Chapter 5

5

Sunday, 10/27/24

I woke up feeling like someone was boring directly into my skull with a hammer drill, a taste in my mouth like the bottom of the Fort Point Channel. My stomach was roiling. My anxiety was cranked to ten.

"Morning, sunshine," Greer said with a smile. She was sitting pretzel-legged at the end of my bed, looking fresh as the bright yellow tulips that line the Public Garden in springtime. "Your roommates were going to wait for you for breakfast, but I told them it was probably going to be a while."

"I drank a goldfish," I told her sadly.

Greer nodded. "I know," she said, holding her phone up as evidence, waggling the video in my face. "I saw."

I winced, rolling over and burying my face in my too-warm pillow. "Oh, god."

"You're kind of viral," she informed me, in a voice that wasn't quite admiring. "Ten thousand views this morning already. You should see if you can leverage this somehow, maybe pick up a corporate sponsorship. I don't know with who, though." I could hear the smirk in her voice. "Like, definitely not Chewy dot-com."

I groaned into the mattress. "Am I a goldfish killer?"

"I mean, objectively, yes," she said, crawling back across the covers and tucking herself in beside me. She smelled like coffee and detergent and the fancy bespoke shampoo she bought off Instagram, which she used to carry to the bathroom at Bartley in a sleek little caddy. "But let's be real, if you didn't drink it, somebody else would have had to. That poor fucking goldfish never stood a chance."

"That's not really comforting to me, Greer."

"It wasn't meant to be," she said pleasantly, patting me on the back before sitting up one more time. "Now go take a shower. You smell like the floor of a bar."

We'd missed brunch in the dining hall entirely, so we walked up to a café near Porter Square for breakfast sandwiches. It was even chillier than the night before, and rainy, the leaves slick on the sidewalk and a wind that sliced cleanly through my jacket. Still, the cold air was bracing, and between that and the greasy bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit I inhaled in two enormous bites, I was feeling a full click steadier by the time we headed back to campus. "Good news," I reported, rattling the ice in my coffee cup. "I might live after all."

"That's a relief," Greer said, raising her elegant eyebrows. "And, you know. More than we can say for the fish."

I made a face. "Did you get your stuff finished last night?" I asked as she swiped her card outside of Hemlock House. I pulled the heavy wooden door open, nodding for her to go ahead. "Or do you have more to do today?"

"I literally always have more to do," Greer reported grimly, "but you can come up and keep me company while I do it, if you want. Or do some of your own, even."

I considered the dull throb of the hangover still echoing at the back of my skull. "That…might be ambitious." We crossed the black-and-white tile of the lobby, past the staircase that led down to the laundry room and a bulletin board bearing notices for STD testing at the health center and an a cappella concert of '90s boy band hits. "Did you do your Zoom with your dad?"

Greer shook her head. "His assistant sent me a calendar invite for Tuesday," she reported, "though I guess it's always possible I'll get listeria and die before then."

"Gotta manifest your dreams," I agreed as we climbed the spiral stairs to the fourth floor. "So, that's going super, huh? You and your parents, I mean." Greer's relationship with her family hadn't been great, back when we were at Bartley. Her mom and dad were what my old roommate Jasper had called hardos, meaning they were the kind of rich parents who cared a lot about grades and also never did cocaine, even on vacation.

"Oh yeah," Greer said with exaggerated carelessness. "It's amazing." She was quiet for a moment. "I mean, it's not that my parents don't love me. Like, they definitely love me? It's just that they don't always seem to like me that much."

"Really?" I frowned. "What's not to like?"

Greer smiled at that. "Why, thank you, Linden," she said, bumping her arm against mine. "I agree that I'm very charming."

"No," I said, stopping and taking her elbow, turning her gently so that she met my gaze. "I'm serious. You're literally at Harvard. You're doing the thing. What else could they possibly want or expect?"

Greer shrugged, like it should have been obvious. "Greatness," she said simply.

I thought about my own mom, back across the river in Eastie. She'd always had high expectations, in her way: from the time I could walk she'd demanded I bus my own plate, clean up my own messes, save my own soul. Once, she signed me up for an entire weekend of community service because she saw me walk past an unhoused woman on the Common and not slip anything into her battered cup. Still, my mom had never, at any time, given me any indication whatsoever that she gave one single solitary shit either way about whether I played sports or where I went to college. I honestly don't think it had ever even occurred to her to wonder if I was great or not. The only thing she really cared about was that I was good.

