Only If You’re Lucky

I can still feel myself lying in bed, phone alight in the dark. Those videos of Eliza and Levi playing on repeat, branding themselves right into my brain. I couldn’t help but watch them, study them: the way they swayed in unison, his arm on her shoulders. That bottle of vodka passing between them before she leaned her head back and howled at the moon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say now, my heart hard in my throat as Lucy stares, smiling.

“Oh, I think we both know that you do.”

I had heard about the party, of course. It was an annual thing. A sacred senior tradition to descend upon that old school during the first full moon of the summer, a rite of passage before we all parted ways—but of course, I didn’t go. It was three weeks into summer and Eliza and I still weren’t speaking. Not since graduation, anyway, our smiles fake and fleeting as we posed for that picture. Arms rigid by our sides as we pretended to be friends. We were leaving for Rutledge in just two months and I was starting to wonder how it would work, the two of us living together when we could barely stand to be in the same room. We would have to get over it eventually, one of us would have to crack, but Eliza had yet to apologize so I hadn’t either, opting instead to stay in that night and watch her life unfold through my phone.

I remember the sky growing darker, the shrieks getting louder. Eliza looking drunker as the night wore on. I wanted to hate her. I wanted to see her suffer the consequences of her actions instead of relying on me to save her the way I always did. I wanted her to stumble home drunk and get grounded by her parents, her senior summer ruined because I wasn’t there to keep her quiet when we crept in late. Because the truth was, the truth I had secretly known for so long: she never appreciated it. She never appreciated me, the way I always propped her up, kept her safe, so instead, I turned my phone off and flipped over in bed. I pinched my eyes shut and I tried, so hard, to just forget about it all. To forget about her, about Levi, about the stinging betrayal I felt every time I thought about the way she had looked at me in my bedroom, those horrible words hissing loudly between her teeth. I tried to tell myself I didn’t care, that she could go ahead and ruin her life if she wanted to—but I did. I did care.

I would always care about Eliza, even and especially when she didn’t care about herself.

“What are you guys talking about?” Sloane asks, leaning forward, but I can’t bring myself to respond. Instead, I’m still back there, back in my bedroom, my body hot beneath the sheets as I let out a sigh, opened my eyes. Realized I could never go to sleep as long as Eliza was still with him, that sick boy next door who watched her through the window. The one who had broken into her room, lain on her bed. Wedged his way between us in a way nobody had ever been able to before.

I remember flinging off the covers, frustration mounting as I crawled out of bed. Silently cursing her for making me take care of her the way I always did as I tiptoed through the dark and threw on my shoes, crept through the back door while my parents were asleep just down the hall. The school itself was only a short walk away and I was stewing the entire time, muttering the things I planned to say to her. That old, burnt building looking haunted and strange as the moon shone down, looming like a shadow puppet cast across the wall.

“Margot,” Sloane says, but I can’t peel my eyes from Lucy.

Lucy, who has asked me about that party so many times. Who has nudged me along, showered me with questions, almost as if she knew the truth and was trying to get me to say it myself. I think about that conversation back in the Outer Banks, New Year’s fireworks popping in the distance and our eyes trained on the stars above. Lucy had brought it up again: that night, that final night, Eliza and Levi stumbling around that old school together. Arms like loose nooses wound around each other’s necks and the vodka pouring down their gullets all tingly and warm.

“He told me about the party,” she had said. “The night she died.”

But that wasn’t true; it was another one of her lies. Levi didn’t tell Lucy about the full moon that night and the way they all gathered, drawn to it like a spell. Like some primordial instinct, some ancient rite, Eliza the sacrificial lamb left bleeding at the altar. Lucy knew about the party because she had been there the way she had always been there, the way she still is: appearing out of nowhere, all feline and quiet.

Watching in the distance, her body blending into the dark.

“I saw it happen,” she says to me now, reading my mind as I remember the way I walked into that building, the party already dying by the time I arrived. Sidestepping people I vaguely recognized as they staggered onto the sidewalk, looking straight through me as if I were a ghost. I had always been invisible when I wasn’t with Eliza and that night had been no different, all those limp bodies with glassy eyes stumbling home like people possessed. “I saw it all.”

I remember poking my head into every single room, each one littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. The sour smell of vomit mixing with the sea breeze as I made my way up the stairs. I just kept climbing—the second floor, the third—searching every corner, trying to find her. The roar of waves in the distance somehow sounding louder the higher I went.

“Margot, talk to me,” Sloane says, grabbing my wrist. “What is this about?”

It’s all suddenly too much—the memories, this room, the feel of Sloane’s hand on my arm and the heat of their stares, all eyes on me—so I stand up fast before walking into the kitchen and out the back door, desperate for space to think. For air to breathe. But the rain is beating down hard as I stagger into the yard, loud cracks of thunder vibrating my bones.

A flash of lightning illuminating the shed, those big double doors still latched shut.

I walk toward it, the smell of blood prickling the skin on my neck as I swing the doors open and stumble inside, breathing heavily. My hair dripping wet as I drop my head in my hands, my mind fully immersed in that final night now like it’s happening all over again, so unbearably real. The memory of my body ascending higher, those rickety stairs with the full moon above illuminating it all. I was so close to leaving. I was so close to just giving up, going home—until I heard that noise.

Something like a kicked can, the scrape of aluminum as it skidded across the floor.

“What was that?”

I remember my head snapping to the side, Eliza’s voice just barely above a whisper. It sounded strange, slurred, so I rounded a wall and that’s when I saw it: two bodies moving in unison in the corner; pale, bare skin glowing bright in the dark.

