Page 41 of Only If You're Lucky
“What are you doing?” I ask, walking closer. “How did you get up there?”
“The lattice,” she says, leaning back on her hands. I can see the red glow of a cigarette between her fingers, the shadow of her feet bobbing to some undetectable beat. “If you stand on the railing, you can get your foot on the bottom one and climb up.”
I glance at the lattice, the jasmine growing around it dormant this time of year, though the leaves are still lush and green, thick vines working their way up the wood like juicy veins on an outstretched arm.
I grab the nearest stake and shake it, testing its strength.
“Why are you up there?” I ask. “Is there… someone with you?”
“No,” she says, finally giving me her full attention. I can somehow sense her sitting up straighter, eyes intent on the shadow of me below. “Who else would be up here?”
“I don’t know.”
I bite my lip, too embarrassed to admit what I was thinking. It was stupid, my own insecurities rearing their ugly head. Not only that: it was impractical, too. Levi wouldn’t be up on the roof, not after what he admitted to earlier. He’s afraid of heights, apparently. Even though that didn’t seem to stop him the last time.
“Just come up,” she says after a beat of silence. “It’s nice.”
I look at the lattice, then back at the roof, my heartbeat thumping hard in my chest. This would normally be the kind of thing I’d scoff at—Eliza on the roof, beckoning me up while I rolled my eyes and shook my head, nagged her to come down before she broke her neck—but instead, I hoist myself up and grab the stake to the side, scooting my way over until I find my footing. I can sense Lucy watching me from above, silently observing, and even though the cheap wine coursing through my bloodstream is making everything feel a little airy and light, I’m still acutely aware of how highup she is. How flimsy this thing feels beneath my weight, like one wrong step will make me tip back and fall.
“Here,” she says, leaning over with an outstretched hand. I’m almost to the roof now, practically parallel to Nicole’s second-story window.
“Thanks,” I say, grabbing her arm. Feeling her fingers wrap around my wrist as she helps me up. Then, once I feel secure, I push off from the lattice and land on my knees, crawling around to the other side of Lucy, farther away from the edge.
“So,” I say once I sit down next to her, palms stinging at my sides. I cross my legs, mirroring her stance, trying to come across as relaxed even though I can still feel my heart beating hard in my chest. “You always come up here in the middle of the night?”
“Sometimes,” she says, taking a drag. She offers it to me and I shake my head.
“What do you do?”
“Just sit,” she says. “Stare. Think.”
We’re quiet for a while, no noises between us outside of the suck of Lucy’s cigarette: the crackling tobacco, the long exhale. The curl and crisp of the paper and the gentle flick of her fingers, red-hot ash scattering at her feet.
“Why are you awake?” she asks at last, not bothering to look at me. She’s staring out at something I can’t see, her gaze settled on one of those invisible spots in the distance.
“I don’t know,” I say, not wanting to reveal the real reason: all those thoughts of her and Eliza, Eliza and her, the two of them dancing around in my mind like the stars of some terrible ballet. “I couldn’t fall asleep.”
“How come?”
I look at her, the side of her face revealing nothing.
“I heard noises,” I say at last. “It was you, I guess, although it didn’t sound like it was coming from above before.” I look back ahead, the realization just now dawning on me. “It sounded like it was coming from below.”
That’s why those noises were so odd, so hard to pin down: they weren’t coming from inside or outside, but somewhere else entirely. Both and neither at the exact same time.
“Did you hear it on Halloween, too?” she asks. “The noises?”
“Yeah, actually. I did.”
I think back to those strange sounds that had lured me out of bed: the rustling, the cough. That fast slap of a door opening and closing again. I had forgotten all about them once I stumbled across Nicole on the tile, all my attention focused on her, and I watch as Lucy sucks down the last of her cigarette and flicks it off the roof, the tip of it sailing like a firefly in the night. She lies flat on her back as she blows the smoke out, a single fat cloud funneling into the air.
“Levi wasn’t in the house that night,” she says at last. “Not technically, at least.”
“What do you mean?” I turn my head to look at her, trying to understand, though she just continues to stare at the sky.
“He was in the cave.”
“The cave?” I ask, my eyes flicking across her face. They’re starting to get adjusted now, just enough to see the inky outline of her features in the dark: the gentle slope of her nose, the jut of her chin. “What’s the cave?”