And if sometimes it felt like that might have been a higher bar to clear, well, I suspected she probably knew that too.

Greer looked at me for a second, the two of us standing there in the stale dimness of the stairwell. In her glasses and her sweatpants, she looked very, very young. "Linden—" she started, then seemed to think better of it, turning and starting to climb one more time. "I mean," she said over her shoulder, her voice light and playful, "I think they also always kind of hoped I'd play the oboe."

Back in the suite, Keiko, Margot, Dagny, and Celine were all parked in the common room, the TV murmuring quietly and a small platoon of Starbucks cups scattered across the coffee table. Margot had her headphones on and was moving her lips silently, either practicing the conjugation of irregular verbs in Latin or listening to Taylor Swift on Spotify. Celine was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of the box.

"Oh, hello, " Keiko said when we came in, her voice mock-formal. "Nice to see you." She looked at me pointedly, then back at Greer. "Is this what you meant when you said you were going to pull an all-nighter?"

"Rude," Greer replied primly. "How was everybody's evening?"

"I mean, nobody here drank a goldfish, if that's what you're asking." Keiko grinned at me. "How you feeling, Linden?"

"Full of shame and regret," I assured her.

"And goldfish," Greer said sweetly.

"Keiko hooked up with the drummer from the jazz quartet," Dagny reported.

"What? Shut up," Greer said, jaw dropping even as Keiko whacked Dagny with a throw pillow shaped like a slice of watermelon. "The girl with the septum piercing?"

"I didn't even think they let you have septum piercings at Harvard," Margot said, plucking a headphone from one ear.

I settled myself on one of the wobbly wooden stools at the breakfast bar, listening idly as they postgamed their respective Saturday night adventures, their voices rising and falling like a fugue they'd sung a million times before. I looked around the common room, thinking how different it was from the living room of the lax house, the way the girls had worked to make it feel like an actual home: they'd covered the college-issued couch with a crisp white sheet, laid the floor with a vintage rug I recognized from Greer's room back at Bartley. The overheads were off, a warm, cozy glow cast by a handful of mismatched lamps and a string of twinkle lights strung above the windows. Keiko was an art minor, and a triptych of her bright abstract paintings was tacked to the wall opposite the TV. "Bri still sleeping it off?" Greer asked finally, reaching out for the cereal box; Celine handed it over, wiping her sugary fingers on a fleecy throw blanket printed with stars.

"I think so," Keiko said. "She left the party with some girls from the crew team while I was, um, otherwise engaged. I haven't seen her."

"We hung out a little bit last night, actually," I reported helpfully, raising my eyebrows in Greer's direction. "She said you want to get back together with me."

"Oh, is that what she said?" Greer asked with a laugh, taking my hand and dragging me down the hallway toward her bedroom. "She must have been even more fucked up than usual."

The lights in Greer and Bri's room were blazing when she opened the door, though Bri was in fact passed out cold—sprawled on top of Greer's still-made bed in the same silky green chameleon top she'd been wearing at the party the night before, her dark hair a mess across the pillows.

"Big night," Greer said with a laugh, righting a lamp that was overturned on the desk, presumably where Bri had knocked it over as she stumbled and fumbled her way toward the closest available mattress. "Rise and shine, cupcake." She was reaching out to scratch Bri's back when suddenly her eyes narrowed; I followed her gaze, spying a small orange bottle and the remains of some crushed-up pills on the desk.

"Woof," I said, squinting at what was left of the label on the bottle—most of it had been scratched off, though a telltale OXY remained—even as Greer swore under her breath.

"What the fuck, Bri?" she muttered. "Is she trying to get us both kicked out of housing? Hey," she said, leaning down to shake Bri awake. "Can you please get up and get rid of this shit before we both wind up in jail?" Then she frowned. "Bri, babe," she said, shaking her a second time and then a third. "Bri?"

Greer gripped Bri's motionless shoulder, tugging her over onto her back before whirling to look at me, wild-eyed. "Is she breathing?" she asked, a full octave higher than normal. "I don't think she's breathing. Bri?"

"What?" I snapped to attention, my throat dropping into my stomach. Bri's mouth was slack, her skin horribly, unmistakably gray. Still: "Yes, she is," I said, full of useless bravado. "No, she definitely is."

