was the point.

I wonder how much time we have until the search for Lucy really ramps up. I know, right now, they’re grasping at straws: an adult gone for three days is hardly enough to call her a missing person, especially considering what they’ll soon come to learn. And Sloane wasn’t lying when she said it before: Lucy does this kind of thing. Everyone who knows her knows it.

But still, Levi is dead. Levi is dead, Lucy is gone, and someone has to pay.

I roll over now and reach for my bedside table, yanking the drawer open. Inside, I sift through all the typical clutter: a TV remote, a couple empty lighters I haven’t bothered to throw away. Wrinkled receipts and dried-out pens, until finally, my fingers wrap around something cold and smooth shoved into the back and I pull it out, tap it awake.

It’s Lucy’s phone, a smattering of stars sprinkled across the lock screen.

I know I can’t hang on to this forever. I know they’ll eventually track it and it’ll lead them back here, to this house. To the three of us—Sloane, Nicole, and me—her roommates and confidants. Her best friends. But it’s better than Lucy having it, we all knew that. There were certain things that made sense for her to keep: her ID, her wallet. A handful of credit cards, although of course she’d have to use those to be tracked down. Her phone, on the other hand, was something we couldn’t risk. At least this way, by the time they find it, it’ll be stashed underneath her bed or something, completely obscured by dirty clothes and rogue shoes. The battery will be dead, which will explain how we never heard the ringing of various people trying to reach her.

Which will explain why, after always getting voice mail we stopped trying ourselves.

But by the time that happens, they will have already found their answers … only they won’t be the answers I know they’re expecting. Lucy’s unpredictable like that. No, the answers they’ll find will only lead to more questions, and slowly, carefully, we’ll slink back into the shadows and let all those other things crawl quietly into the light. We’ll remove ourselves from the story completely, letting it morph into something different, better. Staged.