Page 2 of Only If You're Lucky
“It’s been three days, I think.”
He looks at me, the first to speak up. “You think?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think.”
Sloane and Nicole keep staring at the floor, their silence loud enough to fill the room, curling and twisting and seeping into the corners like the lingering smoke I can still smell in my hair.
“Nobody is getting into trouble, girls, but she hasn’t been accounted for since Friday. She didn’t show up to work all weekend. Have you talked to anyone in her classes?”
“Lucy doesn’t go to class,” Sloane says, and Nicole grunts, stifling a laugh.
“So you aren’t at all concerned?” he asks, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Your roommate is missing and you aren’t worried about where she might be?”
“Detective”—Sloane stops, making a point to stare at the nameplate pinned to his chest—“Frank, if you knew Lucy at all, you’d know this isn’t unusual.”
“Meaning?” he asks.
“Meaning,” she sighs, “she probably decided to go out of town with some guy for the weekend, I don’t know. If you find her, tell her the rent’s due and we’re not covering for her again.”
I shoot Sloane a look, hypnotized at the chill in her tone: menthol cool and sharp as an ice pick, almost like he’s boring her.
Detective Frank shifts again, switching gears, and I think I see him flush a bit more, heat rising into those chipmunk cheeks like he’s embarrassed or flustered or a little bit of both.
“So, three days ago,” he says to me next. “Where were you?”
“We stayed in that night, just hung out in the living room.”
“All of you?”
We nod.
“What were you doing?”
“Girl things.” I smile.
“How was Lucy acting?” he asks, not taking the bait. “Any different?”
“No,” I lie, the first of many. I remember the depth of her pupils, oversized like two black holes, swallowing everything. The way she kept sucking on that Tootsie Pop, an orb of red, until it looked like her teeth were bleeding. “Just Lucy.”
We’re all quiet and I’m starting to feel squirmy in my seat. Myeyes dart to the clock—it’s almost eleven—and I think about opening my mouth, making up another lie about running late to class, when Detective Frank takes a step forward and rests his hands against the table, leveling his eyes with ours.
I hear the wood creak, straining under his weight. Almost like he’s hurting it.
“Did Lucy tell you girls we brought her in for questioning?”
Nicole perks up, finally. “Questioning for what?” she asks, even though, of course, we know. We know so much more than this man thinks we do and I see his lips twitch at this little victory—at thinking he’s finally said something important enough to make us care—as he drums his fingers against the table, preparing his quick draw.
“For the murder of Levi Butler.”
CHAPTER 2
BEFORE
She was everything and I was nothing. That’s always what I thought, anyway.
We spent our entire freshman year just a few doors down from each other. We were in the all-girls dorm, the unlucky few who got placed in the only same-sex building on campus: Hines Hall. It sat at the top of the single hill downtown, trapping us inside like a bunch of Rapunzels, untouchable, though it only made us more desirable. Like things to be won. I still think about move-in day: pulling my pile of boxes on a metal trolley, a neon 9 taped to the back and the hot flash of embarrassment every time a wheel squeaked too loud. Watching the boys loll past with their hands punched into their pockets, craning their necks, already scheming on how to get inside.
Everybody whined about it at first, skin slick with sweat and throwing scowls in every direction as we lugged comforters and futons up that long, winding stairwell, blaming each other for our own anatomy.
