“Okay, but here’s the thing . . .” He slid down the headboard a bit and had to straighten up, putting the laptop on his knees and changing the view. “I was talking to the people who brought me here and I was saying that you should come here too because . . . because you should and they said they would talk to someone at the American embassy who works in educational tourism or something and he just got back to me and . . . you’re a pretty little starfish . . .”
“What?”
“Okay! Okay. You wouldn’t stay in my building, but they have some rooms in the building connected to this one. They said they could get up to four rooms for a week or ten days or something and you could call it study abroad or something, like, you’d have someone to call at the embassy so if Quinn gets up your ass about it . . .”
“Wait . . . you got . . . four rooms? For . . .”
“For you. And for Nate and Janelle and Vi, because I know that is how this would work. You just . . .” He gestured expansively and knocked the computer off his knees. She was looking at the ceiling for a moment before he righted it. “Study abroad. Thing. This guy can help with that. You tell the school you’re looking at museums or some shit and you come here.”
Stevie was so distracted that she set her cake on the front of her hoodie, by her collarbone.
“I need a passport. Don’t I? I don’t have one.”
“You can get one. It doesn’t take that long. Just come here, stop being a dick about not being here right now and come here. There’s, like, a queen. So come here. Just do it. Come on.”
Stevie didn’t precisely rip Janelle’s door off the hinges a few minutes later, but there was a bit of violence inflicted on it. While Janelle called Vi, Stevie ran to the end of the hall and rattled Nate’s doorknob. He didn’t answer, so she texted him until the door cracked open and he peered out.
Everyone wanted to go to England.
Stevie woke the next morning assuming that everything she remembered about the conversation was a dream, but there were multiple messages from David waiting for her—a name, an email, a phone number, the address of a building in London. It was a genuine offer with a genuine person at the American embassy prepared to back it up.
She spent every moment between classes and lab and yoga looking up flights and passport information. She had some money—the result of work she had done over the summer with a guy named Carson who ran a company called Box Box and wanted to make a true crime podcast. She’d been undercover at the summer camp he’d bought and helped him solve the cold case of the Box in the Woods. He’d paid her decently for her time at the camp, plus he’d advanced her some money while he put together the podcast about the case. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was way more than she’d ever had before, working at the mall or the grocery store. She could buy a fancy coffee every once in a while, and she had invested in some new black hoodies. There was enough for a plane ticket, plus a little pocket cash for each day to pay for food and things.
Over dinner that night at the dining hall （maple-glazed pork with mashed sweet potatoes with a little bit of maple syrup in them）， the four set about creating their presentation—their pitch to Ellingham about why they should be permitted to go to London. There aren’t many advantages to having a bunch of murders happen at your school. They tend to bring down the mood. However, in the search for silver linings, there was one—the school had fully embraced the concept of remote learning. Before, Ellingham expected its students to be there all the time, “going to class” and “being part of the school community” and that kind of thing. But once the murders started, they decided to get a bit more flexible. It turned out you could do a lot of school stuff outside of school. Ellingham still wanted you to go to class, but if people had to travel home, or go on college visits, or do a project somewhere, there were far more opportunities to do so. You could join your class remotely.
It took about four hours, and many cups of coffee, but by the end of the night, they had collectively hammered out something that looked like a legitimate case—a detailed day-by-day schedule in spreadsheet format, listing cultural and historical locations of interest and what they intended to do there and how this related to their individual academic goals. They reviewed the plan until midnight, at which point they emailed it to Dr. Quinn, the head of school. They weren’t expecting anything else to happen until tomorrow, but she replied within ten minutes to everyone with the following words: My office. Tomorrow. Six p.m.
Stevie was going to England. Maybe. If Dr. Quinn said it was okay. Which was not a guarantee. Because of things like the murders and Stevie’s propensity to get involved in them.
She just needed a yes.
June 23, 1995
11:00 p.m.
“THERE YOU ARE, MY DARLINGS!” SEBASTIAN SAID AS SOOZ SHEPHERDED Angela into the sitting room. He popped a bottle of champagne and put the foaming mess to his lips. Some of it made it inside his mouth; the rest went down the slim-fitting deep purple shirt he was wearing. He used his champagne-sticky hand to sweep his dyed black hair back off his face.
“We’re seriously going to play when it’s pissing down?” Yash said from the sofa.
“Of course!” Sebastian intoned. “We are not cowards!”
“Don’t speak for me.”
Angela sat next to Yash, sinking deep into the cushions. This was a proper old sitting room sofa, the kind that enfolded you in soft flocked fabric and broken-down filling, inviting you to stay for hour after hour, drinking and reading and enjoying the fire.
“We could stay inside,” Yash said. “Like normal people. We could drink.”
“Sounds like someone’s worried,” Peter said, coming into the room with a tarnished horn he’d picked up from one of Merryweather’s countless displays of antiquities. He tooted it speculatively, but it only made a spluttering fart noise.
“I don’t even know why we have to play this game every time we are here,” Yash went on.
“Tradition!” Sebastian said.
“How’s it a tradition if we’ve only been here three times? That’s not even a habit. It barely qualifies as a trend.”
Noel threw himself over the back of the sofa and slid down between Yash and Angela. Noel rejoiced in weird movements and liked to throw himself around the furniture, down the stairs, up into the rafters.
“Now,” Sebastian said as he grabbed a bag and began distributing small packages containing disposable clear rain ponchos. “I’m the starting seeker. I’ll count to a hundred to give you all time. As I find you, you’ll join the seeker team. I’ll give you a yellow poncho to show you’ve switched sides.”
He held up a yellow poncho as an example.
“When you find people, bring them to me for the poncho. Oh, and don’t even bother with the outbuildings. . . .”
He reached down into the front of his trousers and fished around for a moment.
“The evening has taken a turn,” Yash said. “It’s a bit early to get your cock out, Sebastian. Even for you.”
Sebastian jerked his arm up and triumphantly displayed a set of keys. “Everything’s locked, and these are the only keys.”