Only If You’re Lucky

I run outside and crane my neck, the sky above granite black. There isn’t a cloud in sight and the stars look like little pinpricks in fabric, so sharp and clear they take my breath away.

“Hey!” I yell, the sound of my voice making me strangely self-conscious in the otherwise silence of the night. It feels like talking out loud in an empty room, searching for proof you really exist. “Who’s up there?”

I hear more shuffling and turn to the right, squinting my eyes, trying to make out shadows in the dark. I still can’t see anything so I walk around to the side of the house, angling for a better view, when a figure emerges out of nowhere, like whoever it is was lying flat on their back and suddenly decided to sit up straight.

“Hey,” she responds.

“Lucy?”

The voice is unmistakable. It’s Lucy up there—maybe alone, maybe not—and I get the distinct feeling I’ve interrupted something.

“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 high up 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?”

“The basement.”

“This house has a basement?” I ask. “I didn’t think houses around here could have basements. The water table—”

“Yeah, too high, I know,” she says. “Less of a basement and more of a crawl space, then. You can’t even stand up in there.”

“What was he doing in our crawl space?”

“It’s stupid,” she says, finally rolling her head to look at me, the wet whites of her eyes glistening in the dark. “It’s a part of their pledgeship. All the freshmen have to spend a certain number of hours down there before they’re initiated.”

“You’re not serious,” I say, but as I think back to Halloween, it actually makes sense. I picture the blond boy first, the one in the dress, coming out to the fire before gesturing to our house like he was on his way there—then shaking his head, pursing his lips. Realizing, perhaps, who he was talking to. What he shouldn’t say. Levi next and how he looked so haunted, so scared, stuttering to find an explanation to defend his presence.

His eyes landing on the fire, finally, and then to Trevor. That sick look on his face like he had turned feral.

“You doin’ okay, man? You look a little pale.”

“What do they do?” I ask.

“Just lie there,” she says. “It’s too narrow to do anything else. I’ve seen it before. It’s literally a hole, like being buried alive.”

My mind wanders back to Levi again, that tortured expression, and I wonder how long he had been down there before he came barreling back out, running through the shed, eyes wide and full of terror. An hour, maybe two, body rigid in the dark as he listened to the sound of his own heart in his ears. His own rushing blood. The feeling of little legs crawling across his skin as he opened his eyes only to see the vast expanse of nothing staring back.

“Extra cruel to do it to a guy who claims to be claustrophobic,” she adds.

That’s why Trevor had been laughing tonight. Hearing Levi admit that, his fear of small spaces, and knowing what he was forcing him to do.

“They think it’s some big secret but Trevor told me when he was drunk,” Lucy continues, and I think back to that night at Penny Lanes, her finger tracing its way around the rim of her cup. Her listening, the rest of us talking, spilling our secrets like she slit us right open.

I suddenly wonder how much she knows about people. I wonder what all she’s heard.

“The next morning, he made me promise not to tell anyone,” she continues. “If Rutledge found out, they’d definitely get disbanded.”

“Why would anyone agree to do that?” I ask. “It’s…”

“Degrading?” she interrupts. “Disgusting? It’s because they’re desperate.”

“Desperate,” I repeat.

“Desperate to belong.”

She says it like a slur, like something to be ashamed of, but for the first time since I’ve known him, I can see the smallest piece of myself in Levi: so eager to be a part of something, to be accepted, that you make yourself do things that you would otherwise never do. Sucking on the wrong end of a cigarette, tobacco grit burning hot on your tongue; eating old pizza off the floor or letting a drug dissolve into your bloodstream just because someone placed it in your palm and held your hand tight. It’s no different than what I did to get here, really: agreeing to live with three strangers I knew nothing about. Blindly going along with whatever they said, whatever they did, like if I faked it hard enough, I’d be one of them.

“Trevor says it bonds them.” She laughs. “Like trauma bonding.”

“That’s fucked up,” I say.

“Yeah. It’s just a matter of time before something happens.”

I turn to her again, eyes narrowing, waiting for her to continue.

“There’s a little door on the side of the house you open to get into it, behind the azaleas, but if it closes all the way and latches from the outside, you’re stuck in there. This house is not up to code,” she adds. “It’s too old.”

I hear those noises again in my mind, so distinct in the dark: a sliding door, a body scraping against something as it shimmied itself inside. A cleared throat, a dry cough. Settling in before the awful, endless waiting.

“They leave it cracked open when they’re in there, but … you know. Accidents happen. One little push and you’re trapped.”

I’m quiet, my heart beating hard in my throat. Thinking of Levi on Halloween; his bare chest, scratched and bleeding, like jagged fingernails cutting across the skin.

“Did you mean it?” Lucy asks me suddenly, twisting her neck so she’s facing me again. “What you said on Halloween? In the kitchen?”

It takes a second for me to realize what she’s referring to, but then it returns to me slowly, like recalling a dream. It’s been living quietly between us for the last four weeks, really, my admission curled up like a hibernating animal. Neither of us wanting to poke it awake, acknowledge its presence. Talk about those words I had muttered as my body trembled cold in the kitchen; Lucy feeding me water, baby sips in the dark. It had barely been conscious, the thought ejecting itself from my mind like an exorcism: demonic and violent, completely out-of-body. I just had to get it out, the terrible belief that had been living inside me for far too long.

“I wish it was him. It should have been him.”

“Of course I meant it,” I say at last. And I expect to feel ashamed afterward, maybe even embarrassed. I expect to feel disgust or surprise but instead I feel lighter the second I say it, like the thought itself had been tied around my ankle. A ball and chain weighing me down. “Eliza didn’t deserve to die like that. Levi did.”