I can practically hear him now, that belittling voice. Commanding and masculine; always right. “You were drunk, Nicole. You don’t know what you saw.”
“We need to start locking the doors,” I say. “Lucy told me Nicole keeps losing her key, but we can’t just leave them open for anyone to come in.”
Sloane looks at me, opening her mouth like she’s about to tell me off.
“I’m not blaming Nicole,” I add, holding up my hands. “That didn’t come out right. I’m just saying we need to protect ourselves.”
She closes her mouth again and glances down at her lap, fingers working at the seam of a skirt for so long the thread has pulled, unraveling the fabric.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she says at last, nodding slowly. “We need to protect ourselves.”
CHAPTER 38
Finals go by in a sleep-deprived blur: waking up early, slogging to campus, those bleary morning hours desolate and dark despite the string lights wrapped tight around the fronds of the palmetto trees. Entire days spent hunched over textbooks in an always-abandoned corner of the library, underslept and overcaffeinated, my body buried between archaic desktop computers like the only mourner left in a forgotten graveyard.
Saying goodbye is strange once the semester is over and it’s finally time for us to all part ways. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent every single day of the last seven months together, suddenly inseparable the way Eliza and I once were: hips attached, finishing each other’s sentences. Oftentimes falling asleep in the same bed. So many nights, I wake up with a jolt to the glow of some old movie playing in the background, the sticky sensation of cotton mouth on my tongue. Turning to the side to see the three of them curled around each other like plaited roots, eyelids twitching in the dark and the twinkle of Christmas lights hung haphazard around my bedroom as I’m left wondering what I did to find myself here. How I’ve gotten so lucky with this second chance I know I don’t deserve.
Or maybe it’s because I know, once we all leave, that Lucy will stay. That while the rest of us will be making our way home, four whole weeks getting fattened up with home-cooked meals and spoiled with piles of intricately wrapped presents, Lucy will still be here, alone. Without us. She’ll be making her own meals or probably picking up takeout, plastic fork nudging at the leftovers from Penny Lanes. The house will be eerily quiet around her—even Kappa Nu will be empty, every last one of the boys gone, too—and it’s such a depressing thought, so un-Lucy-like, picturing her all forsaken and small.
“Are you going to be okay?” I ask now, my hand on the door as I hesitate outside my running car. Exhaust is billowing out as Lucy stands on the porch in sweatpants and bare feet, arms crossed tight against her chest. “Being here by yourself?”
“Margot,” she says after a beat of silence, the tip of her nose chapped and pink. “Are you serious?”
“You can come home with me. We’d be happy to have you.”
Ever since that night on the roof, her voice raspy and raw as she told me her secret, I’ve felt the offer threatening to rip right through me so many times before simply swallowing it back down and forcing myself to forget. I know she’ll refuse, maybe even get angry at me for feeling an ounce of pity for her, but now that I’m standing here, the last one to leave, it feels wrong to just drive away without saying something.
“I’m touched,” she replies, hand over heart, monotone and mocking.
“Really. My parents are … I mean, they’re parents. They get annoying sometimes. They’ll probably interrogate you the second you step inside—”
“You’re doing a really great job selling me on this.”
“—but at least you won’t be by yourself on Christmas,” I finish. “Come on, Luce. You don’t deserve that. Nobody does.”
She hesitates, and for a single second, I imagine her stomping down the steps and wrapping me in a hug, her nose nuzzled tight into my neck and her breath warm on my ear. I picture her sliding into the passenger seat, fiddling with the radio. Bare feet on the dash as she pokes around the cupholders, curious fingers collecting loose change.
Instead, she crosses her arms tighter and leans against the doorframe.
“I want to be by myself,” she says at last. “Really, it’s fine.”
* * *
I see the silhouette of my mom in the yard the second I pull onto my street. She’s waving frantically, standing on her tiptoes with one long arm flailing in the air while my father hovers behind her with his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable.