The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(15)

Especially after what happened to her last year.

“Let me just drop my bag,” I said, leaving the money with Mrs. Dunham and heading up the stairs. The whiteboard on my door was blank, the hall quiet but for the buzzing overhead lights. People were lingering in the dining hall, making their way to the library, studying with their doors shut.

I dug around in my backpack for my keys. No one at Sherringford locked their doors, except for me and Elizabeth.

No one except us had any reason to.

And despite my decision not to drag Elizabeth into this, I realized I had my phone in my hands. I had an Incident at lunch today, I wrote her. That’s why I disappeared.

It was the code we’d developed the first time she’d seen me have a panic attack, after I realized it was impossible to hide them from her.

Her response was immediate. Do you want me to come over? Maybe we can blow off lit mag and watch Incident-curing puppies?

We’d been watching a show called Puppy Surprise. It was, unsurprisingly, about people being surprised with puppies, and at her suggestion, we only let ourselves watch it when one of us was having a really, really awful day.

I don’t know if today qualifies, I wrote her, flopping into my desk chair.

Was it a puking Incident? she asked. Did anyone see? Do you feel okay now? Did your dad help? Or oh God did he make you go bowling again??

Her questions were stressing me out—she had a tendency to interrogate me in a way that wasn’t exactly soothing—but I laughed anyway. Bowling, at least, wasn’t on my father’s list.

It was; no; sort of; he made me go sleuth something; I have to write a presentation or else I would puppy show so hard. After a moment, I said, That sounds really wrong but I’m not sure why?

But it had worked; I was smiling.

See you at lit mag, babe, she wrote, and I put my phone down.

For a long minute, I twirled in my chair, then opened my laptop on reflex. I had an email from my sister (Can hear Mum and Ted having sex I think?? What does sex sound like? Jamie this is the LITERAL WORST, line of vomiting emojis) and a whole bunch of spam. I sent Shelby back a vomiting emoji and two knives and told her to call me. I opened my physics presentation. Looked over my homework for tomorrow. The King’s College London banner I’d tacked above my desk. A goal. I’d be on to the next part of my life soon. I had a nice girlfriend. A nice group of friends.

I was fine.

Sure, I was late for lit mag, but I felt calm, finally, and grateful for the quiet, and though I hurried down the stairs, I didn’t run. The night stretched out before me, calm and quiet too, and if I was five minutes late, nothing would change. Slowly, I wrapped my scarf back around my neck and picked my way through the snow.

As I approached the student union, I could see her through the glass door. Elizabeth, lingering by the stairwell. The harsh lighting made her blond hair fluorescent, and as I watched, she checked her phone. I stood there for a second, just looking at her. I knew that she had a poem in her backpack that she had written about the willow tree in her backyard at home. I’d been writing about last year, stories about art thefts and explosions and kidnappings that the rest of our club found “unrealistic.” Despite what they—and everyone at Sherringford—knew about the details of Dobson’s murder, the facts of my European misadventure were still too wild to believe.

And while I wrote compulsively about my life, trying to make heads or tails of it, Elizabeth refused to write about any of it at all. Her attacker. Her hospital stay. In the world of her poems, none of it had ever happened. I admired that, weirdly enough. Her determination to rewrite her life with the worst parts excised.

Standing there in the hallway, she looked a little like a stranger. I never looked at her from across a room anymore; she was always under my arm. In a lot of ways, boarding school made it difficult to date without feeling married. Every morning, I passed the three redbrick buildings between my front door and hers. I met her in the lobby of her dorm, which always smelled like microwave popcorn and too-sweet perfume. Because I usually slept through breakfast, she had a to-go cup of tea for me, and we walked to class together, talking about homework, warming our hands with our hot drinks. Four times a week, we’d walk together to lunch; three times a week, to dinner. We worked in the library most nights in the table by the café. After lights out, we didn’t send each other selfies, or even really text—what else did we have to say?

Now that it was winter, we’d stopped wandering the grounds, looking for places to make out; instead, we laid together in my bed, me on the outside, her on the inside, and instead of talking, we listened for a hall assistant to come by so that I could drop my right foot down onto the carpet. (During guest hours, keep one foot on the floor! said the signs in the stairwells. Below, someone had drawn an anatomically correct picture of something you could do with all four feet firmly on the ground.) Mostly, we were talking. About New York City versus London; about her sister, who wrote and recorded these strange, aching songs we played off YouTube; about where we’d go if we had a car and I could take her on a proper date. Sometimes she’d just sleep on my chest while I read for AP English, and I listened to her breathe while I dog-eared my text. It made me feel sort of guilty, but I had enough to do that finding time to work was a relief. My American applications were in, but the English ones weren’t due for another few months, including King’s College London, my top choice. Unlike Tom and Lena, who were set to coast through senior spring, I was still on hard burn.