Chapter 19

19

Friday, 12/6/24–Saturday, 12/7/24

We went to dinner at a place Greer liked in Chinatown, tucking ourselves into a tiny table by the fogged-up window and ordering a mess of steamed buns and udon noodles. "What are you doing for the break?" Greer asked over the clank of dishes from the kitchen.

Trying to find odd jobs and avoiding Holiday, probably, but I didn't say that out loud. "Still considering my options," I told her instead, hooking an ankle around hers underneath the wobbly table. "Why, are you traveling?"

Greer nodded. "I think Vail, maybe?" She heaped a pile of noodles onto her plate. "We'll see what happens when grades come back, though. It's possible my dad will make me stay in Connecticut practicing Latin conjugation to atone for my unextraordinary mind."

"I think you're pretty extraordinary," I told her, no hesitation. Greer flicked a piece of green onion at my head.

We got an Uber back to campus. It was freezing, the wind damp and that bite in the air that tempts snow; Greer slipped her hand into mine as we crossed the courtyard toward Hemlock House, tugging me close like we could keep each other warm that way. "You could come with me," she murmured. "Over break, I mean."

I looked down at her as we made our way through the lobby, interested. "To Vail, you mean?"

Greer grinned. "Or to Connecticut," she said with a shrug. "I might need some help with my irregular verbs."

We swung by the suite to pick up a bottle of wine Greer had squirreled away in her closet, then climbed the stairs to my empty room. Both of us had work to do, so Greer put on a jazzy, Starbucks-y playlist she said would help us focus, the two of us sitting side by side in my bed clacking away at our computers. Duncan and Dave got back from the library around midnight, bearing fries and shakes from Tasty Burger. All of us were asleep by one a.m.

I woke up the following morning to a knock on the door. The light was gray and blurry out the window when I cracked one eye open; I was confused for a second, thinking I was back at home in Eastie and my mom was knocking to tell me that school had been canceled for snow. Then I blinked and remembered.

"What the fuck," Dave mumbled, rooting around for his glasses as whoever it was knocked again, louder and more insistently this time. "What time is it?"

"Early." I climbed over Greer, who was only just stirring, and padded barefoot across the carpet to swing the door open. "Yeah?"

"Michael Linden?"

I blinked. Standing silhouetted against the harsh light of the hallway were the same two campus security guards Holiday had shaken down to let us look at the entry log for Hemlock House. "Um," I said, a second of keen white fear slicing through me that something terrible had happened to my mom while I was across the river drinking goldfish and reading Derrida like an asshole. "Yes? That's me."

"We've had a report of stolen property in this room," said the taller one—DiNapoli, I remembered. I wasn't sure if I was imagining the look of gleeful satisfaction on his face. "We'd like to conduct a search."

I didn't answer for a moment, my brain sluggish with sleep and confusion. "A search?" I repeated slowly, trying to figure out what the fuck I should do here. I knew Holiday would tell them to come back with a warrant—but did campus security even need a warrant to search a dorm? I didn't know, on top of which I was in my heart, and had always been, a rule follower. Also: I had nothing to hide. "Yeah, okay." I looked at Duncan and Dave, who were both sitting up dazedly in their bunk beds. "I mean, if it's okay with you guys?"

They nodded in unison.

"Um, what's this about?" Greer asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for her tortoiseshell glasses, her brow furrowed as she slipped them onto her face. "I mean, what are you looking for, exactly?" She turned to me. "Do you know what they're looking for?"

"I have no idea," I promised quickly, swallowing down the reflexive kind of guilt you feel when people are accusing you of something, even when you know objectively you haven't done anything wrong. I watched as the two of them opened my drawers and pawed through my closet—with, frankly, a lot less elegance and finesse than Holiday and I had when we'd been going through Hunter's stuff back at the lax house. "Who was the report from?"

"That's not information we're able to share," the shorter one said—or started to, anyway. He was interrupted by a quiet sound of satisfaction from his partner:

"Welp," DiNapoli announced, his beefy hands buried in my underwear drawer, "here we go."

I looked over, my mouth falling slightly open in abject shock: there was Greer's watch—the vintage Rolex, big and heavy and elegant—gleaming quietly in the morning light.

I gasped, I couldn't help it. Duncan and Dave looked on in horror. Greer stared at me for a moment, a thousand different expressions flickering across her face. "Linden," she said finally, and her voice was almost preternaturally calm. "What the fuck are you doing with my grandpa's watch?"

"Greer," I said, gaping back at her. "I have no idea. I have no fucking idea! Somebody planted it in there. Somebody's setting me up. Come on, you've gotta know somebody's setting me up." It sounded ridiculous. It was ridiculous, like something out of a campy film noir. "Greer," I said again. "Come on."

But Greer wasn't listening. "Can I have it back?" she asked the security guards. Her voice was very small. "My watch, I mean."

The shorter one shook his head. "We need to photograph and log it as evidence first—"

"Evidence?" I was almost shouting. "It's not evidence of anything."

"—but you can file a claim with the university, and it'll be returned to you once the disciplinary hearings are done."

Greer nodded. "Okay," she said, rubbing a hand over her face. She looked exhausted, the hollows under her eyes bluish in the pale light of morning. "Thank you."

My heart was racing. "Greer—"

"Don't, Linden." She barely spared me a glance before turning back to the guards. "Can I go, then? Like, do you need me to…" She trailed off, waving a hand in a way that presumably meant act as a witness for Linden's summary execution.

"Sure," one of them said, looking to his partner for confirmation. "I don't see why not."

"Great," she said. "I guess I will…do that, then." She turned back to Dave and Duncan. "I'll see you guys around, I guess? I don't even—"

"Greer!" I tried again, and this time she whirled on me.

"I don't know what's going on," she said, "and honestly, I don't really want to know. But you've been acting weird ever since we started hanging out again. And I've been trying to tell myself it's fine, that it doesn't matter, that I'm just grateful to have you back in my life, but now—like, is that why you wanted to get back together? So you could steal from me?" She shook her head. "Did you hurt Bri too?"

"Of course not," I said, momentarily dizzy. "Stop."

"We're going to need you to come with us to the dean's office," DiNapoli announced, putting a hand on my arm. I resisted the urge to jerk away, but barely. I felt like I was floating somewhere up near the ceiling, watching this whole thing happen to someone else.

"I've gotta get out of here," Greer said, so quietly it might have only been to herself. "I've gotta go." She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and brushed past the security guards, the swish of her hair the last thing I saw before I turned around to face whatever was about to happen next.