Chapter 1

1

Thursday, 10/17/24

A fact that seems relevant to mention before we begin, though of course it didn't occur to me to look it up until much later: statistically, it's actually very unlikely for a person to fall victim to a violent crime in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The rate of robbery is remarkably low, at just 52.6 annually per 100,000 residents, compared to 135.5 throughout the United States and 118 just across the Charles River in Boston. Rates of assault are admittedly higher, though occurrences still clock in well below the national average, with a rate of 224.3 per 100,000 residents.

And murder? Well, murder is rarest of all, with a rate of just 0.8 per 100,000 residents, compared to a national average of 6.1. "Even if you were trying to get murdered in Cambridge," Holiday mused later, eyes narrowed behind the metal rims of her giant glasses, "you'd really have to, like, apply yourself."

At least, that's what we'd always thought.

Anyway, like I said, I didn't know any of that the fall of my first year at Harvard, and I probably wouldn't have cared about it even if I did. Anyone trying to tell me would have had to shout over the sound of my teammates egging me on as I stood on a metal folding chair and shotgunned a hard seltzer in the dining room of the lax house, the sweet, fizzy dregs of it trickling down the side of my neck and into the collar of my hoodie.

"He's got style, he's got grace!" Cam declared as I finished, clapping me hard between my shoulder blades. Every first-year lacrosse player was paired with an upperclassman mentor, and he was mine; in the weeks since I'd arrived on campus he'd not only set my daily workout plan and invited me over to watch the Pats on Sundays but had also imparted such valuable information as which dining halls had the best cereal selection and never to use the shower stall next to Ryan Jakes, a junior defenseman who was notorious for pissing into the communal drain. "He's Miss United States."

"Thank you, thank you." I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, fully aware that this was absolutely not, under any circumstances, an achievement for which to feel proud of myself, but feeling a tiny bit proud of myself anyway. It's always kind of a high-wire act, trying to figure out where and how to fit in on a new team. If cheerful drunk wasn't quite what I wanted to be known as over the next four years, it was a better position to start from than whiny little bitch who can't hang. "As always, I appreciate your love and support."

"Let's see him go again," suggested Dex Rutland, a sophomore midfielder. The grin on his pale, freckled face just missed being friendly. "What do you say, Linden?"

Cam looked at me, the question clear in the wrinkle of his smooth brown forehead. I was just about to oblige—one thing about me, for better or for worse, is that I will basically never back down from a dare—when I felt a slice of cold air from the direction of the foyer and caught sight of a familiar cardinal-red peacoat slipping in through the front door.

"Hey!" I called a beat too quickly, hopping down off the chair so fast my bad ankle nearly gave out and left me sprawled on the dingy Persian rug. I ignored the goading jeers of my teammates as I threaded my eager way through the crowd. "You came."

"I came," Greer agreed with a forbearing smile, tucking her hands into her pockets and popping up onto the toes of her boots, pressing her cold cheek against mine. She wore a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses and an oversized L.L.Bean pullover, a vintage Tiffany bean around her neck. "I like old things," she'd told me once, the two of us sprawled on my bed back at the Western Massachusetts boarding school we'd attended together. Now, two years later, I couldn't help but hope that included boyfriends. "Hi."

"Hi yourself," I said, my heart vibrating dorkily in my chest. "I didn't think you were going to show."

"I almost didn't," she confessed, "but Bri is already here somewhere, so I figured—" She broke off, eyes narrowing as she looked across the warm, crowded living room, where Dex had graciously taken over in my stead and was already halfway through a twenty-four-ounce can of White Claw. "I thought you said this was going to be, like, a chill, low-key kind of thing."

"Is this not low-key?" I asked sheepishly, my voice getting lost as the rest of the guys erupted into cheers over my shoulder. Most of the upperclassmen on the lacrosse team had moved off campus a few years back, when Harvard randomized their housing selection process and made it harder for teams to self-sort into particular dorms. Since then, the lease on this place had been passed from one lax captain to the next, the walls and floors and carpets bearing the not-inconsiderable scars of hundreds of parties way wilder than this one. "Come on," I shouted over the noise, jerking my thumb in the direction of the kitchen. "I'll get you a drink."

