“You’re welcome.”
6
October entered like a bulldozer, demolishing any hope of a slow transition to autumn. One minute, the days were warm enough for Ellory’s lace-white classmates to stretch out on the quad in bikini tops, sunglasses on their faces and suntan oil glinting on their stomachs. The next, Ellory was wearing a sweater to every class and carrying a light jacket in case it got colder when the sun went down.
The trees had grown red with warning, those that had leaves left to change, and she was already contemplating going home for her winter clothes. Though the two states converged at the southwest border, Connecticut cold wasnothinglike New York cold. Ellory’ssoulneeded a hoodie, or it would freeze to death inside her.
It had been two weeks since the party, and the weather wasn’t the only thing that chilled her. Acknowledging the strangeness of her school year seemed to have given that strangeness more power.
Once, Ellory had been behind the counter at Powers That Bean during a shift so slow that she hadn’t had a customer in hours. She was taking advantage of the quiet to read a book, one of thefew times she could read for leisure, and she turned the page, only for the words to swim before her eyes. The lighting over the page changed from late afternoon to early morning, and her nails were painted rather than plain, and it felt like she had read this book before, except that she had never read this book before. When she blinked, she was breathing hard and the book was on the floor, her hands still curved as if holding it.
Another time, the sharphonkof a car horn narrowly saved her from being struck by the speeding vehicle as she stepped into the road, lost in a memory that had unfurled and dissipated like incense. In her mind’s eye, she hadn’t been on a sidewalk; she had been outside an ornate yet somehow nondescript house at nighttime, seconds away from pressing her face against the lit glass to see who was inside. Her stomach dropped, and she leaped back onto the sidewalk, gasping for breath as a man cursed at her through the car’s open window. She stood there, frozen and blinking rapidly, until her brain reoriented itself, until she could remember nothing of the daydream that had distracted her except that golden light in the darkness.
And then there was the time Ellory crossed campus, only to find out that her class had been canceled, freeing her to take a walk to the greenhouses. She didn’t even make it inside; the second she touched the doorknob, she saw not the plants on the other side of the shaded glass but bodies, rows of corpses with unseeing eyes and unrecognizable brown faces. The greenhouse was no longer a greenhouse but a mausoleum, and all the graves were open to reveal husks that withered from brown to black, curling in on themselves like a newborn’s fist. Maybe it had been a dream or a vision, maybe she’d been exhausted from the walk or blinded by the sun, but it had scared her so much that she hadn’t gone inside.
It was like being a child again, talking to people who weren’t there and hearing murmurs in the trees that no one else could and lying awake while straining to hear her parents’ quiet conversations about what was wrong with her.
Still, after two weeks, all she had was a too-long Word document and a too-short list of resources. Her mind had become an unreliable thing, an Etch A Sketch that shook itself clean at random, and she never knew when she would lose her grip on reality next. Around her investigation, she still had university to drown her in weeks of homework and studying, quizzes and the occasional argument about refrigerator space with her roommate. By the time the day of the salon arrived, she was almost relieved to be anxious about something else for once.
Ellory checked herself over one last time in Stasie’s full-length mirror with a sigh. She had no idea what a salon was, let alone how to dress for one at an award-winning professor’s house. For her, the wordsalonconjured images of Astoria hairdressers, Black women with press-on nails and all the best gossip, metal chairs that needed to be pumped up so she could see her untamed Afro in the vanity mirror, the miserable pain of getting fresh box braids put in and knowing she’d be taking ibuprofen to sleep. Apparently, a salon was also a gathering of the noblesse, and she didn’t have the money to dress like someone who used the wordnoblesse.
Instead, she’d let Cody dress her in business casual. A long-sleeved off-white silk shirt tucked into a pair of high-rise black skinny jeans. An oversize double-breasted check coat in brown and black, and a cherry-red scarf would keep her warm. She wore the same black heels that she’d worn to the party, mostly because she didn’t want to learn to walk in a pair of ill-fitting ones on such short notice. Who would be paying attention to her shoes anyway?
