“Oh, shit, that.” Natalie squeezed her arm. “Sorry, that’s pretty jarring, right? That’s why they warn you about the dropout rate during orientation week! Not everyone’s a good fit for the mountain!”
“Yeah,” Lucy said. It was the same thing she’d thought, after all. But still. “It’s notcommon, though, right?”
“Oh God, no!” Natalie said. “When people go, they go home! Or to like, LA or New York or something! But all the more reason not to let things get to you in a place like this, right? When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you, and all that.”
Lucy laughed, and allowed her unease to be mollified. It was hard to dwell on much of anything in the face of someone who could quote Nietzsche in glow-in-the-dark lipstick. “True enough!” she said. “I’d love a drink.”
“There’s a table to your right!” Natalie planted a neon-pink kiss on Lucy’s cheek. “And then I’d better see you dancing!”
Lucy shouted her thanks. When she rubbed the lipstick from her cheek, it came away as a smear of light against her hand.
She weaved her way across the room, dodging elbows here and there, and she watched the whirlwind of outfits go by as she scanned the wall for the drinks table. The dress code was delightfully non-uniform: There were some dressed in light summer-wear like Lucy, a cluster of goths jingling cheerily as they danced, and at least two people in full-latex clubwear. The girl Lucy had to weave around when she reached the drinks table was wearing a T-shirt with a sequined rendition of a movie poster forThe Exorcist.
Sequin Girl, it seemed, had been waiting for someone to cross into her orbit—she happily spun to Lucy as she scoured the table for a single seltzer, chatting as though it didn’t bother her that Lucy’s answers were barely audible over the bass beat. Lucy noted, with a poorly suppressed smile, that it seemed to be a Rollins-wide habit to ask about someone’s major before getting their name.
“No major yet!” Lucy said. “I’m actually a first-year.” At Sequin Girl’s raised eyebrow, she reluctantly, for ease of explanation, used her least favorite euphemism. “Nontraditional student. I worked for a couple years after high school.”
“Oh!” Sequin Girl beamed brighter than her shirt. “You’re going toloveit here. They let you study whatever you want, as long as you have a good plan.”
“Really!” Lucy said. “What’syourmajor, then?”
“Theater and anthro!” Sequin Girl said. “I’m working on my joint thesis now. I already know what I’m going to title it. ‘Playing Dead: A Comparative Study of Theatricality in Modern Death Rituals.’”
Lucy cackled. Sequin Girl’s obvious delight was infectious. “That fucking rules!”
“You think so?” Sequin Girl turned a little, swatting in the direction of another girl with her back turned to them. The girl, deep in conversation with the barely visible outline of a man, didn’t seem to notice. “Alicia thinks I shouldn’t use a pun! She says it’s disrespectful to the dead!”
“I’ve planned two Catholic funerals,” Lucy said with a demonstrative shrug. “There’s no getting through one of those without some disrespect to the dead!”
Sequin Girl’s eyes glittered as brightly as her T-shirt. Holding out her phone, she asked, “Could I interview you? I don’t have any Catholics yet!”
Lucy dutifully typed her number into the phone. She didn’t plan to talk about all that very much, not here. But she could make an exception for science. “Hey, have you seen any seltzers?”
“I saw a case in the kitchen!” Sequin Girl said. “That’s smart. Go slow and all that.”
“I’m allergic to alcohol!” Lucy said.
“Ohhh,” Sequin Girl said. “Sorry for that loss too, then.” Lucy threw her head back and laughed again as she pushed through the crowd to find the kitchen.
If there was one thing Lucy had learned about Rollins already, it was that people like Sequin Girl were far from a rarity. The students here had interests that Lucy couldn’t have dreamed up if she tried—and even after a few days at Rollins, she wasn’t yet tired of hearing of them. Quite the opposite, actually. It made her happy, listening to them gush, watching the moment the fire hit their eyes. It was too bad Whitney had decided she was some sort of troglodyte. It would have made Lucy happy to hear about her thesis, too.
It was fun. But it was also valuable information. Lucy had no idea what her major was going to be. Hadn’t even considered it until she was well into packing to leave. There’d never been enough oxygen in Lucy’s home to keep a fire going. She’d only ever wanted one thing—and getting to Rollins had been the full extent of her plan.
The acoustics of these old buildings are strange, Lucy thought as she slipped into the kitchen. The music should have been just as loud in the kitchen, but everything went muffled when she rounded the corner, like she’d dunked her head underwater. The aqua stars from the globe lamp skimmed the backs of her ankles as she crossed the threshold. Then she left them behind altogether.
The overhead fluorescents were switched off in favor of a small, yellow-tinged light over the stove. There was just one person in the kitchen with her, standing at the sink with his back turned to the rest of the room. Against his broad outline, Lucy could see the edge of the box of seltzers. She murmured an apology as she slid alongside him.
He was quiet as Lucy worked a lukewarm can out of the box. Quiet enough that she laughed and said, “Pretty loud in there.”
She cracked the seltzer open and took a sip. Somewhere in that moment, she saw his mouth move. But whatever he said was lost in the swish of raspberry-lime bubbles against her jaw. “Sorry,” she said. “What?”
He turned, and for the first time, she saw his face. She would never remember how he looked at her in that moment. Only that it was the last thing she remembered seeing.
“Hold still,” he said. And then nothing.
The night had a pulse. It always had. The mountain around her was teeming with life: She could hear it in the air above and the dirt below. Lucy couldn’t understand why, in all her years slipping in and out of the dark, she had never noticed it before. It was a wonder that anyone ever slept through this at all.
She laughed. Around her, the crickets sang. The grass bunched and scattered and whipped in the whispery breeze, and the stars whirled against the black above as if projected from Natalie’s cutout lanterns.