Greer let me take her hand as we weaved through the crush of bodies in the narrow center hallway, past the once-grand front staircase that led up to the bedrooms and the tiny little telephone nook tucked underneath. "That's cute," she said when she noticed it, and she sounded sincere, which I took to mean she hadn't looked closely enough to see the giant, erupting cock and balls carved into the woodwork of the antique bench.

The kitchen was mercifully empty, the heavy door swinging shut behind us and muffling the clatter of the party. Greer hopped up onto the scarred Formica counter as I pulled a beer from one of the picnic coolers lined up beside the door to the cluttered mudroom, handing it over before grabbing one for myself and perching against the edge of the wobbly wooden table. "So," I said, reaching out and clinking my can against hers, "what's up?"

Greer shook her head, smirking a little at the question. "Not too much," she said, the heels of her boots banging lightly against the worn lower cabinets. The kitchen at the lax house was huge, with two stainless steel fridges parked side by side and a massive industrial range that always looked a little grimy; the sink was a big old double-basin situation with separate taps for hot water and cold. "How about you?"

"Oh, you know." I shrugged, the silence stretching out between us for a few seconds too long not to be awkward. I took a big gulp of my beer. I'd forgotten this, how back before Greer and I started dating my junior year at Bartley I was perpetually tongue-tied around her. How I could never think of the right thing to say. "Not too much…either."

Jesus Christ. What was wrong with me? I was generally pretty good with girls—women? I guessed they were technically women, now that we were in college—though you'd never have known it by the way my mind was suddenly blanker than an old-fashioned Scantron sheet at the beginning of exam week. "Okay, can we—" I started, just as Greer said, "Look, Linden—"

Both of us broke off, smiling a little wanly. "Go for it," she told me, at the same time that I shook my head: "Sorry, what were you—?"

Another long moment of silence. I was just about to excuse myself to go drown politely in the Quabbin Reservoir when all at once Greer's roommate, Bri, spilled through the door of the kitchen, a human tornado made of charm bracelets and expensive perfume.

"You are here!" she accused, throwing her arms around Greer like they'd last seen each other on the battlefields of Antietam and not, presumably, a couple of hours before in their suite back at Hemlock, one of the nine upperclassmen houses nestled between the Square and the river. Bri's hair was the same dark chestnut as Greer's, though she was taller, with the slightly muscley shoulders of a girl who had played field hockey in high school but now mostly did the elliptical machine at the gym. She was wearing a pair of open-toed shoes with heels so high I wondered briefly how she'd managed to walk all the way here without smashing her skull open like a melon on the crooked, brick-lined sidewalks. Also, she was visibly shit-faced. "Somebody said they'd seen you come in and I was like, No, there's no way she's here and did not find me immediately, though I see now"—here Bri flicked me in the side with one polished fingernail before making a beeline for the cluster of sticky, half-empty alcohol bottles on the counter opposite Greer—"that you were busy rekindling your tortured high school romance."

"Bri," Greer chided, her cheeks reddening even as she rolled her eyes. "For fuck's sake."

I took another sip of my beer, feeling my own face warm at the merciless baldness of Bri's assessment. I'd known Greer was at Harvard when I got recruited, obviously—she was a sophomore now, studying to become a spinal surgeon just like both of her parents—but we hadn't run into each other until three weeks into the semester, when I'd rounded a corner at the Coop and there she was, considering the ball caps, backpack slung over one shoulder and her hair in a shiny French braid. "It's you," she said, like she didn't quite believe it.

