I shook my head. “I thought we were going to, but then at the last minute she said she had a personal thing to handle, and she wanted me to come with her. We drove back toward Boston and she met up with…somebody.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” My recollection of the whole night was hazy; it had taken the better part of a year for my short-term memory to sort itself out. “We were out somewhere near Alewife, I think, in one of those big shopping centers that has like a Target and a Trader Joe’s. It was raining. She had me wait in the car, but I could kind of see her from the passenger seat.”
“But you don’t know who or why?”
I frowned. “Whoever it was, they were wearing a parka, and I only saw them for a second. And like I said, the weather was shit. Anyway, by the time we got back out toward campus it was late, almost curfew, and I think we both were kind of worried about getting caught. I tried to get her to tell me who she’d met up with, and she wouldn’t. We argued—wewerearguing—when we hit the deer.” I shrugged. “You can kind of fill in the blanks. My ankle was busted, I couldn’t play the rest of spring semester, she felt guilty, I was trying not to act like I was mad at her, but I probablywasa little mad at her….” I trailed off. “We just kind of drifted.”
Holiday nodded slowly. “And you never asked what the deal was?”
I shook my head. I knew she was wondering why I hadn’t pushed—why I hadn’t investigated—but before I could explain how fragile things had felt with Greer back then, not to mention how tenuous they still sometimes felt with hernow,my mom was knocking on the open door, waving her phone at me and telling me I needed to talk to Rose; then I wasonthe phone with Rose for ten full minutes, and by the time I hung up, my mom and Holiday had decided we should look at photo albums from when Holiday and I were kids, the two of them hauling them out of the cabinet in the entertainment unit and cracking them open. “We look like the Little Rascals,” Holiday said, and we actually sort of did, her with her wild hair and poking-out stomach, me with what was clearly the remainder of a Popsicle dripping down the bottom half of my face.
“What was the name of the place near your house where we used to get the Italian ices?” I asked. My mom had gone back into the kitchen with her laptop to work on a diaper drive for her mutual aid group; it was just Holiday and me, the album open between us on the floor. “With the weird sad rabbit in the cage in the window?”
Holiday wrinkled her nose. “In retrospect, that situation was…not hygienic,” she said with a grimace. “Also, we probably should have called the MSPCA.”
“Youdidcall the MSPCA,” I reminded her with a laugh. “Remember? You left them an anonymous tip.”
“Oh, my god, I did.” Holiday clapped a hand over her mouth. “I wonder if that’s why it closed.”
“Gone forever, thanks to you,” I said sadly. “A relic of the past, like the elevated train and theLive Poultry Fresh Killedsign.”
Holiday shook her head. “TheLive Poultry Fresh Killedsign is still there,” she reminded me.
“It’s not,” I said. TheLive Poultry Fresh Killedsign had hung outside a wholesale butcher in Somerville for decades, an enormous yellow beacon for all of a person’s dead-bird needs. “They sold the building and took it down. I think it went to auction.”
Holiday looked deeply skeptical. “Are you sure?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure I drove past it like, sometime in the last year.”
“You didn’t,” I said, “because it’s not there anymore.”
“Really?”
“Do you not believe me?”
“I kind of don’t.”
“Fine,” I said, “let’s get in your car right now and I will prove it to you.”
“Fine,” Holiday echoed, smirking at me. Her dark eyes were shining as she held a hand out so I could pull her to her feet. “Let’s.”
“We should wager something,” I said as I got our jackets from the closet, dorkily excited. “You know, make it interesting.”
Holiday stopped with her coat half-on. “Okay,” she agreed slowly, her gaze even on mine. “What did you have in mind?”
There was something in her voice that had me thinking about the other night at the lax house. There was something in her voice that had me looking at her mouth.
That was when the bell rang again.
“Jesus, it’s like South Station in here today,” my mom said,coming in from the kitchen and pressing the intercom button. “Hello?”
“Um, hello?” crackled a voice on the other end. “I’m not sure I have the— Is this Linden’s house? This is Greer.”
“Oh!” my mom said. “Okay.” She let go of the button. “Michael?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, like she’d been asking if that was in fact what she’d named me. I was frozen, standing there in the living room. I couldn’t make myself move at all.
Finally, Holiday blew a noisy breath out and brushed past me, pressing the intercom button herself. “He’ll be right down!” She looked back at me, gesturing toward the door. “Well?” she said, and I couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Go.”
