Chapter 2

2

Friday, 10/18/24

The sun was just stretching its arms over the tops of the academic buildings when my alarm went off the following morning. I had a real first-year kind of schedule, with eight a.m. classes every single morning of the week; on Fridays it was International Women Writers with Professor McMorrow, who was youngish and palpably brilliant, with a strict no-bullshit policy and a nose like a blade. The second week of class, some finance major with a two-hundred-dollar haircut had jumped in with a question that was really more of a comment about what he described as the wokening of the Ivy League, and I'd watched her take him out so cleanly she might as well have been a resistance sharpshooter in 1942 Paris. Something about her reminded me of my mom, actually, if my mom had gone to graduate school at Yale and Oxford instead of meeting my dad smoking a cigarette outside the Cantab in the spring of 2003.

"Nice work today, Michael," the professor said as I headed out the door of the lecture hall. "But don't forget to message me to set up a meeting, okay?"

I nodded. McMorrow was also my academic advisor, which meant that, per the email that had gone out to all first-year students at the beginning of the semester, I was supposed to have already scheduled a time to go to her office for a heart-to-heart about picking a major and fitting into the Harvard community and, presumably, what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wasn't sure why I kept putting it off, except for the fact that I didn't have answers to any of those questions, and one thing about the Harvard community was that everyone else decidedly did. "I will," I promised. "I'll do it tonight."

I had another class in a different building immediately after that one, and by the time it was done I was starving, so I grabbed a Snickers bar from one of the vending machines and ate it in two big bites, dry leaves crunching under my sneakers as I crossed campus toward Hemlock House. Greer's dorm was vintage Harvard, a big old brick building with a slate roof and a dozen chimneys, all narrow hallways and windows that didn't open properly and a geriatric elevator of questionable repute. I'd seen three different mice—at least, I thought they were three different mice; I suppose it could have been one particularly industrious mouse on three different occasions—in the handful of times I'd been inside.

My key card didn't give me access to any dorm other than my own, but a girl in jeans and a cable knit sweater held the front door open for me as she was leaving—an unsmiling blond who looked vaguely familiar, though I wasn't sure from where. I'd met a lot of people during orientation back at the beginning of the semester, when every social interaction felt like it began with someone in a brightly colored T-shirt announcing a game of Two Truths and a Lie ( I'm originally from East Boston, I'm allergic to apples, two summers ago I helped solve a murder; no, I'm not allergic to apples ). Since then I'd mostly hung out with the guys I knew from the lax team—and, more recently, with Greer.

She lived on the fourth floor of Hemlock, in a six-person suite made up of three doubles surrounding a small common space with a bathroom and a kitchenette. The girls usually kept the main door propped open with a book or a shower shoe wedged underneath it, and I knocked twice before I let myself inside. "Hey!" I called, breathing in the same burned-popcorn smell that all the suites had, cut by a faint whiff of hair product and a cupcake-scented plug-in. The common room was empty, somebody's crusty bowl of mac and cheese sitting forlornly on the coffee table. "Are you here?"

"Um, hi!" Greer called from the direction of her bedroom, her voice pitched a little higher than normal. "Yeah."

"Hey," I said again, heading down the dimly lit hallway. Greer's room—her side of it, at least—reminded me a lot of the one she'd lived in back at Bartley: thoughtfully considered and immaculately tidy, the bed made up with an antique quilt from Etsy and a Mark Rothko poster tacked neatly to the wall above the desk. Toni Morrison and The Tempest lined the bookshelf alongside a couple of the frothy, brightly covered romances Greer didn't like to admit she read, a vintage Polaroid camera serving as a bookend. The photos themselves were tucked into a ribbon board beside the bed, Greer with her parents in front of the big Christmas tree in New York City and a close-up of Bri at last year's spring formal, her red lips puckered like Marilyn Monroe's. Sweaters hung neatly in the closet. Jewelry hung neatly on hooks. A place for everything, I could almost hear Greer's mother telling her. Everything in its place.

Well. That was how it usually looked.

"Whoa," I said now, stopping short in the doorway. The whole room was a mess, the floor strewn with books and burrito wrappers and party clothes, like a panicky ghost had ransacked the wardrobe before dashing outside stark naked for a night of haunting. The drawers were all hanging open. The trash can had been overturned. "What happened?"

Greer shook her head. "I have no idea," she said, looking around at the damage. She was standing in the center of the room, holding a T-shirt she must have randomly scooped off the floor, her expression bewildered. "I just got back from class and it was like this." She rolled her eyes. "Probably Bri looking for her last party pill she thought she dropped somewhere, let's be honest with ourselves."