"I'm not stalking you," I blurted immediately, flustered even though there was a part of me that had been waiting for this exact encounter since the moment I stepped onto campus. We'd only talked once since we'd broken up at the spring of my junior year at Bartley: two summers ago she'd called me to report that her parents' insurance company was going to want to talk to me about what had happened the night of the car accident that had both shattered my ankle and effectively ended our relationship, and she'd appreciate it if I stuck to our story. "I mean, I guess that's also what I would say if I was stalking you? But. I'm not."

"Okay…," she said slowly, the corners of her lips quirking just a little. "I didn't think you were."

"I go here now," I told her, my voice weirdly loud in the quiet bookstore. My hands felt too big, a pair of old phone books attached to the ends of my arms. "I'm playing lacrosse."

Greer nodded. "Yeah," she said, "I heard something about that. I'm glad it worked out." She smiled for real this time, like the sun coming up over the Charles in the morning. "Hi, Linden."

I exhaled, my shoulders dropping back down to where they belonged. It was useless to pretend I didn't still think about her. It was useless to pretend I didn't still care. "Hi, Greer."

In the weeks since then we'd hung out a few times, meeting for coffee at the hipster place in the Smith Center and going to a free concert on the Esplanade. Every single time, I shoved a piece of gum in my mouth just in case, but so far we seemed to be stuck decisively in neutral. Which was fine, obviously—it wasn't like I thought Greer owed me a hookup for nostalgia's sake or whatever. I just…still liked her, that was all. I was pretty sure that neither one of us could quite decide if she still liked me back.

Now Bri ignored our visible discomfort, plucking a half-empty bottle from the makeshift bar and waggling it in Greer's direction. "Want me to make you one of these?" she asked.

Greer tilted her head, her expression equal parts curious and fond. "Just to clarify: by one of these, you mean a generous glug of Fireball in a red plastic cup?"

"Exactly." Bri's smile was dazzling. "Craft cocktail, baby." She poured for a three count, splashing some cinnamon-flavored whiskey onto the counter and wiping it up with her bare hand before heading for the living room. Then, on second thought, she doubled back and took the bottle, too. "You guys be good."

"We always are," Greer promised. She waited until Bri was gone, then shook her head at me. "Sorry. That girl is my best friend at college, but she is a hot mess."

"Is it an act?" I asked, taking a chance and boosting myself up onto the counter next to her, the sides of our pinkies just brushing. "Like, a fun party girl thing?"

"I mean, yes and no?" Greer shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, she's a literal genius, all her professors love her, but she also is very much getting obliterated five nights out of the week."

"That's a lot of nights."

"It is, in fact, five-sevenths of the nights," Greer agreed. "She's also now putting her Adderall up her nose instead of just like, taking it the normal way like everybody else, which feels sort of alarming to me? But she's on the dean's list and I'm barely clinging to my sanity, so what the fuck do I know. I should probably just try it her way."

I smiled, bumping her arm lightly with mine. "You know some things," I said.

That made her laugh. "Thank you," she said, dropping her head briefly onto my shoulder. "I do. I know like, one or two things."

"Three things at least," I continued.

"Well, don't overdo it," Greer said, holding a hand up. "You're going to make me blush."

"It is wild here, though," I admitted quietly. "At this school, I mean." The truth was, I still couldn't quite believe I'd gotten in: the accident had left my ankle smashed to powder, with any chance at a lacrosse scholarship—not to mention my entire future—hanging precariously in the balance. It wasn't lost on me how lucky I was to be at this party right now and not bagging groceries at Market Basket half a mile away. "I know that like, the first rule of being at Harvard is to act like being at Harvard is no big deal and that you always knew you were smart and accomplished enough to deserve it and the work doesn't make you want to lie down in a ditch? But I'll tell you, Greer: sometimes the work makes me want to lie down in a ditch."

"Same, obviously." She took a sip of her beer. "Do you wish you were somewhere else?"

I shook my head. "I do not."

"Me either." Greer smiled. "I know it's so dorky, but you know what my family is like. Every single one of them went here. They literally put me in a Harvard onesie to bring me home from the hospital after I was born." She ran her thumb over the mouth of the bottle. "Can I tell you something so fucking corny?"