"She's not." I could hear the fear rising in Greer's voice like a wave suddenly breaching the seawall. "She's not. "

"Call nine-one-one," I said, then bumbled my own phone out of my hoodie pocket even as Greer yelled down the hall to her suitemates.

What happened next was a blur, bright chaos and noisy panic: The girls flooded into Greer and Bri's room. Keiko dashed back out, yelling for help. A bespectacled RA came running, attempting clumsy CPR in the long minutes before the EMTs arrived with a couple of officers from Harvard's police department close behind them, their radios crackling with static as they shouted at the rest of us to give them room. The whole thing reminded me of another scene I'd witnessed two summers ago and a hundred miles from here: the purple predawn light of the beach in the early morning, a body floating motionless in a pool. That time, though, the paramedics had moved quickly and efficiently, careening away in the ambulance with lights and sirens blaring.

This time, I couldn't help but notice, they didn't seem to be in any hurry at all.

Greer noticed too. "Why aren't you helping her?" she demanded, the rest of us watching in slow-motion horror as one of the paramedics turned to his partner, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was so quiet. "There's nothing we can do here."

The afternoon seemed to go on forever. I sat with Greer while the police interviewed her and the rest of her suitemates, all of us clustered in the common room like some incredibly fucked-up family meeting. My hangover had returned with a vengeance, my stomach queasy, the headache pulsing brutally at the back of my eyeballs. "Did you know Bri was using drugs?" asked one of the officers, a tall, businesslike woman with glossy shoulder-length braids. "Or anything about where she might have gotten the pills?"

Greer shook her head. She looked dazed and bedraggled, her face raw and red from crying; her ponytail had mostly fallen out. "I mean, she went to a party at the lax house last night, but I don't know if that's where—" She broke off, her gaze cutting to me.

"Was that usual for her?" the other officer asked, a heavyset ginger with a spray of freckles who couldn't have been much older than us. "Excessive partying?"

"I didn't say it was excessive," Greer protested, looking to the other girls for backup. "I mean, she liked to have a good time, but—" She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I don't want to make it sound like she was some drug fiend. We're in college, you know? Especially a college like this—"

"But she used drugs and alcohol regularly?" the officer pressed.

"I—" Greer hesitated. "Yeah," she admitted grudgingly. "I guess."

"This party," the first officer put in. "You said it was with the lacrosse team?"

"Hang on a second," Dagny interrupted suddenly, holding a hand up. "Can I ask you a question? Do we need lawyers right now?"

"Why would you need lawyers?" the second officer asked, his expression even.

Dagny shrugged, her expression wary. "I mean, you tell me."

"It's fine, Dag," Margot said, pulling one leg up underneath her. She was the most composed of everyone, I'd noticed, the one who'd thought to put on a pot of coffee; the smell of it filled the suite now, comforting and warm. Keiko had spoken only when directly spoken to, while Celine, her arms wrapped around her knees on the love seat, hadn't said anything at all. "We want to be helpful, right?"

"Of course we want to be helpful," Dagny snapped, "but I'm also not about to call my mom and tell her I got expelled from Harvard just because Bri bought fake Klonopin laced with horse tranquilizers, or whatever the hell—"

"Dagny!" Greer said. "Jesus."

I was expecting an argument, but right away Dagny's shoulders dropped, her whole body caving in on itself. "I'm sorry," she said, and that was when her voice broke. "Shit, I'm sorry. That was horrible. I'm sorry." Keiko slid an arm around her, pulling her close.

"Nobody's getting expelled," the first officer said, more gently now. "These things happen on campuses all the time, unfortunately. It's a tragedy. We just want to make sure we understand the chain of events."

Margot nodded. "Of course," she said, getting up and pouring Dagny a cup of coffee, pressing it into her shaking hands. "What do you need to know?"

Once they were finally gone—once the dean of students came and left and someone from down the hall dropped off dinner from Sugar I didn't have brothers or sisters, and usually it was a relief to me, the way there was always somebody to talk to. The way there was always somebody around. Right now, though? I kind of just wanted to be alone.

"I gotta run an errand," I announced, then shrugged back into my coat and went downstairs, shuffling across the Yard in the direction of the T stop, tapping my card and stepping onto the first inbound train that arrived. I thought about going home to Eastie and curling up on the sofa in my mom's apartment. I thought about showing up unannounced at Holiday's dorm. Instead, I just rode all the way to the end of the line and back again, staring out the window at the inside of the tunnel and listening to the noisy mechanical hum all around.