“Like, he killed her?” Nicole asks.
I open my mouth, then immediately close it, the answer too difficult to form into words.
“It’s complicated,” I say at last. “It was ruled an accident, officially, but there was more to it than that.”
“What happened?” she asks, and eventually, I sigh, my body back in that lukewarm water. The tangle of seaweed caught in my toes and the flitter of minnows grazing my thigh. Later that night, during dinner, Eliza’s parents told us that the Butlers were from somewhere in state. That their son, Levi, was a year younger than us and rightfully bitter at having been yanked out of high school the summer going into his junior year.
“He doesn’t know anyone in the Outer Banks,” Eliza’s mom had said, stabbing at a chunk of salmon with her fork. I still remember the sound of the metal scraping against the inside of her teeth, harsh and grating, spraying goose bumps across my arms. “So you girls be nice.”
“Why did they move?” I had asked, my sun-stung eyes darting in the direction of the Butlers’ house. Even though there were two thick walls and a full yard between us, I could still feel him there, as if he were sitting at that very table, nestled between Eliza and me. Already cutting me out.
“Said they needed a lifestyle change.” Mr. Jefferson shrugged. “Didn’t elaborate more than that.”
Eliza was unusually distant that night, lost somewhere deep in the fissures of her own wild mind. I watched as she sat there quietly, gnawing on a fingernail as Mr. Jefferson stood up and cleared the plates before lowering the needle down on an old record player; grabbing Mrs. Jefferson’s hand and swinging her around the kitchen the way he always did after dinner. I remember closing my eyes, listening to the music leaking out through their wide-open windows; the acoustics and laughter drifting across the water like some kind of birdsong that felt exotic and rare.
I remember thinking she’d get over it, that it was just another one of her brooding moods, but in the weeks that followed, it only got worse.
“What happened,” I echo back, Nicole’s question haunting me like a whisper in the night. I can’t even count the number of times I listened to those words tumbling out of the mouths of my parents that summer as they watched the news in the dark, shaking their heads and a film of tears sitting stagnant in their eyes. How many times I imagined the Jeffersons screaming them into the phone, at each other. Overheard my curious classmates as they tried to pry information out of anyone they could find. Running on repeat in my mind like a broken record, night after night, as I tried to understand it, come to terms with it all—and not just the singular moment, the accident itself, but everything that came before it.
“I don’t really know what happened,” I say at last. “That’s the hardest part.”
The three of them shift on my bed, uncomfortable, perhaps knowing on some subconscious level not to interrupt.
“I think she was just curious at first,” I say, remembering how I would catch her eyes skipping over to the house next door: to Levi, sweaty and shirtless, pushing around a manual lawn mower or doing push-ups on the patio while we sunned ourselves out back. She seemed only vaguely interested in the beginning, a window-shopper’s curious detachment. Strolling around the backyard the way she always did in nothing but her bathing suit, eyes on her phone as she walked the dock like a runway, pretending he didn’t exist. And he kept his distance, mostly. Sneaking the occasional glance when he thought we weren’t looking. Eliza sneaking it back. But then she caved after those first few weeks and searched for him on Instagram, scrolling through an endless array of Levis before throwing her phone onto her bed in defeat. His anonymity just made him more interesting to her, her mind filling in the blanks with details that were far more exciting than what likely existed. It didn’t help that we went to an all-girls school, either. That we spent every day of our lives enveloped in a heavy cloud of body mist and estrogen, dreaming about boys instead of seeing what they were actually like in real life.
If our parents sent us there with the intention of keeping us focused, of eliminating the distraction, it had the opposite effect. Instead, we were clueless and curious, a lethal combination, drawn to their bright colors like moths to a flame.
“She was always trying to branch out, meet new people,” I continue. “Then all of a sudden, this new guy shows up from somewhere different and starts taking an interest.”
“So, they dated,” Sloane says, and I shake my head.