“That’s what I’m saying,” I whispered urgently. “We were lucky once. Not to mention the fact that I don’t really think we’re going to find a smoking gun in the back of Wells’s—”
“Underwear drawer?” Holiday asked, pulling something out of the dresser with a showy, theatrical flourish.
I gaped at her, my eyes flicking wildly back and forth between her delighted face and the prize she was holding aloft like a kid who’d caught a giant fish their first time casting into the water. It was a rumpled, threadbare rugby sweatshirt, monogrammed on the pocket with the initialsGTH.
And there was a streak of blood on the collar.
“How the fuck did you just do that?” I asked, my heart slamming away in wonder inside my chest.
“I’m magic,” Holiday deadpanned, and for a moment I 100 percent believed her. If she had pulled a snow-white rabbit out of the dresser along with the sweatshirt, then sawed it in half and promptly put it back together again, I would not have been more impressed. “Is this what Greg was wearing at the party?”
I tried to think, but try as I might, I couldn’t pull up a clear picture of him in my mind. “It could have been?” I asked, cringing at my own shitty memory. I wanted to be as impressive as she was, to wow her the same way she wowed me, but my fuzzy brain wouldn’t cooperate. “It had to be, right? Wells must have hidden it after he pushed Greg into the pool.”
“And what, like, wrestled it off his wet, comatose body?” Holiday frowned. “Why go through the trouble? Like, obviously the bloodcamefrom someplace. Whoever found Greg was going to know that he had hit his head somehow, whether they saw blood on the shirt or not.”
“Maybe it’s not Greg’s blood, then?” I guessed. “It could beWells’s, right? From the fight? And he didn’t want there to be any evidence.”
“But why keep the sweatshirt in the first place, then?” Holiday persisted. “And in his room, of all places? Why not just toss it, or burn it, or literally anything else?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, irritated at her for taking the wind out of our collective sails so quickly. Shouldn’t we have been celebrating right now? “Because he’s a big dumb weirdo, conceivably. But it doesn’t matter why. The fact of the matter is he’s got Greg’s bloody sweatshirt hidden in his bedroom. And we need to get the fuck out of here.”
Holiday nodded. She took a few photos of the sweatshirt on her phone before placing it carefully back where she’d found it and shutting the drawer. “So what do we do?” she asked as we headed back down the stairs. “Do we bring the sweatshirt to the police? I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a chain-of-custody issue or something, but I have to Google to be sure.”
“Google to be sure about what?” Jasper asked, padding into the hallway from the direction of the kitchen.
“Whether Michael’s haircut makes him look like Macklemore,” Holiday said immediately.
“A little bit it does,” Jasper said, looking at me speculatively. “Not as handsome, though.” He turned to Holiday. “Are you coming to the thing tonight?”
“What thing?” she and I asked in unison.
Jasper grinned a curly grin. “Aw, you guys are cute.” Then, looking at me: “Illumination Night, remember?”
I did suddenly—he’d mentioned it this morning, aVineyard tradition where a cluster of tiny Victorian cottages near the water in Oak Bluffs were decorated with thousands of Japanese lanterns—but I’d completely forgotten about it until right now. Before I could respond, Holiday answered, “I am!”
I walked her out to her car not long after that. “Hope it’s okay that I’m coming tonight,” she said quietly. “It’s just probably a good chance to get our eyes on Wells, is all.”
“No, totally,” I agreed. “I’ll see you there.”
Jasper was waiting in the kitchen when I got back inside, eating a plum. “I didn’t know you guys were here,” he commented. “What were you doing hiding upstairs?” It was pretty clear from his tone that he’d drawn his own conclusions, and that they definitely weren’tsnooping through my brother’s room looking for evidence.I felt myself blush.
“Nothing,” I said, bumping his shoulder with mine as I headed for the refrigerator; all that detecting had left me starving. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh no?” he asked, a knowing smirk on his face. “What’s it like?”
I opened my mouth, shut it again. “She’s like my sister,” I said finally, because I knew Jasper would understand that, though in truth it didn’t feel like Holiday was my sister at all. But it wasn’t anything like it was with Eliza either, the way all my nerve endings perked up whenever she was in the house. With Holiday it was just…whatever it was.
“Sure thing, dude,” Jasper said. He finished the plum and tossed the pit into the garbage, wiping his hands on his shorts. “Whatever you say.”
