Chapter 13

13

Monday 11/25/24–Friday 11/29/24

I barely slept that night, or the one that came after it. I kept replaying my conversation with Greer in my head, wondering how I could have handled it differently. I kept replaying the other night in Hunter's room.

I dozed off in International Women Writers on Tuesday morning, I couldn't help it; I woke up just as the lecture was wrapping, startling to alertness as my classmates packed their things all around me. I swallowed down the stale, sticky taste in my mouth, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and trying to sneak out of the hall as unobtrusively as possible.

No such luck: "Michael," Professor McMorrow called just as I was heading through the door, "hang on a minute, will you?"

I bit my tongue, barely suppressing a visible wince. This was the last conversation I was ready to have, especially now; all I wanted to do was shuffle back to Eastie, stuff myself full of turkey and sleep for four full days. "I know," I said once the classroom was empty, more sharply than I meant to. "I owe you a meeting."

McMorrow nodded. "You do, although actually I just wanted to pull you aside to ask you, going forward, to find another venue to catch up on your Zs."

"Uh, yeah." I winced. "Sorry about that."

"I understand you've had a lot going on," she continued. "I'm not sure if you got my email about your friend Bri, but—"

"I did," I said, remembering with a sudden surge of irritation the way everyone on campus had tried to pump me for information after she died. "It just wasn't really something I wanted to talk about."

McMorrow nodded. "Fair enough," she said. "But all first-years do need to meet with their advisor before the end of the semester, and in terms of registering for your classes for the spring, it would be good for us to sit down and—"

"Let's just have it now," I interrupted. "The meeting, I mean. I have no idea what classes I want to take next semester. I have no idea what I want my major to be. I have no idea about a lot of things, honestly, including what I'm doing here most days, so I don't know that it makes a ton of sense for us to schedule something just to sit and waste each other's time."

"Well." McMorrow's eyebrows twitched. "I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling. That's all the more reason for—"

"I'm not struggling, " I said, weirdly offended by the suggestion. "I just—" I broke off. I just what, exactly? I just completely alienated my girlfriend by spending the last three weeks on a murder investigation that probably isn't even legitimate? I just kissed my best friend in a panicky attempt at an undercover operation and now she won't look me in the eye? All at once it occurred to me that I was flailing. All at once it occurred to me that I was way out of line. "I'm sorry," I said, holding my hands up. "That wasn't— I shouldn't have—"

"Michael," McMorrow said, and her voice was surprisingly gentle. "Are you sure you don't want to talk?"

"I'll email you," I promised—hands still up, taking two giant steps back toward the doorway. "We'll set something up."

I bailed out of the lecture hall before she could reply.

The dorms closed for Thanksgiving break at noon on Wednesday, my classmates grumbling good-naturedly about traffic or the crowds at airport on the busiest travel days of the year. For my part I packed up a duffel and took the T back home to Eastie, trying not to feel sorry for myself. Normally, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday; in fact, it had always been kind of a special thing for my mom and me, the two of us making a gross-but-delicious green bean casserole and watching the dog show on TV, then driving down to Revere Beach to watch the sunset and eat pie in the car while listening to Christmas carols on Lite FM. We did all those things this year too, but none of it felt especially festive. I couldn't stop thinking about Greer, the accusing look in her eyes under the bleachers at the football game.

Also, I couldn't stop thinking about Holiday.

I'd texted to tell her what I suspected about Emily, and she'd agreed it was worth looking into, though it wasn't totally clear how to do that when Greer wasn't speaking to me and we didn't know Emily's last name. We found one promising profile among Greer's Instagram followers, EmilyBoo42, but the account was set to private and the avatar pic was a screenshot of Miss Piggy in an evening gown.

Neither one of us had mentioned the kiss again.

"So, obviously I recognize that you'd rather fling yourself directly into the Mystic River than talk to me about girl stuff," my mom said finally, tucking one leg underneath her in the driver's seat and taking a bite of her pie, "but you know I'm here to listen if you want." She held her hand out. "Switch."

"You're right," I said, passing her my big plastic clamshell. My mom was a good baker, but she hated to do it, so we always got two different pies from Market Basket and ate them whole without bothering to slice them; I'd picked pumpkin every single year since I was seven, but for her part she liked to mix it up. This year she'd gotten banana cream. "I'd rather die." I licked the back of my fork—the bananas were a little gloopy, but not necessarily in a bad way. "Also, what makes you think I'm having girl trouble?"

My mother eyed me across the gear shift. "Aren't you?"

I spent that night and the better part of the following morning on the ancient Bernie we'd never talked about it, and I hesitated, wondering exactly how much I wanted to tell her. "Things got kind of weird after the accident. She was, uh. The one driving the car, so."

"Oh." Holiday's eyes widened, though I could tell she was trying not to react. "I…didn't know that."