“It’s fine,” Levi said, his voice breathy and hoarse. “It’s nothing.”

“Is there someone there?”

“I said it’s nothing.”

I crept closer, blinking my eyes, each flip of the lids making everything a little bit clearer, a little more real. It was them, I could tell, even in the darkness: it was Eliza and Levi, completely unclothed, lying on the floor of that disgusting place. They were surrounded by empty bottles and sleeping bags, cigarette stubs and discarded trash. Levi’s body moving in a rhythmic motion, his hands clenched tight around her wrists, fingers digging into her skin while Eliza lay beneath him, open eyes on the sky.

I opened my mouth and started to take a step forward—but then I stopped myself, remembering the night of the break-in. The way I could smell Levi in her bedroom, the scent of him stained deep in her sheets.

Realizing, with a jolt, that what I was watching wasn’t the first time.

I still don’t know which part was worse: seeing Eliza like that, the way she kept lowering her standards for him, digging herself deeper into this hole I somehow knew would trap her forever, or finally understanding the magnitude of their relationship and what it entailed. The reality of just how far apart we had drifted: all the things she had kept from me, all the things she felt she couldn’t say. I remember watching with pure detachment as they finished, unable to look away. Levi rolling off with a grunt before standing up, pulling on his shorts. Eliza self-consciously gripping her chest while she looked around for her sundress, fingers skimming the floor.

“I’ll be back,” he had said, not bothering to help her up before heading to the stairs and walking down. “Gonna grab another beer.”

It was pure reflex that finally pulled me out of the shadows, my body stepping forward as Eliza got dressed. She was standing a little too close to the edge, swaying gently as she pulled on her clothes. Her body eclipsed by the glow of the moon. I remember feeling such sadness then, watching as she tried to pull herself together: brushing her fingers through tangled hair, cupping a hand to her mouth as a hiccup escaped. Thinking that the person I was looking at then wasn’t the Eliza everyone envied. That it wasn’t the Eliza I looked up to, the one I spent my entire life wanting to be.

The person in front of me was someone else entirely.

It took her a few seconds to realize I was there, but then she turned around, somehow feeling the presence of another body behind her, and I registered the shock in her expression, the unmistakable shame.

“Margot,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to make sure you were okay.”

She was quiet, a subtle wetness in her eyes, and for a single, stupid second, I actually thought she might run over and hug me.

“You don’t have to protect me,” she said instead, crossing her arms tight across her chest. “I told you that.”

“Obviously I do,” I said, gesturing to the corner where she had just been. Dipping my voice an octave lower, trying to hide the judgment that was so clearly there. “Eliza, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“Yeah, well, neither do I.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, taken aback.

She just scoffed, shook her head, and I took a few steps forward, the two of us suddenly close enough to touch. I could feel the wind whipping off the water in the distance, a welcome relief from the hot summer air, and I could tell she wanted to say something then. I could feel some big explanation for the way she’d been acting so close to barreling right out and I wanted to hug her, to slap her. To tell her I hated her and tell her I loved her—but at the same time, the wall we had built between us was too tall at that point. The stones too solid to tear back down.

I was exhausted, just so exhausted. I no longer felt that there was a point.

“Let’s go home,” I said at last. “You need to go home.”

“I’m staying,” she said, swaying some more.

“It’s late, you’re drunk. You need to go to bed.”

“No,” she said, her voice quivering a little. “I mean I’m staying.”

I looked at her, still not understanding until I felt a stab of something sharp in my chest: rejection, pain, a terrible comprehension settling over me as I stared at her in the dark.

“What?” I asked, taking a step closer. “What do you mean you’re staying?”

“I’m not going to Rutledge,” she said. “I’m staying here with Levi. He’ll graduate in a year and then maybe we’ll go together. His dad was a Kappa Nu there—”

“Eliza, this is crazy,” I interrupted. “You’re being crazy. What happened to you?”

I felt the claw of tears then, their sharp nails scraping their way up my throat. I tried to swallow them down, push them away, but they sprang to the surface faster than I could contain them, gliding their way down my cheeks.

“We were supposed to go together,” I said, my voice fragile and wet. “You can’t just leave me—”

“I love him,” she said with a finality that cut deeper than any lethal weapon, any sharpened blade. I could practically feel myself bleeding out then, the life leaking from my body as she watched it pool.

“I’m your best friend,” I said at last, my voice barely above a whisper. “You’re supposed to love me, too.”

I noticed a little tremble in her lip, maybe a flash of regret like that day in my room, but before she could say anything, before she could respond, I spun around fast, ready to walk away and leave her there. So tired of caring about her more than she cared about me.

“Margot, wait—” she started, reaching out to grab my arm. I remember feeling the clasp of her fingers, her touch sending a surge of rage through my chest. In that single second, our entire life flipped through my mind like a movie as I thought about everything she had done to me, everything she had said. Every time she had left me, abandoned me, made me feel like I wasn’t her equal, and before I could think twice, before I could relax, I whipped my arm away—violent, hard, way too fast—knocking her back with too much force. “Margot!”

I turned around just in time to see her stumble, eyes wet and wide as she reached out her hand like she was asking me to take it—but I didn’t. I didn’t take it. I don’t even know if I could have reached her in time. I don’t even know if it would have mattered, if I would have gone down with her, the two of us holding hands like we used to, fingers clasped together as we fell. But instead of trying, instead of helping, instead of swooping in to save her the way I always did, I simply stood right there, feet planted in place, watching in shock as her body tipped back.

The flutter of her dress and the wind in her hair making it seem, for a second, like she was flying.