Emma
Emma set an alarm on her phone. Ninety minutes. She’d give herself that much time to scan the material and get the paper done before she turned her attention back to her story and following up on what Cara had told her. Writing papers this way was just like journalism, she told herself, writing under deadline. Other students did their papers at the last minute every day.
But she squirmed in her seat, had trouble concentrating. She kept picking up the phone and looking at the time she had left. It reminded her of how her mother acted when they had to get to the airport for an early flight; every cell in her body was on edge, anticipatory. She finally stopped after an hour, when she had a first draft. She’d proofread it and check the footnotes in the morning. Or she’d hand it in and get the B- or the C+ that she deserved for half-assing it. She rubbed her eyes and put her laptop away. She was lucky it was on a religious topic she understood, something any Catholic could outline in her sleep. If it had been on almost any other topic, she’d be sunk. She headed for the communal computers and chose the one farthest from the door. She felt a little guilty suddenly, that unlike the other kids here, she had a scholarship and also a laptop. She hoped none of them had seen her sitting at the other table on the second floor, typing away, packing her things up. But there were plenty of open spaces; she wasn’t taking a computer from someone who needed it, and that was all that mattered.
A quick search for Professor Grady brought up cursory, predictable material. Married, lived in the suburbs. A pretty wife whose clothes looked a little artsy and hand-dyed and who taught preschool at a private school. Two teachers in the house? She felt sorry for their kids. A Semper alumni. Attended Radnor High School. In an article about Radnor parks, he was quoted as being part of a lively game of outdoor chess played throughout the summer. He practically had nerd stamped on his forehead.
She opened Google Earth, stared at the bird’s-eye view of his house outside Wayne. A green lawn, well-trimmed hedges, target set up in the backyard. Archery? Had to be. A path that looked like it led to the neighbor’s house. Or maybe the Radnor Trail, depending on where this street was; she didn’t know that part of town well enough to know. She looked him up on social media, expecting little, finding next to nothing. Typical. She remembered her own father’s attitude toward Facebook, calling it a burn book, a gossip column. She scrolled over to LinkedIn and found a profile there. Ah. That was actually better. Students connected with their professors on LinkedIn all the time. She asked to connect with him, knowing it would probably take weeks for a response. Then, to cover her tracks, asked to connect with all her other professors as well, then logged off and kept looking elsewhere.
She found an alumni Facebook group for the year he graduated, but it was private, and she had a feeling he didn’t belong. There had to be more alumni materials archived at the library—yearbooks, she guessed, maybe student newspapers and programs for the plays? These thoughts skittered through her mind as she dismissed them. They struck her as available but unimportant. She thought of other things that would be accessible—marriage licenses, real estate transactions, the salaries of public officials. She didn’t need that info to guess at what he and his wife made; he taught two classes, had tenure. They lived a nice, comfortable life but not a glamorous one, and she was willing to bet their kids went to the private school where his wife taught, and they would go to Semper, too, all at discount. It wasn’t a bad strategy for making a teacher’s salary stretch.
Still, something bugged her about the house. So neat and trimmed. Too neat? She went back to Google Earth, stared at the skinny, winding path she’d noticed in the backyard. The grass was trimmed at the edges. This was no trampled grass path, no cut-through. It was intentionally made. Was it stepping stones? Brick? Zooming in didn’t help; the resolution wasn’t crisp enough. But when she zoomed out? It was clearly a designed path that led down to a neighboring property. But wait. No. She plugged in addresses near his house number until she hit the one next door. From there, she could see it clearly. A patio, pool, and hot tub, the aqua tones throbbing in the midst of green, brown. A structure too small to be a house—it was a pool house or shed. Not a separate home. Part of his home, the parcel behind his, another terraced level. An expensive terraced level. How much did a pool and hot tub cost? A lot, she knew. This could mean something or nothing. He could have family money; this was the Main Line after all. But did people with family money usually attend Semper? Only if they were academic fuckups. Not if they were nerds who played chess in the park.
Meanwhile, three of her professors had accepted her LinkedIn requests, but none of them Grady. She switched her privacy mode to anonymous so no one would know she had looked at their profiles, then scrolled through. None of them were linked to Grady, but that could mean nothing. She thrummed her fingers against the keyboard impatiently. Grady only had forty-two connections. Two of them were to Semper professors in his department, one to his secretary. He didn’t have a photo posted. He probably didn’t have his alerts set up. This was a waste of time, she decided.
She was about to seek out the librarian and ask about historical Semper materials when it occurred to her that someone may have digitized them. Bingo. Of course. A generous alumnus by the name of Stanley Gross had paid for the project. Searchable yearbooks. How thoughtful of you, Mr. Gross, to make spying on your classmates and friends so easy. Bless you.
And there he was, Professor Grady, freshman year of college. She was totally shocked, as she often was with older photos of adults, by how hot he’d been. Longish hair, streaks of sun in it. Skin still tanned from a summer backpacking or lifeguarding. Just a dude before he’d chosen a major, before he’d met his wife. Before his life had even begun. There were no clubs or interests listed. Had he joined the chess club? Taken up archery? Did he know what might lie ahead? Did he have a plan? Or was he as clueless and unformed as she was?
She scrolled through the whole class, thousands of them, searching for what, exactly? She wasn’t sure. She went through the Gs to the Zs slowly and was about to exit when she realized she’d forgotten A–F. And there it was. Sam Fucking Beck. Same class. Similar hair, bigger smile. He looked confident, like he knew more about what awaited him.
She felt an actual tingle along her neck and spine and knew before she even pulled up the search, before the pieces came together, that they would. Precisely. Same dorm. Same room. College roommates.
She felt a rush of blood to her head. They were in it together. She didn’t know whose idea it had been. And whether it had been hatched in college, lying shoulder to shoulder in their narrow bunks, surrounded by more beautiful coeds than they’d ever seen, or later, when their paths diverged, and one of them had an idea the other could help with. She imagined their lawyers claiming all this didn’t prove anything. Of course a friend would go to an old friend’s restaurant! Of course he would! And she knew they would be wrong, without even knowing the particulars. She knew it in her bones and didn’t need all the details, not yet. Those things could turn this from story to series, the behind the scenes, the history, the evil plot. She saw it all in her mind, the photos, a timeline, a map, a path. Her path.
In her small notebook, she wrote down the name of every freshman boy who had lived in their dorm that year. Page after page. Just in case. It was somewhere to start, and it seemed as logical a place as any.
Walking back to her dorm, it was crystal clear to her: she’d been following the wrong people. The girls were a given. Whether it was one roommate or all—what did that matter? The part of her that cared about that was the girl in her, not the writer. She felt left out, excluded, jealous in a weird, twisted way. She had to laugh at the absurdity. Wasn’t I good enough to be a ho, too? What about me?
But the writer in her needed to follow the men, the money, the mechanics of it. The girls could come later. All she needed was one, just one, to talk on the record. That, she thought, would be the easy part. And she decided that asking Fiona questions was wrong, too. Fiona didn’t want to talk. Fiona didn’t want to be pursued. When Fiona was home, she needed peace and quiet and space. So there was no reason to trip all over Fiona. No. There were other girls out there, had to be.
She would have to let Fiona come to her, not the other way around. And Emma thought, in her youthful and naive way, that she knew how to do it.
There was a reason Fiona had approached Taylor and not Emma. Taylor acted the part. Taylor looked the part. And that, Emma knew, was fixable. Learnable. Doable.
First stop: CVS.