After his initial text with the date, time, and address, Hudson Graves had resumed treating her like her existence was inconvenient. Classes were still a battlefield. Comments were still bladed. Gazes were still cold. Ellory wound up checking her phone every day, making sure his text was still there, that their conversation at the party hadn’t been the result of spiked Corona. Even now, part of her doubted he would actually show up. Or, if he did, maybe it would be with the rest of his friends in tow to laugh at her before they pulled away to the salon from which she was definitely excluded.
graves:outside moneta
She sent backcoming!and eyed herself in the mirror one last time. She looked good. She felt good. If she could impress Professor Colt tonight, she could score her own invitation to future salons, and she wouldn’t need to rely on Hudson Graves. She couldn’t mess this up. Shewouldn’tmess this up. She could do this.
graves:hurry up
Then again, making it through the night without strangling Hudson Graves in front of a crowd of witnesses would be enough of a miracle.
As promised, he was right outside the lobby doors, playing a game on his phone. He wore a dark brown cashmere turtleneck, a storm-gray chesterfield coat, and brown loafers. His slacks were black, his scarf was tartan wool, and his hair was curlier than usual. The platinum blond of it seemed to glow beneath the fading sunlight.
“Nice,” he said, when he finally looked up at her. Ellory might have taken this as an insult if it weren’t for the way his eyes lingered on her, not dismissive but not considering either.Appreciativewas the best word she could come up with for how his gaze traced her lines and curves. He slid his phone into his coat pocket. “Come on, then. We don’t want to be late.”
The walk to the student parking lot was a silent one. Ellory didn’t want to ask questions until it was too late for Hudson to take her back to her residence hall. The sky was dimming from clear blue to hazy gray, the foliage dusted pink and orange by the sun. Dusk was when the campus caught a second wind after the marathon of classes drained the energy of their morning coffees. Students traveled in packs to the dining halls, to off-campus bars, to the library to get ahead on their homework, and to night classes they didn’t regret until it was actually time to go.
When it wasn’t stressing her out, Ellory could admit that Warren was beautiful, with its endless green lawns and trimmed elm trees, its dramatic columns and French-inspired grandeur, its iron gates and the creeping ivy that twisted around each spire like sleeping serpents. It wasn’t welcoming, it wasn’t homey, and it wasn’t at all accessible, but itwasbeautiful. It flaunted the same beauty of national parks and private islands: established by wealth and nurtured by exclusivity.
“Holy shit,” Ellory said, stopping in the middle of the parking lot. “Is that—”
“A ’71 Plymouth Barracuda?” Hudson smoothed his hands over a sleek black muscle car that looked like the sort of thing the private detectives would drive in a monochrome movie. “Sure is.”
Ellory blinked. She had been staring at the silver Lamborghini parked in front of whatever the hell that was. Hudson, a manwho owned cuff links and an alarmingly large collection of five-hundred-dollar sweaters, struck her as a Lamborghini type. She needed a moment to process the fact that there was someone else around here who would believe a Lamborghini was an appropriate car to drive around a college campus.
“It’s been in the family since it came off the assembly line. They stopped making the convertible that same year,” he continued. “It can be a nightmare in terms of upkeep, but Boone does all the repairs and modifications for me. In exchange, he doesn’t have to pay rent.”
Ellory blinked again. Was it her imagination, or did he sound quietly proud? “I…see. You like old cars?”
“I like things that tell a story.”
The inside of the car was black vinyl and smelled like citrus. The steering wheel was bronze, and the cassette tape deck and radio had been replaced with a more modern setup. She watched him place his phone in the dashboard mount and flick through for a song, apparently less concerned about being late than he was about finding the right soundtrack. It was such a small intimate thing for them to have in common. She turned to the window, pulling her coat up around her shoulders.
“Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder crooned from the speakers as Hudson backed out of the parking space. She loved Stevie Wonder—and this song in particular. Aunt Carol had used to sing it as a lullaby to get her to sleep, used to tell her about Motown and Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. Her shoulders relaxed automatically. “You like bell hooks andSongs in the Key of Life? This is starting to feel performative.”
Hudson snorted. “Who in this car am I performing for, exactly? I don’t need to impress you. You hate me.”
