“What do you do?”
“Just sit,” she says. “Stare. Think.”
We’re quiet for a while, no noises between us outside of the suck of Lucy’s cigarette: the crackling tobacco, the long exhale. The curl and crisp of the paper and the gentle flick of her fingers, red-hot ash scattering at her feet.
“Why are you awake?” she asks at last, not bothering to look at me. She’s staring out at something I can’t see, her gaze settled on one of those invisible spots in the distance.
“I don’t know,” I say, not wanting to reveal the real reason: all those thoughts of her and Eliza, Eliza and her, the two of them dancing around in my mind like the stars of some terrible ballet. “I couldn’t fall asleep.”
“How come?”
I look at her, the side of her face revealing nothing.
“I heard noises,” I say at last. “It was you, I guess, although it didn’t sound like it was coming from above before.” I look back ahead, the realization just now dawning on me. “It sounded like it was coming from below.”
That’s why those noises were so odd, so hard to pin down: they weren’t coming from inside or outside, but somewhere else entirely. Both and neither at the exact same time.
“Did you hear it on Halloween, too?” she asks. “The noises?”
“Yeah, actually. I did.”
I think back to those strange sounds that had lured me out of bed: the rustling, the cough. That fast slap of a door opening and closing again. I had forgotten all about them once I stumbled across Nicole on the tile, all my attention focused on her, and I watch as Lucy sucks down the last of her cigarette and flicks it off the roof, the tip of it sailing like a firefly in the night. She lies flat on her back as she blows the smoke out, a single fat cloud funneling into the air.
“Levi wasn’t in the house that night,” she says at last. “Not technically, at least.”
“What do you mean?” I turn my head to look at her, trying to understand, though she just continues to stare at the sky.
“He was in the cave.”
“The cave?” I ask, my eyes flicking across her face. They’re starting to get adjusted now, just enough to see the inky outline of her features in the dark: the gentle slope of her nose, the jut of her chin. “What’s the cave?”
“The basement.”
“This house has a basement?” I ask. “I didn’t think houses around here could have basements. The water table—”
“Yeah, too high, I know,” she says. “Less of a basement and more of a crawl space, then. You can’t even stand up in there.”
“What was he doing in our crawl space?”
“It’s stupid,” she says, finally rolling her head to look at me, the wet whites of her eyes glistening in the dark. “It’s a part of their pledgeship. All the freshmen have to spend a certain number of hours down there before they’re initiated.”
“You’re not serious,” I say, but as I think back to Halloween, it actually makes sense. I picture the blond boy first, the one in the dress, coming out to the fire before gesturing to our house like he was on his way there—then shaking his head, pursing his lips. Realizing, perhaps, who he was talking to. What he shouldn’t say. Levi next and how he looked so haunted, so scared, stuttering to find an explanation to defend his presence.
His eyes landing on the fire, finally, and then to Trevor. That sick look on his face like he had turned feral.
“You doin’ okay, man? You look a little pale.”
“What do they do?” I ask.
“Just lie there,” she says. “It’s too narrow to do anything else. I’ve seen it before. It’s literally a hole, like being buried alive.”
My mind wanders back to Levi again, that tortured expression, and I wonder how long he had been down there before he came barreling back out, running through the shed, eyes wide and full of terror. An hour, maybe two, body rigid in the dark as he listened to the sound of his own heart in his ears. His own rushing blood. The feeling of little legs crawling across his skin as he opened his eyes only to see the vast expanse of nothing staring back.
“Extra cruel to do it to a guy who claims to be claustrophobic,” she adds.
That’s why Trevor had been laughing tonight. Hearing Levi admit that, his fear of small spaces, and knowing what he was forcing him to do.
“They think it’s some big secret but Trevor told me when he was drunk,” Lucy continues, and I think back to that night at Penny Lanes, her finger tracing its way around the rim of her cup. Her listening, the rest of us talking, spilling our secrets like she slit us right open.