Holiday grinned at me, her smile luminous in the late-season sunlight. “See you around, Michael.”
4
Saturday, 10/26/24
Back at my dorm I grabbed dinner and a shower, then sat on my bed and pulled my phone out of my pocket, flicking through my contacts until I got to Greer’s name.See you at the lax house tonight?I asked, hoping I sounded appropriately casual and not like I’d spent the better part of six miles composing and revising this exact text in my head on my run earlier today.
The phone buzzed with her reply a moment later:I can’t,Greer reported, adding a little sad face emoji.I have a biochem quiz first thing Monday morning. Going to get a PSL as big as my head and go work in the library like the most basic of bitches.
On Halloween weekend?I couldn’t help but ask.
I know,she texted back.The worst. But my dad wants to schedule a Zoom to talk about the “outlook for the remainder of the semester,” which is honestly scarier to me than the Babadook at this point.
I flopped back onto the mattress, fighting down an embarrassing surge of disappointment.That sucks,I typed, for lack of anything clever or useful to say.Breakfast tomorrow, maybe?
“So hey,” Duncan said just then, leaning back in his desk chair across the room. His voice was so, so casual. There was a tiny hole in the bottom of his sock. “About your friend Holiday.”
I felt my eyes narrow. “What about her?”
“You guys aren’t…” Duncan frowned, reaching for his water bottle and cradling it like a newborn baby. “I mean, are you?”
“We aren’t what, exactly?”
“He wants to know if you guys have boned,” Dave piped up helpfully, “but he’s afraid you’ll beat him up for asking.”
That stopped me. “When have I ever acted like I was going to beat either one of you up for anything?” I asked, weirdly wounded. “Like, is that the vibe I give off to people?”
“I’m not afraid you’re going to beat me up,” Duncan clarified.
I frowned. “I thought we were friends.”
“Are we?” Dave asked. He tilted his head, his straight black hair falling across his eyes. “Like, is that what you would call us?”
“Yes!” This was absurd. “Anyway, to answer your question, no, of course not. We’ve never—” I shook my head. “She’s like my sister.”
“To be fair, I don’t think he’d want you to date hissistereither,” Dave pointed out, munching a Bugle on the bottom bunk.
“That’s not the poi— Look, I gotta go,” I announced abruptly, getting up off the bed and yanking a clean shirt over my head, screwing with my hair in the mirror on the back of the closet door. “I’ll see you guys in the morning, all right? Don’t forget to check your Halloween candy for needles.”
I met up with George Patel and a handful of other first-years for the pregame in a different dorm across campus, where I drankthree beers a little faster than I meant to, so my head was already feeling like a balloon by the time we headed over to the party. The lax house was warm inside: the steady thump of a bassline, the smell of booze and people and weed hanging densely in the air.
I got swallowed up into the crowd pretty much immediately, downing another couple of beers and playing wingman for George as he tried to make it happen with a girl from his Intro to Computer Science class. I was hoping Greer might have blown off the library and come anyway, that I’d catch sight of her perched on the steps, dressed as a black cat or a Freudian slip, but when I looked around the crowded living room there was no sign of her glossy dark hair and round tortoiseshell glasses. A few of her suitemates were here, though, and I waved to Keiko and Bri, who—judging by her rosy cheeks and slightly glassy expression—had also gotten her own personal party started at some point before she arrived.
“Linden!” she called when she spotted me, holding out her arms like we were long-lost sisters from a Disney movie. “Come settle a bet.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, weaving through the crowd. She was sitting on the arm of the couch with her shoes on the cushion, her sharp heels snagging on the worn leather. “What’s up?”
Keiko was shaking her head. “Nothing,” she assured me, nudging Bri with one sharp elbow. “We were just…speculating, that’sall.”
“About?” I asked, and both of them burst out laughing.
“Never mind,” Keiko said firmly, though her gaze flicked unmistakably to my crotch before finding its way back up to my face. “Where’s your costume?”
“Where’syours?” I countered, looking at Bri.
“This is it,” she said, gesturing down at her outfit, jeans and a silky emerald-green tank top I was pretty sure belonged to Greer. “I’m a chameleon.”
“Do you change colors?”