"I don't talk about it that much." I hardly ever talked about it at all, actually, to Holiday or to anyone else—one, because every time I thought about it I wound up pissed-off and cranky, and two, because Greer and I had lied to everyone at Bartley about what we were doing when it happened, and in my experience the best way to keep a lie straight was not to talk about it in the first place. Still, Holiday sat silently, ankles crossed on the carpet; both of us knew she was waiting me out, and both of us knew it would eventually work.

"The rules about cars at Bartley are weird," I explained finally. "Seniors are allowed to have them, but it's this complicated thing where you're not really like, supposed to take them very far unless you're driving home for a break? Like, they're called town privileges, but that's it." I shrugged. "Anyway, the night of the accident we told everyone we went to see a movie at the second-run theater."

"But you didn't."

I shook my head. "I thought we were going to, but then at the last minute she said she had a personal thing to handle, and she wanted me to come with her. We drove back toward Boston and she met up with…somebody."

"To do what?"

"I don't know, exactly." My recollection of the whole night was hazy; it had taken the better part of a year for my short-term memory to sort itself out. "We were out somewhere near Alewife, I think, in one of those big shopping centers that has like a Target and a Trader Joe's. It was raining. She had me wait in the car, but I could kind of see her from the passenger seat."

"But you don't know who or why?"

I frowned. "Whoever it was, they were wearing a parka, and I only saw them for a second. And like I said, the weather was shit. Anyway, by the time we got back out toward campus it was late, almost curfew, and I think we both were kind of worried about getting caught. I tried to get her to tell me who she'd met up with, and she wouldn't. We argued—we were arguing—when we hit the deer." I shrugged. "You can kind of fill in the blanks. My ankle was busted, I couldn't play the rest of spring semester, she felt guilty, I was trying not to act like I was mad at her, but I probably was a little mad at her…." I trailed off. "We just kind of drifted."

Holiday nodded slowly. "And you never asked what the deal was?"

I shook my head. I knew she was wondering why I hadn't pushed—why I hadn't investigated—but before I could explain how fragile things had felt with Greer back then, not to mention how tenuous they still sometimes felt with her now, my mom was knocking on the open door, waving her phone at me and telling me I needed to talk to Rose; then I was on the phone with Rose for ten full minutes, and by the time I hung up, my mom and Holiday had decided we should look at photo albums from when Holiday and I were kids, the two of them hauling them out of the cabinet in the entertainment unit and cracking them open. "We look like the Little Rascals," Holiday said, and we actually sort of did, her with her wild hair and poking-out stomach, me with what was clearly the remainder of a Popsicle dripping down the bottom half of my face.

"What was the name of the place near your house where we used to get the Italian ices?" I asked. My mom had gone back into the kitchen with her laptop to work on a diaper drive for her mutual aid group; it was just Holiday and me, the album open between us on the floor. "With the weird sad rabbit in the cage in the window?"

Holiday wrinkled her nose. "In retrospect, that situation was…not hygienic," she said with a grimace. "Also, we probably should have called the MSPCA."

"You did call the MSPCA," I reminded her with a laugh. "Remember? You left them an anonymous tip."

"Oh, my god, I did." Holiday clapped a hand over her mouth. "I wonder if that's why it closed."

"Gone forever, thanks to you," I said sadly. "A relic of the past, like the elevated train and the Live Poultry Fresh Killed sign."

Holiday shook her head. "The Live Poultry Fresh Killed sign is still there," she reminded me.

"It's not," I said. The Live Poultry Fresh Killed sign had hung outside a wholesale butcher in Somerville for decades, an enormous yellow beacon for all of a person's dead-bird needs. "They sold the building and took it down. I think it went to auction."

Holiday looked deeply skeptical. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I'm pretty sure I drove past it like, sometime in the last year."

"You didn't," I said, "because it's not there anymore."

"Really?"

"Do you not believe me?"

"I kind of don't."

"Fine," I said, "let's get in your car right now and I will prove it to you."

"Fine," Holiday echoed, smirking at me. Her dark eyes were shining as she held a hand out so I could pull her to her feet. "Let's."

"We should wager something," I said as I got our jackets from the closet, dorkily excited. "You know, make it interesting."

Holiday stopped with her coat half-on. "Okay," she agreed slowly, her gaze even on mine. "What did you have in mind?"

There was something in her voice that had me thinking about the other night at the lax house. There was something in her voice that had me looking at her mouth.

That was when the bell rang again.

"Jesus, it's like South Station in here today," my mom said, coming in from the kitchen and pressing the intercom button. "Hello?"

"Um, hello?" crackled a voice on the other end. "I'm not sure I have the— Is this Linden's house? This is Greer."

"Oh!" my mom said. "Okay." She let go of the button. "Michael?"

"Yeah," I agreed, like she'd been asking if that was in fact what she'd named me. I was frozen, standing there in the living room. I couldn't make myself move at all.

