Only If You're Lucky

The unacknowledged daughter of Mr. Jefferson, Lucy is Eliza’s half-sister. She grew up not knowing her father; she and her mother received only financial support from him. After the death of her boyfriend, Parker, in high school, Lucy found Mr. Jefferson, but he rejected her. She then developed an unhealthy obsession with Eliza, stalking her and trying to emulate her life and personality. Following Eliza’s death, Lucy goes to Rutledge, befriends Nicole, Sloane, and Margot, and tries to live as though she is Eliza. For most of the novel, Lucy projects a confident and charismatic personality, which is later undercut by the discovery of her personal history. Margot discovers that Lucy isn’t inherently like Eliza but was intentionally emulating her behavior, befriending Margot and pursuing Levi to repeat or continue elements of Eliza’s life. At the end of the novel, Sloane kills Lucy, fearing that she would have told Detective Frank that Nicole murdered Levi, though little evidence supports Sloane’s suspicion. Although Lucy lies to the other women about her identity, her actions toward Margot indicate that her friendship with them was earnest, and her willingness to help Margot cover up Eliza’s and Levi’s deaths would likely extend to Nicole as well.

Although Lucy is initially a foil to Margot and a doppelganger of Eliza, these appearances result from Lucy’s ability to emulate Eliza’s behavior and personality. Beneath the veneer of Lucy’s imitation, she’s more like Margot than Eliza because both characters wish they could be like Eliza. Lucy’s role in the novel is largely as a red herring, or a false lead in the unraveling mystery. The enigmatic Lucy always appears to be the prime suspect at each turn of perilous events, but in the end, the novel reveals that she’s the only one of the four women who didn’t directly commit a crime.

Sloane and Nicole, Lucy’s friends before meeting Margot, form the remaining half of Margot’s friend group. Sloane is a more dominant and mature figure, displaying responsibility in her schoolwork and job, and she’s protective of Nicole, who is less confident. Sloane operates in parallel to Lucy, though she admits that Lucy exerts more control in the friend group than she does, as is especially evident in Nicole’s relationship with Trevor, which Lucy instigated. As such, Sloane, while protecting Nicole from threats in general, specifically protects her against Lucy and often asks where Nicole is. This role builds when Lucy gets a knife to play truth or dare and Sloane instinctively puts an arm out to protect Nicole. Sloane’s function as a protector reaches a climax when she murders Lucy so that she can’t turn Nicole in to the police for Levi’s murder.

Nicole operates parallel to Margot, much as Sloane does to Lucy, but is even more timid and malleable than Margot. Lucy persuades Nicole to start a relationship with Trevor, which culminates in his sexually assaulting Nicole. Nicole’s major moment of agency is when she murders Levi, who she thinks is Trevor, though both Levi and Trevor have harmed Nicole. She’s largely absent in the text itself, which often indicates that she’s present and silent or is away with Trevor. Her role in the novel is to show the dangers that face young women at college, as both Lucy and Trevor manipulate her, which leads to Levi’s death. Unlike Margot, Nicole doesn’t want to become like the person on whom she’s dependent, Sloane. Instead, Nicole’s identity is firmly rooted in her meek demeanor, and Sloane and Nicole operate as a team of complementary characters, Sloane masking the deficits in Nicole’s agency.

Eliza, Margot’s best friend from childhood throughout high school, was confident and popular, drawing attention everywhere she went, much to Margot’s dismay. When Levi moved in next door to Eliza, they began a romance, which was cut short when Margot pushed Eliza to her death, perhaps inadvertently, at a party after graduation. Eliza isn’t present in the novel except in Margot’s flashbacks and periodically as a hallucination when Margot feels similarities between the degradation of her friendship with Eliza and the present. For example, when Levi appears from the shed on Halloween, Margot envisions Eliza sitting next to her at the fire, her neck broken and blood dripping from her mouth. This imagery connects Eliza intimately with death and guilt, as Margot struggles to cope with both the grief of losing her best friend and the guilt of having killed her.

Eliza represents the prototypical ideal for Margot and Lucy, serving as a role model without receiving full characterization due to her early death. Only after Eliza’s death does Margot discover that she knew of Lucy’s existence and her father’s infidelity and told Levi about it. Her story reveals that unlike Lucy, whose story reveals an identity crisis, Eliza wasn’t comfortable discussing her problems with Margot. Eliza was aware that Margot idealized her, which prevented her from telling Margot about Mr. Jefferson’s infidelity and Lucy. However, Levi, as a new person in her life, provided an outlet for her to express her concerns, which led to her spending more time with Levi than with Margot. Nonetheless, Eliza expressed remorse for excluding Margot from her life both when she called Margot obsessed and when she admitted to Margot that she wasn’t attending Rutledge the following year. In both cases, Eliza understood the impact of her actions on Margot but, as Margot notes, chose herself over her friend.