Only If You’re Lucky

This picture of my past, this snapshot in time.

I remember it being a happy memory—comfortable, at the very least, the two of us in our element like this—but I’ve never actually noticed before how this photo of Eliza and me so blatantly displays our differences: me, self-consciously covered by my towel, eyes looking warily away from the lens. Eliza, all brazen in her little blue bikini. Reveling in the attention of the camera the way she reveled in the attention of everything.

My heart thumps hard in my chest as I stare at it, dissect it, try to wrap my mind around why it’s here, in Lucy’s bedroom, tucked away like a secret. My fingers resting on the glossy paper, Eliza’s face. Blond hair bleached even brighter by the sun and the freckles cascading across her nose like stars, her very own constellation.

I think about the envelope of money I found deep in her dresser; the Fairfield address scrawled across the back. I pull my phone out of my pocket now, opening my pictures, and tap on the most recent image, the one I just took: Lucy’s ID. Then I flip back to the picture of the envelope from Christmas, then back to the ID.

The addresses are the same.

I drop my arm, my head feeling like it’s swimming in a sea of something thick and heavy as I try to process it all. Try to think about what it all means.

Did they know each other, somehow? Lucy and Eliza?

Is this why Lucy chose me? Is Eliza the reason why I’m even here?

Maybe it was blackmail. Maybe Eliza got tangled up in something bad, something she shouldn’t have. Something somehow involving Levi. This seemed to start when they met, after all, all those sullen moods and bad habits she seemed to pick up out of nowhere. All those times she flipped her phone over when I walked by, hiding her screen, or opening her mouth to tell me something before changing her mind and closing it again. Those times when the two of them fell into a whisper as I approached, their conversation cut short by my presence alone. It still feels like Lucy and Levi somehow knew each other, too, long before he got here. The way he clearly recognized her that night at Penny Lanes; the way she was always so drawn to him, so curious, every little detail filling her up like she couldn’t get enough.

I faintly register a noise in the distance—a muted thumping, my own heart in my ears—but my mind still feels like it’s wrapped in gauze, a padded room dulling everything. I feel too detached to react so instead, I stay floating, like I’ve simply left my body behind and I’m watching myself from a distance with cool indifference.

“Margot!”

The sound of my name pulls me back slowly and I wonder where it came from. Sloane upstairs, maybe. Nicole calling down from her room.

“Margot, open up!”

I twist around, toward Lucy’s open door, simultaneously recognizing the voice and realizing the noise is coming from outside. And it isn’t just thumping, either. It’s knocking.

Lucy is knocking at the front door.

“I forgot my wallet!” she yells, banging harder. “Why is the door locked?”

I look down at the picture again, shaking in my grip, before pushing it back in her desk and locking the drawers, terror surging through my chest. I step back, a faint tingling crawling up my neck as I look around, frantic, trying to find something for my hands to grab. Because if Lucy is standing on the porch right now, peering through the windows and into the living room, she’s going to see me walking out of her bedroom. She’s going to be rightfully curious why I locked her out of the house and walked into her room the second she stepped outside.

My eyes dart around, keys still in hand, wildly searching for some excuse to be in here. Some plausible reason that she might buy—and that’s when I spot it. A stack of books in the corner, piled high against the wall.

“One second!” I yell, a cold sweat erupting on my palms. I grab the familiar title on top and walk out of her bedroom, trying to act casual as I register her face through the window, her expression twisted into grim annoyance. I shoot her a smile as I walk to the front door and unlatch the bolt, letting her inside, but she storms straight past me, hands on her hips.

“Margot, what the hell?” she asks, her eyes flicking back and forth between my face and her room. Her keys are stuffed in my back pocket and I try to angle my body away from her, attempting to hide them. “What were you doing in my room?”

“Just grabbing my book,” I say, holding up Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s pure dumb luck that I spotted it sitting there, right on top, so easily within my reach. “I need it for another class this semester. I wanted to get it before I forgot.”

“And the door?” she asks, gesturing back to it.

“I lock it sometimes,” I say, sagging my shoulders, acting ashamed. “I told you I don’t like leaving it open. I didn’t think you’d be back for a while.”

I stare at Lucy’s expression, maddeningly neutral like a lenticular image, her very essence changing depending on which way I look at it. It’s amazing how quickly she can morph in my mind from beautiful to menacing to something else entirely, the tiniest twitch of the eye or suggestive smile threatening to reveal something I’ve never seen in her before.

“Okay,” she says at last, posture loosening, though she doesn’t sound convinced. “Yeah, okay.”

She walks past me and into her bedroom, my breath held as she disappears inside. Quietly, I walk over to the wall hook and replace her keys, biting my cheek. Waiting for her to notice something out of place and come storming back out, demanding the truth. Instead, she reappears calmly with the bag slung over her shoulder and I wonder, for a single second, if this was another test. If she left her purse on purpose, maybe. If she somehow knew I would do exactly this.

“I’ll be taking these,” she adds, elbowing me as she walks past. I watch as she grabs her keys from the hook on the wall and shakes them in front of me, dangling like a carrot. “In case you decide to lock me out again.”

She walks back onto the porch and closes the door before I can respond, my head spinning as she skips down the steps. Then, once she’s gone again, I walk into my bedroom and toss the book on my bed before opening my laptop and beginning to type.