Page 49 of Only If You're Lucky
I nod, my mind on those videos again. On Eliza stumbling her way up the steps, one by one, the empty beach roaring beneath her and the glow of the moon high up above. That’s why they had been there: the moon. What a strange, stupid stroke of bad luck. If it wasn’t full that night, the party wouldn’t have happened. If it wasn’t so clear and cloudless, she wouldn’t have gone.
If she hadn’t been there with Levi, of all people, howling at it like a lonely wolf trying to find her pack, she wouldn’t have gotten so sloppy, so drunk.
She wouldn’t have fallen. She wouldn’t have died.
CHAPTER 39
It takes a few hours for me to finally fall asleep, my childhood bed feeling more foreign than my room back at Rutledge. Nestled between bursts of deep dreams that always startle me back awake—scared and sweaty, eyes darting madly around the room like my own body can’t remember where I am—I come to realize that my mother is right. She’s right about all of it.
The reason I haven’t been back is that I’m avoiding them, her.Here. The last conversation that took place in this very room.
I knew it the second Eliza started seeing him again. It was like an intuition, barely there, my eyes picking up on the subtle way she would smile when her phone chimed at night or how she’d started getting dressed up again any time we ventured out onto the dock. She had kept her distance for a while, the break-in spooking her just enough, but it didn’t last long, the pull of his attention stronger than anything I could say to convince her to stay away. And I’ll admit it: I liked the fact that I had been right. All along, I had been right about Levi. I had been right to be wary of him and it was always so tempting to remind her of that, the ever-present urge to pick at the crust of a scab before it could fully heal. I don’t knowwhy I did it. I was boasting, I guess, reminding her in my own little way that I was useful, necessary.
I had seen something she hadn’t—but Eliza, she hated it. She resented me for picking up on what she didn’t.
“How can you just forget about him breaking into your house?” I asked one night, hands on my hips, the anger surging out of me as she tapped away at her phone. Even though graduation was approaching, only a handful of days left before we were set to walk across the stage, I had to ask her about it. I had to know. I knew it would only be temporary—only one more summer spent with Levi lingering and then we would both, finally, be free—but I couldn’t handle the thought of her keeping something from me, something secret. Something as big as this. “Eliza, that is such a violation. We should have called thecops.”
I realized, too late, that I was mirroring the way my mother sometimes stood when she was berating me about a mediocre test score, her judgment like a physical thing between us, sucking the very air out of the room. Even my tone was the same, harsh and grating, so I dropped my hands to my sides, suddenly unsure where to put them.
She looked up at me, a beat of silence before she dropped her phone onto my bed.
“He said he didn’t do it.”
“What do you mean—” I started, then stopped, my eyes growing wide as understanding dawned. “Youaskedhim about it?”
“Yes,” she said. “I asked if he came into the house while we were gone.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he would never do that. That there had to be some other explanation.”
“Well, yeah, of course he’s gonna deny it—”
“I could have misplaced the picture, Margot. Maybe my mom took it to use in the yearbook or something. We never even told my parents it was missing.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “You didn’t misplace it.”
“Levi also suggested that maybeyoutook it.”
I stared at her, a wave of disbelief washing over me, trying to process what she just said.
“What?” I asked, although I heard her fine. I just wanted her to repeat it. I wanted to give her a second to reconsider what she just said; the opportunity to apologize, take it back. “He said that?”
“He suggested it.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it made sense.”
I blinked—two, three times—a substantial silence settling over us. It had been almost an entire year of Levi trying to weasel his way between us, break us apart like a splinter in dried wood, but that was the very first time he had been so deliberate about it. Like instead of just sitting back and waiting for the crack to travel, growing slowly, naturally, until the fissure was complete, he decided to take a sledgehammer to it. Smashing us to smithereens.
“You’ve done it before,” she said, averting her eyes, like she was suddenly embarrassed for me.
“What do you mean?”
“You collect things. I’ve seen you take stuff out of my room before… ticket stubs, receipts—”
“That’sdifferent,” I said, my cheeks burning at the knowledge that she had seen. At all the little mementos that were stashed away in that very room, at that very moment. “I would neverstealsomething of yours.”
