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Sunday, 11/24/24

Holiday let herself into my dorm room that night while I was sleeping, easing the door open and padding across the industrial carpet in a soft pair of sweats. “Hi,” she muttered, reaching out and running the tip of her index finger along the curve of my ear, a touch so light it seemed wildly improbable that I could feel it all over my body.

“Hi,” I said, boosting myself up onto my elbows as she climbed into bed with me, slinging one leg over my hips and making herself comfortable. She smelled different than usual, flowery and faint. “What are you doing?”

Holiday grinned, her smile like a slice of moonlight in the dark. “What do you think?” She reached back and pulled her shirt off—

And I woke up with a gasp alone in my extra-long twin bed.

“Dude,” Dave said, glancing at me across the room from his perch in his desk chair, where he was scrolling a thread on Discord and eating a banana. Dave was from South Korea by way of California; his parents sent elaborate care packages full of socks and ginger tea. “You good?”

“I’m awesome,” I muttered, then counted to a hundred and shuffled grumpily down the hall toward the bathroom. “Never better.”

The weather that day was perfect for a football game: crisp and clear and sunny, the kind of autumn morning that made me feel nostalgic about living in New England, even though I was still actively doing it. The streets were packed with tourists. The air smelled like leaves. A guy dressed in full Revolutionary War regalia handed out pamphlets advertising walking tours of Harvard Square.

Holiday had texted to say she’d meet me at the entrance to the stadium, and when I made my way over she was already waiting, looking more like her regular self today in a big cream-colored fisherman’s sweater. I felt myself relax at the sight of her in broad daylight, tall and lipsticked and normal: it had been an aberration, that was all, whatever had happened between us last night. It didn’t have to change anything.

“Look,” I said as soon as we were close enough. “About—”

“I was tired,” Holiday interrupted with a wave of her hand, “and I listened to Dear Evan Hansen right before I came to the party. You were totally fine.”

“Are you sure?” I asked uncertainly. “Because it definitely felt like—”

“Michael,” she said; I couldn’t tell if I was imagining the edge in her voice or not. “You’re good. Seriously. I would have done the same thing if you hadn’t gotten there first.”

“You would?” I asked, half a beat too quickly. “I mean, you would have—” I broke off.

Holiday looked suspicious all of a sudden, like possibly she thought I was setting some kind of trap for her. “Anyway,” she said instead of answering, “there’s something else I want to talk to you about. I was thinking when I got home last night: Why was that girl Noelle—”

“Linden!” Greer called. When I looked up she was ambling toward us along with the rest of her suitemates, all of them looking like something out of a promotional brochure from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions in their jeans and Harvard sweatshirts. “Hi!”

I introduced Holiday around as we met up with a couple of the guys from the lax team and a few other people from Hemlock, all of us climbing the tall stadium steps to our seats. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Holiday told Greer, and though her tone was perfectly friendly, her smile wide, something about the way she said it had my gaze flicking nervously in her direction.

“You have?” Greer asked, glancing back at me sidelong. “How do you guys know each other?”

“We grew up together” was all Holiday said, then shaded her eyes with one hand as she peered down at the concession stand. “Anybody want lemonade?”

It was fun, the Harvard-Yale game, everybody in a celebratory, almost-Thanksgiving kind of mood; we cheered and swore and drank the party punch Margot had snuck into the stadium in a water bladder, Greer’s arm looped casually around my waist. We headed down the bleachers for popcorn at halftime, her phone pinging with a text as we waited in line: “Be right back,” she promised, though she hadn’t returned by the time I finished paying, and eventually I found her near the entrance gates, talking urgently to a girl in ripped black jeans and a flannel.

“Hey!” she said as I approached, taking the popcorn with a grateful smile. “You remember my cousin Emily, right?”

I didn’t, actually—I didn’t think we’d ever met, back at Bartley—though she did look weirdly familiar to me, with blond hair and a spray of freckles across her fair, angular face. “How’s it going?” I asked, holding my hand out. “You don’t go here, do you? Are you at Yale?”

