Covet. It was a peculiar word. One I tended to associate with long, dull lectures on Hawthorne and other early American writers from the Puritan age. I had to look it up once, as part of an essay I had been forced to write in school. What I found was: to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others. There were other definitions. More words, different words, although all of them meant the same thing. But it was that first part that had stayed with me: to desire wrongfully.
It struck me as strangely beautiful and yet frighteningly accurate.
The feelings I felt toward Lucy, I often thought, were something like this—something sharper than a normal friendship, something that I felt threatened to overwhelm and, quite possibly, destroy. There were moments when I had thought that I did not so much want her as wanted to be her. The two feelings were so strong and so opposite, yet they continued to merge and mingle until I was no longer able to tell one from the other. I coveted the easy way she had, and I desired that: her way of being. I wanted it for my own. And there were days when I almost felt it—when, emboldened by her nonchalance at the world that, already, even in my young years, seemed so cruel, I was able to withstand the shadows, the anxiety that so often plagued me. And so there were days when I never wanted to part from her, when I felt that my whole being depended upon my close connection with her. And there were days when I hated her, resenting myself, resenting her, for this reliance, this symbiotic relationship that we had formed—though on the darkest days I wondered whether it really was, whether there was anything that I had to offer her, and whether what she offered me wasn’t more a crutch than a benefit. Lately I had struggled more with the strangeness of our relationship, as I was never able to explain it fully, not even to myself, and sitting in the back of that taxi, surrounded by this easy, carefree group of friends, I was struck once more by the need to be able to, to understand it all before it threatened to overwhelm me, totally and completely.
PILED INTO THE PROMISED CAR, Tom’s friends reluctant to abandon him to the back roads of Vermont, we made the final leg of the journey in silence.
Once at Bennington, it was with something near regret that I eventually left them, dismayed to find that the thought of returning to my room, to Lucy, had since grown terribly dim.
“Wait.”
I turned and found the boy with the leather elbow patches, Tom, I reminded myself, running toward me. He leaned over, taking the suitcase from my grasp. “Let me carry it for you.” And so he walked me back to my room, made sure that I was able to get in safely, setting my suitcase beside my bed as he gazed around the space. I wondered what it was that he saw reflected there: in the hopelessly childish duvet that adorned my bed, a ghastly shade of pink and white that my aunt had purchased in a misguided attempt to welcome her new ward into an adult home, at the embarrassing effort that I had made to decorate my side of the room, various sketches tacked to the wall. He paused at the map on Lucy’s side of the room, studying, or so it seemed, the numerous pins that we had once placed there. A silly game we played with some intensity our first year, when the newness of our relationship had made anything seem possible.
And then he moved to the row of photographs that I had taped above my dresser.
I had signed up for a design class on a lark that fall, and the instructor, a working photographer who spent a few days out of the week in Vermont and the rest in New York City, had been encouraged by several photography enthusiasts in the class to erect a makeshift darkroom on campus. My mother’s old camera had been among the few things I had brought with me to Vermont, though I had never really thought to learn how to use the thing. Soon, however, I began spending hours in the darkroom, happy to lose myself in the process of developing and printing, feeling as though I had found something of my own at last. Something separate and distinct from the Alice I was with Lucy. It was a strange experience, one that began to unfurl within the folds of my stomach, so that there were days when I felt filled up by it, as if this new knowledge—of what I might be capable of—was nourishment enough.
I felt my heart beat faster, waiting for him to speak—but then the door opened and Lucy rushed in. “You’re home.” She breathed. “I was worried, I just checked the bus and it said—” She stopped then, and turned.
Tom smiled, nodded his head.
“Lucy,” I began, “this is Tom. He was my knight in shining armor today,” I said, before relaying the whole tale for her, anxiously, nervously, so that both of them looked slightly embarrassed, slightly aghast by the time I had run out of breath. A frown had crept across Lucy’s face at the story, and she remained silent once I had finished.
We stood there, the three of us, the knowledge that something had changed, that something had shifted, coursing through the room. But then, later, I wondered whether Tom had even noticed, or whether it wasn’t something that Lucy and I had felt alone, another example of our strange duo that defied explanation, that defied normalcy.
And one that I, for the first time, felt myself suddenly anxious to shed.
SUDDENLY, IT WAS NO LONGER Lucy and me.
It was both of us, and Tom too, a strange little threesome that I soon learned refused to fit together. At first, I had made a concerted effort. When I was given an assignment by my professor to learn how to use a view camera—the weight of the piece requiring more than one set of hands—I invited Lucy to join Tom and me as we hauled the equipment around campus, Tom joking he was both subject and subjected. Lucy accompanied us only the once, when we spent nearly an hour lugging it to the edge of campus, to what we laughingly christened the End of the Universe, that stretch of land at the entrance to Bennington, and which dipped, low and jagged, as dangerous and threatening as the End of the World was not.
“I pity the man unfortunate enough to drive off into that,” Tom had said, smiling back at us as he leaned against the rail, waiting for me to set up the camera and begin.
