I remember sitting up fast, my screen glowing in the dark and alarm growing in my chest. Watching the two of them giggle uncontrollably, stagger around. A bottle of vodka clutched in his hand that he lifted to her lips, tipping it back.
I open my mouth, ready to speak again, when the body of a boy comes out of nowhere and slams into the seat beside me, making me jump.
“Holy shit,” he says. “Lucy Sharpe?”
Maybe it’s because everything feels so detailed tonight, the edges razor-sharp like a freshly whetted blade, but I can’t help but register the way Lucy’s eyes swell at the sight of him, her face freezing for just a second before slipping back into that indifferent fa?ade.
“Jesus, we all thought you were dead or something,” the boy continues, laughing, missing the fact that Lucy is ignoring him. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. “Where have you been? Do you go here?”
I watch as she gives him her full attention, finally, a fair-faced blonde wearing a short blue dress slathered in blood. Even from behind, I can see his shoulders tense beneath her scrutiny, a self-conscious laugh escaping his lips.
“Yeah, I know, I didn’t pick the costume,” he says, grabbing the dress. “All the pledges had to wear something stupid. I’m one of the twins from The Shining. What year are you?”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea who you are,” Lucy says at last, crossing one leg over the other. “We’ve never met.”
“Yes, we have,” the boy says, shaking his head. He doesn’t seem drunk—in fact, compared to the rest of us, he seems shockingly sober.
“You said you’re a pledge?” she asks, leaning forward, the light from the fire making her eyes shine. “A freshman, then?”
“Yeah, I’m Danny, remember?”
“Then why aren’t you getting me a drink?”
She thrusts her cup in his direction, the liquid inside barely half gone, and I look back and forth between Lucy and the boy, her cold eyes trained on his, something heavy traveling between them. It isn’t like Lucy to be so casually cruel like this. Blunt? Sure. She gets off on making people uncomfortable, commanding them around, but it’s usually with an air of intimacy, like she’s teasing them because she loves them. People would kill to be bossed around by Lucy, wearing her attention like a badge of honor … but Danny looks concerned right now, uneasy, cataloging the way she’s staring at him. Like she doesn’t even know him at all.
“I … I was just going…”
He gestures behind us, farther into the backyard, before closing his mouth and shaking his head, like he’s suddenly thought better of whatever he was about to say.
“Yeah, sure,” he says at last, standing up and taking her cup. “Coming right up.”
We watch in silence as he walks away, nothing but the popping of the fire and the distant echo of music masking the utter stillness between us. I wonder if she’s going to bring it up again, Eliza, nudge me to continue, but instead she turns toward me and smiles like she only just realized I’m here.
“Terrible pickup line.”
“You really didn’t know him?” I ask, looking back at the house where the boy disappeared, my own voice suddenly sounding strange in my ears. “It seems like he knew you.”
“No idea,” she says. “I bet one of the guys put him up to it. They always try to embarrass the pledges like that.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding vaguely, suddenly feeling a little nauseous. Slowly, quietly, the sense of euphoria I had earlier feels like it’s being replaced with something else now. Something more like unease. “Listen, should we find Nicole? I don’t want to leave her—”
Before I can finish, I hear the bang of the shed door swinging open behind us; the slap of the wood hitting the siding, hard. I twist around, relieved, expecting it to be Nicole—maybe Lucas was wrong; maybe she hasn’t been here after all, but instead, in her room, and now she’s mad at us for leaving her behind—but almost immediately, I feel the color drain from my skin as I register the body standing before me, his familiar face streaked with dirt.
“Levi,” I say, noticing the wild look in his eyes. It seems both haunted and hollow, like he’s just seen something terrible—or maybe it’s my eyes, distorting things. Twisting his face into something demonic, not unlike the way it looked immediately after they found Eliza, his pupils large and impassive as he stared into the lights, the cameras. His face on the news and his sweat-soaked skin as pale as a corpse. “What are you—？”