This is Stacy Willingham’s third novel and I am becoming a fan. All three are “thrillers,” set in the South, and in each there is some kind of terrible unexplained event which threatens the heroine’s possibilities for a normally happy life. “A Flicker in the Dark” is the solving of a horrific crime from the narrator’s childhood. “All the Dangerous Things” involves the kidnapping of a toddler, while father and mother, our protagonist, were in the house. The mom, Chloe, has never recovered her equilibrium.
The narrator of “Only If You’re Lucky” is similarly afflicted. Margot, a senior in high school living on the Outer Banks, has always been the sidekick to her best friend, Eliza. Margot is bright, but somewhat timid, passive, too easily led. Eliza is daring, adventurous, a rule breaker, in a teenage kind of way. She energizes Margot, staying out too late, sipping a beer, piercing Margot’s ears, driving too fast... teen things. It was decided that they would room together at Rutledge, a fictional college in South Carolina, but there is a terrible accident. Eliza dies, and Margot goes alone.
After a quiet freshman year, Margot meets and is taken in tow by Lucy. Lucy is a creation. If one is feeling generous one would call Lucy a natural leader. She has charisma, energy, beauty, force. Others do as she says. If feeling ungenerous, one might think of Lucy as the “monk” Rasputin, with a piercing, captivating gaze, hypnotic powers. Or the manipulative Svengali. The name Lucy also suggests Lucifer, the demon, personification of evil, who seduces humans into sin. All these creatures ensorcell their victims, take them over. Conveniently, Margot has no strong sense of self and actually wants to be shaped, molded by a stronger entity. She is willingly malleable.
Lucy convinces Margot and two other girls to share a house next door to the Kappa Nu fraternity house and sophomore year begins. American undergraduate life has always been rambunctious. Fitzgerald at Princeton was no choir boy. But Willingham’s description of the “social” life at this little school will keep parents up at night. It seems most days are devoted to “laying out,” tanning so relentlessly there will be work for a thousand dermatologists for decades to come, and the amount of drinking is terrifying. These girls and the frat boys next door party with kegs and with “handles,” that is half gallons, of booze, and with the sweet disgusting drinks unknown among sensible adults. The liver damage is incalculable. Whatever studying there is, is done with a cruel, punishing hangover.
Beyond these petty injuries, however, there is real pain and catastrophe. Eliza’s death is reexamined, a young man turns up dead at a beach party and Lucy goes missing. The police are on it , but the roommates—Margot, Nicole and Sloane, who know what happened, stay solid. The first chapter ends, “College friends are different. We would do anything for each other. Anything.”
