“What?” I was across the room in two big steps.“What?”
“Don’t overreact,” Holiday said, getting to her feet andstepping back so I could peer over her shoulder at the contents of the drawer. “And don’t touch anything.”
“I’m not going to—” I broke off. “Oh, fuck me.” In the nightstand drawer, in between a dinged-up tin of lip balm and a tangle of charging cords, was a stack of Polaroids.
Of Greer.
In her underwear.
In bed.
“Woof,” Holiday said, nudging around in the rest of the drawer with one manicured finger like she was afraid of catching avian flu. “What a creep.” She glanced over at me. “Down, boy.”
“I’m notup,” I insisted peevishly, then felt myself blush through my deep irritation. I felt a muscle ticcing in my jaw. Hunter was a dick, yeah, but he also came from generations of money; his dad was a partner at a hedge fund on Wall Street. His family had a ski house in Vail. I hated to think of him seeing Greer like that at all, let alone whenever he wanted to. I hated the idea of him still having this kind of access. “I mean, I’m not— Whatever. I’m cool.”
“Oh yeah, you look real mellow.” Holiday nudged me out of the way, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “Her hair is different, right? So they must be from last year?”
“I didn’t think they were from this— Whatever,” I repeated as she opened up her camera app and snapped a dozen photos of the Polaroids and where we’d found them, stepping back and taking a shot of the nightstand itself for reference. “I mean, this proves it, right? Hunter’s still obsessed with Greer. He tried to get back together with her, she turned him down—shit, maybe they evenargued about me at some point. He went to her room that night because he knew she wasn’t at the party, and thought she might be alo—” I broke off as Holiday slid the nightstand drawer shut. “What are you doing?” My eyes widened. “You’re going toleavethem here?”
Holiday looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I mean,” she said carefully, “I’m not going to steal evidence, no.”
“Thatevidenceis creepy pictures of my girlfriend that he’s probably using to jerk—” I snapped my jaws shut at the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming closer down the hallway.
Holiday’s eyes widened. “Fuck,” she whispered, her gaze darting wildly around the room. “Is that—?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We need to—”
“Hide,” she agreed, but the doorknob was already turning.
Just for a second, I froze in a blind, useless panic.
Then I grabbed Holiday around the waist, tossed her down onto Hunter’s rumpled bed, and slammed my mouth against hers.
It wasn’t elegant. It was spit and teeth and a quiet “oh” from Holiday, our noses bashing together in the second before we course-corrected and her hands came up to cup my face. She opened her mouth, or I did; I could feel how warm her body was, straight through the lacy fabric of her shirt. She was a good kisser, I thought vaguely. I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did.
“Hey, are you in h— Whoops!” said a female voice, high and tinkling and openly amused. Holiday and I broke apart—quickly, though probably not as quickly as we could have. I turned around and realized with some horror I was looking back at Noelle, a sophomore who lived a couple of floors above Greer over in Hemlock.She was wearing a stretchy crop top and big white sneakers and the twisty grin of a person who thinks she’s seen something salacious she wasn’t supposed to see. “Sorry.”
“Shit,” I said, pulling back a little dizzily. I didn’t need to fake acting stupefied and out of breath. “Uh, no, we’re sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry,” Noelle said, still grinning. “As you were.” She twirled her hand in a funny little fairy-tale wave before turning and shutting the door neatly behind her.
Once she was gone Holiday cleared her throat, scrambling up off the bed so fast she almost lost her balance and wound up sprawled across it one more time. “Okay,” she said, arms pinwheeling a little as she righted herself. “We need to get out of here.”
“Uh,” I said, getting unsteadily to my feet. I felt like I’d been hit with a two-by-four. I felt like I’d fallen down a well. I’d been working on the beginning of a boner, and I shifted my weight a little awkwardly, hoping Holiday wouldn’t notice but knowing that realistically she already had. “Yup.”
“Okay,” she said again. She was touching her face, her hair, her shirt, her hands migrating up and down her body like a pair of nervous birds searching unsuccessfully for a comfortable place to land. “Well. Let’s…do that.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the door, wrenching it open and marching down the dim, narrow hallway. I stumbled down the staircase after her, tripping a little on the worn carpet runner. Neither of us bothered with our coats. Outside, the porch was littered with empty beer boxes, a couple of empty liquor bottles peeking out of a giant black trash bag. “How are they not worried about this?” Holiday asked, looking around at the detritus.Her voice was just the tiniest bit shrill. “Like, hasn’t it occurred to them that somebody could just be strolling by and see it and call over to the dean like, ‘Hey, it’s me, Joe Neighbor! Just so you know, there are fifty underagescholar athletesgetting utterly shit-faced in campus housing and one of them is probably going to get alcohol poisoning or commit a date rape before the evening concludes, okay, have a great night’?”
“This isn’t campus housing, technically,” I explained, a little taken aback by the hard conversational swerve and also not really loving the air quotes she’d put around “scholar athletes.” “And beyond, that, no, I don’t think they care that much.”
Holiday shook her head. “No,” she replied softly. “I guess they wouldn’t.”
Neither one of us said anything for a moment. A couple of chattering girls got into an Uber a few houses over, their heels clicking on the chilly sidewalk. The wind rustled the branches of the enormous old trees that lined the street. “So what’s our next step?” I asked finally, not looking directly at her. Every nerve ending in my body felt open and raw. “We need to bring those photos you took to the cops, right?”
“What?” Holiday asked. Her lips were bright and smudgy in the white glow of the porch light, her hair twice its normal volume, an enormous dark corona around her face. “I—no, I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.”
That surprised me. “Wait,” I said, “no? Why not?”
