Page 12 of The Debutantes
The silence stretches, pressing against the windows like a palm print in the condensation.
Dad sighs. “I’m just really sorry it happened.”
“Yeah,” I say through a tightening throat. “Me, too.”
I close my eyes again, but this time, I can’t block out the images. The blood on Lily’s dress. The red light.Margot.It’s like my corset is getting tighter and tighter, so fast that I want to scream just to remind myself I still can.
Like she can sense it, Mom straightens. “Y’all want to take one last spin down St. Charles before they take all the lights down?”
I may be a cynic who wants nothing more than to get home right now, but Iama sucker for some good ol’ capitalistic holiday cheer. Plus, I could really use the distraction.
“Hell yeah,” I say. “Aux me?”
Dad hands me the cord, and I hitSHUFFLEon a playlist of Whitman Family Favorites—all the big holiday hits except for “The Christmas Shoes,” because Dad can’t listen to it without openly weeping—and shift around in my giant skirt until I have a good view.
I drive down this street every day on the way to school, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still take my breath away. St. Charles Avenue is like something out of another world, old sepia-toned photographs come to life in full color. The long two-way street is split by the neutral ground—or the median, for the uninitiated—and the streetcar track, all of it shaded by a parade of gnarled old oaks, bending to each other as if in mutual adoration. Both sides of the street are lined with some of the grandest houses I’ve ever seen: old Victorians and colonials with wraparound porches, dangling lanterns, and big yards behind tiny iron fences that are hardly more than decorative, like the mansions themselves are imposing enough to ward off intruders.
Most are still decked out for the holidays, white lights wrapped around tree branches, ornaments dripping like red and gold dew drops. The St. Charles families always go all out, spending tens of thousands to hire decorators, like it’s some kind of competition. Which I guess it is. Tourists flock to this street, snapping pictures from the sidewalk and the streetcars, dreaming about which fairy-tale home they’d choose.
And shining above them all is Lily LeBlanc’s mansion.
I can’t help looking as we pass it, some compulsion to capture it all. The house is a bright, flawless white, three stories trimmed with columns and cornices that make it look more like a wedding cake than a home, too perfect to cut into.
On instinct, my eyes track up to the window I know is Lily’s bedroom. I haven’t been there since last year, but it still lives in my head like an old photo, the contours clear if I focus hard enough. Her queen bed with its gauzy canopy, the covers and pillows as white as her ball gown. Bare, tidy walls, except for a single picture hanging there: Margot and Lily sitting in profile, the levee stretching behind them. Margot has her signature claw-clipped bun and smudge of black eyeliner, playfully giving the camera the finger. And Lily looks over her bony shoulder, head tilted like she’s forgotten that I’m behind the lens. Like she’s forgotten that I was Margot’s friend first.
I can remember that night so clearly. Or maybe it’s just that I remember the photo, which, sometimes, I think is the same thing. It was a few weeks before the start of our junior year, mine and Lily’s—Margot was about to be a senior—and for the past month, we’d been something like a trio. Against my will, obviously, but I had no choice.
Margot and I had been friends since that January, even though hardly anyone knew about it, not even my parents. We never really hung out at school. She had her crowd, and I had my camera. But it wasn’t that she wanted to keep me a secret. At least, I didn’t think so. Because I felt that way, too—like she was this special hidden place I’d found, or a new favorite song by an underground band, something that would be ruined once everyone knew about it.
But then, that summer, Margot spent a few weeks at her family’s beach house in Mississippi, which just so happened to be right next to the LeBlancs’ new vacation home. When they got back, Margot and Lily were attached at the hip, and suddenly, whenever we hung out, she was there, too, whether I liked it or not.
I didn’t, for the record. And neither did Lily. To her, I was just an unfortunate consequence of befriending Margot, the crawfish shell and spindly legs you have to deal with before sucking the good stuff straight from its head.
The night I took that photo, we were sitting in Margot’s favorite spot on the levee, right along where St. Charles turns into River Road. We’d go all the time that summer, walking about ten minutes from Margot’s house, crossing the train tracks, and then climbing up the grassy hill to the bike path on top of the levee, where we’d sit facing the other side: a concrete slope down to a tangle of grass, trees, and beyond that, the Mississippi River and a skyline marred by bridges, barges, and industrial plants. It wasn’t much to look at. If St. Charles Avenue was a kingdom full of castles, then this was the drawbridge and moat, the last thing standing between us and destruction.
Maybe that’s what Margot liked about it: it felt like the edge of the world.
“Y’all ever think about how the river could just kill you?” she’d asked that night, absent-mindedly rolling the spark wheel of her lighter, the fancy silver one engraved with a sad clown face. I never knew where she’d found it, but she always carried it around, more for the aesthetic than any actual smoking habit.
Lily laughed, genuine and bubbling.
“Thank you, Morbid Landry,” she teased, taking a sip of her hard seltzer. “Please elaborate?”
“Like, the current is so strong it’d pull you under in seconds. It’s filled with toxic sludge and definitely alligators and it could also flood us at any time, but we still built a city around it. That’s pretty badass.”
“Or a death wish,” I added.
Margot’s face lit up as she turned to me. “Exactly.”
I couldn’t help smiling back.
“We’re literally sinking into the ocean,” I added. “It’s kind of ridiculous that people still buy property here.”
Lily glanced at me. “Well, you’ll be out of here soon enough, right?”
Her tone was casual, but the question sent uneasy pinpricks down my spine.
“I mean, like, with college,” she added, off my silence. “Didn’t you say you’re not applying anywhere in the South?”
