“It’s perfect,” I say, dropping my bags in the center of the room. And I’m not just saying that: really, it is. The house radiates an effortless cool the way Lucy does, too: a kind of grunge aesthetic that could not be more different than Maggie’s matching throw pillows. Exactly what I want. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” Lucy says, hands on her hips. “You just got here.”
CHAPTER 5
It doesn’t take long to unpack my things: I have one suitcase full of clothes that are still on their hangers, easy enough to put away, and another full of school supplies, books, electronics, and cords, most of which I’m unsure of their function. I grab a few handfuls of hardbacks first, their spines cracked and gnarled like overworked hands, and push them to the side before emptying the rest.
The truth is, a truth I rarely acknowledge: I’ve barely opened a book in a year. I used to get so lost in these imaginary worlds, slipping into another skin every time I parted their covers. The musty scent of the pages curling beneath my nostrils like an elixir that ripped me from one reality and implanted me into the next. That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.
I still read for school, of course—as an English major, that’s impossible to avoid—but ever since I lost Eliza, every time I’ve tried to flip open the pages of an old favorite, immerse myself in something mindless, the words won’t melt in my mind the way they used to, warm and smooth like freshly whipped butter. Instead, every sentence feels clunky, hard, taunting me like they’re written in some foreign tongue, completely illegible.
I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.
I push the empty suitcase across the room and reach for the last one, the one I’ve been avoiding. The one full of sentimental stuff, all that collectible trash I can’t bring myself to throw away. I don’t exactly know when I started doing this: saving things like concert bracelets and grainy photobooth strips. Sea glass and lanyards and an empty box of Milk Duds from the first time Eliza and I went to the movies by ourselves. I’ve done it since childhood, I know, but it’s become something of a compulsion now. An irresistible urge to tuck away the things most people would toss, made even stronger since the night she died. Maybe it’s because these are the only things I have left of her, the objects that keep her partially alive in my mind like some kind of shrine: one of her scrunchies with thin strands of hair still knotted into the fabric, an old tube of lipstick she didn’t live long enough to finish. If I were to get rid of them now, it would feel like getting rid of her, too. Throwing her memory in the trash along with an embroidery floss bracelet, a broken ornament we made together in kindergarten. A cookie from her tenth birthday party I never took out of the packaging, so rock-hard stale I couldn’t bite into it now even if I wanted to.
I do my best to organize the clutter before setting it aside and pulling out my pictures. I stare at the one of Eliza and me first, resting on top in a delicate gold frame. It’s of the two of us in our bathing suits, a grinning selfie we snapped while lying out on her parents’ dock. I can’t even remember when we took it—freshman year, maybe, still early in high school—and behind it, there’s a second one of us in our graduation caps, taken just before walking into the auditorium on commencement day. We look so effortless in that first one, all limbs and teeth glowing bright against our summertime tans. We spent so many afternoons out there: Eliza’s blond hair turning even blonder, a cascade of freckles popping out across her nose. Salt water and sunburns turning our skin crispy and tight. That was our element: just the two of us, together, unrestrained.
But in the second picture, there’s a rigidity to our smiles that makes me sad.
I remember when that one was taken, of course. Just three weeks before the night she died. The last picture we’d ever have together and we don’t even look happy.
I wonder now what Eliza would think about all this: Lucy, the house. Me agreeing to move in with three strangers I know nothing about. She’d probably love it, honestly. It’s the kind of thing she would do. She was always the one pushing me to get out of my comfort zone, try new things. She’d be disgusted at the way I spent my freshman year, too cocooned in the safety net of my dorm room to venture out and experience anything new. She was never shy about that. I remember an argument we had once, junior year, me whining about wanting to stay in instead of show up at some party with a bunch of public-school people we barely even knew.