A Study in Charlotte

The thing was, I didn’t know if I wanted to slow dance with her. Holmes. Or maybe I could just imagine it a bit too readily, how it would feel to have my hands on the small of her back, to have her uncertain breath hot on my neck. Her soft laughter as the boy band sang I wanna kiss you, girl. How I’d drop my hands to her waist, pull her even closer to me.

But if I squinted, I could see that blond girl in my arms just as easily. Honestly, it wasn’t very fair to any of us. I knew myself pretty well; I could be so easily taken in by the now, not thinking much about the after. But with Holmes, all I could think about was the after. Silent drives at dawn, wildfire conversations, sneaking into locked rooms to steal away evidence to our little lab—I wanted those things. I wanted the two of us to be complicated together, to be difficult and engrossing and blindingly brilliant. Sex was a commonplace kind of complicated. And nothing about Charlotte Holmes was commonplace.

Even the way she filled out her dress.

No. I wasn’t going to think about that. Our track record proved that we were too volatile to survive that sort of shake-up. Just this morning, she’d chased me from her lab, wielding her violin like a weapon. Tomorrow night we might be sharing a cell. Tonight?

Tonight, I was getting punch.

Mr. Wheatley, my creative writing teacher, was manning the refreshments table with a pretty-ish woman around his age. He looked deathly bored, but brightened a bit when I made it to the front of the line. It wasn’t long. Not many of us were too lame to have someone to slow dance with.

“Jamie,” Mr. Wheatley said, though I could hardly hear his voice above the music. “What’ll it be?”

“How’s the punch?” I asked.

“Horrible.” He leaned in to the woman next to him. “This is one of my best students,” he said, pointing to me. “Jamie, this is my friend Penelope. She’s keeping me company tonight.”

I didn’t know that Mr. Wheatley had even liked my writing. Everything I’d turned in, my poems especially, came back to me in a mess of green ink. But I’d been working hard to revise them into something better, and it was nice to know my work was paying off.

“It’s lovely to meet you.” I shook hands with Penelope. She had a sort of standard art teacher look to her, with her curly hair and loose-fitting dress. A nice counterweight for Mr. Wheatley, I thought, who always buttoned his shirts up to his collar.

“She’s a writer friend from New Haven,” he said. “A poet. She teaches at Yale. Jamie might be someone you’d want in your freshman workshop, in the not-too-distant future.”

“Oh, is this the one you were telling me about?” she asked Mr. Wheatley, who went a bit pale. “The murder investigation? Dr. Watson’s descendant? So, do you write mysteries too, Jamie?”

“Not really,” I lied, as I processed the rest of what she’d said. She’d heard about the police’s suspicions about me. “You’ve been watching the news coverage?”

Mr. Wheatley pulled at his collar.

“Oh, the media’s moved on by now,” she said. “But Ted’s on top of it. He knows details they haven’t even released to the press!”

While I was trying to make sense of this, Holmes appeared, proffering a pair of chocolate-covered marshmallows on a fondue stick. An olive branch, I thought. She seemed to have forgiven me my awkwardness, so I took mine with a thank-you smile.

“Hello,” she said to the adults. I made a round of introductions.

“Penelope was just saying that Mr. Wheatley’s in the know about all that Dobson stuff,” I said, a bit obviously. I wished we’d set up hand signals for this kind of situation, or that she was actually telepathic. There was a good chance that she could have deduced my suspicions just by looking at me, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

“Oh?” she asked, her face perfectly blank.

“Yes, ah”—Mr. Wheatley cleared his throat—“I should do another walk around the room. Penelope?” She smiled politely at us, her interest already elsewhere, and the two of them glided away.

“Well, you cocked that up rather badly.” Holmes drifted back onto the dance floor. So much for an olive branch. I pulled the second marshmallow off the stick and bit into it hatefully.

I WANDERED THE BALLROOM FOR A WHILE, FLOPPING DOWN finally at an empty table. The dance was coming to a close, and the DJ had put together a long set of slow songs to end the night. The floor was thick with couples that would be social-media official by the morning. I was surprised, and then less surprised, to see Cassidy and Ashton swaying together, so close their foreheads touched. Randall, Dobson’s roommate, danced the whole set with the little blond freshman. He kept his hands low, grabbing at the fabric of her red dress. In his giant arms, she looked as small and inconsequential as a snack cake.

I felt vaguely sick.

“Okay.” Lena plopped down next to me. “Jamie. You look, like, super pathetic.”

“Where’s Tom?”

“Playing poker.” She pursed her lips. “Go talk to her.”

“She’s dancing with Randall,” I said, being difficult on purpose.

“Jesus, come on. Charlotte’s sitting outside, alone. You guys are just sad without each other. There’s like this obvious empty space next to you.” It was poetic, for Lena. She stood and offered me a hand.

“Are you asking me to dance?” I asked.

She cocked an eyebrow. I let her haul me to my feet. And she dragged me all the way across the ballroom and out the front door, where she gave me an unceremonious shove into the night air.