Only If You’re Lucky

I’m up early, six A.M., the gin and tonics I drank the night before making my tongue feel raw. I don’t know if I ever fell asleep, really, but instead just lay rigid beneath my comforter in some kind of comatose state, staring at the ceiling. My head pounding gently to the rhythm of my heart.

I pull the covers up to my chin, a chill traveling down the length of my spine. It isn’t just the temperature that’s making me shiver, although it is freezing in here. I had noticed it on that very first day, the way the upstairs was so stifling hot compared to my room, constantly cool. I had chalked it up to shitty insulation at the time, cracks in the windows, although technically, that should be making it hotter in here, not the other way around. But right now, it’s thoughts of Lucy that are making my body react like it had that day in the dorms, her glacial gaze on my back turning my spine cold and hard. An icicle materializing from the chill of her eyes alone.

I can’t stop thinking about the way she looked last night, elbows pressed together as she leaned into Levi. The concentration on her face and that little twitch of a smile as she bit her lip, watched him squirm.

“If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?”

I climb out of bed and creep toward my door, pushing it open in the dark. It’s just starting to get light outside, the hazy start of a new day, but the silent stillness of the house tells me everyone is still sleeping. I’m not surprised. I can’t even remember what time we stumbled home last night—only a few hours ago, surely—but still, I slink into the hallway, past Lucy’s room, and tiptoe up the steps until I reach the second floor.

“Sloane?” I whisper, knocking gently on her door. “Are you up?”

She doesn’t respond, but still, I enter, her blackout curtains choking any trace of light from outside. I climb onto her bed and shake her gently. “Sloane,” I say. “Wake up.”

“What?” she groans. “What time is it?”

“Shh,” I say, dipping my voice low in case Lucy is around. I know it’s illogical—I know her door was closed when I walked past, I know she’s sleeping—but still. She has that habit of creeping up behind you, popping up unannounced. You never really know when she might be around. “I need to talk for a second.”

“And I need to sleep,” she says.

“What was up with last night?” I ask, ignoring her. “That was weird, right?”

“What about last night?”

“Lucy,” I say. “That question.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, eyes still closed. “Lucy likes to play games.”

“Well, yeah. I gathered that.”

“I don’t mean that game,” she clarifies. “I mean games. Head games.”

“You think she was trying to get into Levi’s head? Because of what I told you?”

“Like I said, I don’t know.”

I’m quiet, chewing it over, remembering the way she dipped her chin low like she was sharing a secret, a confession, and the way she had chosen Levi, specifically, as the person to share it with. We had been playing the game for hours at that point. She could have asked anybody … but instead, she asked him.

“I don’t like that,” I say at last, thinking out loud as I cross my legs. “I don’t like her dangling it in front of him like that—”

“Then you shouldn’t have told her,” Sloane interrupts. “That’s what Lucy does. She dangles.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. I risked this when I decided to tell them about Eliza and Levi and the history they shared. The accident that killed her and the fact that Levi was there with her. The unanswered questions, all those loose ends. Everyone looked at him differently after that, rumors mounting when he was identified as the last person to be seen with her alive. Silent speculation trailing him around like an invisible odor, turning up noses.

I suppose I just hoped they would keep it to themselves.

“What is she going to do?” I ask at last. “She isn’t going to confront him about it, is she?”

“Are you really asking me what Lucy is going to do?” Sloane asks, finally flipping over to face me. “You should know by now that’s a stupid question. Nobody ever knows what Lucy is going to do.”

“It’s a bad idea,” I say. “It could make him feel cornered or something. People are dangerous when they feel cornered.”

Sloane is quiet, her head pushed into the pillow and her tired eyes open just barely. Finally, she sighs, rolling onto her back so she’s staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t think she’d do that,” she says at last. “But she is gonna fuck with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s gonna play with him. Scare him. Paw at him like a little mouse.”

I remember the way Lucy had looked that night on my bed, her expression impenetrable as I told her about Levi and the things he did. I could tell, even then, that there was something churning around in her mind. Something gaining substance, growing solid. I just didn’t know what.

“Why do you care, anyway?” Sloane asks, pulling me from the memory. “Why should he get to come here and live a perfect life after what happened to your friend?”

“He shouldn’t,” I say, sinking lower into the comforter, the feeble resolve getting harder in my chest.

“Right,” she says. “So let him squirm.”

We settle back into the silence, Sloane’s chest rising and falling until I’m certain she’s asleep again. I think about getting up, heading back into my own room and trying to do the same, when my mind wanders back to Lucy’s cup last night, sitting untouched by her side.

“Did you notice she wasn’t drinking?” I ask at last.

“Margot, I have a raging hangover,” Sloane says, eyes still closed. “I didn’t notice if Lucy was drinking.”

“She wasn’t,” I say, thinking about how we all got so drunk so fast while she seemed to stay sober, voice straight and words unwavering. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t.”

Sloane sighs, finally pushing herself up and resting her head on the headboard. I watch as she gestures to a half-empty glass of water on her side table, a smudge of old lipstick kissing the rim, and I hand it to her, watching as she takes a small sip.

“Lucy likes to know everything about everybody,” she says at last, licking her lips. Then she exhales, long and hard, and closes her eyes like she just ingested some kind of drug. “She wants to know it all.”

“She’s inquisitive,” I say, but Sloane shakes her head.

“She’s cunning. If she wasn’t drinking, it’s because she had some kind of agenda last night. She wanted to keep her wits about her. You still don’t know anything about her, do you?”

I think for a second, knowing she’s right. Sloane had asked me this very same question on that very first day, the two of us pushed against the side of the shed, and now, months later, my answer is the still same. I consider Lucy a friend at this point, no longer a stranger on the hall or an object sunning herself on the lawn. Not just an enviable face I looked at with wonder and awe but something more personal now … and still, when it comes to who she is at her tender, pulsing, meaty core, I know next to nothing. Lucy never offers up anything of substance, shunning truth for dare and always guiding the conversation to avoid any questions that threaten to get too personal. She never opens up, instead focusing her attention on prying anything and everything out of the people around her. It’s what makes her so mysterious, so interesting. The reason those rumors swirled around her like a cloud of gnats our freshman year; why people made up stories, her very existence an urban myth, a far-fetched legend. Something whispered about behind cupped hands, passed down from person to person, each iteration more fictious than the last.

They were just trying to understand her. Trying to make sense of this curious girl living among us who nobody knew anything about.

“What do you know?” I ask, leaning forward slowly.

Sloane looks at me for a beat longer than necessary, like she’s trying to make some calculation in her mind. Finally, her eyes dart to the door, her mouth starts to open, but the moment is interrupted by a wooden groan in the hallway, long and grating, and we both look to the side, the sudden noise sending an inexplicable pang of panic through my chest. This house makes sounds, it’s old like that, and even though I know it’s probably just the air conditioner kicking in, Nicole getting up to pee in the dark, I have the sudden sensation of someone standing just outside, ear flush against the door.

“It’s a waste of time trying to figure Lucy out,” Sloane says at last, rolling back over to face the wall. “Just trust me on that.”