A short laugh.
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course. But . . . we don’t have to. We can do whatever. I’m saying yes. I’m also saying that whatever you decide is good with me. You know what I’m saying . . .”
There was a little nervousness there now that was unlike him. She looked at his face, which was framed in the squares of pale moonlight coming through the glass.
If not now, when? This was about as ideal a time as she’d ever hoped for. This was what she had thought about and considered and researched.
“I’m saying yes,” she said.
“Tonight, or in general, in the future?”
“Tonight,” she said. “Now.”
“I brought condoms,” he said. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Where are they?”
He reached into his back pocket and produced a small package.
“If you say stop, we stop. Talk to me. And we don’t have to. Just so we’re super clear on this.”
“Same.”
Now that they’d had the discussion, they were left for a moment looking into each other’s faces on the pillow. For a moment, she thought the spell was broken. But then they both burst out laughing at the same time. People made out like this stuff was so serious—it wasn’t. It was stupid and fun. It was taking turns rolling on top of each other, biting ears and kissing necks and getting stuck in your own clothes trying to get them off. It was feeling muscles moving under skin, feeling the warmth under the covers. She didn’t know precisely how it was all supposed to go, but she was getting an inkling that was growing all the time. She was vaguely aware of noises in the hallway, but they didn’t matter. She was gone—out of the mansion, in some kind of skyscape made of David’s hair and the inside of the covers. Nothing mattered, not the future or college or anything but . . .
There was a knocking on the door—a strong, steady knock that increased in urgency.
“Who is it?” Stevie finally called, breathless.
The person responded by throwing open the door. Sooz stood there in a long red dressing gown, over royal-blue pajamas with a pattern of leaping tigers.
“I know who . . . oh.” She looked at the two of them together, blinked in confusion, then shielded her eyes as a nod toward privacy. “I thought you said come in. So sorry.”
She stepped back out of view, but kept the door open a crack.
“It is important, though. You’ve got to come downstairs. I know who Samantha Gravis is.”
Sooz gathered the residents of Merryweather in the kitchen rather than the sitting room. She had roused the entirety of the house, including Janelle, Vi, and Nate. Everyone else was wearing, if not formal sleepwear, then something generally presentable. David had pulled on his Yale sweatpants and his T-shirt. Stevie had grabbed the closest thing at hand—her sex hoodie.
“Oh,” Janelle said, noting the onesie that Stevie was wearing （now well zipped）。 While modest enough, it had never been intended for a wide audience. She wondered if she was still flushed, still sweating. She could feel moisture at the base of her neck. Her hair was probably standing on end. Luckily, no one cared what Stevie looked like—they had all been roused and brought around to the table, where Sooz’s laptop was open.
“I couldn’t get to sleep,” Sooz said. “I was thinking about everything that happened tonight and the face of the girl in the newspaper. I was sure I had seen her before. So I looked through my photos. It took a while, since I have so many, but . . . I found her.”
She indicated a scan of a photo that she had pulled up.
There were members of the Nine—young and shiny faced, with their 90s hair and communal clothes—lined up against the bar at a pub. Behind them were the decorative handles of the beer taps, and a bartender caught unawares by the camera, his eyes glowing red as he looked up from filling a glass. On the far end was Sebastian, his eyes closed in a squint and preening for the camera. Theo was tucked under his arm, smiling at something or someone out of view. Noel, tall and slouched, in oversized glasses and a flop of dark hair. Angela was next to him, thrusting a flower in the direction of the camera like a sword. Peter wore a green-and-blue-striped rugby shirt and had his head thrown back in laughter, while Yash had his mouth open and his hand out in a wide gesture, still in the middle of telling a joke. Only Julian tried to work the camera at all, a half smile on his lips. He wore a loose T-shirt and had a flannel shirt tied around his waist.
There was one more person, far to the edge of the frame. An afterthought who almost didn’t make the cut. She looked away slightly, but her face was clear enough. She wore an oversized Oxford sweatshirt.
Sooz pointed to her.
“There she is,” Sooz said. “The Canadian.”
“What?” Yash almost dropped his mug of tea. He hurried over and leaned in to look at the screen.
“Canadian?” Stevie repeated. She went in for a look, but the members of the Nine had crowded around Sooz and her computer. Yash scraped back one of the wooden chairs and sat down.
“The Canadian,” he repeated, rubbing his forehead. “My God.”
“Why do you keep saying she’s Canadian?” Stevie asked.
“Because she told us she was Canadian,” Sooz replied.
“It used to be a thing,” Theo explained. “Some people weren’t overly fond of Americans? So some Americans would say they were Canadian instead. Can’t really tell the difference. American and Canadian accents sound the same to us, generally.”
“Okay,” Stevie said. “Who is the Canadian? I mean, Samantha. She’s Samantha. But how did you know her?”
“We didn’t,” Peter said.
“Well, we did in a way,” Theo added. “But not really, like Peter says.”
“We did,” Yash said. “I did.”
“Julian certainly did,” Sooz cut in.
It was like they were talking in riddles.
“In our last week or so at Cambridge,” Sooz said, “during exams or right after, sometime around that period, we were all at the pub one night, and we met the Canadian. The American . . . Samantha. I don’t think we knew her name, did we? We called her something else.”
“Monty,” Yash said. “Because she was Canadian, and I said something about Mounties, and she thought I said Monty or something. It was just one of those things that happen in a pub. She probably told us her name but we called her Monty. She seemed to like it. It made her laugh.”
“I took the picture,” Sooz said. “And you can see we’re all in it except for Rosie. Which means this happened on the night Julian cheated on her.”
Julian lifted his head.
“Sooz, do you have to . . .”
“I’m trying to explain. Rosie was out studying for an exam or doing a lab or something, and we were all at the pub without her. And Julian met the Canadian and he snogged her. The Canadian was the reason Rosie and Julian broke up . . .”
Julian again lifted his head in protest.
“。 . . which sounds worse than it should. Everyone broke up with Julian when he cheated, which was always and with everyone. We broke up, what, four times because of that?”
“It wasn’t always me that did the cheating in that case, Sooz . . .”