Chapter 17

17

Thursday, 12/5/24

"My back hurts," I complained on Thursday afternoon, crouched on the fourth-floor landing of the dimly lit stairwell at Hemlock House. "Remind me again why we can't just wait outside the building?"

"It's suspicious," Holiday countered. She was close enough that I could smell the faint Earl Grey smell of her, her neck craned so she could peer out the narrow window in the staircase door. "Also, it's thirty degrees."

"How is it suspicious?" I asked. "I literally go to this college."

"I don't," Holiday reminded me. "And neither one of us lives here. Do you really want to have to explain to Greer what you and I were doing lurking around outside her dorm room like a couple of weirdos?"

"Waiting to surprise her with a candygram," I posited, only half joking. "Looking for my lost contact lens."

Holiday made a face. Both of us were punchy and bored; we'd spent the better part of the last three days tailing Margot around campus—or, more accurately, I had spent the better part of the last three days tailing Margot around campus, with Holiday dropping in for backup whenever she could—and so far it had been the dullest and most uneventful stakeout in the history of all humankind. We'd watched as Margot went to the library and worked on a paper. I'd followed her to a yoga class at the gym. We'd seen her buy a blueberry fig bar at the convenience store, then double back for a bottle of fizzy water; it was scintillating stuff, truly, but none of it had given us any indication of who Boy Genius might be, or what secret he and Margot might have been protecting from Greer. My neck ached. I had homework I should have been doing. And I was feeling more than a little like a dumbass.

"This is a waste of time," I declared.

"Maybe," Holiday agreed amiably. "You want to quit?"

I sighed. "No," I admitted. "But I would feel better if we'd been able to find anything on Emily so we could at least be sure we're even focusing on the right lead." An obituary for Greer's paternal grandpa in the New Haven Register had led us to her parents' marriage announcement; assuming Emily was related on Greer's mom's side, her last name was possibly Hawker, but a search of that name hadn't turned up anything useful.

"I wish I could figure out where I recognized her from," Holiday said, running her hands through her wild mass of curly hair. "It's driving me out of my mind."

"Senior citizens' water aerobics?" I teased, naming an actual class Holiday had taken at the Cambridge Y over the summer.

"Nah, it was probably leg day with my bros at the gym," she shot back.

"Rager at the lax house, maybe?" I asked—then, realizing it was a little too close to the thing we weren't talking about, I cleared my throat. "So," I said, glancing out the door of the stairwell one more time, "you and Duncan."

Holiday snorted. "What about me and Duncan?"

"Are you guys, like, dating now? Is it serious? Should I expect to come home and find a sock on the—"

"Easy, tiger." Holiday cut me off. "I like him," she admitted. "I mean, I don't know that we're going to be spending New Year's Eve together or anything, but I'm willing to see how it goes."

"Is that your measurement of a relationship with promise?" I teased, rolling my shoulders to ease the cramp there. "New Year's Eve plans?"

"Yes," Holiday said immediately. Then, at my dubious expression: "I mean, think about it. In terms of significant calendar dates, New Year's is a bigger deal than Valentine's Day. It's more important than your birthday, even. By spending New Year's Eve with someone, you're basically saying, I want to be with you in the past and in the future. I want to sit with you in the tension between the old world and the new one. I want to be with you for all time. "

"I mean, sure, I guess." I blinked at the intensity of it. "Or, alternately: I want to get drunk with you at a party and watch for cars while you pee on the curb at three a.m. "

Holiday rolled her eyes. "It's truly a wonder that publishers aren't clamoring at the door for your collection of original love poetry."

"I'm an undiscovered talent," I agreed. Holiday and I had spent at least three or four New Year's Eves together in elementary and middle school, actually, eating popcorn at her parents' house and staying up to watch the ball drop, though neither one of us mentioned that now. We'd been kids, that was all. She wasn't talking about when you were kids. "Is that what happened with Evan?" I asked, picking at my cuticles instead of looking directly at her. "You didn't want to spend New Year's Eve with him? You never really said."

