Chapter 4

4

Saturday, 10/26/24

Back at my dorm I grabbed dinner and a shower, then sat on my bed and pulled my phone out of my pocket, flicking through my contacts until I got to Greer's name. See you at the lax house tonight? I asked, hoping I sounded appropriately casual and not like I'd spent the better part of six miles composing and revising this exact text in my head on my run earlier today.

The phone buzzed with her reply a moment later: I can't, Greer reported, adding a little sad face emoji. I have a biochem quiz first thing Monday morning. Going to get a PSL as big as my head and go work in the library like the most basic of bitches.

On Halloween weekend? I couldn't help but ask.

I know, she texted back. The worst. But my dad wants to schedule a Zoom to talk about the "outlook for the remainder of the semester," which is honestly scarier to me than the Babadook at this point.

I flopped back onto the mattress, fighting down an embarrassing surge of disappointment. That sucks, I typed, for lack of anything clever or useful to say. Breakfast tomorrow, maybe?

"So hey," Duncan said just then, leaning back in his desk chair across the room. His voice was so, so casual. There was a tiny hole in the bottom of his sock. "About your friend Holiday."

I felt my eyes narrow. "What about her?"

"You guys aren't…" Duncan frowned, reaching for his water bottle and cradling it like a newborn baby. "I mean, are you?"

"We aren't what, exactly?"

"He wants to know if you guys have boned," Dave piped up helpfully, "but he's afraid you'll beat him up for asking."

That stopped me. "When have I ever acted like I was going to beat either one of you up for anything?" I asked, weirdly wounded. "Like, is that the vibe I give off to people?"

"I'm not afraid you're going to beat me up," Duncan clarified.

I frowned. "I thought we were friends."

"Are we?" Dave asked. He tilted his head, his straight black hair falling across his eyes. "Like, is that what you would call us?"

"Yes!" This was absurd. "Anyway, to answer your question, no, of course not. We've never—" I shook my head. "She's like my sister."

"To be fair, I don't think he'd want you to date his sister either," Dave pointed out, munching a Bugle on the bottom bunk.

"That's not the poi— Look, I gotta go," I announced abruptly, getting up off the bed and yanking a clean shirt over my head, screwing with my hair in the mirror on the back of the closet door. "I'll see you guys in the morning, all right? Don't forget to check your Halloween candy for needles."

I met up with George Patel and a handful of other first-years for the pregame in a different dorm across campus, where I drank three beers a little faster than I meant to, so my head was already feeling like a balloon by the time we headed over to the party. The lax house was warm inside: the steady thump of a bassline, the smell of booze and people and weed hanging densely in the air.

I got swallowed up into the crowd pretty much immediately, downing another couple of beers and playing wingman for George as he tried to make it happen with a girl from his Intro to Computer Science class. I was hoping Greer might have blown off the library and come anyway, that I'd catch sight of her perched on the steps, dressed as a black cat or a Freudian slip, but when I looked around the crowded living room there was no sign of her glossy dark hair and round tortoiseshell glasses. A few of her suitemates were here, though, and I waved to Keiko and Bri, who—judging by her rosy cheeks and slightly glassy expression—had also gotten her own personal party started at some point before she arrived.

"Linden!" she called when she spotted me, holding out her arms like we were long-lost sisters from a Disney movie. "Come settle a bet."

"Uh-oh," I said, weaving through the crowd. She was sitting on the arm of the couch with her shoes on the cushion, her sharp heels snagging on the worn leather. "What's up?"

Keiko was shaking her head. "Nothing," she assured me, nudging Bri with one sharp elbow. "We were just…speculating, that'sall."

"About?" I asked, and both of them burst out laughing.

"Never mind," Keiko said firmly, though her gaze flicked unmistakably to my crotch before finding its way back up to my face. "Where's your costume?"

"Where's yours ?" I countered, looking at Bri.

"This is it," she said, gesturing down at her outfit, jeans and a silky emerald-green tank top I was pretty sure belonged to Greer. "I'm a chameleon."

"Do you change colors?"

"Only when I get excited," she chirped, then turned back to Keiko. "Linden doesn't do Halloween costumes," she reported. "He's too cool."

"Is that what Greer told you?" I asked.

Bri's lips twisted. "Don't fish," she said primly. Then she grinned. She had a nice smile, Bri, warm and open. "She wants to get back together with you," she confessed, dropping her voice a little. "Greer, I mean."

Right away, Keiko shook her head. "I'm not hearing this!" she announced, sliding off the couch in the direction of the keg. "I know nothing."

"She wouldn't care if I told him!" Bri called after her. "They dated for like a full year!"

"She does?" I asked, trying not to sound too thirsty. "How can you tell?"

Bri shrugged. "She's my best friend. I know things."

"Well." I tucked my hands into my pockets. "For the record: I want to get back together with her too."

"Oh, we know," Bri assured me. "You're gonna have to nut up a little, though."

I snorted, hoping she wouldn't notice my cheeks reddening. "I'm trying."