“She’s at BU,” Greer reported.

“I am,” Emily agreed, eyes still on Greer, “although honestly we hardly ever see each other, since my cousin here can only be bothered to return like one out of every three texts.”

“Not true!” Greer protested, her mouth dropping open. “We see each other.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “Do we, though?” she asked sweetly.

“We definitely do,” Greer said. Then, not quite under her breath: “We see each other plenty.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, though if Emily was anything like the rest of Greer’s family I could probably guess. “What are you studying?” I asked Emily, trying to change the subject. “At BU, I mean.”

Emily lifted her chin like a challenge. “As it happens, I’m undeclared.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “Although I like to think of it more as keeping my options open.”

We chatted a little while longer, about the game and about their family Thanksgiving, which their grandma was hosting back in Connecticut; I was just about to ask if they were driving down together when Holiday came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” she said over the roar of the crowd. “Can I borrow you for a sec?”

“Oh!” I said, surprised. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten Holiday was here: I wasn’t sure whether or not it had anything to do with what had happened the night before, but she’d kept her distance for most of the first half of the game, chatting with Dagny and Celine and Margot; I’d briefly clocked her talking to Li-Wen, a sophomore who lived in the same suite in Hemlock as Noelle and a couple of other girls from the crew team, then lost track of her again. “Sure.”

I promised Greer and Emily I’d catch up with them soon and followed Holiday through the crowd and down underneath the bleachers, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. The game was muffled down here, the air a full ten degrees colder. “Who was that girl you were talking to?” she asked. “The blond?”

For one utterly unhinged second I thought she was asking because she was jealous. “Greer’s cousin Emily,” I reported. “Why?”

“She looks familiar to me from someplace,” Holiday mused, tugging thoughtfully on the end of one dark curl, “but I don’t know where I would have seen her.”

“To me too, actually,” I admitted. “But yeah, I don’t know from where. She goes to BU, if that helps. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No, actually.” Holiday shook her head. “Hunter’s not ourguy.”

“What the fuck?” I blinked, snagged by the suddenness of it. “Wait, how do you know that? How can you possibly know that?”

Holiday sighed. “So that’s what I was trying to tell you before the game started,” she said. “All last night, I was wondering what that girl Noelle was doing barging into Hunter’s room without knocking. You know, when she walked in on—” She waved a hand back and forth between us, blushing a little.

“I think I recall, yes.”

“It made me wonder if there was something going on between them, which”—she pulled out her phone and clicked over to Noelle’s Instagram, shoving a picture of Hunter in my face—“ta-da, there does actually seem to be. And I knew from that big list you made for me a few weeks ago that Noelle lives in Hemlock, so. It’s a pretty safe bet that’s what—or, you know, who —Hunter was doing in Hemlock House the night that Bri died.”

Right away, I shook my head. “It’s conjecture,” I argued, echoing her words from the night before. “We still don’t know for sure.”

“We do,” Holiday countered. “Li-Wen explicitly told me. She said that the night Bri died she had to crash in the common room of their suite because whatever Noelle and Hunter were getting up to sounded like, and I quote, ‘someone was eating a bowl of pudding without the benefit of a spoon.’?”

I winced. “Oh, my god.”

“She should be a creative writing major, right?” Holiday said admiringly. “I told her she belongs at my school instead.”

“She certainly has a way with words,” I had to admit.

“Anyway,” Holiday continued, “Hunter didn’t do it.’

“Okay,” I said, trying without a ton of success to swallow a surge of annoyance. “Well, that’s that, then. We are, and continue to be, absolutely nowhere.”

“I mean, don’t get pissed.”

“I’m not,” I said irritably. I was, though. I was pissed at Hunter for those pictures. I was pissed at Holiday for always being one step ahead. I was pissed at myself about that dream, and for kissing her to begin with, for cracking a door we both knew was better off staying firmly shut.

