“Telling you,” I said, though in truth I wasn’t totally sure. The more I went over that night in my head, the less clear it felt to me, like a letter that’s been handled so much that the writing has started to blur and smudge and soften. “He wasn’t swimming.”
“And he’s not just one of those guys who takes his shirt off randomly?” Holiday asked. “He seems like he might be the type.”
“He does,” I agreed with a smirk, “but he was dressed at the party.”
“In what?”
“That I don’t remember.” I shook my head at her barrage ofquestions; just for a moment, it felt a little like she was interrogatingme.“Why does this matter again?”
Holiday blew out a breath. “Everything matters, Michael,” she said in a voice like that should have been obvious. I remembered this about her, how she could be a little bit of a know-it-all when she felt like other people weren’t keeping up. My ankle ached; the shine of Birdie’s revelation had worn off by now, and I found myself wondering what fun shit Jasper and Eliza were up to that I was currently missing out on.
“Okay,” Holiday announced suddenly, digging her car keys out of her back pocket and holding them aloft. “Time for a field trip, then.”
I blinked. “To where?”
“Wells’s room,” she said pleasantly. “Lead the way.”
I stared at her. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“I never kid,” she informed me. “Come on, Michael. No risk, no reward. Let’s go.”
Which is how we wound up back at August House, making our way as quietly as possible through the cool, empty corridors. Birdie was baking a berry pavlova in the kitchen. Mrs. Kendrick was reading a magazine by the pool. Mr. Kendrick was in his office, I was pretty sure, judging from the closed door and the low murmur of conversation on the other side of it. And everybody else was down at the beach—at least, that’s where Jasper had said they were headed as I’d limped out to meet Holiday earlier thisafternoon.
Wells’s room was down at the end of the hall on the secondfloor, past Jasper’s and Eliza’s and around the corner from his parents’ suite and the guest room where Meredith was staying. I put my hand on the knob, then hesitated. Crossing the threshold into Wells’s room meant violating an actual, physical line of demarcation; once we went inside in search of concrete evidence, there was no way to excuse away whatever we were doing asjust messing around.
“I feel like it’s going to be booby-trapped,” I said, and Holiday laughed.
“With like, one of those networks of lasers that we have to do ballet moves to get between?” she asked. “In that case, my friend, you will be on your own. If he has an invisible hair taped over his diary, on the other hand, I feel confident in my ability to dismantle it undetected.”
“Fair enough.” I twisted the knob, eased the door open. I hadn’t had any reason to visit Wells’s room since I’d been staying at August House, but it had the same familiar, slightly funky smell I recognized from my friends’ rooms—and, let’s be real, mine too—back at Bartley. It was decently neat, which I knew now was Birdie’s doing; the bed was made with the same striped sheets from the guest room upstairs, a hairbrush and a stick of deodorant lined up neatly on the dresser.
Holiday stood at the center of the tasteful, neutral area rug, turning a slow circle like she was committing her surroundings to memory. “What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked.
She shrugged. “What’s that saying about porn?” she shot back. “You can’t describe it, but you know it when you see it?”
“I’m pretty sure I could describe what porn is,” I replied absently, then immediately felt myself blush.
“I’m sure you could,” Holiday said with a smirk. “And judging by that little Kleenex-and-lotion situation on the nightstand over there, so could Wells.”
“Oh,gross.”
“Shh,” she said mildly, squaring her shoulders and getting to work. I watched as she moved purposefully around the room with the quick precision of a master surgeon, taking careful inventory of its contents: rifling efficiently through the closets, getting down on her hands and knees to peer under the bed. I didn’t trust myself to be quite so meticulous, so I kept watch in the doorway, head tipped for the sound of anyone coming; Holiday was squinting through the blinds to see which parts of the property were visible from the window when I heard someone’s footsteps on the stairs.
“Shit,” I hissed, even as Holiday whirled around, panic written all over her face. Without thinking, I grabbed her arm and yanked her into Wells’s closet—the two of us staring at each other wide-eyed, holding our breath in the inky dark. I imagined I could hear her heart beating. I thought I could feel it right through our clothes. We listened, Holiday’s nails digging into the thin skin on the underside of my arm as whoever it was—Mr. Kendrick, I thought, based on the solid but slightly springy tread—headed down the hallway in the opposite direction, opening another door and moving around noisily for a moment before finally retreating back downstairs.
“Holy crap,” Holiday breathed once we’d eased the closet doorback open, blinking like baby ducks in the sudden light. “That was—”
“Yeah.” I felt light-headed with leftover adrenaline, dizzy with relief. “It was.”
“Did you even have a plan?” she asked, laughing a little bit giddily. “Like, how were you going to explain it if Wells opened the closet door looking for his sneakers?”
“That—” I broke off abruptly.We were making out and couldn’t wait until we got upstairs,I almost said, but something about that felt deeply unwise. “I had no plan,” I amended, scrubbing a hand through my hair. I was sweaty, even though the temperature at August House was always kept at seventy-two degrees exactly; my ankle felt like it was on fire. “You ready to get out of here?”
Holiday nodded. “In a second,” she said calmly. Then, with no more urgency than she had displayed before we were almost interrupted, she continued her search. I stared at her in disbelief as she headed for the dresser, peeking inside a smooth wooden accessory box sitting on top before turning her attention to the furniture itself.
“Holiday,” I warned, glancing nervously over my shoulder, “come on.”
“I’ll be quick,” she promised, poking through Wells’s T-shirts and bathing suits. “But who knows when we’re going to get this chance again?”
