Greer’s eyes were shining. “It gets cooler,” she told me, motioning along the walkway back the way we’d come. “Here, go stand at that end.”
I did as she told me, watching as she made her way to the opposite side of the globe. “Hi,” she whispered—or at least, I could tell by the way her mouth was moving that it was a whisper. The acoustics of the Mapparium made it so I could hear her as loudly and clearly as if she’d been speaking right into my ear.
“It’s a whispering gallery,” she told me, her smile radiant on the other side of the world. “It’s for telling secrets.”
“Oh yeah?” I felt the back of my neck get warm. “Tell me one, then, how about.”
Greer tapped a finger to her lips, like she was thinking. “I’m really glad you came to Harvard,” she confessed after a moment. “I think maybe I’ve been letting you feel like I didn’t care so much one way or the other. I think maybe I wanted you to believe that, even. But I’m really happy you’re here.”
“I’m really happy I am too.” I grinned at her, the warmth in my chest enough to power the entire planet. I could feel the weirdness from my fight with Holiday—the heaviness I’d been carrying ever since Bri died—melting away. I looked at Greer standing there across the walkway, hands still tucked neatly into the pockets of her bright red coat. I loved her, I realized. And I was tired of sneaking around, keeping secrets and telling half-truths like the scared, insecure kid I’d been when we were together back at Bartley. I wanted to be honest with her. I wanted to be the kind of grown-ass man she deserved. “I have to tell you something,” I said.
Greer laughed. “I mean,” she replied, in her normal voice this time, “that’s kind of the idea.”
But I shook my head. “I’m serious.”
Her smile slipped, just a little. “Okay,” she agreed slowly, taking a cautious step toward me and tilting her head back toward the door. “Should we go?”
We grabbed lattes at a nearby Starbucks and sat on a bench outside the Mapparium, both of us shivering a little bit in the grayNew England afternoon. “Are you breaking up with me?” Greer asked, running her thumb in circles around the plastic lid of her coffee cup. “Because I gotta say, Linden, if you chased me around all semester just to dump me two weeks before finals—”
“I’m not,” I promised quickly. “I’m definitely not.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then what?”
“First of all,” I began, then cleared my throat and started over. “First of all, please believe me when I say I know this is going to sound completely bonkers. And also, I know you’re probably going to be pissed.”
“Oh, boy.” Greer looked at me sidelong. “Gotta love a conversation that starts that way.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “So, um, here’s the thing. I know Margot and James are hooking up. And I know that you know too, but I think the thing you mightnotknow is that theyknowyou know, and that’s why they tried to hurt you, but wound up accidentally getting Bri instead.”
For a moment Greer just gaped at me, the only sounds the cars on Huntington Avenue and the frigid wind screaming across the plaza. It felt like the first moment after a gunshot. “To begin with,” she said finally, her voice small in the sudden hugeness of the city all around us, “um, no. I definitely did not know that.”
“Oh. Well.” I felt myself blush, like possibly I was the pervert here. “Margot and James are hooking up.”
“Margot and James are first cousins.”
“I know,” I said.
“And they’re—”
“Yeah.” I winced. “I saw it. I wish I could unsee it, actually.”
Greer didn’t laugh. “Where?” she asked. “Like, when did you—how do you even know that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Were you spying on them?” She stood up so fast her coffee burbled up like a geyser, flooding the lid of her cup. “Have you been spying onme?”
“Of course not,” I said, scrambling to my feet to match her. “Why would I spy on you?” I shook my head. “I just—it started because when we were at Margot’s at Thanksgiving I saw this text on her phone—”
“You were going through herphone?”
“She handed it to me!” I protested. “The text popped up while I was taking that video of you guys doing the dance fromHigh School Musicalor whatever.”
“First of all, it wasA Goofy Movie,” Greer corrected me. “And second of all, you realize how sketchy you sound right now.”
“I do, yes.” I sighed, setting my coffee cup down on the bench. “Anyway, the point is—”
“Thepointis,” Greer interrupted, “this is ridiculous. Even if it is true about Margot and James—and I will tell you right now, I think that is abigif—Margot was with me in the library the night Bri died, Linden. She felt bad for me about missing the lax party, so she came and brought me snacks and was generally a really good fucking friend to me, right up until the moment that we left Widener together and she dropped me off outside your dorm. There’s no way she went up to the suite and killed Bri, thinking it was me: she knew I wasn’t in there. On top of which, she’s my friend, and she wouldn’t try to hurt me. And if shedidtry to hurt me forsome wild, enormously unlikely reason, she wouldn’t have accidentally hurt Bri instead.” Greer shook her head before I could say anything. “Look, Linden. I care about you. I love you, even—or I could, if you’d relax and give me a chance. But you havegotto stop this. It’s too much for me. It’s freaking me out. It’s making me worry about you.”
