It’s even worse once it’s quiet, though, the thought of Levi creeping through our house the same way he once crept through Eliza’s forcing my brain to stay awake. It comes to me in flashes, the juxtaposition of then and now blurring together until they’re indistinguishable: his calloused hands on our doorknob, twisting it gently before stepping inside. The fluttering of wind in the curtains, Eliza’s living room and the marshy smell that seeped its way in like he brought something dead inside with him. Walking around her bedroom, plucking that picture from her wall and running his fingers over it before slipping it into his pocket.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, my body sinking down with the creak of the springs.
I’ve slipped into sleep a couple times, but it’s always a restless, stressful dip out of consciousness before I’m startled back awake after only a few minutes—and every single time, I see flashes from my past, carnivalesque and over the top. The same way the circle of us around that bonfire felt otherworldly and wrong: Eliza and me lying out on the dock, our limbs stretched so long they look like melting taffy pulling in the sun. Levi’s white smile, the corners of his lips fish-hooked so high I can see his gums.
Darkness, total darkness, so disorienting that I feel myself falling far and fast until I hit the ground with a quick, wet splat.
I glance at my bedside table, little digital numbers glowing red and the pair of handcuffs coiled on the clock, serpentine in the dark. It’s almost four in the morning and even though the effects of whatever I took earlier have mostly worn off, there’s still that lingering discomfort that borders on fear.
My legs won’t stop pulsing, thrashing, my body begging me to run.
“It’s totally harmless,” Lucy had said, grabbing her keys from a hook on the wall and unlocking the cuffs. Then she sat me down on the kitchen floor and fed me little sips of water, hand cupped tight under my chin. I had been shaking uncontrollably at that point, trembling jaw like a chattering-teeth toy. “Just gives everything a bit of a glow until, you know. It doesn’t.”
“I wish it was him,” I had said, ignoring her completely. Goose bumps spraying across my skin and my voice as sharp as a blade. Lucy cocked her head and I watched as the understanding dawned on her slowly. I had been thinking of Levi, of course, visions of him and Eliza staggering around that night on my phone. Their lips slick with vodka and spit and their fingers twisted together, knuckles white in the dark. “It should have been him.”
I flip to my side, eyes wide and stinging. Now that I’m coming down, I try to talk myself into believing what Lucy had said: there are so many explanations that could make sense. Maybe Levi really was in the shed, one of the other brothers sending him on some obscure errand like fetching lighter fluid that didn’t exist, laughing behind his back as he fumbled around, frantic, too afraid to come back without it. It was the kind of stupid thing they did to the freshmen; the kind of thing meant to embarrass and belittle. Or maybe he really was fixing something in the house, fiddling with one of the many broken things we had to hound the boys about: the shoddy heater that wasn’t a problem in the summer, but now, in October, made our toes stiff when we walked barefoot across the floor. The leak in Sloane’s ceiling that still wasn’t fixed or, like Lucy had said, the running toilet tank that, now that I think about it, I haven’t heard all night.
I close my eyes, exhaling long and hard. It was a bad trip, that’s all. A foreign chemical that managed to hotwire my brain, revving up the worst of my fears.
But then, just as my body starts to unwind, I hear the faintest sound.
I sit up quick, trying to determine where it came from. It seemed like it was both inside and outside at the exact same time: a muted thump, like a fist pounding or foot kicking … or the hard, fast slap of a door slamming shut.
I click on the lamp on my bedside table, holding my breath as I listen. I hear it once more, in my room but also out of it: a muffled shuffling, close but quiet, so I fling off the covers and get out of bed, creeping my way toward my closed bedroom door.
“Lucy?” I whisper, even though I know, from down the hall, she can’t hear me. She’s probably asleep, anyway. It’s four in the morning. “Luce, is that you?”
I can feel my heart in my throat as I pray for a response—she’s in the bathroom, maybe, grabbing a glass of water—but instead of her voice, I hear it again. That sound.
A thump, a groan. A single dry cough.
“Shit,” I whisper, the palms of my hands prickling with damp. “Shit, shit, shit.”