The truth is, I’ve absorbed more in these three months than I did my entire freshman year: how to shotgun a beer and roll a joint and blow perfectly circular smoke rings by arcing my tongue in just the right way. I’m still a little quiet around the boys, sometimes on edge, but Lucy has been opening me up slowly like a finicky houseplant still learning to be loved. She’s been hatching me out of my shell—gently, gradually—but in a way I know would have made Eliza proud … and I’ve been starting to understand why Eliza wanted this, too, the thrill of it unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It wasn’t the parties or the games or the drinks she craved, I know that now, but the little things that appear in the moments in between: the way it feels to have someone recognize your face, know your name. Call you over to the other side of the room like they genuinely want you there. It’s the roar of laughter when a joke lands just right or the feeling of someone’s eyes on your skin that makes you feel so achingly alive.
Finally, I’m starting to get it—I’m starting to get her—and every single night, I collect those moments like I collect everything. Sentimental souvenirs I can’t stand to toss away.
“I have to work tonight,” Lucy says, leaning against the mantel. I look up again and notice she’s wearing her regular uniform: short shorts and crew socks and a red T-shirt with a bowling ball in the center, the logo for Penny Lanes emblazoned across the front. “You want to get the girls and come by after close?”
I smile, nod, eager to soak up these final few days together. I don’t know how things will change once everyone else comes back to campus but somehow, already, I know that they will. I can feel it, the shift in the air. The buzzing energy of other bodies nearby. I’ve noticed the moving trucks appearing around town, the first trickle of freshmen scoping out the dorms, and it’s strange, seeing them here. The presence of other people ripping me out of this reverie we’ve created like a stranger showing up unannounced in a dream—because that’s what these last three months have felt like. A dream, an alternate reality. The funhouse-mirror version of regular life. A college town in summer isn’t actually a college town at all and our little pocket of it has felt like a ghost town to us, a bunch of bored girls roaming around with nothing to do and all the time to do it.
Deserted and dangerous and ours for the taking.
* * *
We arrive at Penny Lanes an hour after closing, leaving Lucy enough time to clean up, close down, and ensure that everyone is gone. Sloane knocks three times on the front door as we wait, the summer air like a steam room, our skin like an oil slick. Another hot, humid night that siphons the energy out of us the second we step outside.
“I hope they have tater tots,” Nicole says, her left leg bouncing. “They’re so good here.”
Sloane looks at her, eyebrow cocked. “You know they just buy all their shit from Costco, right? It’s all frozen.”
Nicole shrugs. “Everything tastes better when it’s free.”
“It’s not free.” Sloane laughs. “We’re stealing it.”
“Still free to me.”
The door pushes open with a cool gush of air and I immediately know that something is different. Lucy is smiling at us from the other side of the building, beckoning us in, but the last time we showed up here, the inside of the alley was stone-cold and quiet, almost as if it was waiting for us to breathe it back to life.
This time, though, there are other people inside. Familiar voices. Boys.
“What’s all this?” I ask, stepping through the door. “Did we come too early?”
“Nope,” she says. “Just in time.”
I look around, recognizing Trevor and Lucas and a couple other brothers from next door. I’ve gotten to know them all intimately this summer, the small pocket of them who stayed behind, too. Trevor is boorish and loud—the polar opposite of Nicole, who’s always too nice to set him straight. It’s hard to know what they see in each other, to be honest, besides their uncannily good looks: poreless skin, milk-white teeth, both of them almost too perfect to be real. I have a feeling there’s something between Sloane and Lucas, too—something she doesn’t want to admit—and they’re an odd match themselves, but one that makes sense when I catch little glimpses when they think nobody is looking. Sloane is always so serious, so stoically bored, and Lucas makes her laugh in a way no one can.
I glance at the two of them now, Sloane and Nicole, though they don’t look as surprised as I feel.