So I ran a load of laundry, carried Greer’s bag down to the Jeep. “Oh, shit,” I said as we were hauling the last of our stuff into the trunk, “I think I left my hoodie upstairs.” I doubled back into the house and tidied up the kitchen as fast as I could, starting the dishwasher and tying up the trash bags before digging all the cash I had out of my wallet and leaving it on the kitchen table on top of a paper towel, scrawlinghousekeepingacross it with a pen I found in a drawer. “Where’s the hoodie?” Greer asked when I climbed into the Jeep a few minutes later, breathing a little hard.
“I realized I already packed it,” I said. “I’m a dumbass.”
“Only sometimes,” she replied, scooting over in the back seat to make room.
It felt like the ride back to Boston took forever, the stop-and-start of the Thanksgiving weekend traffic making me queasy. Since the accident I could be a little weird about driving in bad weather, especially with people I didn’t know that well. “You okay?” Greer murmured as Margot flipped off a minivan behind her on 95 South. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“Just hungover,” I said, which was partly true. “Which reminds me: What happened with the, ah, turkey?”
Both of them burst out laughing at that.
When we got back to campus I basically tucked and rolled outof the car, saying a hurried goodbye to the girls outside of Hemlock and dialing Holiday’s number as I darted up the stairs of my dorm. “So, I’m guessing you got my other message,” I said when she sent me to voice mail one more time. “Like I said in my text this morning, definitely feel free to just ignore that, but—”
I broke off as I opened the door to my room—and found Holiday cross-legged on my mattress eating a paper cup of ice cream from J.P. Licks. Duncan was sitting in his desk chair opposite, his feet propped up on the bed. I blinked, looking from Holiday to Duncan and back to Holiday again. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked her.
“Always,” Holiday deadpanned, then rolled her eyes. “No, Michael.” She nodded at Duncan—who, I saw now, had his own cup of ice cream. They’d been hanging out here, I realized belatedly. In my room.Together.
Onpurpose.
“Dave’s connecting flight is delayed in Chicago,” Duncan reported cheerfully, his ruddy hair flopping down over his forehead. “How was your break?”
“It was good,” I said absently, still trying to tease out exactly how this scene before me had come into existence. Who ate ice cream in December, anyway? It was unnatural.
Holiday scraped the bottom of her cup with her plastic spoon. “I should get going,” she announced, tossing them into the trash can underneath my desk. “Duncan, I’ll text you about the—”
“The reading at Trident,” he finished for her. “Yeah, definitely.”
“It’s a date.”
Adate? My head banged. Fuck, at this rate I was going to behungover until New Year’s. “I can walk you down,” I managed. I was still wearing my coat, suddenly sweating in the overwarm residence hall.
Holiday shook her head. “I’m good,” she said, but I followed her anyway, trailing her down the hallway and onto the staircase.
“Hey,” I said. “So, about that message—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said airily, holding a hand up in an attempt, presumably, to save me from myself. “I could only understand, like, half of what you were saying anyway. Who’s Boy Genius?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I think it’s worth looking into, right? If Greer somehow found out something incriminating about him and Margot—”
“Trying to shut her up could be enough of a motive for them to come after her,” Holiday admitted. “It probably makes sense to put eyes on Margot for a couple of days, see if she leads us anywhere interesting.”
I nodded. “And Emily? It seems weird that Greer didn’t mention her being on campus the day her room got trashed, right?”
“Yeah.” Holiday sighed. “Can you please do me a favor and try to figure out what Greer’s mom’s maiden name is?” she asked. “I mean, I’m a pretty good internet detective, but there are thirty-two thousand students at BU and like four thousand of them are named Emily.”
“Yeah, of course,” I promised. It occurred to me that she didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about the idea; I wondered if the novelty of this particular investigation was starting to wear off for her, though it could have just been that my head was still poundingand all my joints kind of hurt. “I’m happy to help.” Then, because I couldn’t quite stop myself: “So you and Duncan, huh?”
Holiday made a face and shoved her hands into her coat pockets at the same time she shrugged, a Thanksgiving cornucopia of nervous body language. “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “We’ve been talking a little bit, that’s all.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So I see.”
“He couldn’t afford to fly home just for the weekend,” she continued as she got to the bottom of the stairs and opened the door to the bustling lobby. “He’s on scholarship, just like you.”
I blinked. “He is?” I hadn’t known that; I’d never thought to ask about his plans. It made me feel like a dick in a way I didn’t want to examine too closely.
“He is,” she reported. “Imagine that.” She pushed open the door of the building, an icy blast of wind blowing through. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Michael,” she told me. “Meanwhile, drink some water, will you? You look like you’re about to keel over and die.”
“Thanks for that.”