"Really?" I asked, unconvinced. The room did not seem to me like it had been tossed by Bri looking for her last party pill she thought she dropped somewhere, but it didn't seem immediately wise to say that out loud. "Is anything, like, missing?"

"I mean—" Greer looked around a little uncertainly, seeming to falter for a moment. "I don't think so?"

"Do you want me to get the RA?"

"What? No. " She shook her head, coming back to herself, though the color was still high in her cheeks. "What for, to tell her that Bri is a slob? It's fine. I'll make her buy me brunch this weekend, that's all."

"Okay," I said, gingerly setting my backpack down on the floor in the hallway, feeling pretty sure that there was more going on here than Greer was saying but not exactly sure what it might be. Girls could be kind of animals sometimes, I knew that about them. One time back at Bartley I'd seen a pair of roommates send each other to the ER. "Well, I can help you pick it up, at least."

"Are you sure?" Greer asked, frowning a little. "You definitely don't have to."

"No, of course," I said quickly. "Are you kidding? I'm about to spend my entire weekend scouring the grout at the lax house with a Magic Eraser. This is nothing."

That made her smile. "Okay," she agreed. "If you're sure."

"Greer," I said softly. "I'm sure."

We worked in companionable silence for a while, folding and sorting and setting things to rights. It felt weirdly intimate touching Greer's stuff like this, lining up the perfume bottles on her dresser and fluffing the throw pillows on her bed. Greer filched a dustbuster from one of her suitemates' rooms, running it over the rug for good measure. "Good enough," she decided finally, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and running her hands through her hair. "Thanks, Linden."

"Yeah, sure thing." I hesitated for a moment, then sat down in the desk chair. "No big deal."

"No, it is a big deal," Greer countered. "You're a good guy, you know that? I forgot that about you. Or, like, I tried to."

I glanced at her sidelong, grinning a little. "I can't tell if that's a compliment or not."

"It's a compliment," she promised, reaching out and nudging me in the ankle with one white platform sneaker. "I missed you, is what I'm telling you here. Take the win."

"Okay," I agreed. "I missed you too."

"Did you?" she asked. "Say more about that." Then, when I only mumbled noncommittally: "Oh, come on." Her voice was warm and familiar, the sound of the heat clanking on in the dorms back at Bartley. "It's a little late to get shy, good buddy."

"I'm not shy, " I said, though I was, a little bit. She undid me, Greer. She always had. "I might have checked your Instagram once or twice last year, who can say."

"Who indeed," Greer echoed teasingly. "This was in between you running up and down the Eastern Seaboard hooking up with a million other girls, yes?"

"I wasn't hooking up with a million girls," I protested, though I was secretly a little pleased she cared enough to be jealous. In fact, I'd hooked up with exactly one girl since Greer—but barely, and only just before she announced with zero equivocation that she never wanted to see me again as long as she lived. She was at Sarah Lawrence now, or that was the rumor; she'd blocked me on all social media platforms, so I couldn't confirm.

"That's not what I heard," Greer said now, taking my hand and tugging me over onto the bed beside her.

"Well, you heard wrong." I raised my eyebrows, leaning back against the wall. "Why, were you asking around about me?"

She shrugged. "I may have been."

"Say more about that. "

"I don't think I will, actually."

"Hardly seems fair."

"It doesn't, does it."

"Can I ask you something?" I blurted before I could lose my courage, looking at her in the autumn light seeping in through the tall, narrow window, dim even though it was still midday. "What exactly happened between us? After the accident, I mean. It was like one second we were fine, we were good, and then suddenly after…"

It was the first time either one of us had mentioned it since I'd gotten to campus, and it took Greer a moment to answer. "I don't know," she admitted finally, pulling her feet up onto the edge of the wooden bed frame, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I just felt so guilty after everything that happened, you know? I basically ruined your entire life, Linden."

"You didn't," I said immediately. "You didn't."

"I mean, maybe not in reality," Greer pointed out. "It turned out okay. But like…it definitely felt that way at the time. It did, " she insisted when I started to protest. "You were hobbling around campus in so much pain, you couldn't play lacrosse, you were so angry and so miserable—"

"So you thought you'd just cut your losses and ditch me?" It was out before I could stop it.

"I didn't ditch you, Linden!" Greer sounded wounded. "You barely had two words to say to me, don't you remember that? Every time we were together it was like this heavy, malignant fog hanging between us. This fucked-up thing had happened, and it was all my fault." She shrugged. "I guess I thought the best way to handle it was just to leave you alone and let you live your life."

