Chapter 22

22

Saturday, 12/14/24

It felt like a lot longer than a week since I'd been on campus. I looked around uneasily as we climbed the steps of Hemlock House, feeling like Rip Van Winkle waking up after a hundred years. "You ready?" Holiday asked as we made our way down the hall. I couldn't quite get myself to reply.

It was Greer who opened the door of the suite. "What are you doing here?" she asked, her dark gaze darting back and forth between Holiday and me. "Did they clear you?"

"Not yet, actually," I admitted a little sheepishly. On the ride over here I'd been happy to take Holiday's lead, but all at once I wished I'd made her tell me exactly what we were doing here: how to play this, what to say. "Li-Wen let us up. Can we come in?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea." That was Dagny, with Keiko and Margot close behind her and Celine bringing up the rear; they clustered behind Greer in the doorway, a quartet of Chanel-scented bodyguards.

Holiday cleared her throat. "Hi," she said, holding a hand up and smiling her sanest smile. "I don't know if you all remember me. We met at the football game; I'm Holiday, I'm Linden's friend. I know it's a Saturday, and that you guys must be busy with finals, on top of which you've all obviously been through, like, a ton of shit this semester. This will only take a second."

"What will?" Keiko asked, but Holiday was already slipping neatly past her into the common room, perching on the arm of the sofa.

"I just was hoping to talk to Greer really quick," she said, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "About the night Bri died."

"Oh, my god, when are you guys going to drop this!" Greer whirled on us. "I'm not doing this with you. I'm not."

Dagny frowned. "Greer—"

"They think somebody was trying to kill me and got Bri instead," Greer announced, "which is delusional, clearly. And they're been like, snooping around trying to prove it, or at least that's what they said they were doing—"

"Holy shit," Dagny said. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because it's embarrassing!" Greer exploded. "And it's weird! And it's frankly fucking scary, so—"

"You guys are guests here," Margot interrupted, turning to me and to Holiday. "You don't even go to Harvard, and I don't even think you're technically allowed on campus right now, Linden, so I don't know what you think you're doing just like barging in here and—"

"Making wild accusations?" Holiday supplied. "No, totally. I agree. And I owe you an apology, Greer, because we were wrong to think somebody was coming after you. That's not actually what happened at all."

"Okay," Margot said, holding her hands up. "This is silly. I'm going to go get the RA—"

"You told Linden you were in the library with Margot until it closed the night that Bri died," Holiday said to Greer, "which as far as I can tell is probably true. But what you didn't mention is that Margot peeled off afterward—to go to BU, if I had to guess—"

Keiko's eyes narrowed quizzically. "Why BU?" she asked Margot, but Holiday was still talking.

"—while you came back to Hemlock before you went to Linden's room. And you had someone with you: Corinne Hayes." She turned to look at me, anticipating my question. "The two of them were together, on the camera footage. I didn't want to say anything because—" She broke off, but I knew why. A couple of years ago Holiday had posited someone I cared about as a suspect, and it had almost been the end of our friendship. There was no way she'd have said anything this time unless she was absolutely sure.

"Wait a second," Dagny said. "Who the fuck is Corinne Hayes?"

"That's a great question," Holiday said. "Corinne Hayes took the SATs for Greer. Did she write your essays too?" she asked, turning to look at her. "I know she does essays, but they're expensive."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Greer snapped.

"She was shaking you down, right?" Holiday sounded almost sympathetic. "Escalating. Leaving creepy notes where your suitemates might find them. Trashing your room. Threatening to rat you out to your parents—or worse—if you didn't keep paying, which is why you started stealing things—including, I'm pretty sure, your own watch. A nice touch, by the way. Very clever to throw suspicion off yourself right from the get-go. I would have done the same thing.

"My guess is that she came back for more the night of the party at the lax house," Holiday continued—she was enjoying herself now, I could see it, her posture relaxing as she perched on the arm of the couch. "And what were you going to do? You were in it now. You'd done it. It was way too late. You couldn't risk anybody seeing you give her the money out in the open, so you brought her up here thinking the suite would be empty. Bri must have come back from the party, heard you guys arguing, and freaked out. You couldn't pay her off too, probably. She was drunk, she was high. She was going to out you. You fought. And it got out of hand." She turned to me. "We were wrong from the very beginning, Linden. It was never a case of mistaken identity. Nobody was ever after Greer. Greer killed Bri to keep her secret."

I felt myself get light-headed, the blood draining from my skull. I don't know what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't this. "Holiday," I started, but Celine cut me off.

"This is ridiculous," she announced, pulling Greer behind her like Greer was a child and we were a couple of perverts lurking on the playground. "Like, what in the actual fuck is happening right now? Who the fuck do you think you are? We all know you're here on scholarship, Linden. We all know you never have any cash. So if this is some messed-up way to try to shift the blame off you for stealing shit from people who trusted you, then—"

"Don't," Greer interrupted. "Celine, come on, don't say that."

"Are you serious?" Dagny whirled on her. "Why are you defending him right now? We're your friends, Greer. We're not about to sit here and let him use what happened to Bri as some excuse to call you a fucking murderer —"

"That's not what we're saying," I interrupted reflexively.

"It's exactly what you're saying!" Margot looked at me like I was deranged. "It is literally exactly what you guys just said. Like, does that make you feel good about yourself, to waltz in here and say that shit to a person who's grieving—"

"Stop," Greer said, holding a hand up. "All of you, just—"

"You stop, Greer! I'm not going to let them come into our house and say you killed our fucking suitemate in cold blood. Like, did you kill our suitemate in cold blood? Of course not, so—"

"It wasn't like that," Greer said quietly. "That's not what it was like."

Just for one second, none of us breathed. "Greer," I murmured, and I swore I could feel my heart breaking deep inside my chest. "Oh, Greer."

"It wasn't, " she insisted, shaking her head a little. "Bri was my best friend. I loved her. The same way I love all of you." She slid down the wall into a crouch, wrapping her arms around her knees like she wanted to make herself as small as humanly possible. "But she was just so outraged, you know? It was like she didn't even know me, like she was just going on and on about fairness and integrity, like she had any kind of leg to stand on. That whole I'm just the humble daughter of a car salesman thing that she liked to do? Her dad literally plays golf with the dean of admissions on Nantucket every summer. It's not like she got here through brains and grit. But she just looked so disappointed in me, you know? It made me feel insane. And she was going on and on and she was just so noisy. " She turned to the girls. "You guys know how she was. A voice like a fucking foghorn. Even on a Saturday with nobody around, somebody was going to hear. I didn't mean to hurt her. I just needed her to stop yelling before someone heard.

"You guys don't know what it was like," she continued. "Not coming here was never an option. My grades weren't great. I'm not a violin prodigy or a field hockey star. I'm just…average. I always have been. And there is absolutely nothing my parents hate more than that."

It was Margot, in the end, who found her voice first. "Greer, sweetheart," she said. She sounded so kind. "We have to tell someone."

Greer looked at her for a moment. "I know," she said quietly, and started to cry.

Margot hugged her then. The other three joined them, the five of them holding each other, connected in their grief and their love for each other. They looked like a Renaissance painting, like something you'd see hanging in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum across town. It felt like we were intruding.

"Come on," Holiday said, putting a gentle hand on my arm and nodding toward the exit.

"What?" I murmured, surprised. I was waiting on the grand finale; I figured she'd have somehow texted a buddy on the Cambridge Police Department on the way over here, or sent out a distress signal via the 311 app. "Don't we need to make sure—?"

"No," Holiday said, "we don't." She shook her head. "They can handle it from here."