A Study in Charlotte

“I need to get my gloves out,” the cop said, his voice muffled. “I know they’re in here somewhere.”

“Well, hurry up,” the other cop replied.

“My hands are ass-cold, man. Give me a second.”

“We’ve got a single-car crash and a drunk wandering somewhere in these woods, Taylor. We better get to it.”

Taylor must’ve found his gloves, because there were footsteps again. Retreating. The cruiser ambling back out to the road, and the officers getting out to look again at the sedan.

Holmes turned to me with a look of morbid satisfaction. She had been right. We hadn’t been found. Crouched below the steering wheel, I rubbed my face with my hands. One way or another, this year was going to kill me.

I could hear the pair of officers talking as they examined the black car, though I couldn’t make out their words. An endless hour passed while they dickered about something. Their lights kept flashing; I fought to keep my eyes open. Holmes had folded herself down to the foot of her seat, still alert, somehow. Our wild chase hadn’t exactly been subtle, and if someone had called it in to the police, they would know there was another car. What if they came back around again, searching for us? I dug my hands into the seat, trying to steady my nerves.

Then finally, finally, we heard it. The unmistakable groan of a tow truck as the sedan was hauled away. The cop car following after.

When I shut my eyes, I could still see the flashing lights pulsing against the darkness.

It was another half hour before Holmes gave the all clear. “We should wait longer,” she said, her voice even hoarser than usual, “but the petrol station will be open any minute now, and I don’t want us to get caught back here.”

Every joint in my body cracked as I climbed back into the driver’s seat. I caught a glimpse of my face in the rearview mirror, scored here and there by the sharp fingers of branches.

“Jesus,” I said, with feeling. Holmes cracked her neck. “All that for the campus dealer. Some paranoid freak who probably just ran because we were chasing him.”

“Not a dealer,” she said. “Something worse.”

My heart hammered in my chest. “Like what?”

“It doesn’t add up. If he’s sampling his wares, as it seems from the powder spilled on the driver’s side seat, why is he in such terrific shape? Why was he was wearing four-hundred-dollar shoes and running like an Olympic sprinter? If he’s a dealer, he’s unlike any I’ve had contact with. I’d be shocked if he was Lucas, the townie who deals on campus.”

“Why?”

Holmes’s face twisted. “He ran like one of my brother’s men.”

“Did you see his face?”

She shook her head.

“Then how—no, wait. Your brother has men?”

“Several thousand, at last count. It’s the most rational explanation. He has a tail or two on me most of the time. I imagine we ran into one, and he panicked.”

I let that sink in. “All that was because your brother was trying to check up on you? Your brother. Who’s a good guy. It doesn’t add up.”

“It’s likely that Milo wanted to assess you. Find out where your loyalties really lie. My friends . . . well, I haven’t ever really had one before.”

“Oh,” I said.

She considered me for a moment, her eyes bloodshot. “I don’t want my brother on your tail. You don’t deserve that. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“And you have,” I said softly. My vices got in the way of my studies.

We looked at each other. She bit her lip, took a breath—she was on the cusp of saying something—and then she turned away.

“What did you find?” I asked, finally. “What was that thing you put in your pocket?”

She didn’t look at me. “Let’s get back,” she said. I tried not to look at the square outline of the thing in her jacket, and started the car.

We didn’t talk. Instead, I turned on the radio as Holmes peered silently out the window. The passing streetlights washed her face blank and bright.

I couldn’t tell you what was in her head. I couldn’t even guess. But I was beginning to realize I liked that, the not knowing. I could trust her despite it. If she was a place unto herself, I might have been lost, blindfolded, and cursing my bad directions, but I think I saw more of it than anyone else, all the same.

five

I SPENT THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE CATCHING UP ON HOMEWORK.

After Tom finished telling me how appalled he was at my decision—this took several hours—he got ready. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him preen in the mirror. He managed to pull off his baby-blue suit from sheer force of will; I think it would have made me look like Buddy Holly’s deranged cousin. After asking me one more time if I wanted to go (“Mariella doesn’t have a date, and she doesn’t even think you’re a murderer!”), he finally cleared out to go pick up Lena, leaving me to write a poem for Mr. Wheatley’s class. I traded my contacts for my horn-rimmed glasses in an attempt to get myself in the proper mood.

Pen hovering over the page, I wondered, not for the first time, what I was doing.

For one thing, I used to like dances. That is, I liked taking girls to dances. Well. I supposed I just liked girls. I liked getting shy looks from them in class, and the way their hair smelled like flowers, and how it felt to walk along the Thames on an overcast afternoon, talking about which teachers they hated and what they were reading and what they’d do after we finished school. But in my head, all those memories had begun to run together. I couldn’t tell you if it was me and Kate at the chip shop the night it snowed, or Fiona; if Anna was allergic to strawberries; if Maisie was the one my sister Shelby had adored. Even Rose Milton, the girl of my daydreams, with her softly curling hair and endless string of awful boyfriends . . . I can’t say that I would have left my room, that night at Sherringford, even if she’d asked me to be her date.