Chapter 21

21

Saturday, 12/14/24

"You know," I said forty minutes later, sitting in the passenger seat of Holiday's filthy car as we cruised through Newton, a tony suburb west of Boston, "clearly I am not in a position to be questioning anything about your investigative methods at this particular moment. But one might make the argument that I'd be a more effective stakeout partner if you'd tell me what we're looking for."

"Who says we're even on a stakeout?" Holiday shot back, flicking on her turn signal with a flourish. "I mean, for all you know I'm just taking the scenic route back to my dorm. There's something I need on a high shelf that I can't reach."

"You're taller than I am," I pointed out.

Holiday's smile was brilliant. "I know."

She turned left, then right again—navigating without the benefit of her phone or any map that I could locate, like possibly she had the entire road atlas of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts tucked neatly away in her brain—before finally pulling into the parking lot of the public high school and cruising to a stop in front of the main entrance. "Okay," I said as she pulled the parking brake. "Now what?"

But Holiday only shrugged. "I don't know, Michael. You did miss my stage debut," she reminded me. "I feel like I'm entitled to a few theatrics." She nodded at the entrance, where a steady trickle of high schoolers were making their way through the main entrance, heads ducked against the sharp December wind. "SATs today," she observed.

"Thinking of reapplying?" I teased. "Going to try to get into business school after all?"

Holiday shook her head. "They couldn't handle me."

"That's a fact."

We were silent for a moment, both of us watching the entrance. Harvard didn't require the SATs anymore—most schools didn't—but I'd taken them anyway, and so had most of my friends at Bartley. If you tanked, there was no obligation to submit the results to colleges. And if you did well, at the very least they knew you could take a test.

"How was it?" I asked finally, glancing at her sidelong. "Your showcase, I mean."

Holiday looked at me for a long time. "I nailed it," she said.

"Yeah," I said, a confusing mix of emotions surging through me—pride, regret, a weird chasm of longing. "Sounds about right." I took a deep breath. "Look, Holiday—"

But Holiday held up a hand to stop me. " You look," she said, pointing through the windshield. "Right there."

I squinted, following her gaze across the small plaza to where a blond in jeans and a nondescript gray hoodie was heading into the testing site. "Is that…Greer's cousin Emily?" I asked. "I don't— She goes to BU. What's she doing taking the SATs?"

"She doesn't go to BU," Holiday announced. "Her name isn't Emily. And she's not Greer's cousin."

I blinked. "Wait," I said as the girl—Not-Emily, apparently—disappeared inside. "What? Hang on a sec."

"Greer is on academic probation, right?" Holiday asked, sitting back in the driver's seat and pulling one leg up underneath her. "And when I was looking at your Bartley yearbooks when I was at your house that day, I didn't see her in any of the honor society pictures. It just made me wonder, you know—if she didn't have the grades to get into Harvard, and she wasn't like, a sports person or a computer prodigy or whatever, how did she wind up there?"

"Legacy," I said immediately. "Which is cringey, I know, but—"

"Would she have taken the chance on legacy, though? Like from what you said about the pressure she was under, would she have risked it?" Holiday lifted her chin in the direction of the entrance. "Or did she have an insurance policy?"

I shook my head, feeling defensive on Greer's behalf in spite of myself. "I don't know what that means."

Holiday blew a breath out. "That girl's real name is Corinne Hayes," she informed me. "She's an MIT dropout who works at the Apple Store in the South Shore mall, but she's also, as it turns out, got a nice little side hustle taking the SATs for would-be Ivy Leaguers who aren't sure they can get the job done on their own."

"But Emily—"

"There is no Emily, Michael."

"Wait wait wait." I blinked. "Like, at all?"

Holiday shook her head. "At least, not that I could find. And trust me: I looked. "

"I know you did," I said slowly. "I know."

"Did Greer ever mention a cousin before that day at the football game?"

I thought about that for a moment, racking my memory. "No," I admitted finally. "I guess she didn't."

"It took me a long time, but the other night I finally figured out where I recognized her from," Holiday told me. "Corinne, I mean. She was on the security camera footage when we were looking for Hunter. She went into Hemlock a couple of minutes before he did." Her lips twisted. "You might have noticed her too, if you hadn't been so busy arguing with the security guard over the technicalities of goldfish swallowing."

I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to put the pieces together. "So Greer hired this girl Corinne to take the SATs for her. And then—" I thought of the note underneath the bed: you owe me. I thought of seeing Corinne leaving Hemlock the day Greer's room got tossed. "Our theory is what, exactly? Corinne came after Greer for money? But got Bri instead?"

"Yes," Holiday said, "and no."

"Is that all you're going to tell me?"

She shrugged. "Michael," she said, and her voice was so quiet. "Let me be a little bit impressive right now, will you?"

I opened my mouth, closed it again. "Sure," I said. "Of course."

Holiday nodded briskly at that, putting the car in drive and glancing over her shoulder as she pulled out of the parking lot. "Buckle up, partner," she instructed, her dark eyes shining. "We're going back to school."