Page 6 of Only If You're Lucky
I raise my hand, ready to knock, but before my fist can connect with the door, it swings open on its own, a burly boy standing directly on the other side of it. I stare at him for a second, wide-eyed, trying to keep my attention from traveling down his bare chest, the thin line of hair sprouting beneath his belly button and pointing like an arrow to the waistband of his shorts.
“Who are you?” he asks, a mop of brown hair tousled like he just rolled out of bed.
“I’m Margot,” I say. “I’m… supposed to live here.”
Suddenly, a sense of horror descends upon me and I cannot believe it didn’t dawn on me before.
I peer past the front door and into the house, a place so disheveled it looks like a cave occupied by animals. I think about theshoes outside, themen’sshoes, and take in the shirtless guy in the living room staring at me with a smirk on his lips. It’s the same way Lucy had looked that day in the dorm, almost like she was laughing at some joke I didn’t understand.
This is a prank. All of it, a prank.
She must have seen me staring at her that day on the lawn and thought it would be funny: inviting me here to live with her, withthem,knowing I was desperate enough to say yes. I wonder if she’s watching me right now through the window of some neighboring house, pointing. Laughing.
I wonder if it’s too late to call Maggie and apologize. Beg for mercy, take it all back.
I feel the tears well up and start to mumble excuses, ready to pick up my bags and run away, until the door opens wider and I see Lucy standing on the other side of it.
“Sorry,” she says, pushing the boy out of the way. Her hair is pulled up into a bun and she’s wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt and black biker shorts, her toned legs bronzed and beautiful. “This is Nicole’s boyfriend. Trevor, Margot. Margot, Trevor.”
She gestures between us and the boy smiles at me again, nodding that thick shock of hair before sticking his hand down his waistband and scratching his crotch. Lucy rolls her eyes at me like we’re sharing some kind of mutual disgust and I smile, feeling the relief fill me up fast.
“Everyone’s still asleep,” she says, gesturing for me to come inside. I grab what I can of my bags and watch as she motions to the empty beer bottles littering the floor. There’s a giant bong on the coffee table, cloudy water specked with debris, next to a glass ashtray shaped like a peace sign. I notice a bowl of assorted candy in the center; a handful of coasters I doubt anyone uses. “I’ll show you to your room.”
The house is one of those old homes Rutledge is known for: two stories with a giant front porch, big white columns, and defunct fireplaces in almost every room. The floors look like original hardwood, and they would be nice, if someone had cared enough to take care of them. Campus is small—a cluster of old buildings situated between bars and restaurants, coffee shops and independent boutiques—and although most students live in apartments downtown, out here, mere minutes from city center, there’s space to roam. Room to breathe. Already, I can feel the rural air infiltrating my lungs; the weight of the last year slowly easing off my chest. We’re about a mile from downtown, only a few blocks to a campus bus stop. Greek row looms large on the street perpendicular to ours and I can’t help but think about how this section of town has been overrun by students who can only afford to live in big houses like these because their rich parents pay for them to.
My own parents weren’t thrilled about me ditching out on a summer back home, but at the same time, when I explained the situation—a group of friends,realfriends, the kind my mother’s friends were so sure I would find—they begrudgingly agreed to send me a security deposit and the first three months’ worth of rent.
“Nicole and Sloane sleep upstairs,” Lucy says now, weaving me through the living room. It’s furnished with two mismatched couches, a coffee table, and a floor lamp; on the opposite side of the room there’s a TV on the floor and an old record player propped open on a side table, a collection of vinyl covers decorating the main wall in a grid. “You and I are down here.”
When we get to the back of the house, Lucy gestures to two closed doors: one, apparently hers, and the other, mine. She swings open the one on the right and I peer inside, my eyes scanning it all.
“It came furnished, so it’s actually good you don’t have much to bring.”