Lucy had stood, tersely, staring out into the woods, and even though I had begged her to let me take her photograph as well, she had remained silent, so I wondered, in the end, whether she had heard me at all.
Later, as we walked back to campus, Tom had tried to talk with her, about literature, about what she was working on in her courses. “I’m jealous you’ve got Professor Hyman here,” he said. “I would love the opportunity to take a class with him. Have you signed up for any of his yet?”
She had turned to him, her gaze steely and hard. “No. But then, I suppose I’d rather take a class with his better half.”
Tom was silent after that.
I tried to talk about it with her once, not long afterward—to try to dispel the strangeness that had stolen over us, between us. But she had only turned away, her face closed, guarded. I suspected she meant to punish me—for my relationship with Tom, a closeness that not only did not involve her, but which, oftentimes, left her alone. And though I felt guilty, I was confused by her odd behavior, knowing that if the situation were reversed, I would not have been so cold.
“There’s something not right about her,” Tom said one evening late into the spring as we lay, hidden from the Commons Lawn, just beneath the End of the World, waiting for the sun to begin setting.
“Oh, don’t be cruel,” I had protested, pushing against his shoulder—protective, even still, of my odd roommate. It was true that I did not condone her behavior, that I was just as embarrassed as Tom was likely offended by it. And yet, I could not help but pity her too—for those long afternoons she now spent alone, trapped in the library, for those nights we passed, silent and held apart from each other.
“I’m not,” he said, pulling me closer with a laugh. “I promise.” He grew quiet then, and as I leaned up against him I could feel the rise and fall of him, could smell the scent that was uniquely his—something like sun and sand and bit like laundry that had been left out for an afternoon. I moved closer. “It’s just,” he began, “it’s just the way she looks at you.”
I frowned
. “What do you mean?” When he did not respond, I turned to look up at him. “How does she look at me?” I demanded.
He looked away, as if embarrassed, as if he were hesitant to say the words aloud. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try,” I said, desperate to have the answer.
But he only remained silent.
I turned, feeling a shudder run through me. I was quiet then, pressed up against his warmth, feeling as though I would never be warm. Together, we watched the sun set in front of us.
ONE MONTH AFTER I MET TOM, things began to disappear.
IT WAS LITTLE ITEMS AT FIRST. A tube of lipstick that I couldn’t locate. A necklace that went missing for a few days, only to turn up in a spot I knew I had already checked. A scarf that I could not remember wearing and that appeared in the laundry bin, ready to be washed. I thought nothing of it at first, and later, when I realized it must be Lucy, I only assumed that it was how sisters lived—borrowing things from one another without asking, the mutability of their wardrobe and accessories an unwritten law between them.
But then one day in early May, I walked into our room and found her standing in front of the mirror, wearing my clothes. I blinked. It wasn’t simply one item—a scarf or a sweater—it was everything, from head to toe. I recognized my ivory dress with the eyelet fabric and Peter Pan collar, a smart beaded cloche that my aunt had purchased for me the previous winter. Lucy was standing, her head tilted to the side, watching herself in the mirror as she pulled at the waistline in an attempt to adjust the fit, but the dress hit strangely on her body, as if she were trying on clothes that had once been worn by her younger self.
It took a few moments before her eyes met mine—before she realized that she was no longer in the room alone. “I’m sorry,” she said, quickly removing the hat. Her face had turned a deep crimson.
“No, don’t apologize.” I smiled, trying, and failing I suspected, to dispel the strangeness of the moment. We had not spent much time together lately—I was either in the darkroom or with Tom—and the moment seemed rendered somehow more strange, more unsettling, by our distance. “You’re free to borrow it whenever you like,” I finished quickly.
Despite my words, she hurried to remove the clothing. She placed the hat on my bed, looking more angry than embarrassed, I thought. The dress she lifted from her body, quickly and with such force that I worried she might tear the seams. It was all over in a matter of seconds, and once more Lucy stood before me in one of her own outfits, her face blazing with an emotion I could not quite interpret.
In the end, I thought it best to ignore the incident, turning from her and taking a seat behind my desk, arranging and rearranging my books until the tension in the room settled and then passed, as if nothing had happened at all.
BUT THEN, TWO WEEKS LATER, as Lucy readied herself for the morning, I found myself startled by the item she had clasped around her wrist: my mother’s charm bracelet, that thin piece of once-gleaming silver that had now worked itself to a tarnished gray. It was nothing valuable, of course, and yet, I still counted it among my most prized possessions—a fact that Lucy well knew. I had spent hours, after my mother’s death, studying the charms. A small couple, the girl in red, the boy in blue, preparing to ski. A bubble gum machine, with tiny little colored beads serving as the candy. A violin. I knew each and every one by heart, had memorized all their intricate details, particularly in those moments when the weight of the truth, the reality of never seeing my mother wear it again, sat heavily on my chest.
As I watched it dangle from Lucy’s wrist, my heart began to pound, and I saw spots in my vision—like little twinkling stars, bright lights that crowded and fought for space in front of my eyes. I blinked. I told myself that she did not mean anything by it, that surely she had just forgotten about what I had told her, about just how special the bracelet was to me. But then I paused, trying to recall—a conversation, a brief mention, anything I had said or done throughout the years we had lived together, only to find that it was all becoming too blurred, too confused in my mind.
