I took a deep breath, then described it one more time as best I could—Greg’s head just barely above the waterline, his broad body slouched like a punctured raft on the steps—but Holiday still didn’t look satisfied. She squinted at me for a moment, then slid her notebook across the table, thrusting her purple pen at me. “Draw me a diagram.”
I sat back without entirely meaning to, like she was handing off a poisonous snake. “Seriously?” I laughed.
But Holiday nodded. “I want to be sure I’m picturing it right,”she said, waggling the pen in my direction. “Besides, you’re a good artist.”
I made a face. “I’m sorry, you’re basing that onwhat,exactly? All those drawings of Pikachu I used to do when we were seven?”
“They were very realistic renderings,” Holiday said primly. “Also, don’t be fake-modest—it’s not cute. Didn’t you win like a hundred art contests back in middle school?”
I shrugged, oddly embarrassed that she’d remembered. I never drew anymore, not really. It was a hobby I’d left behind when I went to Bartley, along with taking out huge stacks of manga from the East Boston branch of the BPL every week and stealing shopping carts from the Market Basket parking lot. Kid stuff.
Still, a thing I had forgotten about Holiday was how hard it could be to say no to her, and after a moment I found myself taking the pen from her outstretched hand and putting it obediently to paper. My grip felt awkward under her watchful eye, like when you sign your name too many times in a row and the letters stop meaning anything, but finally I pushed the notebook back across the table. It was all there: the carefully landscaped yard with the lights strung up in the trees, the bean-shaped outline of the pool. I’d done quick sketches of me and all three Kendrick siblings, drawn little arrows to indicate where everyone had come from. A stick-figure Greg sprawled on the steps.
Holiday’s fingertips brushed mine as she picked up the notebook and looked at it closely. “Very sophisticated,” she commented. “I especially like the littlex’s over his eyes.”
“You know what, screw you,” I said with a laugh. “You’re the one who wanted me to do this.”
“I did,” Holiday agreed. She was smiling as she said it, but her expression got serious as she studied the drawing for another moment, chewing speculatively on her bottom lip. “This is exactly how he was lying?” she asked. “You’re sure?”
I thought back, suddenly skeptical of my own recall. My memory wasn’t always the most reliable since the accident, and already I could feel the previous night going fuzzy in my brain, smearing like wet ink on glossy paper. Still, when I closed my eyes, I was pretty sure I could picture Greg exactly: the sag of his shoulders, the slump of his spine. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
“Then somebody must have moved him.”
My eyes popped open again. “Wait,” I said, sitting up so straight my knees bumped the tiny table; our empty dishes rattled loudly, and I felt myself blush. “What?”
“Think about it,” Holiday urged, pushing the notebook back in my direction and tapping my little illustration with one fingernail. “Imagine you’re Greg, right? You’re drunk, maybe stoned, you come back to the Kendricks’ yard either through the side gate here or up the stairs on the beach side. You’re looking for Meredith, or to find Wells and yellAnd another thing!or whatever. You’re messed up enough to trip and take a header into the pool.” She walked her fingers along the narrow lines of the paper. “There’s no way you just casually land on the steps in a way that miraculously keeps you from drowning.”
“Well, no, of course not,” I said, a little defensive. “But he could have conceivably fallen in, hit his head, dragged himself over there, andthenlost consciousness.”
“I mean, I guess.” Holiday looked unconvinced. She pluckeda fancy kettle-cooked chip from the bag on the table between us, crunching thoughtfully. “Logically, he would have fallen forward, though, if he was alone. So then how did he wind up with the blood on the back of his head?”
“I have no idea!” I exploded, the words way louder than I meant for them to be. I sat back in my chair, scrubbing a hand over my face as Holiday regarded me across the table. I felt edgy and tense, overwhelmed by the sharp and uncomfortable notion that by bringing her into this, I might have inadvertently set something in motion that I wouldn’t be able to stop later on. Another thing I’d forgotten about Holiday: she wasn’t the quitting type.
“Sorry,” I mumbled finally. “I’m being a dick. Maybe I got it wrong, I don’t know. It was hard to tell where the blood was coming from, exactly. I didn’t really stop to check.”
Holiday seemed to sense that I was about two seconds from pulling the plug on this whole endeavor. “Okay,” she said, holding her hands up. “Fair. We’ll put a pin in that for now.” She stretched her arms up over her head and shook her wrists out, then flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “Let’s talk about suspects instead.” Then, anticipating my protest: “Hypothetically,I mean.”
I hesitated. “I mean, Wells,” I said finally. “He and Greg literally beat the shit out of each other right before this happened. And he hates Greg’s guts because of what happened between their dads.”
Holiday nodded, writing carefully in her notebook. “The other two would have motive too, then,” she pointed out. “Jasper and Eliza.”
But I shook my head. “I know Jasper,” I said. “And before you tell me I’m full of shit, yeah, I hear how that sounds. But I’ve been listening to that kid fart in his sleep every night since we were freshmen. He didn’t do anything.” Even as I was saying the words, I couldn’t help but remember that, apparently, he’d spent the better part of the last year lying to my face about what was going on with his family, but still. Jasper’s preferred method of conflict resolution was, and always had been, avoiding it altogether. I couldn’t imagine him getting into a physical fight in the first place, let alone shoving somebody as big as Greg hard enough that he ended up in the pool with a serious head wound. “He doesn’t have it in him.”
“I mean, I would argue that everybody has it in them, if you push them hard enough.”
I laughed at the true-crime gravity in her voice. “That’s dark, Proctor.”
“What?” Holiday blushed—just faintly, the tips of her ears and nose getting pink. “You don’t agree?”
“It’s not that I don’tagree,exactly.” After all, if there was one thing I’d learned for sure while I was with Greer, it was that all of us, myself included, were capable of way more than we liked to think. “I’m just surprised by your grim view of humanity, that’s all. And I think Jasper should be pretty far down your list.”
Holiday shrugged. “Okay,” she said, turning back to her notebook, “probably not Jasper, then. And Eliza?”
“Not Eliza either.” Prickly heat crept up the back of my neck. “She’s…got an alibi.”
“Does she now?” Holiday’s full mouth twitched. “I’m sorry, and who might that be?”
I made a face across the table. Eliza had taken her time answering my knock the night before, leaving me standing outside her door like a dumbass for long enough that I thought it was possible she’d fallen asleep and I’d missed my chance entirely. I should have known she was just making me wait.
