“Where is Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She does this sometimes.”
“What do you mean she does this sometimes?”
“She just does her own thing. It’s not the first time she’s gone somewhere without telling anyone. You remember Christmas.”
My mom is quiet, thinking. They had met once, my mom and Lucy; a whirlwind of a week that was, other than that night at Penny Lanes, the unofficial start of all this.
“I knew I had a bad feeling about her, even then—”
“No, you didn’t. You said you loved her.”
“Did she have something to do with that Butler boy?” she interrupts, the real reason she’s calling. “Margot, honey, this is serious.”
“No,” I say. “God, Mom, are you kidding? You’re really asking me if Lucy killed someone?”
“It’s just strange,” she says. “Another freak accident, especially after what happened to Eliza…”
“This has nothing to do with Eliza,” I snap. “Why are you even bringing her up?”
“Because that boy was the last person to be seen with her alive!” she practically screams into the phone. “Your best friend, Margot! And now he’s dead, and your new best friend is missing after being interrogated about it! It doesn’t make sense!”
“You’re being hysterical,” I say, only because I don’t want to admit she’s right.
“If he hurt her, I would understand,” my mother says after a heavy silence. I hear her exhale, finally, and I can so perfectly picture the way her free hand is probably worrying its way around her pearl necklace, yanking it from her skin like a too-tight turtleneck. “I would understand if she had to, you know, protect herself.”
“It wasn’t like that, Mom.”
“You know as well as anyone what that boy might be capable of.”
“I said it wasn’t like that.”
“I’m just worried about you.”
“You’re worried about how it looks,” I correct.
“Well, yes, of course I am,” she snaps. “People are going to start avoiding you like the plague if everyone you hang out with keeps winding up missing or dead.”
I close my eyes, let her talk. There’s no point in arguing.
“I can’t believe they’re letting you stay in that house after everything that’s happened,” she mutters, and my eyes click open again, relieved at the shift in topic.
“Actually, they’re not,” I say at last, leaning against my bedframe. “They’re giving us a week to move out.”
“That’s good,” she says, her tone softening. “I never liked the idea of you living there, anyway. All those boys just next door.”
“It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“The college found us an apartment a few blocks away,” I say, glancing around my room, trying not to think about the fact that I still need to pack. I’ve known this was coming for a while, but still, I’ve been avoiding it. We all have.
“What are they going to do with the house?” she asks, and I pinch the bridge of my nose, bottling a scream.
“I think it’ll just be vacant for a while,” I say. “Kappa Nu’s suspended until the investigation wraps, and they own it, so we can’t just live here without landlords.”
“Maybe now is the time to reassess Rutledge,” my mom says, a noticeable pep in her voice like the thought just occurred to her, even though I know she’s been thinking it since the day we put down the deposit. “Distance yourself from all this nonsense. Plenty of students transfer after a year or two, and you do still have the grades for Duke, don’t you?”
“I’m not transferring,” I interrupt. “And I have to go, Mom. I’m really busy right now. Midterms start in two weeks.”
“I don’t know how they expect you to get through exams in the midst of all of this,” she says, sighing. “It’s not right. One student missing and another one dead.”
“Yeah,” I say, chewing over that second sentence: One student missing and another one dead. “Guess they just want to keep us feeling normal.”
“Well, there is nothing normal about this,” she says, her voice dipped into a whisper, muttering to herself like she forgot I’m even here. “Nothing normal at all.”
CHAPTER 20