“What is happening?” I said to no one in particular. Phoebe glanced at me, her expression inscrutable.
“How are you not interested?”
“I am interested. This”—I gestured toward them—“isn’t interest. It’s something else.”
“Obsession,” Arden said, spinning to face me. “I’m obsessed,and you should be, too. Your apartment has lore, Vi! Lore that doesn’t include haunting!”
“It might include a little haunting,” Phoebe said. “My bedroom door shut on its own the other day.”
“You left your window open.” I turned, heading to the counter to grab a slice of pizza. “Isn’t this the end of the road? The guy doesn’t exist and the girl doesn’t want to be found. The end.”
“Or,” Phoebe said, “we could break into the building manager’s office and find Benji’s old files.”
My mouth dropped open. Even Arden balked.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said as Principal Chambers’s warnings about escalation swam through my head. Broken rules graduating into broken laws. Phoebe dipped her toe in with mail fraud—the only thing standing in her way of a life of crime was me, the woman with a hidden stash of Twinkies in her underwear drawer.
“They must have them, right?” Phoebe pressed, looking to Noah for reassurance. His lips pressed into a line, eyes darting to me and back again.
“Probably not. I doubt a place like this holds on to tenant information that long.”
“But you don’tknow.”
“We’re not breaking in anywhere,” I cut in, earning my tenth eye roll of the day. “What are you doing right now, Phoebe? What is this?”
“I’m trying to return someone’s private property, no thanks to you.”
“You’re trying to break the law. Again.”
“Reading someone’s mail is barely illegal, Vi! And it was sent to us!”
“It was sent to him!”
“Ourapartment.”
“Hisname.”
Noah and Arden watched us go back and forth like Venus and Serena at Wimbledon, but then Arden caught my eye, something twinkling. She could see the difference in Phoebe too. My best friend and Noah had been with us through the entire hellish ride, diffusing tension when things got too sour by inviting us over for dinner or out to a movie. And now, finally, Phoebe’s permanent scowl had fled, smiling like the kid Arden and I would make peanut butter and fluff sandwiches for when we were on break from college.
Maybe I wasn’t invested in the letter, but I was invested inthat.
“Fine,” I said, and Phoebe straightened. “If you can figure out a way—alegalway—to find Benji Dexter, I will do everything in my power to get that letter to him.”
She considered this. “Define ‘legal.’?”
Noah snorted.
“I’m kidding,” she said, sending me a reassuring smile. “All my research will be aboveboard. Promise.”
Phoebe padded over to the pizza. I watched her, the anxiety in my chest flaring as her smile dimmed a few watts. I wanted her to be happy. Ineededher to be happy. My reckless, wonderful childhood had shifted irrevocably with the birth of my sister; even at twelve, I found myself protective to a vicious degree, and that part of me grew along with her, exploding into an inferno when she came out to me last summer. I’d never forget the shake in her voice, as if she truly believed something would change between us because she liked girls, or the joyful tears in her eyes when I’d told her I was bisexual.
It was scary, loving someone that much. I wanted to warp the world into a softer, more palatable place for her. Maybe, somehow, this was the first step.
Arden sidled up beside me, her fingers wrapping around my arm. “She’ssmiling,” she hissed in my ear. I nodded stiffly.
“I know.”
“That’sbig.”
