Page 82 of Only If You're Lucky
I turned around just in time to see her stumble, eyes wet and wide as she reached out her hand like she was asking me to take it—but I didn’t. I didn’t take it. I don’t even know if I could have reached her in time. I don’t even know if it would have mattered, if I would have gone down with her, the two of us holding hands like we used to, fingers clasped together as we fell. But instead of trying, instead of helping, instead of swooping in to save her the way I always did, I simply stood right there, feet planted in place, watching in shock as her body tipped back.
The flutter of her dress and the wind in her hair making it seem, for a second, like she was flying.
CHAPTER 63
“I told you you had it in you.”
I whip around at the sound of her voice, the silhouette of Lucy between the open shed doors making my stomach turn. I hadn’t heard her follow me out here, hadn’t registered the slap of the back door above the roar of the rain. The rumble of thunder masking her steps as she approached me slowly, a predator slithering up silently behind their prey.
Fresh tears burn my eyes as I remember the two of us on the beach again, me muttering about how I wanted to be bolder, braver, different than I’ve always been. Not the kind of person who let other people walk all over me, and Lucy’s voice in my ear like a challenge, a dare—or maybe it was a reminder. Another little clue that she had been there, always, watching me in my lowest moments.
“I know you have it in you to be different. I’ve seen it.”
“It was an accident,” I say, shaking my head, the same thing I’ve been telling myself for the last two years. “I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t—”
“She never appreciated you,” Lucy says, walking closer. “I saw the way she treated you before you even saw it yourself.”
I imagine Lucy witnessing all those times Eliza rolled her eyes as I tried to help her, the way she and Levi hushed into a nasty silence as I approached them on the dock, and feel a shard of shame lodge in my chest at the thought of Lucy seeing me like that: so malleable, so weak. A rubber dummy that simply sprang back for more after taking a punch, ready and waiting to get hurt again.
My own words echo in my ears now, the four of us sitting on my bed on that very first night.
“The thing you need to understand about Eliza is that everyone loved her,”I had said, thinking only I knew the real truth of it all.“But just because you loved her, it didn’t mean she loved you back.”
“You deserved to know,” Lucy says, and I remember the sound that had alerted me to their presence: a kicked can followed by Eliza’s low voice. The only reason I rounded that corner and even found them at all. I always assumed Eliza, Levi, and I were the only people up there, the only ones left, but I realize now: that noise had to have come from somewhere.
“It was you,” I say, a sudden shudder cutting through me, quick and vicious, like swimming through a cold spot. The thought of Lucy pulling my puppet strings even then, even before I knew she existed. “You wanted me to see them like that.”
“I wanted you todosomething,” she responds.
“Why?” I ask, imagining Lucy watching as I roamed. Knowing what Eliza was doing just around the corner and spotting that can, kicking it hard. Making a noise so I would find her.
“Because we’re the same,” Lucy says. “You and I are the same, Margot. Spending our lives wanting people who never wanted us back.”
The sound of the rain turns to white noise in my ears as a flashfrom outside illuminates us both. The thought comes to me quick, before I can stop it, as fast and fleeting as the lightning itself: Lucy is right. We are the same. We were both rejected by the very people who should have loved us the most: her father, my best friend. All we wanted was acceptance and belonging. A chance at being a part of something bigger than ourselves.
“I know you know who I am,” she says, taking a step closer. “I heard you and Sloane talking in your room. I know she looked me up at work, I saw you walk off with Danny at the party. I know you’ve been putting it together.”
I think about how Lucy is always there, always listening, always hiding herself in plain sight. I guess she wasn’t at Penny Lanes that day like we thought, instead creeping home early and listening to our whispers. Pushing her ear flush against the door. I guess she really did have one eye on me on that island after all and she had simply been biding her time with Levi, giving me space while she waited for me to figure it out.
“I saw what happened to Eliza that night and I took my chance,” she continues. “I saw that I could actually step into the life I wanted after having to watch her live it from a distance.”
I feel my body start to sway, that murky moral logic making my head nod gently along with her words. Strangely, in this moment, it feels like I understand Lucy more than I ever have before because I’ve felt that same way so many times: Maggie and me on the lawn outside Hines, the envy and awe as we watched Lucy from afar. Her comment on Halloween after we ran into each other, understanding how desperately I wanted to live another life. All those times I had looked at Eliza and felt that flame of resentment flare up in my chest when I saw the things she had that she always took for granted. Lucy had wanted them, too, and I can see it so clearly: her watching through the open window as we sat around the diningroom table. The Jeffersons dancing in the kitchen and Eliza and me on the dock, staring up at the stars. Sharing our secrets like best friends do. Her curiosity growing, morphing, taking over everything and the impulse to keep getting closer, from the dock to the yard to inside the house. Flipping through Eliza’s planner; realizing, once she fell, how easy it would be to simply show up where she should have been. Start her new life in the very spot Eliza’s stopped.
Her best friend, her boyfriend, all of us ready and waiting for her.
“I’ve been trying to make you see it,” she finishes. “I’ve been trying to get you to understand that you don’t have to feel so guilty all the time. You don’t have to keep punishing yourself. She deserved it.”
I think back to that night at Penny Lanes, Lucy’s soapbox about murder and death. The way she had looked at me and winked, spewing out justifications like she was trying to tell me it was okay.
“I would kill someone who deserves it.”
I think back to all of us around the dinner table, that fragile stem twisting between her long, skinny fingers. Every little comment a chisel to my conscience, chipping away slowly, trying to make it disappear. I always thought it was Levi she was playing with, dangling the knowledge of what I told her like a cat clutching a mouse’s tail. Pawing at him, making him squirm. Torturing him slowly just because she could. But it was never Levi—it wasmeshe was trying to get to confess, all those little moments when she asked me questions about Eliza, her death, before sitting back and waiting patiently, quietly trying to pry it all out. She wanted me to put it together and I had tiptoed around it so many times, so eager to ease the crushing weight of it all. This burden to carry that was solely mine. So I had sprinkled in my own truths when I could, telling Lucy about an argument, an accident. The guilt Icarried and all the different decisions I wished I could have made. I had been attempting to justify it, too: sitting on the porch with Mr. Jefferson, frantically searching for someone else to pin it on. For a way to channel my guilt into rage.
I chose Levi, of course, the only other person who could shoulder my blame. He had been there with her and everyone knew it. Other than me, who nobody saw, he was the last person to see her alive. And in a way, it was true: none of it would have happened if he hadn’t come into our lives that day, Eliza’s lips dipped below the water as she watched him curiously. His tan legs ambling down the dock, him handing her a cigarette. All his vices turning into hers, changing her into somebody she wasn’t. Taking her from me even before she died.
I look at Lucy now, suddenly remembering the way she stood up and followed Levi into the trees, her eyes on mine like we were sharing a secret. Like she was granting my wish, that thing I had muttered to her in the kitchen. My hatred for Levi like a festering boil.
“Why did he have to die?” I ask, realizing now that it doesn’t make sense. If Lucy was there the night Eliza fell, then she knew Levi had nothing to do with it. She knew of his innocence all along. “Why did you kill Levi?”
