I was expecting her to answer right away—one thing about Holiday was that she always had her phone on her—but it rang for a long time before she finally picked up. “Hi!” she said cheerfully, and it felt like putting aloe on a sunburn before the outgoing voice mail message continued. “You’ve reached Holiday Proctor. If you get this message, hang up and send me a text. Not you, Bubbe, you’re good. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
“It’s me,” I said after the beep, squeezing my eyes shut; I knew there had definitely been times in my life when I’d felt lonelier than I did in that moment, but I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head. “I guess you’re out. Or sleeping, maybe. It might be late. I took an edible, but I think it might have been like…laced with something? Or maybe that’s just how edibles are. I’ve never done edibles before. I’m not really a drug guy. Although I guess alcohol is a drug, right? It’s a…depressant.” I blinked, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I’m at Margot’s, did I say that already? Or I guess you…know that.
“Anyway,” I continued, “they had us play this fucked-up game where we had to chase a turkey. Not a real turkey. I don’t want you to think I’m not a supporter of animal rights, what with the whole goldfish thing. Pattern of behavior, I know.” I could tell even in the moment that I wasn’t making sense. “Anyway. I do actually have a reason for calling.” I filled her in on the message I’d seen on Margot’s phone—at least, I tried to—plus an abbreviated version of the story Greer had told me about Emily. “Anyway,” I said again, “both of those could be something, right? Or maybe nothing. It’skind of weird here. I probably should have just stayed, yesterday.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking about kissing you.”
Oh,fuck.
The floor tilted under me then, even though I was already lying down. “Imean,” I said, trying to push myself upright—trying torecoverbut not able to quite make it happen, “just that I probably shouldn’t have done it. Not that I like, regret it or anything. Just that, um. Like. You’re my best friend, obviously. And that’s not really…a thing it’s cool for best friends to do. Maybe in France. Or like, some of the girls at Bartley used to, but that was kind of a different—” I broke off. “I should go. Okay. Call me back. Or not, if you’re busy. Tell your bubbe hello for me.”
It took me three tries to end the call, my finger slipping uselessly against the smudgy screen of my phone. Once it finally went dark I laid my head back down on the tile, closing my eyes against the spinning and waiting for a morning that felt a million years away.
16
Sunday, 12/1/24
When I woke up it was December, and someone was pissing enthusiastically into the toilet beside me. “Don’t mind me,” James said, his voice cheerful as I blinked rapidly, hideously alert. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Dude,” I managed, scrubbing a hand over my swollen, throbbing face, “there are like, twelve bathrooms in this house.”
“Emergency,” he said pleasantly. His pajama pants were printed with tiny red lobsters. “Couldn’t wait. Honestly, all things considered, you’re lucky all I had to do was pee.”
I winced, waiting until he was finished washing his hands before I pushed myself cautiously upright. I was still wearing my clothes from the night before, the smell of wood and bonfire smoke wafting off me every time I moved. My joints ached. My mouth felt cottony. And I was filled with the kind of sticky black dread that oozes into every cranny and crevice, a sick certainty that some grave disaster was coming and I was its unlucky author. I could only remember bits and pieces of anything that hadhappened once Leo had taken off into the woods—the weirdness with Greer, the breathing trees, and—woof—the message I’d left for Holiday. What had I evensaid? The whole thing was hazy, but judging by the creeping, moldy feeling in my chest, it couldn’t have been—
I keep thinking about kissing you.
Oh, fuck me.
“Bro,” James said, glancing at me over his shoulder as he headed into the hallway, “you gonna boot?”
“No,” I said, gripping the edge of the bathtub and waiting for him to go away. “I’m good.”
Once I was finally alone I dug my phone out of my pocket with shaking hands, hoping maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing, but there it was:outgoing call, 4 minutes, 11:17 p.m.I had no idea if she’d gotten it already; she hadn’t called me back, or even texted. I swiped over to our message thread, my thumb flying:So, hey. Lots to fill you in on. Back tonight, but in the meantime, if you’ve got a long voice mail from me you haven’t listened to yet…maybe don’t?
I followed up a second later:I realize that me saying that is probably just going to make you want to listen immediately, but. Really. Better to delete.Then, most pathetic of all, I tried one more time:lol.
I waited for a minute to see if she’d text back, which she didn’t, then shoved my phone into my pocket with a grumble and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen, where I found Greer sitting at the long farmhouse table with Margot and Celine and Dagny, all of them eating sticky buns as big as their heads.
“There you are,” Greer said, pulling off one long, gooey piece and popping it into her mouth. “I was going to come poke you ina minute to make sure you were alive.” She looked at me, presumably taking in my pale, sweaty face. “There’s coffee.”
“Thank you.” I poured a cup from the fancy machine, willing myself to steady out. The dull panic coursing through my body felt worse than just normal morning-after anxiety, a kind of foreboding I couldn’t shake. I didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of whatever had been in the edibles or just the catastrophe of my own bad judgment. “I passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“I know,” she said, not unkindly. “I tried to move you when we got back into the house. You told me to go away and that you were communing with the tile.”
“I mean, it is very lovely tile,” Dagny agreed, barely holding in her laughter as she patted the bench beside her. “Come have a sticky bun.”
It was already close to noon, and Margot needed to get back to campus to work on a group project, so once I’d finished my coffee we all headed upstairs to pack. “What are you doing?” Margot asked when she saw me hauling an armload of bedding down the back stairs.
I froze. “Bringing the sheets down?” I explained, feeling a little bit sheepish. “I was gonna throw them into the machine.”
Margot’s lips quirked. “You definitely don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. I looked around at the kitchen, taking in the mess on the counters, the muddy boot prints by the door. The trash was piled high in the stainless steel can. “We should probably clean up a little before we go, right?”
Margot shook her head. “It’s fine,” she promised. “The housekeeper will be here this afternoon. She’ll take care of it.”
The housekeeper.I glanced out the window at the fine wash of sleet coming down on the driveway, thought of my mom spending a snowy Sunday schlepping the vacuum up the grand front steps. “Okay,” I said uneasily. “Well, as long as I’m down here, I might as well toss them in.”
Margot shrugged. “Sure,” she said, “suit yourself.”
