“I was wondering when you were finally going to get your act together,” she said when the knob finally turned, her eyebrows and mouth just barely quirking. She’d changed into her pajamas, a crisp cotton set with white piping along the cuffs and collar. Her lips were slicked with something that just missed being shiny.
“I’m slow,” I admitted with a grin.
“Evidently,” Eliza agreed, then popped up onto her tiptoes and pressed her mouth against mine. She yanked me into her room, shutting the door behind us with a tidy click and walking me backward toward her mattress. Her sheets were clean and starchy and smelled like her—sand and summer, perfume and possibility.
We kissed for a long time, both of us shifting around infinitesimally until I was lying fully on top of her, her body warm and soft under mine. She rubbed the sole of her foot against my calf. I was sliding one careful hand up underneath her pajama top, my fingertips just grazing the smooth skin of her rib cage, when someone knocked on the door.
I sprang back so fast I almost fell off the bed, my reflexes conditioned by years of house parents at Bartley popping their heads into our rooms to make sure everyone had at least one foot on the floor at all times. “Um, yup?” Eliza called, clearing her throat andadjusting her pajama shirt. The palm of my hand felt like it was on fire. “Come on in!”
The door opened and Meredith poked her gingery head in. “Hey,” she said, then “Oh,” her eyes widening when she saw me. She was still in the outfit she’d been wearing at the party, high-waisted shorts and a bathing suit top printed with tiny pineapples. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were—” She nodded at me. “Otherwise engaged.”
“You’re totally fine,” Eliza said, her tone so convincing I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or not. “We were just talking. What’sup?”
But Meredith shook her head. “Just dumb shit,” she said with a rueful roll of her eyes. “I’ll catch up with you in the morning.”
For a moment I thought Eliza was going to argue, that I was going to wind up sandwiched between them on the bed while they gossiped about Aidy’s ugly outfit or the patriarchy or whatever girls liked to talk about late at night, but instead she just nodded. “Okay,” she said, blowing Meredith a kiss across the fluffy white carpet. “Sleep tight.”
Once Meredith was gone, Eliza turned back to me, quirking one perfect eyebrow. “Boner killer?” she asked with a smile.
In fact, as far as I was concerned, the answer to that question was emphatically no, but Eliza seemed to have decided the mood was ruined, because she tucked her long legs underneath her and reached for her phone, fiddling with it for a moment until some quiet, plinky music started piping from the speakers on the bookshelf. “So,” she said, curling up like a delicate bird in the giant nest of pillows at the head of the bed. The pillow budget alone atAugust House must have been more than what my mom paid for rent on our entire apartment in a year. “Linden. Did you have fun tonight?”
“I mean, yeah,” I said, leaning back beside her and wondering in spite of myself how to steer this conversation back around to a hookup-adjacent place. “Parts of it were fun. You?”
Something about the look on Eliza’s face suggested the distinct possibility she was humoring me. “Parts of it were fun,” she agreed, not bothering to hide her smile.
“Why don’t you like parties?” I asked, reaching out and running one finger over the soft crease at the inside of her elbow. I could see the veins there, the blood blue and faint through her skin.
Eliza shrugged into the pillows. “I just get tired,” she said quietly. “Of having to be a certain way.”
“What way is that?”
She seemed to consider that for a moment, her features gone sharp and canny in the warm glow of the bedside lamp. “Civilized,” she finally said.
Something about her answer startled me, like strolling into calm, placid-looking water and suddenly realizing the undertow was a lot stronger than you’d thought, and I let out a reflexive laugh. “Me too,” I joked. “Everyone at Bartley is so fucking squeamish. You can’t even eat a human heart in the dining hall anymore without getting cancelled.”
Eliza smirked at that, though I couldn’t tell if I was imagining she looked just the tiniest bit disappointed in my answer. “What a bunch of prudes,” she agreed.
I didn’t remember falling asleep in her bed, but I must have, because the next thing I knew, I was blinking awake again—Eliza breathing softly beside me, her warm body curled against my side. When I dug my phone out of my pocket, the clock on the screen read 3:42. I got up to pee, then stood in the hallway debating for a long minute before finally heading back up the stairs to my own room. Even if Eliza was pissed at me for sneaking out, I reasoned, it was better than one of her brothers catching me walk-of-shaming it out of her room in the morning. Up on the third floor I collapsed face-first onto the creaky mattress, which is where I stayed until I heard the screaming a little bit before five.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told Holiday now—shaking off the memory, reaching for the last of the cookie and shoving it into my mouth for the sake of having something to do. The truth was I felt enormously awkward justthinkingabout Eliza in front of Holiday, let alone trying to explain whatever was happening between us. The last time Holiday and I had had anything approaching a real conversation, we’d been kids. I didn’t know how to talk to her about girls, or if girls were the kind of thing wecouldtalk about, even. It felt like talking to my sister, if I’d had a sister, only it also really did not feel like that at all. “Let’s just say it’s pretty airtight.”
“For the whole night?”
“For all the parts that matter.”
Holiday’s expression was utterly inscrutable, but she didn’t press me. “Okay,” she decided finally. “It’s your rodeo.” I thought she’d ask me for other suspects, but instead she turned the page of her notebook—a little more violently than strictly necessary, Ithought, but possibly I was projecting. “You said something about a necklace?”
I shifted around in my seat and pulled the tiny rose-gold anchor out of my pocket, both of us staring at it for a moment as it swung gently from my fingers like a hypnotist’s watch. “Well, it’s a Georgette McKeown,” Holiday said at last, reaching out and plucking it from my grip to examine more closely, turning it over in the palm of her hand. “So that’s one place to start.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry, a who now?”
“She’s a famous Vineyard designer,” Holiday explained patiently. “She makes this really intricate, really expensive jewelry with like, New England themes. It’s a status symbol if you are, perhaps, a certain kind of girl.”
I had a feeling I knew exactly what kind of girl she was talking about, but I also knew better than to take the bait. “New England themes?” I echoed instead. “So what, like, Pilgrim hats? Iced-coffee cups?”
“Small but intricate busts of David Ortiz,” Holiday fired back, then smiled. “No, like, leaves and shells and stuff, I don’t know. Nautical shit. They’re all one of a kind, supposedly, but I feel like I’ve seen this one before.” I could almost see her mind working as she peered at it, weights dropping and levers being pulled. “Can I ask you something?” she said suddenly. “The other night at the bonfire—” She broke off.
“What?” I prodded, but Holiday shook her head.
