“Anytime.”
Once she was gone I headed back upstairs to my room, where Duncan had finished his ice cream and was stretched out in bed with a chemistry book. “Hey, dude,” I said, reaching out and running a hand over my bedspread, smoothing out the place where Holiday had been. “I think I owe you an apology.”
17
Thursday, 12/5/24
“My back hurts,” I complained on Thursday afternoon, crouched on the fourth-floor landing of the dimly lit stairwell at Hemlock House. “Remind me again why we can’t just wait outside the building?”
“It’s suspicious,” Holiday countered. She was close enough that I could smell the faint Earl Grey smell of her, her neck craned so she could peer out the narrow window in the staircase door. “Also, it’s thirty degrees.”
“How is it suspicious?” I asked. “I literally go to this college.”
“I don’t,” Holiday reminded me. “And neither one of us lives here. Do you really want to have to explain to Greer what you and I were doing lurking around outside her dorm room like a couple of weirdos?”
“Waiting to surprise her with a candygram,” I posited, only half joking. “Looking for my lost contact lens.”
Holiday made a face. Both of us were punchy and bored; we’d spent the better part of the last three days tailing Margot aroundcampus—or, more accurately,Ihad spent the better part of the last three days tailing Margot around campus, with Holiday dropping in for backup whenever she could—and so far it had been the dullest and most uneventful stakeout in the history of all humankind. We’d watched as Margot went to the library and worked on a paper. I’d followed her to a yoga class at the gym. We’d seen her buy a blueberry fig bar at the convenience store, then double back for a bottle of fizzy water; it was scintillating stuff, truly, but none of it had given us any indication of who Boy Genius might be, or what secret he and Margot might have been protecting from Greer. My neck ached. I had homework I should have been doing. And I was feeling more than a little like a dumbass.
“This is a waste of time,” I declared.
“Maybe,” Holiday agreed amiably. “You want to quit?”
I sighed. “No,” I admitted. “But I would feel better if we’d been able to find anything on Emily so we could at least be sure we’re even focusing on the right lead.” An obituary for Greer’s paternal grandpa in theNew Haven Registerhad led us to her parents’ marriage announcement; assuming Emily was related on Greer’s mom’s side, her last name was possibly Hawker, but a search of that name hadn’t turned up anything useful.
“I wish I could figure out where I recognized her from,” Holiday said, running her hands through her wild mass of curly hair. “It’s driving me out of my mind.”
“Senior citizens’ water aerobics?” I teased, naming an actual class Holiday had taken at the Cambridge Y over the summer.
“Nah, it was probably leg day with my bros at the gym,” she shot back.
“Rager at the lax house, maybe?” I asked—then, realizing it was a little too close to the thing we weren’t talking about, I cleared my throat. “So,” I said, glancing out the door of the stairwell one more time, “you and Duncan.”
Holiday snorted. “What about me and Duncan?”
“Are you guys, like, dating now? Is it serious? Should I expect to come home and find a sock on the—”
“Easy, tiger.” Holiday cut me off. “I like him,” she admitted. “I mean, I don’t know that we’re going to be spending New Year’s Eve together or anything, but I’m willing to see how it goes.”
“Is that your measurement of a relationship with promise?” I teased, rolling my shoulders to ease the cramp there. “New Year’s Eve plans?”
“Yes,” Holiday said immediately. Then, at my dubious expression: “I mean, think about it. In terms of significant calendar dates, New Year’s is a bigger deal than Valentine’s Day. It’s more important than your birthday, even. By spending New Year’s Eve with someone, you’re basically saying,I want to be with you in the past and in the future.I want to sit with you in the tension between the old world and the new one. I want to be with you for all time.”
“I mean, sure, I guess.” I blinked at the intensity of it. “Or, alternately:I want to get drunk with you at a party and watch for cars while you pee on the curb at three a.m.”
Holiday rolled her eyes. “It’s truly a wonder that publishers aren’t clamoring at the door for your collection of original love poetry.”
“I’m an undiscovered talent,” I agreed. Holiday and I had spent at least three or four New Year’s Eves together in elementary andmiddle school, actually, eating popcorn at her parents’ house and staying up to watch the ball drop, though neither one of us mentioned that now. We’d been kids, that was all. She wasn’t talking about when you were kids. “Is that what happened with Evan?” I asked, picking at my cuticles instead of looking directly at her. “You didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve with him? You never really said.”
Holiday glanced at me sidelong. “No,” she agreed, her voice clipped. “I guess I didn’t.”
“So?” I prompted.
“So what, exactly?”
“I mean, nothing.” I wasn’t sure why she was being so evasive all of a sudden, but if there was one thing she’d taught me, it was that the questions people wanted to avoid were usually the ones worth pursuing. “Just wanted to know if you needed me to beat him up, that’s all.”
Holiday snorted. “Why do you assume he broke up with me?” she asked. “For all you know, I could have been the one who endedit.”