Holiday glanced at me sidelong. "No," she agreed, her voice clipped. "I guess I didn't."

"So?" I prompted.

"So what, exactly?"

"I mean, nothing." I wasn't sure why she was being so evasive all of a sudden, but if there was one thing she'd taught me, it was that the questions people wanted to avoid were usually the ones worth pursuing. "Just wanted to know if you needed me to beat him up, that's all."

Holiday snorted. "Why do you assume he broke up with me?" she asked. "For all you know, I could have been the one who endedit."

"Were you?"

"No," she admitted, leaning her head back against the wall. "He was. But I could have been."

"Did he give you a reason?"

"Does it matter?"

"I—" I broke off, trying to think how to answer that. "Yes," I said eventually, which was the truth even if I didn't totally understand why.

Holiday looked at me for a long moment. Then she sighed. "He said I wasn't in it," she reported flatly.

"Meaning…"

"We got in this stupid fight," she said, leaning her head back against the wall. "He was going to backpack through Europe for all of June and July, and he wanted me to go with him."

I blinked. "Wow." Holiday and I had spent the entire summer together, eating ice cream from Christina's and watching the entirety of a sleepy PBS show she liked about a British veterinarian. She'd never mentioned she could have been sipping champagne at a café overlooking the Eiffel Tower and looking at artifacts stolen from colonized nations, or whatever people did on vacation abroad. "And you didn't want to?"

"First of all," Holiday said, "do I look to you for one second like a person who would enjoy backpacking anywhere? I don't even like backpacking to school. " She shook her head. "But also, it was my last summer before college, you know? I just…wanted to spend it here." She shrugged. "Anyway, then it turned into this whole big thing about how he loved me more than I loved him and how I'd had one foot out the door ever since we started dating, like I was just biding my time waiting for—" She broke off. "Whatever. Something better to come along."

"Were you?" I asked, the words coming out a little more quickly than I'd meant for them to.

Holiday shrugged one more time. "Maybe. I don't know." She crossed her arms. "I don't want to talk about this anymore, Michael."

"Why n—"

Holiday grabbed my elbow before I could get the question out, lifting her chin in the direction of the suite: Margot was headed down the hall toward the elevator, dressed in a puffy coat and a beanie, purse slung crosswise over her shoulder.

"Shit," Holiday hissed. "There she goes."

We scrambled to our feet, hustling down the stairs and bursting into the lobby just in time to see Margot disappear out the front door of Hemlock House. "This way," Holiday said quietly, nodding at the side entrance.

We followed her at a distance through the Square and down into the T station, then inbound to Park Street, where she transferred to the Green Line toward Allston. "Are we going to BU?" Holiday asked as the train shrieked out of the tunnel and onto the aboveground trolley tracks, craning her neck to try to keep eyes on Margot in the next car down. "I wonder if she's going to meet Emily. Is there a universe in which Emily is Boy Genius?" She frowned. "We should have brought disguises."

"Sox hats and fake mustaches," I agreed distractedly, peering over a businessman's shoulder.

"Large Dunkin' iced coffees."

"I would love a large Dunkin' iced coffee right now, actually."

"You know you might as well be paying four dollars for a plastic cup of water with a little dust sprinkled in."

"Also, cream and sugar—She's getting off," I interrupted myself, nodding as Margot stepped off the train and onto the platform. Holiday and I nearly took out a couple of old ladies in our hurry to follow, watching as Margot broke into a grin and waved at someone across the street. She darted through the traffic on Comm Ave, flinging herself with wild abandon directly into the arms of—

"Oh, fuck me," I said, stopping so short that Holiday crashed directly into my back.

"Who is that?" she hissed, peering over my shoulder. "The guy she's kissing?"

"That's James," I said. "Margot's cousin."

