12
I found Holiday waiting for me a few hundred yards down the beach from August House the following morning, dressed in jogging shorts and a T-shirt from someone named Alina’s Bat Mitzvah, which, based on the hot-pink date screen-printed on the back, had occurred four years earlier. “Wait,” I said, confusion briefly muddying my baseline crankiness; I’d had to turn down a brunch invitation from the Kendricks to be here, and Eliza hadn’t even spared me a glance as they walked out the door. Between that and last night—she’d never answered the text I’d sent her—I was pretty sure I’d blown it. “Are we actually running?”
“What?” Holiday looked appalled. “God, no. I make it a personal policy not to run unless someone is actively chasing me. OrI’mactively chasingsomeone,I guess, though honestly, I can’t imagine wanting to pursue another human being that badly.” She gestured down at her clothes. “This is a costume.”
“Very Method of you,” I said.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re damn sure going to do it right.”
“I’m sorry,” I said—thinking longingly of the brunch I wasmissing at this very moment, whether or not Doc might be attending, and, if he was, where he might be sitting at the table in relation to Eliza. “If we’re going to dowhat,exactly?”
“You’ll see,” Holiday promised mysteriously. “These beaches are private, aren’t they?”
I sighed, scrubbing a hand across my face. “They are,” I confirmed, “so probably we should try not to lookquiteso much like rabble.”
“I’ll do my best,” Holiday promised, and set off along the shoreline. I trailed reluctantly after her, neither one of us talking as we followed the water for what felt like miles. I assumed we were headed for Greg’s house, though I had no idea what we might do when we got there. I could feel the sun burning the back of my neck. My ankle protested, then complained, then hollered; I was just about to tell Holiday I wasn’t going to go another step without an explanation when all at once she stopped. “That’s it, right?” she asked, nodding up the beach.
I followed her gaze. In daylight the Hollimans’ stark, modern house looked even more like an alien aircraft, squatting at the edge of the sand like it might have abruptly fallen from space in the moments just before we strolled up. “Yup,” I agreed. “That’s it.”
Holiday nodded. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply; when she opened them again, I was shocked to see they were filled with actual, bona fide tears. “Holy shit,” I said, alarmed. “Are you—” But Holiday was gone before I could get the question out, rushing through the back gate of the Hollimans’ house and ringing the doorbell over and over.
Greg’s mom answered a minute later, hassled and harried in head-to-toe luxury athleisure. “You haven’t seen a dog, have you?” Holiday wailed before Mrs. Holliman could say anything. “A Havanese? Her name is Bunny and she looks like—well, she looks like abunny,and she never runs away but she just ran away, and for all I know, a coyote is already tearing her into a thousand pieces. Are there coyotes here, do you know?”
“I—no,” I heard Mrs. Holliman say, peering out the door behind her; instinctively I dove behind a dune. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but this is a private—”
“I didn’t bring my phone because I’ve been trying to practice mindfulness,” Holiday interrupted tearfully. “You know, being present in the moment and all of that? Have you tried it? It’s supposed to be very good for anxiety, which I have, but now I need to get in touch with my mom to tell her what’s going on and I might as well be a farmer in 1826, I might as well send her a message bycarrierpigeon, and—”
“All right, hang on just one second.” Mrs. Holliman looked emphatically underwhelmed by the prospect of having to comfort the hysterical girl on her doorstep, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit shitty for manipulating a woman who’d clearly already been through so much. On the other hand, I reminded myself, weweretrying to help her, in a roundabout kind of way. More than that, we were trying to help Greg—at least, I thought we were. I still had no idea what Holiday was doing.
“Here,” Mrs. Holliman was saying, fishing an iPhone out of the pocket of her leggings and keying in her password before handing it over. “Go ahead and use mine.”
Holiday gasped theatrically. “Thank you so, so much!” she cooed, snatching it out of Mrs. Holliman’s hand and darting away from the doorway. “I’ll bring it right back.”
She paced back and forth across the yard as she pretended to dial, covering more and more distance with each turn until eventually she made it back down to my hiding spot on the beach. “Mom?” she called, loud enough that Mrs. Holliman would be able to hear her back up at the house. “Mom, I lost Bunny!” She let out another noisy, guttural sob for good measure, then immediately composed herself. “Okay,” she said quietly, clicking frantically at the screen with both thumbs and muttering like a contestant onWheel of Fortunehoping to win a trip to a Jimmy Buffett–themed resort and casino. “Big money, big money.”
“What are youdoing?” I reached for the phone, trying to see what she was looking at, but Holiday batted my hand away.
“Shh,” she said urgently. “I figure we’ve got like a minute, tops, so we have to make this count.”
“Make what count, exactly?”
Holiday didn’t answer, so I had no choice but to wait, flopping around like a beached fish while she frowned stonily at whatever she was watching. Finally she sighed, her shoulders slumping; she was silent for a moment, yanking at a strand of her hair.
“I still think somebody pushed Greg into the pool,” she announced after a moment. “But it wasn’t Wells.”
“I—What?” I blinked at her, completely bewildered. “Okay,” I said, “enough. What the hell is going on?”
“See for yourself,” Holiday said, handing me the phone at longlast.
I looked down at the screen, squinting in the midmorning glare. “Oh, damn,” I said after a moment, “is this—”
“Yep.” Holiday had opened up the security camera app on Mrs. Holliman’s phone, flicking backward through the digital files until she got to the night of the party. Sure enough, there was Wells pulling up in front of Greg’s house in the little car just before one in the morning, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching as he made his way up the front walk.
“I saw the cameras on the house when we were here last night,” Holiday reported as I looked at the phone, watching Mrs. Holliman usher Wells inside. “I was pretty sure they were the kind that link directly to a mobile app, but I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to get our hands on the footage.”
“And you couldn’t have just explained that to me in real time?”
“I mean, Icouldhave,” Holiday allowed. “But where’s the fun in that?”
