Lucy
When I get to work, the office is frantic, like someone dialed the volume up a few notches since the last time I was here. As soon as I step through the door, Anjali rushes up to me and motions for me to follow her to my desk.
“What’s going on?” I ask, dropping my bag to the floor and taking the seat across from her.
Anjali glances around like she’s trying to see if someone is coming. “Don’t move. Either of you.” She points to Olivia and then rushes over to Mayor Cho’s office, slipping in through the door.
“Do you have any idea what’s up?” I ask.
Olivia leans forward and ducks her head down like she doesn’t want anyone to hear. “Detective Hampton’s here,” Olivia whispers. “Apparently the Vreelands are throwing a fit because they kept Justin in there overnight.”
“Whoa.” I lean in.
“Yup. His parents got him out first thing this morning.” Olivia cups her hand over her mouth. “Not even twenty-four hours in custody. But they confiscated his passport. At least, that’s what Aunt Sally said.”
“They think he’s gonna flee or something?”
“I guess so.”
“They must be waiting to see if his DNA matches whatever they found on the boat.”
Olivia wrinkles her nose. “Uncle Reid is a wreck. It’s obvious what happened.”
“It is?”
“I mean, yeah. Multiple people said they saw Justin and Billy fight at the party, so later that night, he probably went to the boat to go after him again. Billy was being a dick to Justin, but he didn’t deserve this.”
I glance up at the closed door and wonder what they’re saying in there.
Justin has been as much a part of Pelican Island as the sandpipers or the beach cruiser rental stand at the corner of Shore Road and West Street.
He’s third-generation, and there’s even a Vreeland gymnasium at our school, named after his grandparents, who ponied up millions for the facilities.
Not to mention the fact that his family started Hot Diggity, which has been around for forty years.
I never understood why Justin became the de facto dealer. Why he deemed his future worth throwing away. It wasn’t about money. Of course not. Power, maybe. A perpetual invite to whatever was happening. But it seemed so foolish. So careless.
“I don’t really know him very well. Do you think he is capable of something like this?” Olivia asks. Her voice is quiet but sharp, and she’s pressing her teeth into her bottom lip, her fingers curled around the armrest of her chair.
“I have no idea,” I say. But then I remember the file I found yesterday. I lean in toward Olivia. “Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Godwin were cutting down trees on the Vreelands’ property?” I quickly fill her in on the tree house drama I found in the files, but Olivia just shakes her head.
“That is the most suburban shit ever,” Olivia says. “But I can’t imagine that would lead to this.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine anyone on Pelican Island would be capable of this.
” My fingers tense as a rush of fear surges through me.
It’s not like I’ve said more than “hello” to Justin in the hallways.
He never popped up in mock trial or my AP classes.
He was just someone who lived here, too.
No one I wanted to engage with. Someone who always indicated danger, which has never appealed to me.
Safety, though. That’s what draws me in.
To me, safety has always meant learning the rules of Pelican Island—knowing the familiar faces in town and which beaches require local permits, avoiding the jagged coastlines at high tide, being aware of the last train home from the city, spending time in the comfortable company of Ethan, of Erica, of my sisters.
Danger has not been a part of my life on Pelican Island.
The stuff you hear about on the news—violent gangs and armed robberies—are unheard of.
So is spending too much time off-island with kids who go to different schools with parents mine don’t know.
But now I wonder if my definition of safety is all wrong. If I’m mistaking safety for familiarity and that perhaps they are not the same. The thought sends a rattling through my body.
I haven’t been safe. I’ve been sheltered.
Olivia settles into her seat beside me, and pretty soon she sucks in a breath of air. “She’s leaving.”
Mayor Cho’s office door slides open, and Detective Hampton appears, hunching her shoulders as she heads toward the door. Anjali walks her out, and Olivia and I stand, craning our necks to see Hampton get into her squad car and drive out of the parking lot.
Anjali darts back inside, making a beeline to us. “Why don’t you two take the rest of the day off?” she asks.
“You don’t need any help with…” I nod in the direction of Hampton’s car.
“We’ll see you tomorrow.” She raps her knuckles on top of my cubicle and hurries away, slipping back into Mayor Cho’s office.
“Do you think they’re trying to get rid of us?” I ask, but Olivia is already gathering her things.
“One hundred percent,” she says, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Let’s do them a favor and get out of here.”
Ten minutes later, Olivia and I settle into a corner booth at Little Vincenzo’s, the pizza spot in town.
“I cannot believe how much I’ve missed this,” she says.
“They don’t have cold cheese slices in the city?
” I ask, looking down at the grease-stained paper plate in front of front of me.
We both ordered slices of Pelican Island Plain, which is basically a delicacy here.
It’s a slice of piping-hot plain pizza topped with a handful of cold shredded cheese that slowly melts into the already-melted other mozzarella, resulting in the cheesiest, most comforting bite east of Manhattan.
To so many outsiders, it seems overindulgent, a bit gross, even, but here, it’s heaven.
Olivia bites into her slice and moans with pleasure. She swallows and wipes her mouth with a paper napkin. “I gotta say, there are so many things I missed about Pelican Island, but this is number one.”
“Is your dad still at that company?” I ask, folding my slice. “That’s why you moved, right?”
Olivia nods and pulls at a piece of cheese. “Yeah, but the why didn’t really matter to me. I was so glad to be leaving after…you know.”
I set my pizza down on the table as a boulder settles into the pit of my stomach.
Olivia’s looking at me, and our eyes lock for a moment.
I hold her gaze, afraid to look away. She doesn’t flinch, and all I want to do is lean forward and press my fingers to her cheek, to get close enough to see if her skin is as soft as I remember.
Her lips part slightly, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing, if the question on the tip of her tongue is the same as mine: What could we have been?