“I’d be grateful if next time you could ask.” The words left my mouth and I tasted something bitter and hurried to swallow.
Lucy stopped. She held a notebook in one hand, the other—the one with the bracelet—hung limply at her side. She was silent for a moment. “Ask about what, Alice?”
I turned to face her, chiding myself for feeling nervous. After all, the bracelet was mine, had once belonged to my mother, and was one of the few things that I had left of her. There was nothing wrong with asking Lucy to get permission before taking it from my jewelry box, I told myself. “It’s nothing, really,” I said, feeling the heat as it burned my cheeks. “It’s just, the bracelet. I don’t mind, honest, it’s just, if you could ask next time.”
Lucy continued to peer at me with that same queer expression. Her hand had moved to the doorknob but it froze then, as if she couldn’t decide whether to respond to my request or leave the room without deigning to answer at all. Finally she dropped her hand and said, “I don’t understand.”
“My bracelet,” I replied, stammering over the first word. I pointed to her wrist.
A small laugh escaped from her then. “Alice,” she said, “don’t be silly.”
She was staring at me, her dark eyes boring into mine. I squirmed under their gaze, feeling as though I were the one who had done something wrong, as though the stolen object dangled from my wrist and not her own.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Lucy held up her arm, so that her wrist appeared to me sideways, a portion of the charms hidden from my sight. “This bracelet?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Alice, this isn’t your bracelet.”
I stopped. “What are you talking about, Lucy?”
She dropped her arm. “I mean that this is my bracelet.” She turned, so that her words came to me, distorted by the distance. “It was my mother’s bracelet, in fact.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand. I wanted to say: No, it was my mother’s bracelet—and perhaps I did—though the words sounded thick and far away, as if someone other than I was speaking. Lucy continued to stare at me with that strange look, so that I was unsure of whether she had heard me, or if, in fact, I had actually spoken the words at all.
She took a step toward me. “Alice, are you feeling well? I could get the school nurse if something is wrong.”
I felt a rising tide of panic, suddenly overwhelmed by it all—her strange behavior over the last few weeks, the incident with the clothes, and now this. I wanted to shout at her. To race forward and rip the bracelet from her arm. But would they believe me? I wondered—simultaneously questioning who they even referred to. After all, who could I go to with such a problem, who would not turn away, laughing? It all sounded so absurd, of course I realized that. The idea that two girls would claim the same story about a bracelet—that their respective dead mothers had gifted it to them—it was so unlikely, how could it ever sound anything but absolutely ludicrous?
That was what she wanted.
The thought came to me quickly. It seemed absurd, hard to believe—and yet, I told myself, it had to be true. It had to be true for no other reason than that there was no other reason. Why else would she claim the bracelet had been her mother’s if not for that outcome—she wanted to drive me mad.
She knew about my past. I had told her once, in those early months of friendship, about the time after my parents’ deaths, about the darkness and shadows that had hovered above me so that my aunt Maude had wanted to send me away, to commit me to a place where I would never see the sun again. About how they still came, so that at times I questioned the accuracy of my mind, of my memories.
I would be lying if I did not admit that for the briefest of moments it had passed my mind, that I had wondered if the bracelet did not in fact belong to Lucy and I had somehow confused it as being my own. On
e dead mother’s bracelet for another.
But no, I told myself, looking up at her, watching her confusion with suspicion.
It was mine, I knew it.
I could feel my face burning, but this time it was not in embarrassment or nervousness. “Please, Lucy,” I implored.
She let out a sigh. I thought at first she meant to relent, to admit to it all, to claim it as some sort of cruel prank. But then her expression changed: her eyes narrowed and her face looked suddenly small and mean. “We’ll have to sort this out later, I’m afraid. I have a class now.” And with those words, she was gone.
LUCY DIDN’T RETURN HOME THAT NIGHT.
It was the first time I had slept alone in our room, and I found the sudden absence, the total quiet, to be unnerving. Shadows that I had never before noticed danced across the length of the walls. A shrill noise awoke me in the middle of the night, and it was only some time later that I realized it was simply the sound of two trees rubbing together. By then, my heart had begun to pound and I could hear a strange roaring, loud enough that it blocked out the other sounds that had frightened me only seconds before.
Stop it, I chided myself. You’re a grown woman. You can certainly manage to spend one night on your own. The truth was, it was the first time I had slept alone at all. Someone else had always been in the house with me—my parents, and then later, my aunt. And yes, I knew that there were other girls just a door away, but somehow the house seemed empty, as if it were possible that I was the sole occupant. I worried for a moment that this might somehow be true. Perhaps there had been an emergency drill that I had missed. I peered out the window, wondering whether I would see a row of girls there, huddled together in the night air. There was no one. Still, I could not quite manage to convince myself that I was not somehow totally and completely alone within the walls of our clapboard house. My ears strained for sounds of the other girls. For anything other than the eerie shrieking the two trees continued to produce.
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