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.
Even if Holmes had asked me to be her date.
I wondered if her misanthropy was beginning to wear off on me.
I’d left her in Sciences 442, after a long, trying day. The spectacularly bitchy text war she pitched with her brother wasn’t even the worst of it. She didn’t show me the original message she sent him, but I saw the ones he’d returned. No, you didn’t find my spy, he insisted. He’s obviously still at large. For instance, I can tell you right now that you’re wearing all black, and that Jamie Watson is annoyed with you. I have eyes watching you right now.
THAT IS NOT SPYING THAT IS SHODDY AMATEUR DEDUCTION AND IT IS INCORRECT, she replied furiously.
She was, of course, wearing all black.
“Can we do some actual research, please?” I finally asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
We’d spent an unsuccessful afternoon running down rattlesnake owners in Connecticut. Even after we extended our search to Massachusetts, and then to Rhode Island, we drew a blank. No one was missing their pet snake—at least, no one who would admit it to me, in the guise of a chipper cub reporter researching a book on deadly animals and the owners who, goshdarnit, loved them anyway.
Holmes, still fuming from her conversation with her brother, sat and watched me work.
I scratched the last name off our list. “So maybe we should start calling the zoos—”
“This is unbearably tedious,” Holmes snapped. “Do you know, if I had my Yard resources I’d have this case solved. God, in England, even my name would be opening us doors. Instead, I’m sitting here while you try to determine down the phone if these small-minded idiots with pet jaguars are lying to you, which you’re not at all equipped to do.” She flung herself down on the love seat, cradling her violin to her chest like a teddy bear.
“Right, then,” I said, standing. “What was that thing you pulled out of that car last night? The thing you wouldn’t show me?”
She stared at me evenly.
I threw up my hands. “Fine. I’ll just go pack my things. You know. For jail.”
When she realized I was waiting for her to reply, she picked up her bow and began sawing out a Dvorˇák concerto so savagely that it quite literally drove me out the door. We had no leads, no real information, and tomorrow we’d have to account for whatever Detective Shepard had dug up to indict us with.
And if I wasn’t arrested, I still had homework.
Which left me in my room, with my blank journal page. I tried to push the rest of it from my mind and get to work. Our assignment for Mr. Wheatley’s Monday class was to compose a poem that was difficult for us to write. The prompt didn’t help me much, since all poems were difficult for me to write. They were like mirrors you held up to a black hole, or surrealist paintings. I liked things that made sense. Stories. Cause and effect. After an hour or two of agonizing cross-outs, I dropped my head down onto my desk.
There was a rap at the door. “Jamie?” I heard Mrs. Dunham say. “I brought you a cup of tea. And some cookies.”