“Wait, what?” I pulled away, planting my feet like an instinct. “Why? Now?”
“It’s the perfect time to do it,” she pointed out, impatient. “We know there’s nobody there.”
“What about Greg’s dad?”
Holiday shook her head. “He only comes to the Vineyard like, every other weekend,” she told me. “He stays in Boston most of the time to work.”
“Seriously? Even now that Greg’s in the ICU?” I tried to imagine my mom being anywhere but in my hospital room if I somehow wound up in a coma, and couldn’t; granted, thankfully, I also couldn’t imagine her carrying on a clandestine affair with one of my former best friends. The whole thing made me feel a little sad for Greg, and also made me wonder if possibly he hadn’t earned his reputation for copious douchebaggery entirely on his own. “How do you even know that?”
Holiday rolled her eyes, all exaggerated exasperation. “Cursory! Research!” She nodded again at the edge of the campground. “Come on,” she said, “I’m parked a couple of blocks over.”
I hesitated, glancing back in the direction of the bandstand. I was worried it was going to start looking suspicious if I kept blowing the Kendricks off to creep around on secret investigative missions, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want to bail. Mostly I just felt torn: between wanting to know what had happened to Greg and wanting an actual vacation. Between Holiday and the Kendricks. Between who I wanted to be—how I wanted to look to other people—and who, I suspected, I actually was.
I almost told Holiday to forget it, or to go on without me. I wanted to; I probably would have, if she’d been anyone else. But then I thought of what she’d said about Greg having a little sister. I thought of my mom at home back in Eastie, and the person she thought she’d raised. I thought, a little shamefully, about Wellscalling me a freeloader, and barely managed to hold back a growl of frustration.
“Fuck Tom Brady,” I mumbled finally, nodding toward the parking lot. “Let’s go.”
Holiday frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. Lead the way.”
I had half expected Holiday to drive a lime-green Mini Cooper or a vintage Volkswagen Beetle with a flower on the dashboard, but in fact, her car was a nondescript gray sedan that smelled strongly of palo santo and was full, nearly to bursting, with trash. She apologized as I climbed into the passenger side, reaching across my lap and grabbing a handful of granola bar wrappers and empty coffee cups off the floor before tossing them half-heartedly into the backseat. “I keep saying I’m going to clean it out.”
“I mean, why would you?” I asked teasingly, reaching down and pulling what I realized one second too late was a satin bra out of the center console. “Uh.” I felt my face redden. “Never know when this is going to come in handy.”
“Give me that.” Holiday snatched it out of my hand and chucked it over her shoulder. “You try wearing an underwire for twelve hours a day, see if you never need to yank it off at a red light on the way home.”
I cleared my throat. “I…will be sure to do that.”
Greg’s house hulked a ways down the beach from the Kendricks’; the windows were dark when we pulled up in front, the whole place empty and deserted-looking. It was more modern than August House, all severe angles and huge panes of glass; theback end of it cantilevered out over the ocean in a dramatic feat of architectural excess. “It looks like the house where a corporate supervillain would live in a Marvel movie,” Holiday observed, letting out a low whistle.
I hummed my distracted agreement, glancing uneasily down at my phone. I’d texted Eliza to apologize and tell her I’d meet up with the rest of them back at the house later, but so far she hadn’t replied. “Remind me what we’re looking for, exactly?”
“Just getting the lay of the land.” Holiday unbuckled her seat belt and climbed halfway into the backseat, rooting around like a raccoon in a dumpster until she came up with a pair of binoculars. “They’re my dad’s,” she explained off my gobsmacked expression. “He went through a thing with birds when he turned fifty. My mom was like,Better birds than graduate students,et cetera. I threw them in here a couple of days ago just in case.”
“Of course you did,” I agreed. “By all means, proceed.”
Holiday lifted the binoculars to her eyes and leaned across me to peer out the passenger side window at the dark specter of Greg’s house. “Do you want me to do that?” I asked, reaching for the glasses even as I squished myself back against the seat to give her room.
“Shh,” she said distractedly, swatting my hand away. She stared for another long minute, her thick hair tickling my nose, before finally retreating to the driver’s side and dropping the binoculars—which had to have cost hundreds of dollars—into the backseat with such carelessness that I cringed.
We didn’t talk much as she drove me back toward August House. I could tell by the satisfied expression on her face that therewas a plan coming together in the madcap tinkerer’s workshop of her brain, though I didn’t bother to ask what it might be. I knew from experience that she’d tell me when and only when she was good and ready—or possibly not at all.
Still, my curiosity got the better of me as we pulled into the driveway. “Did you get what you came for back there, at least?” I couldn’t help but ask her. “The lay of the land, or whatever?”
“Something like that.” Holiday grinned, teeth flashing white in the darkness. I was almost up the front steps when she called my name. “Meet me at the beach tomorrow morning,” she instructed through the open window, turning the key in the ignition and putting the car into drive. “And wear your running shoes.”
August House was still and quiet when I let myself inside, Whimsy’s contented snores faintly audible from the kitchen and the cloying smell of the late-summer flowers on the front hall table hanging in the air. Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick always went out with friends after Illumination Night, I knew, and though Wells had mentioned something about going to Doc’s, so far neither Jasper nor Eliza had answered my texts and I felt weird about just showing up unannounced. Holiday probably would have wanted me to use the opportunity to do a little digging—in fact, if I’d let her know the house was empty, she probably would have left skid marks on the pavement in her hurry to turn around and come back—but I’d had about all I could stomach of the investigativelife for one evening. Instead I headed upstairs to the turret room with a vague plan to either watch a movie on Netflix or jerk off in the shower, but as I turned the corner on the landing, I glanced out the window into the backyard, panic closing sharp and sudden around my throat:
There was another body in the pool.
It was floating facedown in the deep end: arms and legs akimbo, swim trunks ballooned around its pale, skinny legs. It was perfectly, preternaturally still, like possibly it had always been there—part of the landscape architecture, maybe, or an art installation I wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t yell for help. I couldn’t make sense of anything but the pure white fear ricocheting through every vein and synapse, the animal urge to get as far as humanly possible from this fucked-up place. What had I done, by coming here? What in the holy hell was going on?
That was when the body stood upright.
It wasn’t a body at all, I realized belatedly, fingers curling around the windowsill even as my knees threatened to give: it had only been Jasper, doing the Dead Man’s Float in the pool. I watched as he tossed his head to get his hair out of his face, water spraying off him like a dog shaking himself dry after a bath. He made his way over to the ladder, pulling himself up and out of the pool in one smooth motion; if he sensed that I was watching, or that anyone was, he gave no indication.
I sat down on the delicate antique bench on the landing, my heart still slamming wildly away as relief and embarrassment battled it out in my chest cavity. I forced myself to take a deepbreath, glancing warily in both directions to make sure nobody had caught me making a fool of myself and trying not to notice the way the walls felt just a little bit closer than they had a moment before. Downstairs I could hear Jasper letting himself into the kitchen, his wet feet slapping against the tile; I thought about calling out to him and telling him he’d scared the shit out of me, turning the whole thing into a funny story about what a dumbass I was, but when I opened my mouth, I found I didn’t quite have the heart to do it. I thought again about how he’d kept the truth about his dad from me, even though I would have called him my best friend back at Bartley. I wondered again what else there was about him that I didn’t know.
I glanced out the window one more time, watching the patio lights as they reflected off the still, peaceful surface of the swimming pool. Then I got up and climbed the steps to my room.
