I look down at my jeans, the dark stain at the bottom, and her words trigger another memory from last night, blurry but there: my fingers digging into the sand as I listened to the occasional splash in the distance, the bobbing of boats anchored offshore. The murmur of voices a few yards behind me and sounds of the party slipping away as people made their way to their tents or just fell asleep right there by the fire. My head spinning and my mind on Lucy and me up on the roof, on the beach over Christmas, curled up in those blankets as we passed the bottle between us.
The distant pop of fireworks and her voice like a whisper, a suggestion. A dare.
“If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?”
I remember staring at the sky, so cloudless and clear I could see every constellation like Thanksgiving night with Lucy’s fingers in mine. The quick stab of jealousy once I found the sisters, the twins, their hands clasped tight while my own remained so painfully empty.
“Did I find him?” I ask, a creeping uncertainty in my voice. My cheeks burning as I remember Levi standing up and walking into the trees; Lucy’s smile as she glanced in my direction before following slyly behind. It’s all so familiar, this terrible feeling. Even after everything I’ve learned about Lucy, everything I know and don’t know, there’s still a possessiveness toward her I can’t control. It’s the same as the greed I had for Eliza, wanting her friendship all to myself. The high from her attention perfectly pure and razor-sharp, not the watered-down thing I had to stomach when somebody else wanted it, too.
“I don’t know,” Sloane says. “You were alone.”
I sigh, closing my eyes, trying to excavate the massive pit settling deep in my stomach. I feel uneasy, sick, but I still can’t put a finger on why. It’s probably all the alcohol, mixing liquors, this abandoned place and the anxiety that inevitably sets in after a night of indulgence. Trying to think back on what I did, what I said. What I might have seen. Maybe it’s the full moon from last night making me feel off-kilter and strange, reminding me of that night almost two years ago. Of watching Eliza and Levi stumble around in the dark just like Lucy and Levi had been. Witnessing that argument—that violent fling of her arm, her low hiss in return—and that feeling of fear, of dread, of knowing I should step in and do something, but also just wanting to fall asleep and forget.
I try to summon more memories now, my mind grazing the feeling of something familiar but just barely out of reach. I try to picture finding them, maybe. Rounding a corner to see their bare skin glowing like ghosts in the night as I stood at a distance, watching it all.
“I wish it was him. It should have been him.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say instead, head swimming, a slow heat starting to crawl up the back of my throat.
I turn around and walk away from the water, toward the direction of the tent before taking a turn and going inland instead. I approach the trees quickly, the foliage growing denser the farther I get from the shore, and I keep my eyes down, watch where I’m stepping. Trying not to think too hard about Lucas on the boat and his comment about all the other creatures we’re sharing the place with; all the deadly things that lurk in the shadows, just waiting for an unassuming something to stumble across their path. Finally, I chance a glance up and spot a clearing a few feet in front of me, another little patch of sand in the distance with water retreating on the other side. I keep my eyes lifted, my gaze trained forward until my foot hooks around a root and I start to fall.
“Shit,” I hiss, just barely catching myself.
I shake my leg free and look down, realizing, too late, that it’s not a root. Instead, my foot got caught on something else entirely: a human arm stretched out in front of me, long and lean and covered in dirt. I feel something catch in my throat—shock, fear, a horrible knowing locked deep inside—and before I can stop myself, I let out a scream, shrill and haunting, before the sharp swell of vomit comes barreling out.
CHAPTER 53
It doesn’t take long for the others to find me.
I can hear them before I see them, the snapping of twigs and leaves as they run in my direction, calling my name. My scream suspended in the air around me and my pile of vomit steaming warm in the cool morning air.
“Margot!”
They must think I’ve stumbled upon some kind of animal, visions of me clutched in the jaws of an alligator, limbs ripping as it drags me away. I recognize Lucas’s voice first, just a few yards behind me, but I still can’t move. I still can’t speak. All I can do is stare down at the body beneath me, facedown in the mud. At the back of his head, moppy brown hair all tangled and torn. The same head I saw staring into the distance from beneath the deck-board slats almost three years ago; those long, tan arms, so muscular and toned, once holding a cigarette as he stood just above, now strewn about in all the wrong angles.