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“I’ve felt that way with articles before.”
“I’m not sure if it’s ever been that way for me. Not with writing, at least,” she says, giving me a wry not-quite-smile. “I know what you’re going to say. Poor little rich girl, right?”
I shake my head, still trying to process this. Not just the reality of Lucie being sad, but Lucie sharing it with me. “You don’t like writing? Or editing?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” she says. “But there’s a difference between liking something and wanting to do it the rest of your life. Between liking something and turning that something into a career. And I know dance would be really fucking hard. That I’d have to work for it in a way I wouldn’t have to with what my parents would give me if I, you know, do what they want. But I want to work for it.” Her expression turns sunnier, a new warmth in her eyes. “This modern dance troupe, they’re amazing and avant-garde, and they always have these kind of disturbing costumes that I’m really into? Like—here.” She pulls out her phone, swiping around on a browser before finding the image she wants. The dancers are dressed in dark green with long dragon tails, their hair twisted up in elaborate styles. “They started at UW just last year. Even if my parents won’t let me major in dance, I thought this could be a way to keep myself sharp. I’d get a part-time job, and I’d try to make enough to cover my own tuition. And then maybe… maybe I could study whatever I wanted to.”
I try to match this up with everything I know about Lucie. The times she tapped her feet to music playing in the newsroom, or put in AirPods and drummed her fingers along her desk as she edited a story. Lucie Lamont, modern dancer.
“That would have to be a hell of a well-paying part-time job,” I say, and she winces.
“I’m interviewing with food services tomorrow.”
“Oh. Good.” I try to imagine Lucie serving me all-you-can-eat pasta, telling me I’m not supposed to leave the dining hall with any of their bowls. I try to imagine her going through today nineteen times, devastated again and again and again, completely unaware she’s been through this before. Nineteen times, and I never knew.
“They’ve always just assumed I’ll follow in their footsteps and take over Elsewhere someday.” She glances out the window as we take the exit for UW. “I really thought college would be different. I’m grateful for what they do, and their hard work. But they still want me to be their perfect clone, and sometimes it feels… suffocating.”
“What about your friends?”
A scoff of a laugh. “My friends? The ones who went to WSU and forgot about me, or the ones who asked if I could hook them up with an internship at Elsewhere, and when I told them no, they promptly stopped texting me back?”
In high school, Lucie was always surrounded by people. Always seemed happy. Meanwhile, the closest thing I had to friendship was the time I interviewed a girl about robotics club and asked to hang out and she said, “For the story?” And I lied and said yes.
Maybe Lucie and I have more in common than I ever thought.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this,” she says.
“Because I’m a great listener who never judges or makes inappropriate jokes?”
To her credit, she ignores this, barreling onward. “I thought I’d double major at first, and they’d be fine with it. But that turned into minoring, which turned into this one extracurricular, and they won’t even let me have that. No matter how many times I assure them I can do both, that I can handle it, they don’t want me to do anything else that would distract from what they want.”
“That’s really rough of your parents,” I say, meaning it. “I’m sorry.”
She nods, and then falls quiet for a while. “Barrett. I tried to stop them, you know. Last year.”
My whole body goes rigid. “You… what?”
“After prom,” she clarifies, and that dark, icy feeling uncoils in my belly. “Cole and the rest of those assholes. I told him to knock it the fuck off.”
“I—” I just sit there, mouth half-open, unable to believe what I’m hearing. Half my body is here, but the other half is back at Island, flowers on my desk and acid in my throat. “Why?” is the only thing that comes out.
“I know I wasn’t amazing to you after the tennis article. And Blaine wound up being… well, a bit of an asshole. Cole wasn’t much better. I hated going to their house because he’d always ogle me, and Blaine would just tell me I was reading too much into it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically, my stomach turning, because regardless of how I feel about her, she didn’t deserve that.
“I could have done more, though,” she says. “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry that happened to you. It really, really shouldn’t have.”
“We weren’t our best selves in high school,” I say finally.
Her eyes meet mine with a soft flicker of understanding. “No. We weren’t.”
At the start of today, Lucie was a means to an end. But now that I’m trying to piece her together, I’m realizing everything I thought I knew about her was surface-level. Those bagels and balloons I thought would fix our relationship—meaningless.
Still, I’m not sure how to heal the wounds both of us have, the hurt high school inflicted on us and we inflicted on each other. It’s not something we can solve in a single conversation. It takes time.
The only thing we don’t have.
“I’ve got to pick up a textbook at the bookstore,” Lucie says as the Uber pulls up to Olmsted. “But I’m going to a frat party tonight. Maybe you want to come with?”
