“She’s crazy.”
I peel my eyes from Lucy and look back at Maggie, jealousy radiating from her skin like a bad smell. “Why do you say that?”
“Because she is,” she says. “I heard she blinded her boyfriend in high school.”
“What? No way.”
“I’m serious. They were arguing about something, fighting at a party, and she reached out and scratched him across the face,” she says, clawing at the air. “Like a fucking cat.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say, eyeing her closely. Maggie isn’t usually like this: gossipy, mean. She’s one of the nicest people I know, actually. Irritatingly so. But at the same time, Lucy seems to bring out this side of people. It’s like her existence alone is somehow threatening to the rest of us—we know we can’t compete, so instead, we recoil, snarling at her from the corner to make ourselves feel safe.
“Swear to God, it’s true,” Maggie says, holding her hands up, defensive. “Her nail was kind of jagged or something and it ended up puncturing his cornea.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Rachel down the hall had a friend visit a few months ago. She said her boyfriend knows a guy who saw it happen.”
I cock my eyebrow.
“I’m just relaying what I heard.”
I turn back toward Lucy, noticing the way her fingers itch absentmindedly against her chest; the way her long, skinny nails leave little white streaks in the angry red of her sunburn. It isn’t the first rumor I’ve heard about her, each one more outlandish than the last. Some other girl on our hall swears she’s a foreign exchange student, undercover royalty shipped over from somewhere rich and exotic, although I’ve detected zero trace of an accent any time I’ve heard her speak. Another is convinced she’s sleeping with her professors—all of them, females included—the only logical explanation for how she seems to get by without studying.
“Anyway,” Maggie says, rolling back over and grabbing a Cheeto before popping it in her mouth. “I think I found us an apartment for next year. Two bed, two bath. It’s on the second floor, thank God. No more elevators.”
I hear myself mumble some distant mhmms, but I’m not listening. Not really. Two other girls have joined Lucy now—a blonde with braids and a dark-skinned girl with calves like baseballs that bulge beneath the skin. They live on 9B, too. Nicole Clausen and Sloane Peters. They’re almost always with Lucy, the three of them swigging from water bottles everybody knows aren’t filled with water before stumbling back hours later, eyes glassy and lipstick smeared. The first time I saw them, there was something about the way they walked that stuck with me: side by side, Lucy in the middle, arms hooked together like a chain-link fence. Like they couldn’t break apart even if they wanted to.
“Did you hear me?”
I whip back around at the sound of her voice to find Maggie looking at me, eyebrows raised.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said it’s close to the library so we won’t have to take the bus.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s great.” I smile, then turn back toward the girls. “Thanks for doing that.”
I watch as Sloane lays a towel on the grass and Nicole starts to slather sunscreen on her arms, though Lucy hasn’t even looked at them. Her eyes are still hidden behind her sunglasses as she stares up at the sky and the truth is, I do know what everyone sees in her. I’ve seen it myself all year. It’s the way her eyes seem to pierce you so deep, leaving behind microscopic little puncture wounds like a snake or spider bite. Something you can still feel on your skin long after she’s left. It’s the easy confidence she exudes, as natural as breathing, and the way she took control of that first night so effortlessly, just a handful of words making twenty-four strangers not only break the rules but simultaneously shatter some widely held belief about ourselves.
Some latent voice telling us to be embarrassed about our situation—nine floors of whores—when we should have been emboldened.
“All right, I’m done,” Maggie says suddenly, slapping her textbook shut with too much force. I crane my neck as she stands up, noticing the thin lines of sweat that have soaked their way through her tank top. Everyone is cramming for finals, meaning it’s only May, but it’s already hotter in Rutledge than it’ll ever be in most of the country by August. We’re used to it, though, students lugging backpacks through hundred-degree heat before stripping off their clothes and heading to the beach, drowning their stress in salt water and sweat.