“Oh,hello,” Keiko said when we came in, her voice mock-formal. “Nice to see you.” She looked at me pointedly, then back at Greer. “Is this what you meant when you said you were going to pull an all-nighter?”
“Rude,” Greer replied primly. “How was everybody’s evening?”
“I mean, nobody here drank a goldfish, if that’s what you’re asking.” Keiko grinned at me. “How you feeling, Linden?”
“Full of shame and regret,” I assured her.
“And goldfish,” Greer said sweetly.
“Keiko hooked up with the drummer from the jazz quartet,” Dagny reported.
“What? Shut up,” Greer said, jaw dropping even as Keiko whacked Dagny with a throw pillow shaped like a slice of watermelon. “The girl with the septum piercing?”
“I didn’t even think they let youhaveseptum piercings at Harvard,” Margot said, plucking a headphone from one ear.
I settled myself on one of the wobbly wooden stools at the breakfast bar, listening idly as they postgamed their respective Saturday night adventures, their voices rising and falling like a fugue they’d sung a million times before. I looked around the common room, thinking how different it was from the living room of the lax house, the way the girls had worked to make it feel like an actual home: they’d covered the college-issued couch with a crisp white sheet, laid the floor with a vintage rug I recognized from Greer’s room back at Bartley. The overheads were off, a warm,cozy glow cast by a handful of mismatched lamps and a string of twinkle lights strung above the windows. Keiko was an art minor, and a triptych of her bright abstract paintings was tacked to the wall opposite the TV. “Bri still sleeping it off?” Greer asked finally, reaching out for the cereal box; Celine handed it over, wiping her sugary fingers on a fleecy throw blanket printed with stars.
“I think so,” Keiko said. “She left the party with some girls from the crew team while I was, um, otherwise engaged. I haven’t seen her.”
“We hung out a little bit last night, actually,” I reported helpfully, raising my eyebrows in Greer’s direction. “She said you want to get back together with me.”
“Oh, isthatwhat she said?” Greer asked with a laugh, taking my hand and dragging me down the hallway toward her bedroom. “She must have been even more fucked up than usual.”
The lights in Greer and Bri’s room were blazing when she opened the door, though Bri was in fact passed out cold—sprawled on top of Greer’s still-made bed in the same silky green chameleon top she’d been wearing at the party the night before, her dark hair a mess across the pillows.
“Big night,” Greer said with a laugh, righting a lamp that was overturned on the desk, presumably where Bri had knocked it over as she stumbled and fumbled her way toward the closest available mattress. “Rise and shine, cupcake.” She was reaching out to scratch Bri’s back when suddenly her eyes narrowed; I followed her gaze, spying a small orange bottle and the remains of some crushed-up pills on the desk.
“Woof,” I said, squinting at what was left of the label on thebottle—most of it had been scratched off, though a telltaleOXYremained—even as Greer swore under her breath.
“What the fuck, Bri?” she muttered. “Is she trying to get us both kicked out of housing? Hey,” she said, leaning down to shake Bri awake. “Can you please get up and get rid of this shit before we both wind up in jail?” Then she frowned. “Bri, babe,” she said, shaking her a second time and then a third. “Bri?”
Greer gripped Bri’s motionless shoulder, tugging her over onto her back before whirling to look at me, wild-eyed. “Is she breathing?” she asked, a full octave higher than normal. “I don’t think she’s breathing. Bri?”
“What?” I snapped to attention, my throat dropping into my stomach. Bri’s mouth was slack, her skin horribly, unmistakably gray. Still: “Yes, she is,” I said, full of useless bravado. “No, she definitely is.”
“She’s not.” I could hear the fear rising in Greer’s voice like a wave suddenly breaching the seawall. “She’snot.”
“Call nine-one-one,” I said, then bumbled my own phone out of my hoodie pocket even as Greer yelled down the hall to her suitemates.
What happened next was a blur, bright chaos and noisy panic: The girls flooded into Greer and Bri’s room. Keiko dashed back out, yelling for help. A bespectacled RA came running, attempting clumsy CPR in the long minutes before the EMTs arrived with a couple of officers from Harvard’s police department close behind them, their radios crackling with static as they shouted at the rest of us to give them room. The whole thing reminded me of another scene I’d witnessed two summers ago and a hundred miles fromhere: the purple predawn light of the beach in the early morning, a body floating motionless in a pool. That time, though, the paramedics had moved quickly and efficiently, careening away in the ambulance with lights and sirens blaring.
This time, I couldn’t help but notice, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry at all.
Greer noticed too. “Why aren’t you helping her?” she demanded, the rest of us watching in slow-motion horror as one of the paramedics turned to his partner, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was so quiet. “There’s nothing we can do here.”
The afternoon seemed to go on forever. I sat with Greer while the police interviewed her and the rest of her suitemates, all of us clustered in the common room like some incredibly fucked-up family meeting. My hangover had returned with a vengeance, my stomach queasy, the headache pulsing brutally at the back of my eyeballs. “Did you know Bri was using drugs?” asked one of the officers, a tall, businesslike woman with glossy shoulder-length braids. “Or anything about where she might have gotten the pills?”
Greer shook her head. She looked dazed and bedraggled, her face raw and red from crying; her ponytail had mostly fallen out. “I mean, she went to a party at the lax house last night, but I don’t know if that’s where—” She broke off, her gaze cutting to me.
“Was that usual for her?” the other officer asked, a heavyset ginger with a spray of freckles who couldn’t have been much older than us. “Excessive partying?”
“I didn’t say it was excessive,” Greer protested, looking to the other girls for backup. “I mean, she liked to have a good time, but—” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I don’t want to make it sound like she was some drug fiend. We’re in college, you know? Especially a college like this—”
“But she used drugs and alcohol regularly?” the officer pressed.
“I—” Greer hesitated. “Yeah,” she admitted grudgingly. “I guess.”
