But it wasn’t that; it was never that. Sloane wasn’t doubting that I lived there. She was defying Lucy because she didn’t.
“That’s why you were so upset,” I say now. “The day I moved in.”
“She was gaslighting me,” Sloane says, and our entire conversation outside the shed flares up to the forefront of my mind again. I play it back, scene by scene: Sloane, eyes darting, afraid of being watched. The venom in her voice, like somebody scorned: “She’s a fucking liar.”
“There has to be an explanation,” I say at last, trying to tread lightly. I don’t want Sloane to think I’m brushing her off, siding with Lucy, but at the same time, it doesn’t make sense. “If she didn’t live in Hines, how was she always getting in and out of the building? Wouldn’t you constantly have to be buzzing her in if she didn’t?”
“Nicole’s keycard,” she says. “You’re the one who made me see it.”
I think back to the two of us in Sloane’s bedroom, just after Thanksgiving. Talking about Nicole and how skinny she looked. The way I had demanded we start locking the door even though she could never keep track of her key.
Sloane opening her mouth before closing it again, looking concerned. Fingers working at that seam for so long the thread started to fray.
“She lost it—” I start, but already, Sloane’s shaking her head.
“She didn’t lose it,” she says. “Nicole still swears it was stolen. We just never figured out who took it.”
The thought of it makes my skin crawl: Lucy wandering up to Sloane and Nicole in the courtyard and talking her way inside. Swiping Nicole’s keycard so she could let herself into the dorm as she pleased before drifting down the hall, into the common room. Convincing us all that she belonged.
“Before I left for Christmas, I stopped by the registrar,” Sloane says. “Right before they closed for the holidays. I searched Lucy’s name.”
“You can’t just look at student records,” I say, eyes widening. “You could get expelled—”
“I know,” she says, holding up her hand. “But after realizing she was the one who took Nicole’s key, I had to know why.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Every time I searched her name, nothing showed up.”
“What do you mean, nothing showed up?” I ask, though I can see it now: Sloane sneaking to her computer, an empty office just before the holidays. Booting it up, glancing over her shoulder. Confirming she was alone. Pulling up records and typing Lucy’s name; brown eyes widening when it came up blank. “Are you sure you spelled her name right? Sharpe with an e?”
“Yes, I spelled her fucking name right.”
“Okay, sorry. I just don’t understand—”
“What is so hard to understand, Margot?”
I can tell she’s biting her tongue, trying not to scream, those ravaged fingers tugging at her hair as she begs me to just put it together. Figure it out. Her frustration is mounting, leaking out of her eyes, and I brace myself to hear the thing that, deep down, I’ve known was coming all along. All those little moments are bubbling up to the surface now. Moments with Lucy when someone asked about her major and she shrugged them off; when they mentioned never seeing her on campus and she just smirked and walked away. She never studies. Sure, she reads, but they’re books I’ve lent her. She was like that last year, too, jealous girls speculating about all the terrible things she must be doing to get by. She’s always coming and going out of the house like the rest of us, but she works, too. She’s the only one of us with somewhere to be that isn’t on campus, so how do we know she isn’t just grabbing her backpack and taking off to Penny Lanes instead of going to class like the rest of us?
The answer is: we don’t.
“Nothing showed up because there is no Lucy Sharpe enrolled at Rutledge,” Sloane says at last, and I feel the twist of something sharp in my chest: fear, cold and hard, plunging in deep like a knife to the heart. “Lucy Sharpe doesn’t exist.”
CHAPTER 47
AFTER
I walk inside to find Sloane and Nicole in Lucy’s bedroom, tired eyes drinking it in. The place is destroyed: floor to ceiling, wall to wall, drawers thrust open and clothes disheveled. Shoes kicked out of the closet and books splayed out like a bomb went off.
“Did you check under the bed?” I ask, joining them on her unmade mattress. I can still smell her here: vanilla and cigarette. Musky and delicate. Radically both.