But then she blinks, and her eyes flit upward to the ceiling. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“You know how I’m taking a gap year?” she asks. “I said it’s because I didn’t get a tennis scholarship, which is true,” she continues. “But the real reason is because my parents can’t pay for school.”
I tear at my crust to have something to do with my hands.
“The job my dad took in the city…The company went bust,” she says. “It was a total tech-bubble thing. He put everything into it, including my trust, the one my grandparents set up.”
“Oh my god.”
“I was supposed to get all this money when I turned eighteen, use it to pay for college, start a life. Now—poof. All gone.” Olivia raises her eyebrows and picks a speck of cheese off her pizza.
“None of my friends in the city know. It’s not something that’s done in our circles, you know?
Take out loans for college?” She blushes.
“I can’t believe I’m embarrassed by this. How much of a snob am I?”
“Look around,” I say. “We’ve both grown up like royalty. If that changed…” I want to say something comforting, but the truth is I don’t know what it’s like. I’ve never had to worry about paying for school, paying for anything. And neither has Olivia.
“I’m taking the year off to figure out what I really want to do before saddling myself with some huge student loan.
” Olivia blinks and her eyes are glassy, like she’s trying not to cry.
“That’s why my parents are in Europe this summer.
Dad’s trying to get some funding for a new project, and Aunt Sally said I could live with them while I figured things out. ”
“Olivia, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s ridiculous,” she says. “There may be other ways, but…” She waves her fingers in the air. “I don’t know. It’s my own shit to deal with. I hate that it scares me. It wasn’t even my money to lose.”
“You’re not a bad person for worrying about that,” I say. “If I was in your position, I’d be losing my mind.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say definitively. “We’ve all grown up with things we don’t deserve, that we didn’t do anything to earn.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly.
“But what we do with that privilege is what matters. That’s how we determine if we’re good people or not.”
“Do you think I’m a good person?” Olivia asks.
Her desire to connect lands deep within my chest. It reminds me of the conversations we’d have when we were together, when we were an us.
Lying on the sand after school in the fall, wrapped in our tennis hoodies, we’d curl up close to each other and ask questions like this: What do you think I’ll be like in ten years?
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you?
What would you change about Pelican Island?
Our answers were aspirational and high-flying, full of promise and purpose and dreams. But, above all, honesty.
That autumn, after joining the mock-trial team, I asked Olivia if she thought I was smart enough to become a Supreme Court Justice one day, and she paused, thinking. Nerves hummed in my stomach until finally she answered.
“I don’t think it’s just about smarts,” she said hesitantly. “It’s about how hard you want to work. And you, Lucy Gold, are the hardest worker I know. So the answer is yes, but not without grinding like crazy.”
The answer comforted me because I knew she wasn’t just saying that. She meant it.
Sitting at Little Vincenzo’s two years later, I want to do her the same courtesy.
“Do I think you’re a good person?” I ask. “I think we have to work at being good people, that we have to make the right choices and consistently decide to do good things. But you seem to do that.”
She reaches over the table and rests her fingers on my wrist, her touch so warm I want to melt right into it. “I think you do, too.”
—
Later that night, when I’m alone in my bedroom, the sounds of the cicadas chirping loud outside my window, I can’t seem to fall asleep.
A sliver of light from the moon shines through my curtains, and I toss and turn, digging my elbows into my pillow to make it comfortable.
But it’s no use. I’m fully awake, all live wires, and I can’t stop thinking about what Olivia asked me. Do you think I’m a good person?
I’ve never thought to ask someone that question, never wondered that about myself. Took it as a given. I wonder what made Olivia ask that.
I squeeze my eyes closed, then let out a long breath and throw the covers back.
Even though Millie’s the resident bookworm in this house, reading usually puts me to sleep.
My feet hit the fuzzy rug, and I make my way to my desk in the dark, looking for the bag I brought to work.
Inside, there’s an Emily Henry book Millie said I had to read before the summer was over, and though I haven’t started it, I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. Maybe now’s the time.
Back in bed, I switch on my lamp and flip open the hardcover. But when I do, a postcard falls out and I hold it by the corner. Millie must have used this as a bookmark and left it here.
The image is of a white-sand beach in Anguilla, footprints in the sand. We took a family vacation there with the Silvers two years ago, but I have no idea why Millie would have kept this as a bookmark. How odd. But when I flip it over, I realize it’s not Millie’s.
There, on the back of the postcard, is Ethan’s loopy, messy handwriting, a short greeting on the left side, and on the right, he had addressed it to Billy Godwin.
I squint, making out the faded words.
BILLY! Made a move with Lucy and it WORKED. Best vacation ever. SEE YOU SOON!
I push my tongue against the back of my front teeth, and I read the words again, trying to get them to make sense.
That vacation was a standard spring break trip, like so many others our families had taken before.
We rented two villas and went boogie boarding and sailing, snorkeling to see the multicolored fish.
At night, we ate ice cream and watched movies, the six of us piled onto a big sofa as the ceiling fan spun lazily around in circles.
But at the time, Ethan and I had been friends. I was still dating Olivia. There had never been a move. There hadn’t been anything romantic, just the promise of sun and sweat and French fries as salty as the Caribbean Sea.
Part of me wants to pick up the phone and call Ethan right now and ask him what the hell this is, how it found its way into my bag, this book.
But as soon as I hold my phone in my hand, I stop.
Ethan has been acting strange all summer, hiding pieces of himself.
There’s no way to know that he’ll tell the truth now.
I turn the postcard over, study the handwriting, the address, the soft edges where the cardstock has worn down. Someone kept this for two years, and with a startle, I realize someone slipped this into my bag. Someone wanted me to find this. To see Ethan’s lie.
A pit opens in my stomach, and I press my head back into the pillows, one word bleating in my brain: Who?