"Shut the fuck up," Holiday said, smacking me in the arm like I was joking, which I was emphatically not. Across the street Margot had popped up onto her tiptoes, her body pressed against James's right there in the middle of the sidewalk. "Are you sure they're real cousins? Maybe it's like one of those things where they're family friends but they call each other—"

"They're real cousins," I said grimly. "They were talking about their mean grandma when we were in Maine."

"Well, then maybe it's a WASP thing I just don't know about?" she asked hopefully.

"Tongue kissing your blood relative by way of greeting?"

"Whatever," Holiday said, a little defensive. "I don't know your fucking Wonder Bread customs. The point is—"

"The point is, we gotta tell Greer." I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket. "Will you come with me to talk to her? I can have her meet us at my room."

"Hang on," Holiday said, holding a hand up. "Wait a second."

I paused, but only for a second, still scrolling to Greer's name in my contacts. "Why?"

"Because we don't know anything yet, Michael."

That stopped me. "What do you mean we don't know anything?" I gaped at her. "Why do you keep trying to slow this whole thing down?"

"I'm not trying to slow anything down," Holiday argued. "I'm trying to keep us—or, more specifically, I'm trying to keep you —from showing your ass to everyone in the entire commonwealth."

"I can cover my own ass," I snapped, more loudly than I meant to, then stopped and scrubbed a hand over my face. "Look," I tried. "We know Margot and James are hooking up, which means James is Boy Genius. We know Greer is onto them, which would give them motive. And Margot wasn't at the lacrosse party."

Holiday looked deeply skeptical. "What about the note, then?" she asked. " You owe me ?"

"Maybe Margot wrote it to try to intimidate Greer into keeping quiet," I suggested. "Or maybe it's completely unrelated."

"Maybe," Holiday said, clearly unconvinced.

I sighed. "The point is, if we just went and asked Greer about it instead of sneaking around behind her back, she could tell us—"

"Greer has already been super clear that she thinks this whole thing is a shit show," Holiday argued. "Bringing her in now is just going to ruin the entire investigation."

"It's not going to ruin— Can I ask you something? What is it about Greer that bothers you so much?"

"Aaaand I'm going to stop you right there," Holiday declared, eyes narrowing. "You know what, Michael? Do whatever you want. We all know that's what you're doing to do anyway." She yanked her phone out of her coat pocket, glancing down at the screen. "I have to get back," she announced snottily. "Duncan's coming with me to a ballet thing at the Majestic."

"Oh, right." There was no reason for that to piss me off so much. "I forgot what a lover of ballet he is. Patron of the arts, truly."

Holiday gaped at me. "Oh, my god," she announced. "Oh, my god!" She put her hands on her face and made a big show of pulling her cheeks down, like the strain of talking to me was causing the flesh to melt right off her bones. "Why are you being like this?"

Uh-oh. Danger, Will Robinson. "Like what?" I asked—stalling, playing like I didn't know what she meant. At the very least I wanted to make her say it first.

Holiday wasn't having it. "Uh-uh," she said, holding a finger up. "You know like what."

"I really don't."

"Like you're four years old and he's playing with your trains and you don't like it."

"My trains, in this analogy, being you?"

Holiday blushed, which was the point. "That's not—" She shook her head. "I can't do this with you anymore, Michael."

"Can't do what?"

"Can't do any of it!" She whirled on me. "Why didn't you come to my showcase?"

I blinked. "Wha—"

"I told you about it, the night we went to South Street. You said you'd be there."

She had, I realized, with the sick, panicky feeling you get in a dream about sleeping through an important test, that warm wash of horror from your chest to your feet. She had told me about it—and not only had I forgotten to show up for it, I'd never even asked her how it went. All at once I remembered the night we'd gone to the party at the lax house, how quiet she'd seemed on the walk over: Did something happen last night? Something had happened. I'd flaked on her fucking show. "Shit, Holiday," I said. "I'm sorry. Why didn't you remind me?"