“I know you wanted it to be him,” she continued, tucking her hands into her back pockets. “But it wasn’t.”

“I didn’t want it to be him,” I said, a little defensive. It was the same voice she’d used to tell me that one weird note did not a murder mystery make. She’d been wrong about that, though, hadn’t she? She’d been wrong, and I’d been right. “I’m just frustrated that now—”

“Everything okay?” Greer asked just then, her Bean boots crunching on the gravel as she came up behind us. It was hard to see her expression in the dimness, but her tone was definitely the tone of a person who’d come to make sure nothing untoward was going on between her ex-boyfriend/current hookup and his tall, striking childhood friend.

“Everything’s great,” Holiday said brightly, evidently choosing not to acknowledge the inherent weirdness of the two of us huddling together under a set of literal bleachers like something out of a musical sequence from Grease. “I was just about to go.”

Greer frowned. “In the middle of the game?”

“Oh, I’m not a football person. I think undergraduate sports should be illegal, actually.” Holiday smiled winningly. “It was nice to finally meet you, Greer! See you around, I hope.” She turned to me, then hesitated for a fraction of a moment before nodding, the gesture oddly businesslike and formal. “Michael. I’ll talk to you.”

We watched as she marched away, both of us a little bit gobsmacked by the Holiday of it all. “What was happening there?” Greer asked once she was gone.

Our murder investigation just went entirely to shit, on top of which I think she’s mad at me for kissing her in Hunter’s room at the lax party last night was not an answer I felt comfortable giving, so instead, I just shrugged like Theater girls, am I right? “Nothing,” I promised, rolling my eyes a little. “She’s just…It’s a long story.”

“A long story like we’re a long story?”

I tipped my head to the side, cautious. “Are we a long story?”

“I didn’t think so.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you guys a thing?” she asked. “You and Holiday? Or like, were you a thing while we were broken up, if you’re not a thing now?”

I almost laughed, but then it abruptly stopped being funny and the sound I made was like a weird, guilty, strangled burp. “What?” I asked shrilly. “No.”

I had never in my life seen Greer look less impressed. “So, yes?”

“No!” I insisted. “ No, not at all. We’re friends. We’ve been friends since we were little.” I took a breath. “My mom is her housekeeper, actually. Her family’s housekeeper.”

That stopped her, which had admittedly been the point. At the back of my mind I felt a little dirty for using the awkward novelty of my mom’s blue-collar job to distract Greer from an argument—though not, apparently, dirty enough not to do it. “I— Oh,” she said, nodding so fast and hard she looked like a Harvard-themed bobblehead. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, there’s nothing going on between Holiday and me. We were just—I mean, she’s been helping me try to figure out—” I broke off.

Greer’s eyes narrowed one more time. “What?” she prompted.

“No, nothing.”

“Linden.” She huffed out a little laugh, high and nervous. “What the fuck?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m sorry.” I shook my head, and then I said it. “Look,” I said, “can I ask you—do you think there’s any chance that what happened to Bri wasn’t an accident?”

All at once Greer got very, very still. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Like she overdosed on purpose ? No, Linden. She wouldn’t have—I mean, she wasn’t, like depressed, or—”

“No no no,” I clarified. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“Like, was there something wrong with her drugs, maybe,” I posited, though at this point I was pretty sure the pills had just been a decoy. “Or was she, you know. Like. Suffocated.”

“What?” Greer gaped at me. “Are you deranged?”

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I just—”

“Wouldn’t the police have been able to tell?”

“I don’t think the police are looking,” I said. “Do you think the police are looking?”

“I mean, no?” Greer said. “I don’t think so? I don’t think there was any reason to—I have no idea! And I also have no idea why you’re being such a weirdo right now. Like, what are you even—”

“The whole thing just seems strange, is all.”

“It is strange!” Greer exploded. “My whole life is strange right now! Bri was my best friend, Linden, and she’s dead. I don’t get to talk to her before we fall asleep at night or get ready together to go out or have her bring me a snack from the dining hall if I don’t feel like going myself. She’s just gone. She’s not, like, a brain teaser for you and your weird friend to work out.”