"Cornier than the Harvard onesie?" I teased.

"Impressively, yes." Greer wrinkled her nose. "It was so nice and fallish outside this afternoon that I put that old Cranberries song on my headphones and just, like, walked back and forth across campus a couple of times pretending I was in a movie."

I burst out laughing, I couldn't help it. "Oh yeah, that is really fucking corny."

"Fuck you!" Greer punched me in the arm. "You like it."

"I do," I admitted, ducking my head a little closer. "I…yeah. I mean. You know I do."

I was just about to ask her if she wanted to get out of here and head back to her suite when the kitchen door swung abruptly open and Hunter Hayes strolled through in a hoodie and a backward Whalers cap: "There you are," he said when he spotted me. "I've been looking."

"Well." I winced. "Here I am." Hunter was a senior forward, cocaptain of the lax team. Every time I looked at him I saw his entire future laid out before me like the battered game of Chutes and Ladders that lived in our entertainment unit when I was a kid: business school at Wharton, followed by a stint at an investment bank in Boston and a successful congressional run in the small Maine district where his dad was a wealthy real estate attorney. Two years after that, a scandal involving the nanny, his blond wife smiling tightly beside him as he stood at a podium and recommitted himself to family values.

"So I see," he agreed now, baring his teeth at me. "Need you to go on a beer run."

"Wait." I frowned: if there was anything we had more than enough of at this party, it was alcohol. I could see at least half a dozen twelve-packs of cans from where I was sitting, not to mention the scrum of bottles on the counter. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," Hunter said cheerfully. "Always be prepared, am I right?" His gaze cut to Greer, his gaze sharpening just the slightest bit. "Unless, of course, you're otherwise engaged."

Greer made a face. I didn't, but only because I didn't want to take a cuff directly to the side of my head. I was used to this: it was the same for all the first-year lax players, the knowledge that you could be called upon at any moment to drop everything you were doing to run some inane, vaguely humiliating errand for an upperclassman—dropping off laundry, picking up foot cream at CVS. George Patel, another first-year, had spent the entirety of last weekend picking all the yellow Skittles out of an enormous bag from Costco because one of the senior defensemen swore they made his pee smell weird. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, really. I'd been playing private-school sports since I was fourteen; I could take a little bit of hazing. In fact, there was a part of me that even welcomed the chance to show the rest of the team that I wasn't about to crack under pressure. Look how stoically this guy scrubs toilets, I imagined them saying. Linden's no whiny little flea, no sir.

Still, I couldn't help but feel like something about it was different with Hunter—that he'd singled me out for a special kind of torture, like there was something about me specifically that had rubbed him the wrong way from the moment I'd stepped onto campus. He'd pissed in my cleats once, back in September. The previous Saturday he'd made me eat six Tasty Burgers in a row while he watched.

Also, not for nothing, I didn't love the way he was looking at Greer.

"Okay," I said now, glancing in her direction, trying to gauge whether or not she was disappointed at the prospect of my leaving. "I'm going. Any kind of beer in particular?"

"You can use your judgment," Hunter said generously. "Nothing cheap, though. We're gentlemen around here, are we not?" He smiled again, his canines sharp and gleaming. "Greer, sweetheart. Good to see you."

"Hunter." She rolled her eyes indulgently. "Always a pleasure."

"It is, right?" He reached out and squeezed her knee through her jeans, quick and casual. "I think so too."

"I hate that dude," I said once he was gone, sliding heavily off the counter and excavating my jacket from the pile on a kitchen chair.

"I suspect," Greer said brightly, still sitting up on the counter, "that the feeling is mutual."

"You're picking that up too, right?" I asked. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about getting hazed or whatever—"

"Aren't you?" Greer teased.

"I'm not!" I insisted. "It just feels, like, personal, that's all. Don't you think that seemed kind of personal?"

Greer shook her head. "Hunter's just like that."

