“This party,” the first officer put in. “You said it was with the lacrosse team?”
“Hang on a second,” Dagny interrupted suddenly, holding a hand up. “Can I ask you a question? Do we need lawyers right now?”
“Why would you need lawyers?” the second officer asked, his expression even.
Dagny shrugged, her expression wary. “I mean, you tell me.”
“It’s fine, Dag,” Margot said, pulling one leg up underneath her. She was the most composed of everyone, I’d noticed, the one who’d thought to put on a pot of coffee; the smell of it filled the suite now, comforting and warm. Keiko had spoken only when directly spoken to, while Celine, her arms wrapped around her knees on the love seat, hadn’t said anything at all. “We want to be helpful, right?”
“Of course we want to be helpful,” Dagny snapped, “but I’m also not about to call my mom and tell her I got expelled fromHarvard just because Bri bought fake Klonopin laced with horse tranquilizers, or whatever the hell—”
“Dagny!” Greer said. “Jesus.”
I was expecting an argument, but right away Dagny’s shoulders dropped, her whole body caving in on itself. “I’m sorry,” she said, and that was when her voice broke. “Shit, I’m sorry. That was horrible. I’m sorry.” Keiko slid an arm around her, pulling her close.
“Nobody’s getting expelled,” the first officer said, more gently now. “These things happen on campuses all the time, unfortunately. It’s a tragedy. We just want to make sure we understand the chain of events.”
Margot nodded. “Of course,” she said, getting up and pouring Dagny a cup of coffee, pressing it into her shaking hands. “What do you need to know?”
Once they were finally gone—once the dean of students came and left and someone from down the hall dropped off dinner from Sugar & Spice and Keiko’s dad drove in from Acton to try to take her home for the night, an offer she steadfastly refused—I carried Greer’s pillow and blanket down the hall to Margot and Dagny’s room, dropping her off there like she was a little kid going to a sleepover. “You sure you don’t want me to stay?” I asked, hesitating in the doorway. “I can crash on the couch.”
But Greer shook her head. “I’ll be okay with these guys,” she promised. “The RA said I can move out if I want to, but I don’t want to leave the suite.” She shrugged. “Kind of a fucked-up way to get a single, though.” Her voice cracked then, and I watched as she sank onto the sofa, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.
The rest of them were there before I could move in herdirection, all of them curling into one another, wrapping Greer up in their arms. They looked like a painting, piled together on the sofa: their fingers laced together, their heads in each other’s laps.
I was extraneous here, obviously, so I said my goodbyes and headed across campus to my room, where Dave and Duncan were ostensibly doing homework but clearly actually waiting for me. “Dude,” Duncan said by way of greeting, his voice low and serious, “this is so fucked up.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a little weird about the expectant way they were both looking at me. It’s weird, the way a tragedy spreads through an ecosystem—the way everyone wants to process it out loud, to get close to it.I almost knew this girl who died.“It’s pretty fucked up.”
“So you were there when Greer found her?” Dave asked. “That’s just, like—what people are saying.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, flopping facedown onto my bed, then thinking of Bri sprawled on Greer’s mattress and immediately getting up again. It felt like there were ants crawling all over my body. It felt like I’d never lie still again. “I was there.”
“Dude,” Duncan said again, still watching me. “So fucked up.”
I nodded silently, biting back a surprising surge of temper. I liked living in a dorm, generally; I didn’t have brothers or sisters, and usually it was a relief to me, the way there was always somebody to talk to. The way there was always somebody around. Right now, though? I kind of just wanted to be alone.
“I gotta run an errand,” I announced, then shrugged back into my coat and went downstairs, shuffling across the Yard in the direction of the T stop, tapping my card and stepping onto the firstinbound train that arrived. I thought about going home to Eastie and curling up on the sofa in my mom’s apartment. I thought about showing up unannounced at Holiday’s dorm. Instead, I just rode all the way to the end of the line and back again, staring out the window at the inside of the tunnel and listening to the noisy mechanical hum all around.
6
Tuesday, 10/29/24–Wednesday, 10/30/24
Time passed strangely in the wake of Bri’s death, stretching out like taffy before snapping tautly back again as the university machine whirred into gear. There were grief counselors available at the mental health center. A memorial service was planned for the end of the week. A campuswide call went out for remembrances of Bri to be published in an upcoming edition of theCrimson.“Great,” Margot said when I mentioned it over dinner in the Hemlock dining hall on Tuesday, “so there’s going to be a full-page spread of total strangers talking about how fun she was to party with.”
“She was a straight-A student, for the record,” Keiko piped up from across the table.
“She got into fucking Harvard!” Dagny shoved a dinner roll into her mouth.
It’s not like I didn’t understand why they were feeling protective. What happened to Bri had been the subject of all kinds of wild speculation on campus, rumors jumping like bedbugs fromhouse to house: That she’d had a needle in her arm when Greer found her. That she’d sometimes traded blow jobs for coke. Even Cam, a person who could generally be relied upon to mind his business, had pulled me aside as we ran laps at the track early that morning to ask if it was true that Bri had gotten caught up in a hazing for a final club dabbling in dark rituals. “Of course not,” I snapped, doubling my pace and pulling ahead of him. “This isn’t the fucking Wizarding World of Who Gives a Fuck. Don’t be a dumbass.”
I was half expecting him to pop me in the face—and there was a part of me that almost wanted him to—but instead, he just stopped running, his expression wounded. “Aw, don’t get mad, dude!” he called after me. “I was just double-checking!”
Even the faculty seemed to be after all the dirty details of Bri’s death. When I checked my phone on the way back from dinner there was an email from Professor McMorrow reminding me I still hadn’t scheduled my first-semester check-in.Additionally,she’d written,a colleague mentioned you may have been friendly with the student who tragically passed away earlier this week. I wanted to let you know I’m here if you want to talk, either about that or about your semester more broadly. When might be a good time for us to meet?
I scowled, shoving my phone back into my pocket as the lampposts blinked on all around me. “Nope,” I muttered, though there was nobody around on the path to hear. “No, thank you. I’m good.”
Bri’s parents were scheduled to come pick up her stuff on Friday morning after the memorial service, so on Wednesday afternoon I went over to the suite to help pack it all up. Greer andthe rest of the girls were already at it when I arrived, pulling the tacks out of Bri’s Klimt poster and folding up her impressive collection of party clothes. “You guys are amazing,” I said, watching as the five of them buzzed around the room with crisp, practiced efficiency.
