Levi on our property, skulking around.
“This is all Lucy’s fault,” Sloane mutters, immediately snapping me out of it.
“How could it be Lucy’s fault?” I ask. “I was with her the whole night.”
“She’s the one who set her up with Trevor,” Sloane says. “She practically forced them together last year even though I told her it was a bad match.”
“They’re not a bad match,” I say, even though it sounds hollow the second I say it.
“Margot, come on,” she says, shooting me a look. “They’re awful together and you know it.”
I think about all the moments I’ve witnessed between them, Nicole and Trevor, subtle little things that always bothered me; elusive discomforts I could never quite place. It was in the way he looked at her, more lust than love, transforming into something else entirely any time he had a few drinks: animal, almost predatory, like he wanted her just for the sake of owning something. A sick pride in draining the life out of a living thing just to mount it on a wall. And then there was the time he interrupted her at Penny Lanes, telling us their secrets. The look on his face, like he was reveling in her shame. Flirting with me when she wasn’t around and stalking around the yard on Halloween, shirt ripped off and that rapacious grin.
The glimmer in his eye that made me take a step back.
“Why did Lucy want them together so bad?”
“It was never Trevor,” Sloane says. “It was this fucking house.”
“The house?”
“Lucy wanted to live here. Trevor was going to be president.”
Sloane arches her eyebrows and I finally understand: Nicole dating Trevor was a means to an end. Lucy wanted the house, and the only way to get it was to get in with Trevor. She had practically admitted it to me that first day of Thanksgiving break when the two of us were trudging through the grass together, making our way out to the shed. Her fear over them breaking up and it going to someone else instead.
“If this is all because of that fight with Trevor, then why doesn’t Nicole just break up with him?” I ask. “I mean, the house is fine, the rent’s cheap, but we can live somewhere else next year—”
“She isn’t going to break up with him, Margot. She’s too nice. Don’t you get it?”
The way Sloane looks at me sends a wave of discomfort through my chest. She’s right: Nicole is too nice. She always has been, ever since that very first day when she tried to pry me out of my shell, her smile cutting through the pressure like a warm wet blade. She’s always the one smoothing things over, keeping the peace. That’s probably what she’s doing right now next door: alleviating any lingering tension before we’re all marooned on an island together without our own house to run to. Without any way to escape.
“Lucy picked her for a reason,” Sloane continues, leaning forward, and I can feel it now, radiating, some massive admission coming so close to barreling right out of her. The force of it something she can no longer contain. “I’ve been telling you that from the start.”
I think back to the two of us outside the shed; the way she stopped, seemed to think hard about something before turning my way, asking that question: “Are you sure you want to do this?” The way she had called me vanilla, malleable. A blank slate. The very thing Lucy wanted like she had picked me specifically, casting me to play some kind of role for her. A preordained purpose I still don’t understand.
“When you’re friends with Lucy, she makes you feel special,” she had said, that ache in her face like she hadn’t yet decided if that was good or bad. “Like she chose you for a reason.”
I had stopped questioning what my reason was, but I never even thought about the fact that Sloane and Nicole might have reasons, too.
“What do you know?” I ask, a chill creeping up my spine. “What do you know that you haven’t told me?”
She hesitates, glancing over her shoulder again before leaning closer on my bed.
“Lucy didn’t live in Hines last year,” she says at last, and I notice the way she’s ripping at her fingers now; pulling a loose nail so hard it bleeds.
“What do you mean? Of course she did. She was there all the time—”
“No, she didn’t,” she says, shaking her head. “Margot, you need to listen to me. Everything you think you know about Lucy … none of it is true.”
CHAPTER 46
I can still see her on that very first day, stepping into the circle of us with a case of beer in hand, bottles rattling. The way she plucked one out and twisted the cap, plunging her arm into the air like a call to arms, a battle cry.