Page 22 of Only If You're Lucky
Right there, sitting in that circle, the seed was planted in all our minds. We didn’t even know it was there in the beginning. It was still a hidden thing, tucked away and biding its time, though over the next few months, its roots would dig deep into our brains, settling in. Spindly little things that would grow thick and strong, tendrils curling. Suffocating us. Holding us tight.
We knew what we were doing, though. We knew the risks. We can’t blame it all on Lucy, because while she was the one who started it, we were the ones who finished it.
My phone buzzes loud against my bedside table, the violent jolt of it startling me back to life, back to the present. Away from my memories of those early days, utopian and distant, and back to the stark reality of now: Levi dead, Lucy missing.
Sloane, Nicole, and me at the beating center of it all.
I glance over to my phone, finally, and roll my eyes when I see who’s calling, pulling myself from my comforter and answering after the fifth ring.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, wishing almost immediately that I let it go to voice mail instead.
“Margot, honey, oh my God,” she says, not bothering with ahelloherself. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my eyes. Lucy has been gone for a full week and none of us have been getting much sleep. It’s even worse now that it’s officially hit the news, the police asking for the public’s help to find her.
They still have no idea where she is. They’re starting to get desperate.
“Where is Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She does this sometimes.”
“What do you mean shedoes this sometimes?”
“She just does her own thing. It’s not the first time she’s gone somewhere without telling anyone. You remember Christmas.”
My mom is quiet, thinking. They had met once, my mom and Lucy; a whirlwind of a week that was, other than that night at Penny Lanes, the unofficial start of all this.
“I knew I had a bad feeling about her, even then—”
“No, you didn’t. You said you loved her.”
“Did she have something to do with that Butler boy?” she interrupts, the real reason she’s calling. “Margot, honey, this is serious.”
“No,” I say. “God, Mom, are you kidding? You’re really asking me if Lucy killed someone?”
“It’s just strange,” she says. “Another freak accident, especially after what happened to Eliza…”
“This has nothing to do with Eliza,” I snap. “Why are you even bringing her up?”
“Because that boy was the last person to be seen with her alive!” she practically screams into the phone. “Your best friend, Margot!And now he’s dead, and yournewbest friend is missing after being interrogated about it! It doesn’t make sense!”
“You’re being hysterical,” I say, only because I don’t want to admit she’s right.
“If he hurt her, I would understand,” my mother says after a heavy silence. I hear her exhale, finally, and I can so perfectly picture the way her free hand is probably worrying its way around her pearl necklace, yanking it from her skin like a too-tight turtleneck. “I would understand if she had to, you know,protectherself.”
“It wasn’t like that, Mom.”
“You know as well as anyone what that boy might be capable of.”
“I said it wasn’t like that.”
“I’m just worried about you.”
“You’re worried about how it looks,” I correct.
“Well, yes, of course I am,” she snaps. “People are going to start avoiding you like the plague if everyone you hang out with keeps winding up missing or dead.”
I close my eyes, let her talk. There’s no point in arguing.
