I remember thinking that, wherever she was, she was looking at them, too.
CHAPTER 7
BEFORE
The living room has been picked up, sort of, beer bottles collected and tossed into the trash. There’s a candle burning on the coffee table, something citrusy and herbal like eucalyptus and lemon, the equivalent of spraying Febreze on dirty laundry. As if the scent alone could somehow render the place clean.
I walk out of my room and clear my throat, three pairs of eyes turning toward me.
“Girls,” Lucy announces, a grin on her lips. “This is Margot. Roommate number four.”
I raise my hand, a sheepish wave, and walk toward them on the couch, trying to make a quick calculation in my mind: Do I plop down, too, just pretend that I’m one of them? Or stand at a distance and wait to be invited?
“Where’d you find her?” Sloane asks, eyeing me like I’m some stray dog Lucy dragged in from the street. Like I might have fleas.
“She lived on our hall.”
“Our hall?”
“Yes,” Lucy says, a hint of annoyance peeking through. “The last door on the left.”
“Why have we never met her before?”
“You’re meeting her now.”
I stay standing, taking in Sloane’s skeptical gaze. Nicole is chewing on her lip, like she’s trying to work out some math problem in her mind. I’m not surprised they don’t know my name. I barely left my room at all last year—but still, the fact that my face isn’t even vaguely familiar sends a deep sting through my chest.
“Sit,” Lucy says, and I glance around, deciding to take a seat on the couch adjacent to them. A little distance suddenly seems safe. “Tell us about yourself.”
I blink, my eyes flitting between the three of them as they stare at me expectantly, and I feel a sudden sense of vertigo, a sharp pang of panic, like I’m standing on a hot stage and suddenly forgot my lines.
“I’m Margot,” I say at last, even though they know that already. “I’m an English major from the Outer Banks—”
“No,” Lucy says, interrupting me. “All of that is bullshit. That’s not you. Tell us about you.”
I can feel my heartbeat rise into my throat, my cheeks growing warm as my mind goes blank. The sad truth of it is, there’s not much else to say.
“Why’d you pick Rutledge?” Nicole asks, wide doll eyes and a gentle tone. Already, I can tell she’s the nicest.
I turn toward her, offering a smile. She’s giving me an opening, I know. A hand to grab because she can clearly see me flailing—but at the same time, I’m not going to talk about Eliza. Not yet.
“I had to get out of North Carolina,” I say at last, a watered-down version of the truth. “I just needed to go somewhere new.”
I think of home again and the way my parents had suggested I defer my acceptance after we lost Eliza, giving me some time to sort through it all. A year to deal with my grief. I had considered it for a while before realizing what their true intentions were: an attempt at making me change my mind and choose Duke instead. It’s like they knew, without her, that I’d default back to them, doing whatever they asked me to do. The future we had planned together gone forever, buried with her, like the friendship bracelet we made together back when we were eight.
I remember looking down at my own, all those colorful threads woven together on my wrist, and suddenly feeling so angry about them capitalizing on her death like that. Using it for their own purposes: to control me, use me, their straight-A daughter just another thing for them to brag about at the country club cocktail parties.
In a way, I think I came here to spite them. I think I wanted them to know that, even dead, I would still choose her first.
“Why?” Lucy asks now, leaning forward. “What happened that made you want to leave so bad?”
I look up at her and swallow, something swirling in those crystalline eyes. A challenge or a dare I’m suddenly sure I’ll fail.
“Jesus, Lucy, would you stop with the third degree?”
I look over at Sloane, her toned arms crossed tight in front of her chest. Her scowl is still there, but suddenly, it no longer feels directed at me.
“I’m getting to know her,” Lucy says, a feigned innocence dripping from her lips.
“You’re interrogating her,” Sloane snaps back. “Lay off.”
The room grows silent again, the four of us sitting in a beat of uncomfortable quiet. The arguing, the hostility: for a second, it concerns me, thinking that the three of them might not be as tight as I thought—but then, I realize it’s the opposite. Eliza and I used to bicker like this, too, throwing the kind of sharp jabs at each other only best friends could survive. Words can stick, wedging themselves fast into the tenderest parts of you—but when you have years of memories to thicken the skin, they aren’t quite as fatal. Instead, they bounce off, land with a whimper. Most of the time, anyway.