Page 5 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“Look, I know it sucks and parents are the worst, but most people just go home.” He looked at her like the solution was both obvious and inevitable. “You should just go home.”
Then he turned, shifting the box like it held the weight of the world—like no college student had ever had to bear a greater burden—and Maggie felt her throat start to burn.
“But what if...” She’d never had to say the words out loud before. “What if you don’t have one?” Her voice cracked, and her eyes watered and maybe that’s why he didn’t quite get it as he glanced back over his shoulder.
“What?”
“My parents died and the golf carts were nonrefundable and I need the condo money for tuition.”
She’d said it all too quickly—like those were excuses that he had to hear all the time—and, suddenly, Ryan from Residential Life stopped looking at her like she was stupid and started looking at her like she was crazy. And also pitiful. Which was okay. At that moment, pity was almost all she had going for her.
“I can’t go home.” She ran a hand over her eyes like she could push the tears back in. When that didn’t work, she looked away. “I don’t have one.”
“Look, I’m really sorry. But...” His voice was lower, softer. Closer. “They turn down the heat and cut the lights. There’s no food. There’sno heat. It’s three weeks. You literally cannot stay here.”
He was right, of course. The heat was the deal-breaker, which meant she was going to have to dip into her meager savings and get a motel. Maybe an Airbnb. She could get a part-time job. Maybe go to the nearest airport and start impersonating long-lost relatives in the hope that someone might take pity on her and take her home. It was either that or—
“You could come home with me,” a voice said from behind her.
And that’s how she met Emily.
And that was the beginning of everything.
Even the end.
Chapter Four
Seven Days Before Christmas
Maggie was fine. Really. She was totally and completely—
Resigned. Yeah. That was more like it. She’d learned long ago that the firsts are always the hardest. The first birthday. The first round of holidays, cycling throughout the year. But the year was almost over, and her first Christmas was coming, so she might as well experience her first party, soldier through and get it out of the way.
Because Maggie wasn’t fine—but she would be. As soon as her stomach stopped growling and her head stopped hurting and this last first was finally over.
So she piled a bunch of cheese cubes on a napkin and grabbed a sparkling water that was probably going to make her burp. She managed three whole minutes of small talk with two different Jens before Ethan Wyatt started a conga line.
“How’s it going, Marcie?” he shouted as he congaed by, and Maggie started doing Party Math in her head.
If she hid for thirty minutes, then waved at three more people on her way to the elevator, maybe no one would notice if she spent the rest of the party hiding in an empty room, reading her Purse Book and eating her Napkin Cheese. It was a genius plan, really. She should have thought of it from the start.
But as she darted down a darkened hall, looking for an open door, Maggie felt her footsteps falter. She had to stop. And stare. Because, officially, the display might have been called the Wall of Fame, but according to Deborah, everyone at Killhaven just called it The Eleanors.
Tucked away behind polished wood and (supposedly) fireproof glass stood ninety-nine novels by Eleanor Ashley. First editions, unlike the used and frayed anddog-eared copies Maggie’s father had once called her only friends—a joke that would have been funny if it hadn’t also been true. And for a moment, all Maggie could feel was wonder, followed quickly by shame because Eleanor Ashley wouldn’t hide at parties. Eleanor wouldn’t have been tricked into coming to begin with. Eleanor would have—
“Yo! Ethan!”
Only a man who wears T-shirts that look like tuxedos could ever shout “Yo!” in a professional setting. Maggie barely had time to dart into an office and hide behind a half-closed door before she heard two sets of footsteps come around the bend in the hall.
“Lance. Hey. How’s it going?”
“Oh. You know.” Lance gave a coarse laugh. “I dressed up for the occasion.”
“I see that. Nice.”
If Killhaven were a high school, then Ethan was the golden boy, player of sports and breaker of hearts. The kind of guy who could get voted prom king at a school he didn’t even go to. Meanwhile, Lance and the other Leather Jacket Guys were nothing more than Ethan’s asshole acolytes. Or Assolytes, as Maggie liked to call them. She half expected Lance to offer to polish Ethan’s leather jacket or do his homework. Maybe dispose of a body.
“Yo. Man. Did you see the ice queen?”