"Greer," I started, though even as I opened my mouth to contradict her I knew she wasn't wrong. As a general rule I tried not to think about the weeks after the accident, the way I couldn't run or climb stairs or even shower without help. I'd spent ten days back at my mom's house, where all I did was have doctors' appointments and watch television and wait for it to be time to take my meds. I was furious. I was terrified. It was like there was poison leaking out of my pores. "I'm sorry."

" I'm sorry," she countered. "For all of it."

"It was an accident," I reminded her, though truthfully there was a part of me that wondered if maybe it had all been avoidable. Greer had never told me the full story of what we'd been doing out there on the road that night, and I'd always been too afraid to push her; even now, it didn't feel like the right moment to ask. "And it all turned out okay."

Greer looked over at me then, her shoulder warm against me, her mouth close enough to kiss. "It did, huh?"

"It did."

Greer grinned. "Come on," she said, springing to her feet and taking me with her, pulling me gently toward the door. "I'm done for the day, and I vaguely remember somebody saying something about a beach walk. And I will tell you, Linden: suddenly, I seem to be finding myself in a Nicholas Sparks sort of mood."

"Duly noted," I said, lacing my fingers through hers and squeezing. Glancing over my shoulder one more time before we left.

In the end we took the bus to Castle Island, eating paper cups of French fries from Sully's and dodging seagulls so big and mean they looked like omens. The wind was freezing cold against my face. It was nearly dark by the time we got back to Cambridge, Greer's chilly hand slipping into mine as we made our way across campus toward Hemlock. I could hear an old Lorde song drifting out somebody's open window, the tinkling ring of a bell on a passing bike.

"You have plans for tonight?" Greer asked, our index fingers still hooked together even as she walked backward up the wide stone steps in front of the building. "Or do you maybe want to come up for a bit?"

"I can come up," I said a beat too quickly, my heart turning over once inside my chest. "Yeah, of course I can come up."

"Okay," Greer said, and the smile that spread across her face was slow and knowing. "Well then. Come up."

I followed her through the lobby of Hemlock and up the winding staircase, breathing in the cold city smell coming off her, the ends of her hair just brushing against my face. I was imagining the two of us alone in her room, her bare skin golden in the glow of the Christmas lights tacked up above the windows, but when she opened the door to her suite, all five of her suitemates were sprawled like sirens across the furniture in the common room—the TV blaring, the smell of nail polish sharp in the air.

"Oh!" I said before I could stop myself, unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice. Margot was eating Cup Noodles while Celine painted little yellow happy faces onto her toenails; Bri tapped away on her laptop as Keiko scrolled industriously through her phone. "Uh. Hey, guys."

Dagny looked at me from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a blanket over her shoulders like a cape, her lips quirking faintly. "Hey yourself." She raised an eyebrow at Greer. "Please tell me you didn't bring a dude to Richard Gere pregame."

"I mean, not just any dude," Greer protested, shrugging out of her jacket and draping it playfully over Dagny's head. "It's Linden. He barely counts."

"Uh, hang on," I said. "Putting a pin in that charming bit of personal description for a minute: What's Richard Gere pregame?"

"Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, Big Harvard," Greer explained with a grin. She crossed the common room to the kitchenette and pulled a couple of clementines and a bag of Halloween candy down off the shelf before wriggling onto the love seat next to Bri. "Every Friday night we pregame to a different Richard Gere movie—"

"Although sometimes we don't actually make it out after," Bri explained, "because the act of participating in Richard Gere pregame reminds us that we don't actually like most people besides each other and Richard Gere."

"I like Richard Gere more than I like you guys," Celine piped up. "To be clear."

"Understood," Greer promised.

"Entered into the record," Margot agreed.

"Anyway," Greer continued, her expression all mischief when she looked back in my direction, "we're doing An Officer and a Gentleman tonight, though I guess it's possible I forgot to mention that when I invited you up here? I can't really remember. Of course, if it doesn't sound like a good time to you…" She trailedoff.

"Uh-huh." I nodded slowly, gazing at the six of them for a moment, their sweatpants and their ponytails and their barely contained amusement. They looked like sisters from a fairy tale. They looked like a flock of dangerous birds. "Richard Gere pregame sounds great."

Greer smiled at that, holding a clementine out in my direction. "It does, doesn't it?" she asked, scooting closer to Bri to make room for me. I sat down beside her, wedging myself into the corner of the too-small love seat. Taking the fruit from her hand.