“This is some party,” I say, turning to Lucas. He’s reclining in a lawn chair so ratty and worn he’s practically sitting on the ground, a cowboy hat tipped low over his eyes.
“This is nothing,” he responds, staring into the flames. “Just wait until January.”
“What’s in January?”
“Initiation,” Sloane says on his behalf. “The first party where the pledges aren’t pledges anymore.”
I nod, reminiscing on the last few months. The freshmen are required to spend every free second at the house during their first semester. I’m always seeing them coming over in the mornings and in the evenings after class, cleaning the house and running errands. Sacrificing Friday nights to be the upperclassmen’s designated drivers, chauffeuring them around town with no questions asked.
“There’s this little island a few miles off the coast,” Lucas continues. “An older brother found it years ago and it’s become a tradition, throwing it out there. No neighbors, no cops. Our own little slice of paradise.”
“How do you get there?” I ask. “By boat?”
I watch as Lucas tips a beer back to his lips, takes a long swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I’ve learned by now that having access to a boat is the highest form of social currency at a coastal college like Rutledge, little skiffs and dinghies cluttering up students’ lawns. Center consoles and speedboats for the locals who are lucky enough to use their parents’。
“Their last task is to drive everyone out there, set up camp,” Lucas says, nodding. “Once we’re settled, their obligations are over. It’s their first real night of freedom.”
I try to imagine it: hordes of students making their way to the water, bow lights bobbing as we venture out and into the night.
“Doesn’t it get cold in the winter?” I ask.
“We have a fire, heaters for the tents. Liquor blankets,” he adds, grinning. “It gets pretty feral.”
Sloane suddenly perks up, twisting around to face the house.
“Where is Nicole?” she asks for the second time tonight, as if this conversation suddenly sparked her memory. I realize, too, that we still haven’t seen her. Not since this morning.
“She’s wasted,” Lucas says. “She’s been here for, like, eight hours.”
“Should we go find her?” I ask, turning around, too. Waving my hand through the air as the wind picks up, pushing smoke from the bonfire directly toward me.
“Trevor has her. She’s fine.”
The circle settles back into a heavy, stoned silence, our limbs light and minds numb. The house is still thumping, still thrumming, still pulsing with the energy of hundreds of people still inside. I can practically feel the sweat dripping, the body heat radiating, and eventually Sloane and Lucas get up to grab another drink, leaving Lucy and me alone again.
I look over at her, blue eyes ablaze as she stares into the flames, feeling another rush of warmth in my chest.
“How was it complicated?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me. She’s still staring into the fire, completely entranced, her voice barely above a whisper. I look around, checking to see who else she could be directing the question to, but still, we’re alone.
“What?” I ask at last.
“Your friend,” she says. “You never said how she died. Only that it was an accident. That it was complicated.”
I feel a quick twinge in my chest like a popped guitar string, my insides buzzing. Remembering that conversation on my bed, the three of them staring as I started to talk.
“She fell,” I say at last, still staring at her profile. I wait for Lucy to turn and face me but she never does. “There was an argument, and she had been drinking … Honestly, it’s one of those things that doesn’t even feel real. Like I dreamed it or something.”
I’m quiet as I turn back toward the fire, my eyes getting lost in the glowing logs, the licking flames. Watching them travel up the pile of wood before transforming into curling black smoke and disappearing altogether.
“Where did it happen?” she asks.
“A party,” I respond. “I didn’t want to go, and she went with him.”
I swallow, close my eyes, remembering how it felt to be lying in bed that night, tapping through Instagram and seeing the videos of them together. Eliza and Levi. I knew she must have been drunk to be posting them like that, raw and unfiltered, one after the other in quick succession. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, a vacant stare, and I could so perfectly picture her heavy fingers punching at her phone screen as Levi draped an arm around her shoulder, the weight of him heavy. Pulling her down.