"Try harder," she advised seriously. "She had a tough year last year, you know? For a lot of reasons. She needs something good in her life right now."

"I will…take that under consideration," I promised, sitting down beside her on the couch. "How's your semester going?"

Bri shrugged. "I don't know," she said, suddenly looking more sober than I'd ever seen her. "Good, I guess. I mean, my classes are fine." She was a double major, I knew, criminology and prelaw. "And I love living in the suite, obviously. But like, do you ever just look around this place and think, What the fuck am I doing here with all these people? I mean, don't get me wrong, my dad sells SUVs in Connecticut, you know? I'm not saying I grew up on the mean streets. But there's a girl in my Economic Justice seminar who's a literal countess. A countess! And also, not for nothing, she's a fuckin' bitch."

That made me laugh. "I get it," I said.

"I know you do," Bri said. I wondered what she meant by that, wondered what Greer might have told her. Back at Bartley I'd done everything I could to hide who I was and where I came from, a scholarship kid with a chip on his shoulder. I'd promised myself I wasn't going to do that here, but still, it was hard to ignore that instinctive flash of defensiveness, the impulse to protect the soft places.

We talked for a long time—about our classes and my roommates and her sister, who was in treatment for an eating disorder down in Stamford. I liked Bri, I couldn't help it. She reminded me of the girls I'd known back at Bartley: warm and witty and a little bit wild, always sharper than they first let on.

"Anyway," she said finally—or started to, then broke off to let out a small, ladylike burp. "Fuck me, that's my cue," she admitted with a laugh, listing a little as she got to her feet. "I gotta go."

"Fair enough," I said, holding out a hand to help her off the couch. "You okay to get home?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fine," she promised, waving to Keiko, who was sitting on the staircase next to a girl I vaguely recognized from the weight room at the gym. "I'll find a buddy. See you around, Linden."

The rest of the night passed in a blur: a sloppy game of Flip Cup, someone's beer spilled all over my sneakers. I was just about to see if there was anything to eat in the kitchen when someone called out across the living room. "Yo, Linden!" Here was Hunter, holding—oh, Jesus—a goldfish swimming frantically around in a drinking glass. "Got a little project for you."

I glanced around, suddenly and deeply uneasy. "What kind of project?" I asked, though there was a part of me that already knew.

Hunter held the glass out in my direction. "Bottoms up."

I could have said no, obviously. I could have told him to go fuck himself. It wouldn't have been the first time someone had done it: just this week another first-year, Oliver Beckett, had snapped and told Hunter to write his own fucking lit papers. It wasn't like he'd gotten kicked off the team. Still, there was a distinct coolness between Oliver and the rest of us now, underclassmen included. I hadn't seen him here at the party tonight.

That wasn't the only reason I wasn't about to back down, though. Back in elementary school I used to get in fights like all the time; I was small, and I got picked on a lot, and I had no dad to speak of, which was a good and efficient thing to make fun of me about if you were looking for a reaction. "Michael," my mom would say, dipping out of Holiday's parents' house to come pick me up in her ancient Toyota, parking me at their kitchen table to do my homework and demanding I not move, "I do not understand it. You know what you're supposed to do in a situation like that. Get a teacher. Walk away." I did know that, and I understood it; still, there was something about the challenge that felt irresistible to me. There was something satisfying about it, even when I knew there was no way it could possibly end well. I would one hundred percent always have rather taken the punch.

Now I lifted my chin in Hunter's direction, squared my shoulders, and took the glass from his outstretched hand. "Bottoms up," I echoed, and drank.

It was almost three when I shuffled back across campus, the wind cold and biting. The temperature had dropped significantly; this afternoon by the river with Holiday felt like it had happened in a whole other life. The overnight security guard eyed me as I swiped my card to get into the building; a squirrelly-looking girl in a beanie smoked a cigarette near the gate.

I stumbled up the stairs and let myself into my room—we never bothered bolting the door, which was good because I couldn't have gotten the key into the lock if my life had literally depended on it. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust: Duncan was open-mouthed and snoring. Dave was watching Emily in Paris on his laptop. And sitting propped up on the pillows cross-legged in my bed, flicking lazily through her phone, was Greer.

"Hi," she said, smiling at me in the darkness. She was wearing cozy-looking sweatpants and a Harvard hoodie, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head.

"Hi." I blinked. The room was spinning wildly, and I flattened a hand against the wall to steady myself. "What are you doing here?"

Greer shrugged. "Checking to make sure you weren't bringing any other girls home," she deadpanned. "Also, I thought maybe you could use this." She reached over and plucked a plastic bottle of red Gatorade off the desk, holding it out in my direction.

"You're an angel," I told her. I think I did, anyway; like I said, I was pretty drunk. "I love you." Then I blanched. "I mean—you know what I mean. Don't freak out. I don't want you to freak out."

Greer shook her head, scooting over to make room for me on the mattress. "Go to sleep, dork," she said fondly. Her laughter was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.