"First of all, I talked about rehearsals pretty much constantly," Holiday retorted. "And second of all, why does it have to be my job to remind you? Like, why do I have to do the emotional labor of constantly reminding you of every commitment you've ever made to me?"

"You said it wasn't a big deal!"

"And you believed me?" She made a face, and I didn't blame her. "Of course it was a big deal! Look, Michael, I don't know how to tell you this without sounding like an asshole, but I'm kind of like, doing some pretty cool shit for a freshman over at my school. And I can't even enjoy it because I'm always on the other side of the river traipsing through some garbage pile with you. And for what?"

"Nobody's forcing you to do any of this, Holiday." My face felt like it was on fire. "Excuse me for thinking we were friends, I guess."

"Friends?" Holiday echoed, barking out a sharp little laugh. "You think we're friends."

I frowned. "What are you— Of course we're friends."

Holiday planted her feet. "Who's my roommate, Michael?"

"What?"

"My roommate. At college. What's her name?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, racking my memory for some identifying detail. She must have mentioned it at some point. Chiara? Liz?

Holiday watched me wriggle for a moment before she finally shook her head. "I can see you're trying to remember," she said. "But it's not in your brain. I've never told you, because you've never asked. You've never asked about my roommate, or what classes I'm taking, or if I even like my program. For all you know I've dropped out of theater school entirely to study business at Northeastern, hoping to get a job selling mortgages when I graduate."

"I mean," I said. "At the very least, I'm pretty sure that's not true."

Holiday blew out a noisy breath. "The point is, if we were actually friends, all that stuff would have come up naturally in conversation. But it hasn't, because we're not. We're not? !" It came out almost like a wail. "I'm just…a person who helps you solve shit. I'm like an extremely useful piece of office equipment to you. I'm an iPhone, but with breasts and an encyclopedic knowledge of the work of Stephen Sondheim."

"I ask you questions," I protested. "I asked you about why you and Evan broke up literally like two hours ago."

"Oh, well, in that case," Holiday scoffed. "One question about my failed relationship six months after the fact makes up for all the rest of it, I guess."

I didn't know how to respond to that, exactly. It felt like wading into a swamp filled with alligators. "We've been distracted," I said finally. "The start of freshman year, not to mention everything else that's been going on—"

But Holiday wasn't buying. "I would have shown up for you," she says. "I always show up for you. And I can't keep doing it, telling myself it's fine, that we have fun together, that it's enough. Like, just hanging around some college I don't even go to, waiting for you to suddenly—" She broke off, her expression stricken.

"Waiting for me to what?" My voice was very quiet.

"Forget it."

"Waiting for me to what, Holiday?" It felt like I was at the top of a tall building with no guardrails, looking over the edge a hundred stories down.

Holiday shook her head. "To wake up one day and suddenly be the kind of friend that I deserve."

"Bullshit," I told her flatly. "That's not what you were going to say. And it's the second time today you've started a sentence like that and then refused to finish it, so I don't think you're really in a position to be telling me what kind of interest I take or don't take in your—"

"See, this is why I didn't want to talk to you about this." Holiday cut me off, eyes flashing. "Because your ego is so fragile that like, any kind of feedback—"

"Feedback?" I echoed. "Is that what you call what's happening right now?"

"I'm not even saying anything mean, Michael! On top of which, I'm not even saying anything new. Our whole lives, our entire friendship has been on your terms."

"On my terms? You are unequivocally the boss of me, Holiday."

"If you think that, you're even stupider than you look."

Oh, I didn't like that. "Maybe we shouldn't be hanging out so much, then. You said it yourself, right? This is a city full of new people. Maybe both of us could stand to go meet some."

Holiday pressed her full lips together. I hadn't seen her cry in almost a decade, and for a second it almost looked like she was about to, but in the end she only lifted her chin like a queen. "Maybe we could," she agreed. "I'll see you around, Michael."

"Great," I agreed. "See you around."