Page 10 of Only If You're Lucky
We stand there for a second, right outside the open shed doors, an uncomfortable quiet relaxing over us as we stare at the side of the house. I realize now that it isn’t the shed that’s strange, or even the things in it. I’ve seen my share of shotguns and hunting knives, fishhooks and fillet blades. We’re in South Carolina, after all. Rutledge is a tiny little town in the middle of nothing but forest and fields: thirty minutes to the water in one direction, thirty minutes to the woods in the other. What seems strange to me is the unrestrictedaccess we have to someone else’s property. How easy it was for us to simply let ourselves into their space… and by that logic, how easy it would be for them to let themselves into ours. I don’t want to say anything, though, knowing that a full year spent living in Hines probably just made me too sheltered. I never got to experience the co-ed dorms. The shared living betweenusandthem.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sloane asks suddenly, the bluntness of her question taking me by surprise. I turn to face her, realizing too late she’s already looking at me.
“Do what?” I ask, wondering how long she’s been doing that: staring. Taking in my expression as I tried to work through my thoughts, a jumbled coil in my brain I still can’t untangle. “Meet the boys?”
“This,”she says, gesturing vaguely around us. “Live here. All of it. You seem… I don’t know. Too nice.”
I have a sudden flash of Maggie in my mind:too nice.What she really means is too boring, too bland, masking the bite of her words with a pinch of politeness in hopes that I won’t taste that comment for what it truly was.
“How do you know Lucy?” she asks again.
“Remember, I lived on your hall—”
“No,” she interrupts, shaking her head. “How do youknowher? How did you meet?”
“Well, I don’t know her,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. “Not really. We didn’t actuallymeet—”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem like her flavor.”
“Herflavor? What does that mean?”
“You’re very vanilla.”
“Thanks,” I say, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.
“That’s not a dig,” she says.
“Kind of sounded like it was.”
“I just mean that’s what Lucy looks for,” she says, resting her arms on her hips. “You can turn vanilla into anything, right? It’s a blank slate. It’s malleable.”
“Okay—?”
“She’s a fucking liar,” Sloane interrupts, a viciousness in her voice I never expected from her. “Like, pathological. Did you know that?”
“I… don’t really know anything about her.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking away, as if that somehow proved her point. “Just take everything she says with a grain of salt. Trust me.”
“Look, don’tyoutake this the wrong way, but if that’s how you feel, then why are you friends with her?”
I don’t know what drove me to say it, but suddenly, standing here listening to Sloane bash her best friend sitting just inside, a strange protectiveness has settled over me, like Lucy somehow needs me to defend her honor in her absence. I don’t know her, not really, but she gifted me an opportunity—an opportunity of belonging, offriends—and so far, she hasn’t given me any reason to doubt her intentions.
So far, she’s been nothing but nice.
Sloane looks back at me, her eyebrows bunched like she’s never actually asked herself that question before. Maybe she’s jealous, I think, the same way Maggie was jealous in the courtyard outside Hines. Maybe she’s threatened by Lucy—or, I realize with a sudden sense of surprise, maybe she’s threatened byme.By another person stepping in, taking her place. I can understand that: the envy that blooms in your chest when you see your best friend with somebody else. The fear of being replaced.
Sloane is quiet for a while longer, considering, before turning back toward the shed like she’s afraid Lucy might be hiding in it.
“She’s fun,” she says at last. “She gets you into places.”
“Lots of people are fun,” I counter.
“When you’re friends with Lucy, she makes you feel special,” Sloane says, exhaling, like the statement finally unburdened her from a truth she’s been carrying around for far too long. “Like she chose you for a reason.”
That, too, I intimately understand. I’ve been feeling that way ever since she stepped into my dorm room, the piercing blue of her eyes pulling me into some kind of trance. It’s almost as if I’ve been hypnotized ever since, entranced by the spell of her, moving through the motions of whatever she tells me to do without a second thought.
“I don’t know.” She sighs again, like she’s doubting herself now. “Maybe I’m being harsh.”
