I think of Levi leaving the shed, that haunted look on his face.
I think of Nicole half naked on the floor, fetal and broken. The way she tried to fight me off when I touched her, her pathetic little limbs pushing into mine and her voice so fragile. Those single-syllable words flopping off her tongue like they were too heavy for her mouth to hold.
“No. Stop.”
Once again, there’s just something about Levi, and it isn’t even how he had been on our property before I found her, having free rein of our home like that night at Eliza’s. It isn’t even the way those bruises had been on her wrist, of all places, sending a sharp pain through my chest like a knife to the heart. It’s that I’ve noticed, ever since Halloween, that Nicole and Levi hardly even look at each other anymore. It’s not like they ever really had a friendship before—Nicole listened to me when I told her those stories about Eliza, his watching, what happened between them on the night she died—and after that, she always kept her distance, albeit pleasantly, politely, such is Nicole. But now, it isn’t just her staying away. It’s him, too. A mutual ignoring that feels deliberate on both their parts.
Like something happened between them they equally want to forget.
“I’ve just been thinking—” I start, but before I can finish, I open the shed and jump straight back, my hand shooting to the base of my neck. “Jesus, that’s disgusting.”
In front of us, a dead deer hangs from a rope on the ceiling, bubblegum tongue lolled out to the side and a steady stream of blood flowing into a floor grate I’ve never once noticed.
“They must’ve gone hunting,” Lucy says, unperturbed, watching curiously as the carcass sways. “It’s finally cold enough.”
I suddenly remember the way the shed smelled the very first time I stepped inside: that metallic tang, like something decayed, that has since become as commonplace as the vanilla perfume dabbed behind Lucy’s ear, Nicole’s peppermint shampoo pushed into the pillows. I barely even notice it anymore, the smell of death. The odor of rust and rot that’s always there, airborne, stained into the place.
“They’re bleeding it,” she observes, tilting her head, her eyes following that thin trickle of red. “I wonder if we can convince them to make us dinner.”
“No, thank you.”
“You’ve never had venison before?”
“No.”
“You should try it. It’s good.”
“I don’t know,” I say, staring into its pupils. Seeing myself in the inky reflection before forcing myself to look away. “It feels a little different when you look into its eyes before eating it.”
Lucy just shrugs, continues walking.
“Who else is here this week?” I ask as we skirt our way around the interior walls. The deer keeps turning as we move; a slow, somber circle.
“Lucas, Trevor, James, Will,” she says. “They’re all local so they’re just going home for the day.”
“That’s it?”
“A couple of pledges,” she adds, deliberately not looking at me. “They always make a few of them stay behind to take care of the house.”
“Which ones?” I ask, suddenly more alert. We’re almost to the back door now, the faint eruption of laughter leaking through the windows. The scrutiny of the deer on my back making the little hairs on my neck stand up straight.
“Levi,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I saw his Jeep out front.”
I stop, barely a few feet from the door now, and Lucy twists around, annoyance on her face.
“Look, I know you don’t like him, but you can’t hide in your room every time he comes around. You were here first.”
“I know,” I say, biting my lip.
“You’re going to have to learn to ignore him.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Being around him just makes me feel guilty.”
“Because of Eliza?” she asks, and for a second, I forget to breathe, hearing Eliza’s name on her lips for the very first time jarring something loose in me I didn’t even know was there. It feels so strange, listening to her say it so casually like that. Like bumping into someone you know in a place you don’t expect them. Seeing them ripped from one world and dropped into another, notably out of place.
“Yes,” I say at last. “Because of Eliza.”
And that’s the problem, really: Lucy and Eliza should exist on two totally different planes. They shouldn’t be intersecting like this, over and over again, the two lives I’ve created that were meant to be parallel now painfully perpendicular.