"I guess." I looked down at her knee for a second, feeling my eyebrows crawl. "How well do you guys know each other?"

"I mean, not that well," she said with a shrug. "Just enough to know he's—"

"A real dick?"

"Exactly," she said with a grin.

"Yeah." I sighed, shrugging into my jacket. "Anyway. I'm gonna go take care of this. I'll see you when I get back?"

But Greer shook her head. "I'm gonna go collect Bri and drag her out of here in a minute," she said. "I've got a response paper due at midnight. I want to read it one more time before I send it in."

I nodded, knowing better than to ask whether that was necessary. Greer's first year at Harvard hadn't gone super, from the sound of it. She'd told me bits and pieces of the story in passing—a stats teacher who'd had it in for her, a couple of big assignments she'd whiffed—but the upshot was that she was on academic probation this semester, which meant if she didn't pull her grades up by Christmas she was done. "Tomorrow, then?"

Greer tilted her dark, glossy head to the side. "Maybe," she agreed slowly. "What did you have in mind?"

"I mean, I don't know," I said, not wanting to sound as eager as I knew I probably did. "Walking tour of the Freedom Trail, maybe."

"Take a ride on a duck boat."

"Visit the USS Constitution, " I joked. Then, dropping my voice a little, not quite looking at her: "We could always blow off all our classes, go to the beach for the day."

Greer snorted. "You realize it's going to be like fifty degrees."

"We'll wear sweaters," I countered easily—enjoying myself now, glad to have settled back into a rhythm with her and hoping she was glad about it too. We'd had fun together, a million years ago. It had been good, what we were. "Take our shoes off. It'll be like a Nicholas Sparks movie, we can do the whole thing."

That made her smile. "Tempting," she admitted, "but not really an option for me at this particular academic juncture. I'm done at noon, though. Why don't you come by the suite and I'll swipe you into the dining hall at Hemlock?"

"You sort of lack a romantic imagination," I informed her. "Do you know that about yourself?"

Greer nodded seriously. "I have been told that in the past, yes."

"I guess I forgive you," I decided.

"That's very generous."

"I'm a generous guy," I told her, "as evidenced by the fact that I guess I am about to go buy beer for the entire Harvard University lacrosse team and fifty of their closest friends." I gestured grandly toward the back door of the lax house. "Wish me luck."

"Oh yeah," Greer said with a laugh, "you're embarking on a regular hero's journey out there."

"I am." I stepped cautiously between her knees, dropping my hands lightly onto her denim-covered thighs and hoping my touch was more welcome to her than Hunter's had been. "Who knows what could happen to me?"

"Who knows," Greer echoed, her full mouth twisting in amusement. She always wore cherry ChapStick, Greer; she kept tubes of it everywhere, in her coat pockets and desk drawers and in the zippered compartment of the vintage neon Jansport she'd carried back at Bartley. After we broke up I found one in the pocket of my favorite jeans, though not before I'd put them through the dryer and melted bright pink wax onto almost every article of clothing I owned.

"Linden," she said now, peeling my hands off her legs, lacing her fingers through mine.

"Greer."

Just for a second, she leaned forward; I closed my eyes like an instinct, but in the end she just used me for leverage, sliding neatly off the counter and slipping past me in the direction of the living room. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah," I promised, swallowing down a warm-beer gulp of disappointment. It had been like this since we'd first started hanging out again, a tacit push-pull I wasn't quite sure how to read. It wasn't that Greer didn't seem interested, exactly. It was more like she was holding me off just to see if I'd wait. "See you tomorrow."

Outside, it was purple-dark and chilly, the wind rustling the branches of the oak trees overhead. Six blocks away, there was a corner deli that sold beer and reliably didn't look too hard at IDs, which was important, since mine said I was a twenty-six-year-old organ donor from Raynham named Danylo Rukaj. I headed in that direction, then stopped and glanced back at the lax house for a moment, squinting at the yellow light glowing behind the curtains and listening to the party going on without me. Then I pulled up my collar and set off.