Each one somehow both outlandish and believable and most of them, as always, revolving around Lucy.
She was with him, after all, splashing him in the water. Sitting next to him by the fire and trying to console him after Trevor humiliated him in front of everyone. Like Nicole had said as the night was just starting: “She’s not exactly subtle, is she?” People noticed the way she touched his leg and how he recoiled, flinging her arm back onto her lap. People noticed how he walked away and she stood up and followed.
Nobody saw him after that. Nobody saw him return.
“I picked up a shift tonight.”
I snap my neck up, unsure of how long I’ve been sitting, staring, sinking into my mattress even though it’s two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Rutledge canceled class for the week, sent out emails encouraging students to sign up for free counseling, but as a result, every second since I stumbled across Levi has been spent in this house, what once felt like my sanctuary now more like a cell.
“I have to get out of here,” Lucy says when I don’t answer, clearly feeling the same. “I think I’m going crazy.”
I blink a few times, registering her in my doorway with the Penny Lanes logo pulled tight across her chest. Our conversations have been so surface-level lately, so stilted, a heavy silence settling over the four of us every time we find ourselves together, thick and impenetrable as we chew it over. The comfortable quiet we once had now accusatory and cruel as we wonder which rumors could be real, which could be fiction.
As we quietly develop theories of our own.
“Come by at close?” she offers, and I try to smile, even though it feels more like a snarl. “Margaritas on me?”
“Not tonight,” I say, registering the subtle hurt in her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Why not?”
She cocks her head, that same look of innocent interest I now know is anything but. It reminds me vaguely of a limping animal; something feigning weakness just to draw you close before whipping around and eating you alive.
“I’m just not up for it,” I say at last. “With, you know, everything.”
“Ah, yes,” Lucy says, crossing her arms. “Everything.”
“Rain check?” I ask, sitting up straighter and suddenly uneasy about the way she’s standing in the doorway, blocking my exit. Her eyes are drilling into mine like she’s trying to extract something from me, some buried truth I don’t want to give up, and I catch that little quiver in her lip like there’s something else she desperately wants to ask.
“Sure,” she says instead, though she’s still lingering there, drumming her fingers against the wall. She nods gently, finally, and turns to leave before suddenly twirling back around like whatever’s on her mind is still struggling to break free.
“You know, Margot, this is a difficult time for all of us.”
She’s choosing her words slowly, carefully, her mind soldering the sentence together before she reveals her thoughts to me.
“I know how you felt about Levi,” she adds.
I bunch my forehead, unsure of what she’s getting at. I hated Levi. She knows that more than anybody. There’s a temptation, once people are gone, to sugarcoat their qualities, inflate their attributes, all the other girls I used to see next door crying to their classmates about how he was such a nice guy—but not me, not Lucy. I literally told her I wanted him dead and I feel a rock lodge in my throat as it dawns on me, finally:
That’s her whole point.
“We should be sticking together, you know?”
She rests her head on the doorframe, reminding me of all the times she’s done the same thing to my shoulder, nuzzling her nose deep into my neck. The two of us on the couch, burrowing close in my bed.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I guess you’re right.”
“Okay, good,” she says, the darkness that settled over her expression before evaporating completely, flashing a smile that makes my blood freeze. “Because now really isn’t the time to turn away from your friends.”
CHAPTER 55
I wait for the slam of the front door before I spring out of bed, run to the living room, and peer out the window, watching as Lucy makes her way down the sidewalk.
I’m no stranger to her cryptic sayings. I’ve known from the beginning that this is who Lucy is, what she does. Like Sloane had said that morning in bed: she likes to play games. She’s drawn to the reaction, the risk, a kid with a magnifying glass angled just right. But this is the first time I’ve found myself directly on the other side of it. The first time I’ve felt the heat of her scrutiny creep across my skin, her gigantic smile amplified on the other end. The first time I’ve looked into her blue eyes not with comfort or curiosity but genuine fear, bulging wide as she watched me squirm.