I can hear her voice now, dipped into a whisper, the same way she always materializes when the memories of her become too much. I can see the swing of her legs in my peripheral vision; the flick of her eyes darting outside.
That flash of excitement as she chewed on her pencil, tugged twice on her hair.
“I think he watches me. I think he’s out there right now.”
I walk toward her dresser next, opening the drawers before I can think twice, resisting the urge to pull something out and inhale it deeply. Wrap it around my shoulders and call it mine. Instead, I let my fingers trail across the clothes still folded neatly inside, skirting the edges, feeling the fabric, until they brush against something different, rougher.
Paper, I realize. A torn-open envelope shoved deep in the back.
I glance over my shoulder, toward her open door, then back to the dresser, grabbing the envelope and pulling it out from between two sweaters. It’s thick, bulky, and I stick my fingers inside, eyes widening as I pull out a stack of cash.
“What is this?” I whisper, my thumb flipping through the bills. There’s several thousand dollars in here, easily, every bill a hundred.
I shove the money back inside and close the flap, flipping the envelope around. It’s addressed to a place I don’t recognize—a place in Fairfield, North Carolina—with no return address at all.
I eye it carefully, trying to figure out who it might be from, who was meant to receive it. Why Eliza had it stuffed in the back of her dresser like some dirty little secret she didn’t want to reveal. Maybe she found it while she was out one day and decided to keep it, claim it as her own. I wouldn’t put it past her. She once found a solid-gold bracelet in the school parking lot and decided to keep that, too, instead of turn it in and attempt to find its rightful owner.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and open the camera, snapping a picture of the address before tucking the envelope back where it was. I close the dresser and walk next to her desk, an urgent curiosity sweeping over me. I don’t care about the money; I just want answers. Eliza and I didn’t keep things from each other—at least in the beginning we didn’t—but this envelope means something, and I want to know what it is. My eyes skip over her old textbooks, still stacked high in each corner, a smattering of notes and papers leftover from senior year. I find her planner and flip it open, fanning the pages, eyes stinging as the little doodles in pen dance before me like a flipbook. I read through all the old milestones she rendered important enough to note—SAT dates, the last day of school, graduation—and blink back tears when I see she wrote future ones, too. Days that she was apparently excited enough about to write down; days she’d never get to see.
Margot’s birthday. Move into Hines. First day at Rutledge!!
I slap the planner shut with too much force, my eyes watering as I walk to the bed and sit on the edge of it, fingers digging into her comforter.
“Margot, honey, you doing okay?”
I can hear Mr. Jefferson at the base of the stairs and I glance toward the hallway, wiping a rogue tear as it trails down my cheek.
“Fine!” I yell back. “Be down in a second.”
I look down at her bed, the imprint of my hand, the picture of that address burning hot in my pocket. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s graduation money, a gift from a relative she never lived long enough to spend. Maybe it’s her own personal savings stuffed in some random envelope she found; a college fund she was stocking up on, spending money for when we were finally free.
Maybe I’m trying to assign meaning to a truly meaningless thing and the very fact that I’m still sitting here, pulling at my hair in her bedroom the way I always was, sends a sharp sting of irony in my chest. A twinge of embarrassment that I’m still trying so hard to understand her, my best friend. Still attempting to read through the lines of the things she told me, separate the truth from her little white lies—but even then, it was pointless. Even then, Eliza only showed the world the face she wanted it to see: carefree and fearless, bold and brave. Everything else stayed hidden, secret, so I suppose her death should be no different.
I stand up and wipe my fingers beneath my eyes, an attempt to pull myself together, when a hint of movement catches my eye through the window. I start to walk toward it, peering through the glass.
It’s coming from Levi’s bedroom.
His blinds are open—the curtains, too—and I can just barely make out the back of his head as he sits on his bed, arms gesturing like he’s talking to someone just out of view. I never realized how clearly Eliza could see into his room from here, though I guess it makes sense—if he watched her, that means she could have watched him, too—and I lean in closer, a little thrill traveling through my chest at the thought of spying on him like he once spied on us.