It doesn’t take long to unpack my things: I have one suitcase full of clothes that are still on their hangers, easy enough to put away, and another full of school supplies, books, electronics, and cords, most of which I’m unsure of their function. I grab a few handfuls of hardbacks first, their spines cracked and gnarled like overworked hands, and push them to the side before emptying the rest.
The truth is, a truth I rarely acknowledge: I’ve barely opened a book in a year. I used to get so lost in these imaginary worlds, slipping into another skin every time I parted their covers. The musty scent of the pages curling beneath my nostrils like an elixir that ripped me from one reality and implanted me into the next. That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.
I still read for school, of course—as an English major, that’s impossible to avoid—but ever since I lost Eliza, every time I’ve tried to flip open the pages of an old favorite, immerse myself in something mindless, the words won’t melt in my mind the way they used to, warm and smooth like freshly whipped butter. Instead, every sentence feels clunky, hard, taunting me like they’re written in some foreign tongue, completely illegible.
I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.
I push the empty suitcase across the room and reach for the last one, the one I’ve been avoiding. The one full of sentimental stuff, all that collectible trash I can’t bring myself to throw away. I don’t exactly know when I started doing this: saving things like concert bracelets and grainy photobooth strips. Sea glass and lanyards and an empty box of Milk Duds from the first time Eliza and I went to the movies by ourselves. I’ve done it since childhood, I know, but it’s become something of a compulsion now. An irresistible urge to tuck away the things most people would toss, made even stronger since the night she died. Maybe it’s because these are the only things I have left of her, the objects that keep her partially alive in my mind like some kind of shrine: one of her scrunchies with thin strands of hair still knotted into the fabric, an old tube of lipstick she didn’t live long enough to finish. If I were to get rid of them now, it would feel like getting rid of her, too. Throwing her memory in the trash along with an embroidery floss bracelet, a broken ornament we made together in kindergarten. A cookie from her tenth birthday party I never took out of the packaging, so rock-hard stale I couldn’t bite into it now even if I wanted to.
I do my best to organize the clutter before setting it aside and pulling out my pictures. I stare at the one of Eliza and me first, resting on top in a delicate gold frame. It’s of the two of us in our bathing suits, a grinning selfie we snapped while lying out on her parents’ dock. I can’t even remember when we took it—freshman year, maybe, still early in high school—and behind it, there’s a second one of us in our graduation caps, taken just before walking into the auditorium on commencement day. We look so effortless in that first one, all limbs and teeth glowing bright against our summertime tans. We spent so many afternoons out there: Eliza’s blond hair turning even blonder, a cascade of freckles popping out across her nose. Salt water and sunburns turning our skin crispy and tight. That was our element: just the two of us, together, unrestrained.
But in the second picture, there’s a rigidity to our smiles that makes me sad.
I remember when that one was taken, of course. Just three weeks before the night she died. The last picture we’d ever have together and we don’t even look happy.
I wonder now what Eliza would think about all this: Lucy, the house. Me agreeing to move in with three strangers I know nothing about. She’d probably love it, honestly. It’s the kind of thing she would do. She was always the one pushing me to get out of my comfort zone, try new things. She’d be disgusted at the way I spent my freshman year, too cocooned in the safety net of my dorm room to venture out and experience anything new. She was never shy about that. I remember an argument we had once, junior year, me whining about wanting to stay in instead of show up at some party with a bunch of public-school people we barely even knew.
“You’re wasting your life,” she had said, me glowering in my sweatpants as she shimmied on some cutoff shorts. She was wearing makeup, too, which was weird to look at. She never wore makeup. “You’re only young once.”
It hurt to realize she had started to think of our Friday nights together as a waste, but I knew what she meant. We had been doing the same thing for practically a decade: bike rides to 7-Eleven to spend our allowance on sweet things and Slurpees before hightailing it back home. Staying up late, giddy and gossiping, then sleeping in in the mornings before doing it all over again. Of course, things evolved as we grew older, swapping gummy worms for wine we grabbed out of her parents’ refrigerator, occasionally the good stuff Eliza found hidden in her dad’s office, but the thing that stayed the same was the way I lived for those weekends, clinging to them even harder once I sensed her desire to start doing something different.
I remember wondering if that kind of power imbalance was normal in a friendship—if every pair consisted of one half who seemed to love the other just a little bit more—but I didn’t want to question it. I was content with the way things were.
I never felt like I needed anybody else—but slowly, inevitably, Eliza did.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her now, my fingertips touching her static face. I wish I could take back every stupid argument, every meaningless fight. Her death had shocked the Outer Banks, sending a ripple of uncomfortable contemplation across everyone who ever knew her. It was a stark reminder that none of us are immortal—especially the ones, like Eliza, who lived like they were. And it had scared me for a while, realizing that any second could be the end of it: something as simple as a trip into traffic, a cramp while you’re swimming. That a life as bright as hers could be extinguished without even the courtesy of a heads-up. But at the same time, the abruptness of it all made me realize that she was right.
You’re only young once, and only if you’re lucky.
“Margot.” I jump at the sudden banging on my door. “Girls are up. Get out here.”
I take one last glance at the picture, guilt washing over me. It’s pretty obvious, now, what I’m doing here. I’m trying to replace her. Eliza is my phantom limb: an amputation that still hurts me, haunts me, despite the fact that she doesn’t even exist. She is the dull, constant throb that wakes me in the night and doubles me over; sometimes, in those early morning hours, I forget she’s even gone. I’ll click open my eyes and reach out to the side, half expecting to feel her warm body beside me like during those summertime sleepovers. My fingers dragging their way across my comforter, searching for the familiar feel of her—but then, every time, I find it cold and empty, the pain increasing until it’s so unbearable I think I might faint.
I know now that if I’m ever going to move on, if I’m ever going to be whole, I need something to take her place. Someone else who can slip into her skin; who can give me everything she once did—or, rather, someone who can show me who I am without her. Because the truth is, I’ve only ever been Eliza’s best friend, ever since that first day in kindergarten when we clicked so easily. And even though we were opposites—me, brainy and bookish, and her, wild and alive—I was the yin to her yang, the quiet sidekick who talked reason into her ear when she got the sudden urge to do something stupid. I used to think that her standing next to me was the contrast I needed to stand out on my own, but I know now that was never the case. Instead, she was simply something I could cling to; a safety blanket that felt familiar and warm.