“Margot.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, twisting further, already feeling Lucy’s eyes on me. Ice-cold and kaleidoscopic; curious, like she somehow knows. She’s all the way in the front, perched on the bow like a figurehead pulling us forward.
Or maybe a siren, seductive and dangerous, her little lies fooling us all.
“Did you hear that?” she asks me.
“Hear what?”
“There’s a full moon tonight.”
I look at Lucy, registering that little twitch in her lip. Like that day on the lawn, our first talk in the dorm, laughing at something I still don’t understand. I don’t know why she’s telling me this, what she’s playing at, so I just nod, smile, and twist back around as I pull my own blanket tight around my shoulders, the sharp chill whipping off the water sending a shiver straight through me.
I think about this afternoon, just over an hour ago, the very moment when everything changed. Sloane and I pushed close on my bed; the things she told me lodged in my brain, stuck like a splinter. Harsh and throbbing as I tried to summon a single memory of Lucy on campus, in one of my classes. Black curls bobbing in a sea of other students or sharp blue eyes staring at me from the back of the library.
That whiff of vanilla hovering like the ghost of her trapped in an empty room.
It was a pointless exercise. Lucy was never there. I was starting to accept it with a certainty that was startling, so much so that it’s hard to imagine how I never noticed it before—but the truth is, it’s easy to blend in in a place like this. Rutledge may not be big, but it’s sprawling. The classrooms are scattered across the city, historic buildings tucked into little cracks and crannies, disappearing into their surroundings so naturally it’s hard to even know what belongs to the college and what doesn’t. There are full sections of the school I’ve never noticed before, entire buildings I haven’t had a reason to step inside. Not only that, but I’ve seen the same handful of people in my classes for almost two years now, all of us trapped inside a bubble of our own making. Completely unaware of what goes on outside it. I rarely catch glimpses of Sloane or Nicole during the day, either, both of them retreating to their respective spaces and staying there until it’s time to come home again, and when I think about all this, really think about it, it actually seems shockingly easy to do what Lucy has done: to simply step into this place and blend in so seamlessly.
To convince us all she’s one of us.
“She’s still our friend,” I said to Sloane, the implications of it all sitting stubborn between us, refusing to sink in. “I mean, this doesn’t change anything—”
“Margot, it changes everything.” She gaped. “We’re living with a stranger.”
“She’s not a stranger,” I said, somewhat mildly, humiliation blooming in my chest at how natural it was for me to keep jumping to Lucy’s defense like this, no questions asked. Same as that first day outside the shed, listening to Sloane’s slander, the reflex to protect her was automatic, instinctive, like a mallet to the knee.
“Well, she’s not who she says she is, either.”
It’s still tempting, even now, to give Lucy the benefit of the doubt. Sloane hadn’t been with us that night on the roof; she hadn’t heard Lucy talk about her childhood, her past. The way things were and her desire to get away.
“I wanted a fresh start,” she had said. “I figured you’d understand.”
I did understand, and I was starting to convince myself that maybe it was simple: maybe Lucy moved to Rutledge on her own but didn’t have the money or the grades to get in. She started working at Penny Lanes, saw the way the students lived, and wanted that for herself, too. A chance at belonging, at friends. Not so different from any of us, really, so she met Sloane and Nicole on the lawn and felt at home in their presence; she was invited into their dorm, into their lives, and didn’t want to admit that she was somehow different, less than, because of her parents. The way she grew up.
Why wouldn’t she fake it when nobody questioned her? Why wouldn’t she just go along with it all, simply pretend, like the rest of us, to be something she’s not?
We’re so close to the island now that I can see the other boats anchoring, swarms of boys hopping off and onto the sand, carrying duffel bags and coolers over their heads to keep them from getting wet. Girls sitting on the sides with their legs dangling off, taking swigs of vodka straight from the bottle. Salt water and wind turning their hair crimped and wild. I thought about skipping the party tonight, hanging back while the others left and using the free time to sort through my thoughts, try to find some answers. Sloane couldn’t get away with bailing without upsetting Lucas—that, and she didn’t want to leave Nicole by herself—and neither of us wanted to tip off Lucy, either. Alert her to the fact that something was wrong. We’re supposed to be sharing a tent, after all, the only two roommates who aren’t coupled up—and then I had an idea.