I wonder if she even cares.
If I was the one to disappear, my parents would already have “MISSING” posters stapled to every light pole across the state. I know I complain about them, I know they have flaws, but I can’t deny that they are the ideal family for a missing girl. They have money and resources and endless time; the kinds of faces that would look nice at a press conference, their televised grief still achingly attractive. There would be manned tip lines and a million-dollar reward set up within the first twenty-four hours.
Probably a hashtag, already trending.
I can’t help but remember now how we all sat here together, in these very same spots, on that very first day: Lucy, Sloane, Nicole, and me, squeezed together on this tiny little twin. Maybe it was the cheap beer still sitting stale in my stomach or the knowledge that Levi Butler was just next door or the fact that Lucy had been looking at me, blue eyes wide and attention rapt, in a way I had never seen her look at anyone before—but whatever the reason, something changed in that moment.
My guard dropped and I started talking. I started telling them everything.
“You’re getting scared,” Sloane says now, her hand on my leg. “You shouldn’t be. This was her idea to begin with.”
“I know,” I say again.
“She’s the one who got us into this.”
“I know.”
“The Butlers are filing a lawsuit against Kappa Nu,” Nicole adds. “Wrongful death.”
I nod, my eyes drilling into my bedspread. I had heard that, too, the breaking news alert chirping across my phone. Even though Levi’s death was initially deemed an accident, it happened at a fraternity function. Alcohol was involved … a lot of it. None of us were of age, yet all of us had been wasted, guzzling cheap booze before passing out around a giant open flame as the temperature plummeted around us, frozen fingers and plumes of breath visible in the night. He had marks and bruises on his skin, possible evidence of being hazed. His blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.
It’s a miracle, his parents would argue, that there weren’t more fatalities.
I can see the impending articles now; all the blame being pointed at Rutledge and Greek life and the way we students were able to run wild, drinking ourselves into a stupor with barely any oversight. Surely, it would go national: endless headshots of Levi flashing across the television, poised and professional and not at all the party animal I had always known him to be. He would be painted an athlete, a scholar, despite the fact that he ran track for one year in high school before dropping out, his smoking habit decimating his lungs. Despite the fact that he was a solid C student who was probably only admitted because his dad was a donor. Nevertheless. The entire country would still mourn his promise, his potential, all of it washed away with the water of an outgoing tide. Kappa Nu would be seen as a mere casualty; an innocent bystander caught in the cross fire.
But were they innocent? Were they, really?
I can’t bring myself to feel bad about the consequences that have already come for the rest of the brothers: the suspensions and the fines. The collective black spots that will follow them around campus, the rest of their lives, forever marring them as the reason one of their own had died. Because they brought this upon themselves, too, the way they looked at us like part of their property. The way they treated us like things they owned; mere decorations that came with the house itself.
The way they used us, dangled us like carrots. Hung us up like a neon sign flashing in the night: GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS.
They deserve it all.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding, remembering. The brightness of the stars that night and the way they shone like diamonds in the sky. The totality of the darkness around us, a deep, dank, velvety black. The way Levi stood up and immediately stumbled, pitching forward in his bare feet before lurching off into the distance.
The way Lucy had stood up, too, glancing in my direction before following him into the cattails, quick and quiet. Disappearing into the night.
“Yeah,” I repeat, my confidence growing. “It’s gonna work.”
CHAPTER 14
BEFORE
“Levi Butler was my best friend’s next-door neighbor,” I say at last, picking at a loose cuticle until it bleeds. The three of them are sitting beside me, chins in their hands. “And he’s the reason she’s dead.”
The bluntness of the statement catches me by surprise, the way it spewed out of my mouth like a sneeze. Powerful and without permission. I look up at them, registering their shocked expressions. Their bunched-up foreheads and wide, white eyes.