As if I’m not about to move into a house with three girls I know nothing about.
“Why me?” I had asked.
Lucy had invited herself into my room by then, trailing her fingers along my desk, her eyes drinking in all the knickknacks tacked to my corkboard. I’ve always been something of a hoarder—no, that’s the wrong word. A collector, maybe. The kind of person who saves ticket stubs and old receipts, applying sentimental value to inanimate objects. Like they have feelings. The idea of tossing even a single happy memory into the trash is enough to make my eyes prickle—and that’s not even the worst of it. There’s also the whittled-down pencil stubs and practically empty nail polish bottles; the crusty tubes of expired mascara and the used notebooks that pile up in my desk drawers for no reason other than the fact that I just can’t seem to throw them away. Mom says I have attachment issues; Dad says I’m a slob. I think I’m just afraid of getting rid of something prematurely; of dipping my hand into my purse and looking for some familiar comfort only to remember that I had disposed of it.
That it’s gone forever. That I’m left with nothing.
“Why not?” Lucy had responded, picking up my perfume and spraying a spritz on her wrist. I watched as she brought her nose to her skin and sniffed, wincing, before setting it back down.
“You don’t even know me,” I continued. “Why do you want to live with someone you don’t know?”
She looked up at me then, saucer-round eyes drilling into mine.
“Why do you?”
I blink now, my own eyes stinging in the brightness of the summer sun, and start to wonder if this was a mistake. I think about breaking the news to Maggie, admitting that I had made other plans in the hour between her telling me about the apartment and coming back from the dining hall, my mind still trying to process what had just happened. My vague explanation of a house off-campus and the hurt in her eyes as her lower lip quivered. The twist in my chest as she turned away, pretended to look for something in her backpack, too humiliated to even act mad. The truth is, she had every right to be mad. I left her, abandoned her, flicked her to the side like a cigarette the second some swanky new vice came prancing along.
Not only that, but Maggie saved me this year. Without her, I don’t know what I would have done.
It’s true that I didn’t feel any real attachment to her, I didn’t love her in the way I loved Eliza, but that’s only because I didn’t feel any attachment to anything. I spent the entire year floating, totally unmoored, completely removed from not only my body but from reality, too. In hindsight, I was definitely depressed: spending day after day in that concrete box, Eliza’s smiling face tacked to my corkboard mocking me as I got ready in the mornings, studied in the evenings. Lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, replaying the events of that night over and over and over again. My parents never noticed; my teachers didn’t, either. I was required to go to counseling after the college learned of Eliza’s passing but my grades never suffered so they simply egged me on, signed my slips, told me to keep doing what I was doing.
That whatever it was, it was working just fine.
Somehow, though, Maggie could always tell when that film started to descend over my eyes. The one that turned them glassy and gray, somewhere far away, my mind wandering to all those deep, dark places it sometimes escaped to when the memories of Eliza became too much. Maggie could see when my attention would start to dart around the room, wildly searching for something to distract me—a handful of painkillers, swallowed dry, a few too many to knock me out; the sharp bite of a thumbtack pushed into my finger until the skin popped—and she would gently nudge me back, suggesting we watch another movie or grab an ice cream, anything to snap me out of it.
All that to say, Maggie deserved more than the awkwardness of this past week together. The tension between us was physically painful: sidestepping one another in our little box of shared space, murmuring apologies and avoiding each other’s eyes. Saying goodbye with an uncomfortable arm hug and a promise to hang out after summer was over—a promise we both knew was dead the second it left our lips. Maggie is a good person, a great person, a person I don’t deserve.
But now, with an entire year lost since I lost Eliza, I don’t just need to be saved anymore. I need to be resuscitated.
I pick up my bags and start walking up the steps, the splintered wood in desperate need of a power wash. There’s yellow pollen caked to everything: the porch railing and rocking chairs and giant cooler situated between them, smudges of it everywhere like crusty mustard stuck to the cap. I drop my bags and open the cooler, peeking inside at the collection of beers bobbing in a foot of warm water, the ice long since melted. There’s a mosquito floating on its back, spindly legs thrashing in the air, and I close the lid again, wondering how long it’s been in there. I take in the portable speaker on the windowsill next, the collection of lighters piled up on a small table, black ash dotting the wood. The giant pair of flip-flops with dirty toe stains like someone just kicked them off before standing up and walking inside.