A Study in Charlotte (9 page)

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.

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.”

I let her in. She looked a bit dotty, as usual, with her crooked glasses and frizzy hair, but the cookies were chocolate chip and still warm.

“You're the only one in the dorm that stayed in tonight,” she said, handing me the steaming mug. “I thought I'd come say hi. I know things have been hard for you lately.”

“Thanks,” I said, embarrassed. “I needed to finish some homework. Writing a poem.”

She made a sympathetic noise. “Any luck?”

“Nope.” She'd brought me English breakfast, and the steam fogged up my glasses. Right then, I wasn't sure who was more of a cliché, me or her. “Any advice?”

She hummed, thinking. “I've always liked that Galway Kinnell poem. ‘Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven't they carried you everywhere, up to now?'” She had a fine voice for reciting poetry, deep-timbered and slow. “Doesn't that just make everything better?”

“It does,” I said, and wished it were true.

Behind her, in the doorway, a girl appeared.

“Are you ready, Watson?” It was her strange, fantastic voice, even smokier than usual, and Holmes stepped into my room.

I blinked rapidly. She'd done something with her hair. Instead of its usual glossy fall, it was tousled, in unfinished-looking ringlets. Her dress looked nothing like I imagined. It looked, in fact, like the night sky. I could see why Lena had coveted it: the cut of it brought my eye to certain places I'd tried to avoid looking at.

“You look very nice,” I said. It was true. She also looked disturbingly like a girl. Hailey had been made from plastic and wet dreams, and everyday Holmes was all exact angles, but this . . . whatever this was, it was something else entirely. I wasn't sure if I liked it. From the way she shifted her weight from one heel to the other, it seemed Holmes wasn't sure either. What plot was she brewing?

“Hi, Charlotte,” Mrs. Dunham said. “Jamie didn't tell me you were coming.”

“Yes, I'm sure he forgot,” she said. “We're in a bit of a hurry.
The dance is nearly halfway done.”

“We are, and I—ah—” I was wearing my glasses and a pair of Highcombe sweatpants.

With an expressive sigh, Holmes began rifling through my drawers. “Braces,” she muttered. “Or as they say here, suspenders. I know you own the ridiculous things. Here.” She tossed them to me, and kept looking.

“So you want me to wear them? Or you don't?”

“Oh, do, it's your thing, with the leather jacket and the—yes, here we go, a skinny black tie, and your nice shirt, and the trousers you wore on the fourth day of school but that haven't reappeared since then. Dark wash. There. Socks, and your oxfords.” Mrs. Dunham scurried out of the way as Holmes buried me in a pile of my own clothing.

I looked down. “You're trying to make me into a hipster.”

“I don't have to try.” Holmes tapped her wrist where the watch would go. “Time, Watson
.
”

“You really can't be here while he's changing,” Mrs. Dunham said.

Holmes put a hand over her eyes. “I am counting down from one hundred.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said, sorting through the clothes she'd given me.

“Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight.”

We were out the door with three counts to go.

From across the quad, I could see the union all lit up for the dance. Each time the doors opened, I heard a bit of a song I couldn't quite place. On a bench sat a boy and girl holding
hands; he was whispering in her ear. Nearby, a cluster of shivering girls admired each other's dresses.

“Are you going to tell me why we're here?” I asked Holmes, holding the door open for her.

She paused on the threshold. “Not yet,” she said, and went in.

Sherringford was a small enough school that we could all fit into the union's alumni ballroom. (Apparently, the school went bigger and fancier for prom. Tom was sure that this year's would be on a yacht.) The theme had something to do with Vegas; the first thing I saw as we entered was a string of blackjack tables, manned by real casino dealers in green-and-white livery. Holmes sidled over, only to make an affronted noise when she saw they were playing with Monopoly money. I was more interested in the chocolate fountain that burbled in the corner, crowded by people holding out skewered marshmallows. Otherwise, there were all the usual trappings: a punch table, strobe lights, a DJ. Bored-looking teachers were “chaperoning,” which meant they mostly chatted together in pairs. Out on the dance floor, girls swayed in dresses the colors of Christmas ornaments. We'd won the football game earlier, so the mood was victorious. As I took it all in, Cassidy and Ashton from my French class brushed past us. Cassidy looked lovely, and Ashton looked exactly like one of the Thundercats. I'd never seen such a radioactive-looking tan.

What I noticed most of all was how many students had been pulled home. There couldn't have been more than a hundred of us on the dance floor. Still, everyone seemed like they
were having fun—no one thinking of the murder, or their safety, or anything except for the ABBA song that had just begun.

It felt, disconcertingly, as though I stood with one foot in a novel and one foot in a shopping mall. I might've belonged here, but Holmes very much didn't. I turned to ask exactly what her plan was, when I caught her mouthing the words to “Dancing Queen.”

“Oh my God,” I said as she startled. “Oh my
God
. You just wanted to come here to
—
”

“There are excellent opportunities for observation and deduction here,” she said hurriedly. “Look at the specimen pool! Everyone with their guard down, probably a good few drinking—the girl next to you has a flask of peach schnapps in that little bag of hers—and perhaps that dealer is here, somewhere, and—”

“—to dance.” I was trying very hard not to laugh. “Would you like to?”

“Yes,” she said, and fairly dragged me out onto the floor.

Holmes, for all her strange and myriad skills, proved to be a terrible dancer. But what she lacked in skill she made up for in absolute abandon. Under the kaleidoscope lights, her hair went blue, then red, then blue again, the music so loud that my head throbbed in time, and she flung her arms straight up as the chorus came, throwing her head back to mouth the words. She knew the words to the next one, too, and the song after that, and she sang them all with her eyes shut, shuffling her feet like a grandfather. For a glorious twelve minutes, I orbited
her, and when she grabbed my hand and said, “Twirl me,”
I spun her around as she laughed.

A slow song came on, some treacly number by an English boy band my little sister liked. All around us, people slipped into each other's arms. Across the room, I saw Tom, resplendent in his ridiculous suit, dip Lena while she giggled.

Holmes and I stood there, in the middle of the floor, trying not to look at each other.

I struggled to hide my panic. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Holmes's cheeks were still pinked from dancing.

“Um,” I said.

There was a tap on my shoulder. The wispy blond girl that had asked me to the dance stood there, her dress a dramatic red. “Hi,” she said shyly. “I thought you weren't allowed to come.”

I watched Holmes rapidly catalog my reaction. After a moment, the girl turned to look at her, too.

“Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I'm in your way.” A little line appeared between her eyebrows, and I thought, for a moment, that she was going to cry. I was sure Holmes noted that too. Her brain was like a bear trap: nothing escaped alive.

This had to be a nightmare. I'd look down, and I'd be naked, and the dance floor would become my math classroom, and then I'd wake up.

I didn't.

“We're not— I'm not— I need something to drink,” I managed, and darted away like the coward I was.

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.