“No, of course not,” I said. “I just—”

Greer put her hands to her cheeks, like that painting of the guy screaming; her braid was unraveling a little, her dark hair starting to frizz around her face. “Look,” she interrupted. “I heard about that thing on the Vineyard a couple summers ago, with Jasper’s family. I know you had like, a friend involved. Was that Holiday too?”

I hesitated, but there was no point in trying to lie. “I mean, yeah, but—”

“Okay.” Greer cut me off, her whole body straightening with barely contained anger. “I don’t know if you guys think you’re a couple of crack amateur PIs now or what, but this is real life, do you understand that? You weren’t there when Bri’s parents showed up. You didn’t have to watch while they carried her stuff out crying. You haven’t had to walk around campus for the last few weeks knowing that the first thing anyone thinks when they see you is Oh, there’s that girl whose roommate OD’d in her fucking bed.”

“No no no,” I said quickly. “I know, and I don’t mean to—I’m not trying to—” I broke off. “Greer, I’m just trying to protect you.”

“Protect me ?” Greer’s eyes narrowed. “From what?”

“Holiday and I—” I sighed, scrubbing a hand through my hair and knowing that there was absolutely no way this was about to improve the conversation. The second half of the game had started, I could hear it: the shriek of a whistle, the hollering of the crowd. “We think it’s possible that Bri wasn’t the real, um. Target.”

“Target?” Greer laughed, but a little hysterically, the sound of it brittle as shale. “Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Is that why you were asking my suitemates all those weird questions about Hunter wanting to hurt me?”

“It wasn’t—I mean—” I winced, although what had I expected, really? Of course they’d reported that back to her. “Hunter is probably in the clear, actually, for what it’s worth. He was with Noelle from the sixth floor at the time Bri was—” I stopped short, not wanting to say it. “He was with Noelle from the sixth floor.”

Greer shook her head, looking at me like she’d never seen me before. Looking like she had no idea what to do with me at all. “I’ve gotta go,” she announced suddenly. “I’ve got like a hundred pages of reading for tomorrow that I haven’t even started. I don’t even know why I came to this stupid game. College sports should be illegal, actually. Your creepy friend Holiday is right.”

“Greer—”

But Greer wasn’t listening. “Maybe we’ve been moving too fast,” she said, backing away slowly, like I was the dangerous one; a sliver of sunlight slipped through the bleachers, just catching the side of her face. “Everything has been so out of control, and I’ve felt so out of control….” She trailed off. “Let’s just talk after the break, okay?”

That stopped me. “But wait,” I said, “what about Maine?” We were still supposed to spend Thanksgiving weekend up at Margot’s family camp near Camden; the plan was for Greer to go home to Connecticut for the actual holiday, then pick me up in Boston on Friday afternoon. When I’d told my mom about it she hadn’t fought me, but the expression on her face was the one she got when she was actively trying not to react to something, and later that night when I was looking at Instagram, I saw that she’d reposted a poem about birds flying south for the winter that made me feel kind of like a dick.

Now, though, Greer hesitated. “I don’t know, Linden,” she said, not quite looking at me. “I think maybe it’s better if we just take the long weekend to cool off.”

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. “I’m cool,” I promised quickly. “Greer. Hey. I’m cool.”

But Greer shook her head. “I’ll text you when I’m back, okay? Have a good Thanksgiving.”

She’d turned and disappeared into the crowd before I could reply.

I stayed there for a long moment, head dropped back and hands shoved into my pockets. How the hell had I managed to bungle that so badly? I was just about to run after her, to tell her I had no idea what I was talking about, to beg her to forgive me, when all at once I froze where I was standing, realizing in a cold flash of clarity where I’d seen Greer’s cousin Emily before: she was the girl who’d held the front door for me as she was stomping out of Hemlock House the day Greer and I had gone to Castle Island.

Right after Greer’s room had been trashed.