“You didn’t trust me. With anything real.”
Avery looks at me sidelong. “Given the way you’ve reacted with your little investigation, I’d say I was right not to trust you. Again, Liv, the wounded act will only go so far. You accused me of murder.”
“Yeah, well, you kind of lost your shit over Emma getting into Harvard. And you said some fucked-up stuff afterward, about Harvard reconsidering you.”
“Maybe you were just projecting, since you were also hiding a Harvard acceptance. Congrats, by the way.” There’s a wryness to her tone. Almost like she means it.
“Thanks?” I answer tentatively. “And maybe I did jump to conclusions. But I was freaking out. Weren’t you freaking out?”
“Uh, yeah, but unlike you, I didn’t start pointing fingers at my only friends.” Then Avery surprises me with a laugh, almost a bark. “Though probably because I knew Emma cast a pretty wide net with her secrets. It could’ve been…a lot of different people.”
“I figured that out eventually,” I mumble.
For a minute, there’s just the steady hum of tires on asphalt, the rhythmic tick of the turn signal before we hang a right onto Claflin Boulevard. We’re almost home.
“You really thought I murdered someone for getting into Harvard instead of me? You thought I’d kill you, too?” She’s wounded again.
“I…” Is there any good way to explain this? All I can do is be honest. “After the fight at the party, yeah, I thought maybe. It’s why I started investigating. I wanted to prove it wasn’t true.”
“And you wanted to direct the police away from you.”
“You guys hacking the security cameras really didn’t help with making me look guilty,” I explain. “I couldn’t prove my story to them.” And now it’s my turn to throw a wounded accusation. “How often did you guys hang out without me like that?”
We pull into the Claflin parking lot, into Avery’s reserved spot close to the front gate. Avery turns off the engine but makes no move to exit. “It was easier that way sometimes. We could talk about all the stupid, frivolous bullshit we wanted without feeling bad. We did feel bad, Liv. Or at least I did. I don’t like rubbing all my money in your face. You…never take it particularly well, even if you pretend about it. We all know.”
She’s got my number. “I know I shouldn’t blame you. But it’s hard, always comparing myself to you and coming up short. Everything seems easier for all of you. The money stuff, at least. I know everyone’s got messy shit in their lives. No one wins the Oppression Olympics.”
Avery bursts out laughing. “Where did you get that?”
“Oh, it’s something my mom always says.”
“I love your mom.”
I turn to face her, craving that eye contact now. “You do? You acted like she was some freak whenever she came to campus. Our sad little life.”
“Olivia, your mom is actually nice to you. No passive-aggressive put-downs about how much you eat or going behind your back because she doesn’t think you’re smart enough to get into her alma mater. She let you come hundreds of miles away to school to better yourself. My mom shipped me here so I wouldn’t get in the way of her fabulous life. Big difference.
“And sometimes, it’s not about you, Liv.” Avery throws open her door, indicating that our heart-to-heart is over. “Now, let’s go to bed. I have a nine a.m. breakfast scheduled with said hell beast of a mother, and I need my rest.”
I raise my eyebrows as I move to get out, and Avery sighs.
“She texted while you were being interrogated. Fitzgerald emailed all the parents about the arrest, and she wants a play-by-play before we do some last-minute Christmas shopping in Boston. Aka: she lets me pick out my present because she hasn’t figured anything out yet.”
We tap in at the pedestrian security gate and walk mostly in silence back to Bay. Avery’s room is closer to the elevators than mine is, so we say our farewells at her door. She pulls me into a hug, stiff at first, but then we both warm up.
“Message me over the holidays,” she says as we pull apart. “I’ll be desperate for a break from my supplements. Megan will be stopping by in person before the deadline to help us get it all done. I can ask her to proofread yours, too, if you want. We’re paying her enough.”
It’s a peace offering, and I accept. I’ll take as many steps to mend our friendship as she will. I can’t help but wonder if I ever really saw Avery. How much of my perception was clouded by my closeness with Emma? The chip on my shoulder as a scholarship student?
I shuffle along to my room, pushing the heavy door open with my shoulder and flicking on the lights with my other hand. I shed my coat first, dumping it over the back of my desk chair, and collapse onto my mattress to unlace my boots. Then I look across the way at the stripped-bare mattress and blank walls. I pad barefoot to the closet. Empty. The desk drawers are littered with useless detritus—a mostly used Post-it pad, paper clips, stray pens. Emma’s parents have taken everything of value, everything left of her. I knew they would, but it still hits me like a gut punch.
She’s gone, and this is over.
My mother spends all of Christmas and the days after it fussing over me, which is pretty standard for her after long stretches without me. But on the heels of my roommate dying and my nearly meeting a messy end myself, she goes into overdrive. She brings me breakfast in bed. This woman taught me how to cook when I was six and hasn’t made me breakfast in a decade. I’m weirded out but grateful. By day I marathon old TV shows on Netflix and subsist on PB and J and salty snacks, and at night my mom allows me to drink wine with her while we watch movies. We talk about anything but what happened to Emma. Love my mom.
I may not want to talk about it, but I’m not done with Emma’s murder. I devour every article in the Globe, then the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vulture once the story goes national. The story of the beautiful rich girl murdered by the pervy school counselor is too good not to go semi-viral. It helps that she’s beautiful and white. Catnip for Nancy Grace and company.
I imagine Fitzgerald is losing her shit right now. Claflin’s name is all over the place, and not in a good way. I read between the lines, analyzing the speech patterns in the anonymous quotes to try to figure out who leaked the story wider, and wish it had been me.
Avery thinks it was Seth Feldstein. His dad works for the Sox, so he knows tons of Globe people, according to her.
It’s been strange, bonding with Avery over this. She doesn’t shut me down like Sierra and Margot do. She’s as hungry for answers as I am. We’ve been chatting, exchanging links and theories. “We should start a true crime podcast,” she suggests over messenger. “College admissions love shit like that.” I assume she’s joking.