Only If You’re Lucky

My head is pounding as I open my eyes, the brightness of the tent borderline blinding.

I blink a few times, my surroundings materializing slowly around me before I smack my lips, try to swallow. My throat feeling like sandpaper and my spit as thick as glue. It’s freezing in here, the early morning air still unthawed, and I reach my arm out to the side, instinctively looking for the familiar warmth of another person beside me only to find the second sleeping bag cold and empty and zipped up tight.

No one’s there.

I sit up fast, a pang of panic flaring in my chest. Memories of Eliza, my phantom limb, all those mornings I had woken up to that blissful, bleary second when my subconscious still believed she was alive. I remember now, with a startling clarity, that Lucy should be in here with me. We were supposed to be sharing a tent last night and I close my eyes again as quick bursts of memory explode in my mind like a strobe light, sharp and blinding: the fire, the dancing, the mounds of warm bodies passed out around the giant open flame. The moon in the sky like a large, open eye and the bottles of liquor being drained faster than what should have been possible. Danny and me on the driftwood, whispering those stories: Lucy and her boyfriend, that accident. Some big argument just before he died. Trevor stumbling around, screaming out orders.

Lucy and Levi and that strange confrontation, a simmering anger as he flung her arm off.

I don’t remember putting myself to bed and I fling the covers off now, looking down, realizing I’m still in my clothes from last night. Smears of dried mud caked to my pants; the cuffs of my jeans stiff with salt water. Sand and cold sweat flaking off my chest like a molting second skin.

I remember Levi leaving, Lucy following, that worm of rage writhing around in my stomach. Trying to drown it, kill it, by picking up the bottle and taking another drink.

A sense of claustrophobia comes washing over me and I suddenly, desperately, need to get off this island. It feels like those early memories with Eliza again—the two of us beneath that dock, surrounded on all sides; that bubble of damp air that got caught in my lungs and made it feel like we were sinking, drowning—and I stand up too fast in my tent, fighting the overwhelming sense of vertigo that rushes to my head before unzipping the opening and stepping outside. The island is buzzing with the kind of hungover energy that makes everything feel like it’s moving in slow motion: lethargic stretches and girls sipping instant coffee out of rustic enamel mugs. Splashing their faces with palmfuls of water, mascara smearing like a bruise beneath their eyes. The boys are lolling around in sweatshirts and basketball shorts, thick heads of hair sticking up at odd angles. A few of them attempting to scramble eggs above barely there flames.

I finally catch sight of Sloane and Nicole in the water, calf-deep and moving slow, and I amble over to them, my heart hammering in my chest.

“There she is,” Sloane says without turning to face me. Already, I don’t like the sound of that. “And how are we feeling this morning?”

“Like shit,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I think I blacked out.”

“You think?”

Sloane looks at me, eyebrows raised, and simply stares for a second before she looks back at Nicole, the tip of her hand trailing idly across the water.

“What happened?” I ask, a croak in my throat, even though I’m not so sure I want to know.

“You tell me,” she says, looking back down, ripples from Nicole’s fingers cracking the glassy surface. “You weren’t making any sense at the end.”

“What was I saying?”

“Something about how you needed to find Levi,” Sloane says, and I suddenly remember the thought that flared up when I was talking to Danny. Wondering if I needed to just talk to Levi, swallow my pride and demand some answers. “I kept telling you to stop but you wouldn’t listen.”

“I was trying to find Levi?” I ask, twisting around, my eyes scanning the beach for any sign of him. For any sign of either of them, Lucy or Levi, although her absence in our tent has made it painfully clear that they’re probably asleep, and they’re probably sleeping together.

“At one point, you ran off to find him and I found you lying by the water an hour later,” she says. “The tide was rising.”

I look down at my jeans, the dark stain at the bottom, and her words trigger another memory from last night, blurry but there: my fingers digging into the sand as I listened to the occasional splash in the distance, the bobbing of boats anchored offshore. The murmur of voices a few yards behind me and sounds of the party slipping away as people made their way to their tents or just fell asleep right there by the fire. My head spinning and my mind on Lucy and me up on the roof, on the beach over Christmas, curled up in those blankets as we passed the bottle between us.

The distant pop of fireworks and her voice like a whisper, a suggestion. A dare.

“If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?”

I remember staring at the sky, so cloudless and clear I could see every constellation like Thanksgiving night with Lucy’s fingers in mine. The quick stab of jealousy once I found the sisters, the twins, their hands clasped tight while my own remained so painfully empty.

“Did I find him?” I ask, a creeping uncertainty in my voice. My cheeks burning as I remember Levi standing up and walking into the trees; Lucy’s smile as she glanced in my direction before following slyly behind. It’s all so familiar, this terrible feeling. Even after everything I’ve learned about Lucy, everything I know and don’t know, there’s still a possessiveness toward her I can’t control. It’s the same as the greed I had for Eliza, wanting her friendship all to myself. The high from her attention perfectly pure and razor-sharp, not the watered-down thing I had to stomach when somebody else wanted it, too.

“I don’t know,” Sloane says. “You were alone.”

I sigh, closing my eyes, trying to excavate the massive pit settling deep in my stomach. I feel uneasy, sick, but I still can’t put a finger on why. It’s probably all the alcohol, mixing liquors, this abandoned place and the anxiety that inevitably sets in after a night of indulgence. Trying to think back on what I did, what I said. What I might have seen. Maybe it’s the full moon from last night making me feel off-kilter and strange, reminding me of that night almost two years ago. Of watching Eliza and Levi stumble around in the dark just like Lucy and Levi had been. Witnessing that argument—that violent fling of her arm, her low hiss in return—and that feeling of fear, of dread, of knowing I should step in and do something, but also just wanting to fall asleep and forget.

I try to summon more memories now, my mind grazing the feeling of something familiar but just barely out of reach. I try to picture finding them, maybe. Rounding a corner to see their bare skin glowing like ghosts in the night as I stood at a distance, watching it all.

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

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say instead, head swimming, a slow heat starting to crawl up the back of my throat.

I turn around and walk away from the water, toward the direction of the tent before taking a turn and going inland instead. I approach the trees quickly, the foliage growing denser the farther I get from the shore, and I keep my eyes down, watch where I’m stepping. Trying not to think too hard about Lucas on the boat and his comment about all the other creatures we’re sharing the place with; all the deadly things that lurk in the shadows, just waiting for an unassuming something to stumble across their path. Finally, I chance a glance up and spot a clearing a few feet in front of me, another little patch of sand in the distance with water retreating on the other side. I keep my eyes lifted, my gaze trained forward until my foot hooks around a root and I start to fall.

“Shit,” I hiss, just barely catching myself.

I shake my leg free and look down, realizing, too late, that it’s not a root. Instead, my foot got caught on something else entirely: a human arm stretched out in front of me, long and lean and covered in dirt. I feel something catch in my throat—shock, fear, a horrible knowing locked deep inside—and before I can stop myself, I let out a scream, shrill and haunting, before the sharp swell of vomit comes barreling out.