“Then you shouldn’t have told her,” Sloane interrupts. “That’s what Lucy does. She dangles.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. I risked this when I decided to tell them about Eliza and Levi and the history they shared. The accident that killed her and the fact that Levi was there with her. The unanswered questions, all those loose ends. Everyone looked at him differently after that, rumors mounting when he was identified as the last person to be seen with her alive. Silent speculation trailing him around like an invisible odor, turning up noses.
I suppose I just hoped they would keep it to themselves.
“What is she going to do?” I ask at last. “She isn’t going to confront him about it, is she?”
“Are you really asking me what Lucy is going to do?” Sloane asks, finally flipping over to face me. “You should know by now that’s a stupid question. Nobody ever knows what Lucy is going to do.”
“It’s a bad idea,” I say. “It could make him feel cornered or something. People are dangerous when they feel cornered.”
Sloane is quiet, her head pushed into the pillow and her tired eyes open just barely. Finally, she sighs, rolling onto her back so she’s staring at the ceiling.
“I don’t think she’d do that,” she says at last. “But she is gonna fuck with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s gonna play with him. Scare him. Paw at him like a little mouse.”
I remember the way Lucy had looked that night on my bed, her expression impenetrable as I told her about Levi and the things he did. I could tell, even then, that there was something churning around in her mind. Something gaining substance, growing solid. I just didn’t know what.
“Why do you care, anyway?” Sloane asks, pulling me from the memory. “Why should he get to come here and live a perfect life after what happened to your friend?”
“He shouldn’t,” I say, sinking lower into the comforter, the feeble resolve getting harder in my chest.
“Right,” she says. “So let him squirm.”
We settle back into the silence, Sloane’s chest rising and falling until I’m certain she’s asleep again. I think about getting up, heading back into my own room and trying to do the same, when my mind wanders back to Lucy’s cup last night, sitting untouched by her side.
“Did you notice she wasn’t drinking?” I ask at last.
“Margot, I have a raging hangover,” Sloane says, eyes still closed. “I didn’t notice if Lucy was drinking.”
“She wasn’t,” I say, thinking about how we all got so drunk so fast while she seemed to stay sober, voice straight and words unwavering. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t.”
Sloane sighs, finally pushing herself up and resting her head on the headboard. I watch as she gestures to a half-empty glass of water on her side table, a smudge of old lipstick kissing the rim, and I hand it to her, watching as she takes a small sip.
“Lucy likes to know everything about everybody,” she says at last, licking her lips. Then she exhales, long and hard, and closes her eyes like she just ingested some kind of drug. “She wants to know it all.”
“She’s inquisitive,” I say, but Sloane shakes her head.
“She’s cunning. If she wasn’t drinking, it’s because she had some kind of agenda last night. She wanted to keep her wits about her. You still don’t know anything about her, do you?”
I think for a second, knowing she’s right. Sloane had asked me this very same question on that very first day, the two of us pushed against the side of the shed, and now, months later, my answer is the still same. I consider Lucy a friend at this point, no longer a stranger on the hall or an object sunning herself on the lawn. Not just an enviable face I looked at with wonder and awe but something more personal now … and still, when it comes to who she is at her tender, pulsing, meaty core, I know next to nothing. Lucy never offers up anything of substance, shunning truth for dare and always guiding the conversation to avoid any questions that threaten to get too personal. She never opens up, instead focusing her attention on prying anything and everything out of the people around her. It’s what makes her so mysterious, so interesting. The reason those rumors swirled around her like a cloud of gnats our freshman year; why people made up stories, her very existence an urban myth, a far-fetched legend. Something whispered about behind cupped hands, passed down from person to person, each iteration more fictious than the last.