There’s a little twin bed in there, a bedside table, and another fireplace, though it doesn’t appear as if it actually works. I thought about bringing my own furniture from home at first, but now, after seeing the way this place looks, I’m overwhelmingly glad I didn’t—I can just imagine her smirk watching me lug my wrought iron headboard and lace duvet into this place, the kind of stuff that fits right in in my parents’ beachside mansion but would feel horribly childish in a house like this.
“It’s perfect,” I say, dropping my bags in the center of the room. And I’m not just saying that: really, it is. The house radiates an effortless cool the way Lucy does, too: a kind of grunge aesthetic that could not be more different than Maggie’s matching throw pillows. Exactly what I want. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” Lucy says, hands on her hips. “You just got here.”
CHAPTER 5
It doesn’t take long to unpack my things: I have one suitcase full of clothes that are still on their hangers, easy enough to put away, and another full of school supplies, books, electronics, and cords, most of which I’m unsure of their function. I grab a few handfuls of hardbacks first, their spines cracked and gnarled like overworked hands, and push them to the side before emptying the rest.
The truth is, a truth I rarely acknowledge: I’ve barely opened a book in a year. I used to get so lost in these imaginary worlds, slipping into another skin every time I parted their covers. The musty scent of the pages curling beneath my nostrils like an elixir that ripped me from one reality and implanted me into the next. That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.
I still read for school, of course—as an English major, that’s impossible to avoid—but ever since I lost Eliza, every time I’ve tried to flip open the pages of an old favorite, immerse myself in somethingmindless, the words won’t melt in my mind the way they used to, warm and smooth like freshly whipped butter. Instead, every sentence feels clunky, hard, taunting me like they’re written in some foreign tongue, completely illegible.
I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.
I push the empty suitcase across the room and reach for the last one, the one I’ve been avoiding. The one full of sentimental stuff, all that collectible trash I can’t bring myself to throw away. I don’t exactly know when I started doing this: saving things like concert bracelets and grainy photobooth strips. Sea glass and lanyards and an empty box of Milk Duds from the first time Eliza and I went to the movies by ourselves. I’ve done it since childhood, I know, but it’s become something of a compulsion now. An irresistible urge to tuck away the things most people would toss, made even stronger since the night she died. Maybe it’s because these are the only things I have left of her, the objects that keep her partially alive in my mind like some kind of shrine: one of her scrunchies with thin strands of hair still knotted into the fabric, an old tube of lipstick she didn’t live long enough to finish. If I were to get rid of them now, it would feel like getting rid of her, too. Throwing her memory in the trash along with an embroidery floss bracelet, a broken ornament we made together in kindergarten. A cookie from her tenth birthday party I never took out of the packaging, so rock-hard stale I couldn’t bite into it now even if I wanted to.
I do my best to organize the clutter before setting it aside and pulling out my pictures. I stare at the one of Eliza and me first, resting on top in a delicate gold frame. It’s of the two of us in our bathing suits, a grinning selfie we snapped while lying out on her parents’ dock. I can’t even remember when we took it—freshmanyear, maybe, still early in high school—and behind it, there’s a second one of us in our graduation caps, taken just before walking into the auditorium on commencement day. We look so effortless in that first one, all limbs and teeth glowing bright against our summertime tans. We spent so many afternoons out there: Eliza’s blond hair turning even blonder, a cascade of freckles popping out across her nose. Salt water and sunburns turning our skin crispy and tight. That was our element: just the two of us, together, unrestrained.
But in the second picture, there’s a rigidity to our smiles that makes me sad.
I remember when that one was taken, of course. Just three weeks before the night she died. The last picture we’d ever have together and we don’t even look happy.
I wonder now what Eliza would think about all this: Lucy, the house. Me agreeing to move in with three strangers I know nothing about. She’d probably love it, honestly. It’s the kind of thing she would do. She was always the one pushing me to get out of my comfort zone, try new things. She’d be disgusted at the way I spent my freshman year, too cocooned in the safety net of my dorm room to venture out and experience anything new. She was never shy about that. I remember an argument we had once, junior year, me whining about wanting to stay in instead of show up at some party with a bunch of public-school people we barely even knew.
