“It does suck.”
A thought occurred to me. “The night of the accident—our accident,” I said carefully. “When you said you had family stuff to take care of…”
“Yeah.” Greer nodded. “She was home from Saint Paul’s for spring break and owed some money to some scummy low-level dealer she knew. She called me to bail her out, so I did. She needed cash.” She sighed. “It scared me, you know? Seeing her like that.”
“It sounds scary,” I said, remembering how tense she’d seemed that night, the way her hands had gripped the steering wheel of her car as we’d started to skid. “Greer—”
“I know what you’re going to say.” She cut me off, holding one manicured hand up to stop me. “That she’s probably the one who took my watch, right? Some crummy addict who’d do anything for money? But Emily isn’t like that, Linden.” Greer’s voice was emphatic. “She would never do anything to hurt me, and I don’t want you to go back to sniffing around—”
“I wasn’t going to say any of that,” I said, which was true, though I had a hundred percent been thinking it. More than that, I was thinking that Emily very well might have killed Bri. After all, I’d seen her in Hemlock House the day Greer’s room was ransacked. What if she’d come back the night of the Halloween party to see if she’d missed anything, and Bri had caught her in the act? “And I’m not going to—what did you say?—sniff aroundanybody.I was actually just going to ask why you never told me about her back at Bartley.”
Greer shrugged, her body language relaxing a little. “I guess I wasn’t sure you were the real deal,” she said softly. “Or, like—thatwewere the real deal.”
“And now?”
Greer stopped walking then. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tilted her face up, pressing her mouth against mine while a bird called out somewhere high in the tops of the pine trees. “You tell me.”
I kissed her, pulling her even closer; she stumbled a little, her body pressing warmly against mine. All at once I didn’t care about Emily, or Bri, or Holiday. All I wanted was to keep on kissing Greer. “Can I tell you something?” I said, even as she curled her hands into my jacket to keep her balance. “I’ve never really liked hiking that much anyway.”
Greer kept her eyes locked on mine. “How about that,” she said, the intent in her grin unmistakable. “Me either.”
Greer shot a quick text to Margot so she wouldn’t worry we were lost in the woods somewhere, and we turned around and hurried back down the trail the same way we’d come, letting ourselves into the dim, quiet house. Empty, the place gave off kind of a haunted vibe, with its stained-glass windows and its antique rugs, but I only had a second to think about it before Greer was pulling me toward the bedroom we were sharing, her dark hair crackling with static electricity in the cold, dry cabin air. “You coming?” she asked, looking back at me over one shoulder. I nodded and followed her upstairs.
15
Saturday, 11/25/24
The others stopped off after their hike at some Maine dive bar that didn’t card, and it was near dark by the time they got back to the house in a cacophony of chatter. “Cavalry’s coming,” Greer said, nudging her knee against mine under the covers; we got dressed as quickly as we could and joined them downstairs, where Margot was opening what looked like a very fancy bottle of red wine. “Oh,hellothere!” she trilled, popping the cork with a flourish. “You guys enjoy your afternoon?”
I could feel myself blush, but Greer just smiled. “We did, in fact. Thank you for asking.” She plucked a wineglass from the rack. “How was the rest of the hike?”
We spent the next couple of hours getting cheerily drunk, James and his buddy Leo posting up at the pool table while Greer held court in an enormous leather recliner and Dagny and Margot painstakingly re-created a dance from some Disney Channel movie they’d both liked as kids. “Linden!” Margot ordered, yanking herphone out of her leggings pocket and waving it in my direction without missing a step. “Come here, take a video.”
I grabbed her phone and dutifully opened the camera app; I was just about to hit record when a text popped up from a contact listed in Margot’s phone as Boy Genius.Not to be that person, but we still need to deal with the Greer situation.Then, half a second later:I know you don’t want to think about it, but if she runs her mouth we’re fucked.
Holyshit.I froze for a second, then glanced around wildly, but the rest of the group had drifted out onto the deck. “Did you take it?” Margot asked, looking at me a little oddly.
“Um,” I said. “Sorry, I had it on portrait. Try again?”
“I remember the first time I used a cell phone,” Greer heckled me from across the room, her cheeks flushed a winning pink from the wine.
“Yeah, yeah.” I tucked the text—and the question of who the hell Boy Genius might be—into the back of my head for later consideration. “Okay, go.”
Margot was the kind of girl who liked playing hostess, who you could tell was going to grow up to throw elaborate dinner parties involving oysters and cheesecloth. That night she took the better part of three hours to prepare an Italian-style feast she’d found on TikTok, using what had to be every dish and pan in the professionally outfitted kitchen, only to wrinkle her nose in disgust upon taking her first bite of pasta. “This,” she announced brightly, “is…inedible.”
“It’s not!” Greer promised, though in fact it sort of was—gluey and garlic-forward, already mostly cold. “It’s good.”
“It’s pretty bad,” Celine put in helpfully.
“Fuck you,” Margot said sweetly, “and fuck dinner. We’re skipping to dessert.” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a box wrapped in gold ribbon. Inside were a dozen intricately decorated truffles, each one nestled in a fluted paper cup.
“A guy I know in town makes these,” Margot explained as she passed them around the table; from the way she said it she could have meant some bespoke chocolatier in suspenders just as easily as some dude who sold Gatorades at the gas station and had a little hustle on the side. “He said they’re the real deal, so one per customer, please, children. The closest hospital is like forty minutes away.”
“Here,” Greer said, handing me the box. I only hesitated for a second before popping one into my mouth. It was more bitter than I was expecting, a little unpleasant. All at once it occurred to me that maybe I should have asked a question or two before tossing it down the hatch.
Once she’d finished her own truffle, Margot nodded at James across the table. “Okay,” she said with a businesslike clap of her hands, “are we ready to play?”
“Play what?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.
