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“Can I ask you something about Lucy?” I say as we cross the main quad. I can hear the party now filtering up from the beach. The smell of burning wood is thick in the air.
“Sure, go ahead. You probably know more about her than I do though. I should ask you things instead.” She laughs sharply, a bitter sound, and smiles. “Lucy didn’t talk about herself much.”
“Did she ever mention me?”
Lesley glances over and doesn’t say anything right away and the pity in her eyes is all I need to know, but she sighs and shakes her head regardless. “No, I didn’t know she had a sister until Emilio told me who you are. I see the resemblance now though.”
It’s like a knife in my chest, grinding and turning, and it’s an old wound, one I can’t seem to shake. Lucy was always more important to me than I was to her, and even though she was the only person in the world that cared about me, it was always a passing care, like it was a secondary thing for her while she was my entire world.
I was like a pet, like beloved cat. She fed me, kept me healthy, but I was never her priority.
Her only priority was herself.
“I’m not shocked, but it still sucks.”
“If it helps, Lucy didn’t talk about her life before the island at all. She mentioned your dad once or twice but that’s basically it.”
“She talked about Dad?”
“Sure, she mentioned how she’s a lot like him, but that he’s a tough person to know. I gather it wasn’t easy, living in your house. I don’t envy you having a dad like Ansell Drake.”
I chew on my lip for a few paces before quietly saying, “No, it wasn’t easy, but Lucy was better at it than me.”
She needed less than I did. Less attention, less love. She could survive on what little my father gave out, which wasn’t much at all. Meanwhile, I was starved for love and affection, and wished I could feel something from that ice-cold man, but it was like he saved himself for our mother and had nothing to spare for us. Mom woke Dad up, made his eyes sparkle, but he remained frozen around me and Lucy. My sister didn’t mind it, but it always hurt me. Lucy said I was too sensitive, but I wonder if I wasn’t being sensitive enough.
“Family is hard,” Lesley says with a sigh. She doesn’t look at me as we round a corner and head toward a large, raging bonfire dug down into the sand and surrounded by stones, burning out in front of a house built high into the air right up against the beach. There are dozens of students milling about and several kegs set up around the perimeter of the fire—but I don’t remember Emilio ever bringing kegs to the island.
Lesley gives me a look and I know she’s wondering the same thing.
Where did they come from?
We blend into the crowd. Lesley seems to know everyone and greets random people in almost every group with an excited effusiveness I’ve never seen from her before. It’s like the Lesley I know and party-Lesley are two entirely different people, and it’s almost jarring, but she floats around effortlessly blending from one pack to another.
“Drink this,” she says, shoving a beer into my hand. “Don’t chug it. Sip slow. You need something in your hand to blend in. Don’t have more than one or two. Don’t get drunk. You’re going to need to be under control in case something bad happens.”
“I’m sorry, are these rules or guidelines or what?”
She snorts and digs her toes into the sand. We’re a few paces from the waterline, and the low tide’s lapping at the beach like a black tongue. The firelight flickers off bodies and faces, excited people, happy, sad, angry people, and a hundred conversations splinter into a thousand different relationships, and I feel like I’m on the outside of it all, never a part of real life but always staring at it like a visitor to a museum.
Lucy, for all her flaws, was always better at connecting to people than I am. Even if she never really cared about them, she understood how the game was played. She smiled, laughed, asked questions. She was charming.
And here I am, a college girl at a college party, feeling like I don’t belong.
“You want to survive this school, right? Then you should pay attention.” Lesley nods toward a group of guys posted up around the keg smoking a long, dark blunt. “See them? They’re not Cask guys, but they’re in another society, the Eagle Roost. We just call them Roosters. And them over there?” She gestures at some girls flirting with a few guys tossing a frisbee around. “They’re in Jackal. Those guys are from Silent Keys, and they’re from Wolf Bane, which is like the lamest society of all, and those are—”
“Lesley, how many freaking societies are there?”
She shrugs. “Twelve. Too many if you ask me, but there’s a new one every few years. Calico’s the latest, Wolf Bane is the oldest. Eagle Roost is somewhere in the middle. And Cask, well, I’m not sure about Cask.”
“Do I need to know them all?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, but—”
“Then let’s make flashcards and study later. Who do I need to talk to?”
She gives me a sharp look and for a second I think she’s about to tell me off, but instead her face breaks into a grin. “God, you can sound just like her sometimes.”
I blush and look at my feet. “Sorry.” I’m not sure how I feel about that compliment. I never thought I was anything like my sister, but maybe I’m wrong.