Finally, Holiday blew a noisy breath out and brushed past me, pressing the intercom button herself. "He'll be right down!" She looked back at me, gesturing toward the door. "Well?" she said, and I couldn't read the expression on her face. "Go."

"I—" I looked at the door, at her, back at the door again. "Okay," I agreed. "I'll be right back."

I thundered down the stairs and flung the front door open. There was Greer on the other side of it in hunter-green galoshes, her hair in a long braid over one shoulder. "Hi," she said.

"Hi." There was a shiny black Jeep idling behind her at the curb, Maggie Rogers faintly audible on the sound system. I could see Margot scrolling through her phone behind the wheel. "Um. How did you know where I live?"

Greer tilted her head, her quirked lips slick with cherry ChapStick. "That," she said archly, "is…not quite the welcome I was hoping for."

"No, that's not—I mean, I'm glad to see you," I backpedaled—laughing a little, stepping back to let her into our dingy foyer. There were phone books piled to one side of the door; some mysterious company kept dropping them off faster than we could toss them into the recycling. A snow shovel leaned against the pockmarked wall next to a crusty five-gallon bucket of ice melt, even though the first snow was still at least a month away. "I'm just…surprised, that's all. Hi," I said again. "For real."

"Hi for real." Greer smiled at that.

"How was Thanksgiving?"

"Oh, god, you don't want to know." She shook her head. "It's over, which is honestly the nicest thing I can say about it. Oh, and there was creamed corn."

"I actually kind of like creamed corn," I admitted.

"You would."

"Is that an insult?"

"Maybe." Greer shrugged. "Anyway," she said, "I didn't come here to talk to you about that. I came here because I think I might have…overreacted the other day. When I told you not to come to camp."

"Oh yeah?" That got my attention. "You might have, huh?"

"Yeah." She blew a breath out. "You were just trying to protect me, right?"

I thought about that for a moment. Trying to protect her was one way of looking at it, obviously. It was what I'd told her last weekend underneath the bleachers, and it wasn't like it wasn't true: I cared hugely about Greer. If somebody wanted to hurt her, I wanted to stop them. If somebody was coming after her, I sure as shit wanted to stand in their way. But truthfully, there was more to it than that, something I knew I'd never be able to explain to her or, maybe, to anyone: the deep satisfaction that came from following a trail of clues, turning over rocks, and shining light into dark places. Of figuring out who'd done what and why. It was hard to name what I felt, solving mysteries with Holiday. If it hadn't been entirely too humiliating to contemplate, the word I might have used was alive.

"Yeah," I agreed quietly. "I was just looking out for you."

"Okay." Greer shrugged. "Well. Anyway. Everyone else thinks you're fun and wants you to come to Maine with us, so."

"Shows how much they know."

That made her smile. "Just," she said—taking a step toward me so our hips were only barely touching, a chilly wind blowing in through the open front door and ghosting over the back of my neck. "Come."

I took a breath. "Okay," I said, then immediately thought of my mom and Holiday two floors up, Holiday already in her puffy parka. I thought of Live Poultry Fresh Killed. "Let me, um…I'll meet you in the car, okay? I just need a minute."

Greer looked at me a little suspiciously. "Who are you embarrassed of here, Linden?"

"What? Nobody," I said, though of course the real answer was all three of them, for completely different reasons, in completely different ways. "They're—I mean, my mom is probably going to give me a hard time for bailing, that's all."

Greer nodded slowly. "Well," she said, and tipped her face up to kiss me. "In that case, I will have to be sure to make it worth your while."

I grinned against her mouth. "I'll be right back."

"Uh-huh." She laid one chilly hand against the flat of my chest, then slid it down my body and squeezed. "I'll be here."

When I got back up to the apartment, Holiday was still wearing her coat, her tote bag slung over one shoulder. "Ready to go see the chicken sign?" she deadpanned. Then, off my presumably stricken face: "I'm kidding, dumbass. Go do your thing."

"I'm sorry," I said, scrubbing a hand through my hair. "I feel like a total dick."

"I mean, you are a total dick," Holiday said cheerfully, "but it's fine. Seriously, Michael, go have fun."

"Really?" Normally, I knew when Holiday was full of shit, but I couldn't get a read on her expression. It was disconcerting; she was a good actress, sure, but I wasn't used to her turning that particular skill on me. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!" She laughed—a little shrilly, maybe? I wasn't sure. "Dude," she said, "you obviously want to go. I want you to go."

"You want me to go, or you think I want to go?"

Holiday rolled her eyes. "I'm not doing this with you," she said. "Goodbye. See if you can find out anything about Emily, or who Greer was meeting the night of your accident. I'll talk to you in a few days."

"Okay," I agreed, unable to shake the creeping sense of unease in my chest and my stomach but not knowing what to do about it either. "A few days."