Chapter Two
Two
I forgot about the letter until Noah answered the door and Phoebe shoved it in his face, shouting, “WHO LIVED HERE BEFORE US?”
“Jesus,” Noah said, blinking rapidly. He and I were the two most important people in Arden’s life, but I was the one talking her down after their parents set them up.
Originally from Seoul, her parents had a lot of expectations when it came to a partner for Arden, and she revolted at every opportunity until they shipped her off to dinner with a sharp-jawed future pediatrician.
Four years later, Arden remained sore about it.
“Phoebe,” I said. “When I said to ask Noah, I didn’t mean the second we got here.”
Ignoring me, she brandished the letter. “This came today. Do you know anything about this guy?”
Noah glanced at me, raising his eyebrows. He’d spent enough evenings playing the buffer between us to recognize the shift in Phoebe—something illuminated for the first time in months—that I didn’t have to say a word. He delicately turned the envelope over in his hands, studying it.
“You opened it?”
“Not the point.”
His eyes cut to me. “Might be kind of the point.”
I shrugged helplessly. “She’s fourteen, man. I don’t know.”
“Okay, let’s check this out,” he said, stepping aside to let us in.
Phoebe herded him to the couch like a border collie; I could practically hear her nerves revving.
I didn’t know why she was so invested in this, but the relief of it doused me in a warmth that had me wondering if I’d been living in a permanent winter since September.
“Do you remember him?” Phoebe asked, bouncing on the cushion beside Noah. A line appeared between his eyebrows as he inspected the envelope again and then carefully slipped the letter out.
“When we moved in, a woman lived there. Shawna.”
Phoebe slumped. “Oh.”
“She had just moved in when we did, so Benji must’ve moved out a year, year and a half ago.” He rubbed his chin, eyes skimming the letter. “Strange that it would show up now.”
“It’s weird, right?” Phoebe scooted closer, reading over his shoulder. “I wonder if this Catalina chick held on to it for a while and was finally like, ‘Bye bitch!’ And sent it back.”
“That or it got lost somewhere and she moved from this address before it reached her.”
“So, we’re all invested in this now,” I said, looking between them. Noah didn’t lift his attention from the letter, brow furrowing. Behind me, the door opened and Arden waltzed in, carrying two pizza boxes along with a smaller box on top.
“Antonio gave us free garlic bread!” she declared, kicking the door shut. “I was totally right about his thing for me.”
I perked up—I knew Antonio from Antonio’s Pizza was into Arden, but this was the first time his crush resulted in a free appetizer. Meanwhile, Noah and Phoebe were too engrossed to notice.
“Man,” Noah said. “There is some serious groveling going on here.”
“Groveling?” Arden deposited the boxes on the kitchen counter, scrunching her face up in confusion. “What do you mean? What’d I miss?”
“We got a letter in the mail written by the dude who used to live in our apartment. Phoebe, being Phoebe, opened it.”
Arden’s eyes lit up and she veered for the sofa. “Ooh. Let me see.”
Checking back into reality, Noah glanced at me with a smirk. “Notice how she has no issue with the felony.”
“Opening someone’s mail is barely a felony,” she said, leaning over the back of the couch to get a closer look. Phoebe threw me a victorious smile. And dammit, I couldn’t muster a lick of irritation; that smile was too nice to see.
“They were hoping we knew him,” Noah mentioned. “But Shawna lived there when we moved in, right?”
Arden nodded absently. I stood off to the side and rolled up the sleeves of my oversized flannel, watching as the three most important people in my life read and reread that letter with mounting interest. I mean, it was interesting. But it didn’t necessarily deserve more attention than hot pizza.
“That’s crazy,” Arden said, tearing her gaze from the letter. “That’s some true love shit. I don’t think Noah loves me that much.”
“I love you more,” he protested. “If we broke up, I wouldn’t write a sad letter. I would do something.”
She ignored this and drew her phone out of her pocket. “We have to look this guy up.”
“Already did,” Phoebe said. I raised my eyebrows.
“You did?”
“Yeah, but there’s literally nothing.” She pushed up on her knees, leaning toward Arden to get a look at her phone. “See? No Benji Dexters. There are Benjamin Dexters, but no one in Boston. And all the ones I found are, like, elderly.”
“How do you know this guy isn’t elderly?” Noah asked. Phoebe rested her elbow along the back of the couch, twisting to face him.
“I found Catalina.”
I recoiled. “How?”
She waved this off. “Her social media is private. But you can tell from her profile pictures she’s pretty young. Late twenties, early thirties maybe,” she explained, her voice rising an octave from the excitement.
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “Who are you?”
Arden quickly tapped something new into the Google search bar. “Which one?”
Phoebe scanned the screen, then pointed. “Her.”
“Holy shit.”
“Right? She’s hot.”
“I wanna see,” Noah said. Arden shot him a look. “I mean, I’m also looking at a hot girl, so I don’t need to see.”
She turned back to her phone, shifting closer to Phoebe. “We should create a burner account and request to follow her.”
“I thought about it, but that might cross the line from curiosity to stalker,” Phoebe replied.
“What is happening?” I said to no one in particular. Phoebe glanced at me, her expression inscrutable.
“How are you not interested?”
“I am interested. This”—I gestured toward them—“isn’t interest. It’s something else.”
“Obsession,” Arden said, spinning to face me. “I’m obsessed, and you should be, too. Your apartment has lore, Vi! Lore that doesn’t include haunting!”
“It might include a little haunting,” Phoebe said. “My bedroom door shut on its own the other day.”
“You left your window open.” I turned, heading to the counter to grab a slice of pizza. “Isn’t this the end of the road? The guy doesn’t exist and the girl doesn’t want to be found. The end.”
“Or,” Phoebe said, “we could break into the building manager’s office and find Benji’s old files.”
My mouth dropped open. Even Arden balked.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said as Principal Chambers’s warnings about escalation swam through my head.
Broken rules graduating into broken laws.
Phoebe dipped her toe in with mail fraud—the only thing standing in her way of a life of crime was me, the woman with a hidden stash of Twinkies in her underwear drawer.
“They must have them, right?” Phoebe pressed, looking to Noah for reassurance. His lips pressed into a line, eyes darting to me and back again.
“Probably not. I doubt a place like this holds on to tenant information that long.”
“But you don’t know.”
“We’re not breaking in anywhere,” I cut in, earning my tenth eye roll of the day. “What are you doing right now, Phoebe? What is this?”
“I’m trying to return someone’s private property, no thanks to you.”
“You’re trying to break the law. Again.”
“Reading someone’s mail is barely illegal, Vi! And it was sent to us!”
“It was sent to him!”
“Our apartment.”
“His name.”
Noah and Arden watched us go back and forth like Venus and Serena at Wimbledon, but then Arden caught my eye, something twinkling.
She could see the difference in Phoebe too.
My best friend and Noah had been with us through the entire hellish ride, diffusing tension when things got too sour by inviting us over for dinner or out to a movie.
And now, finally, Phoebe’s permanent scowl had fled, smiling like the kid Arden and I would make peanut butter and fluff sandwiches for when we were on break from college.
Maybe I wasn’t invested in the letter, but I was invested in that.
“Fine,” I said, and Phoebe straightened. “If you can figure out a way—a legal way—to find Benji Dexter, I will do everything in my power to get that letter to him.”
She considered this. “Define ‘legal.’ ”
Noah snorted.
“I’m kidding,” she said, sending me a reassuring smile. “All my research will be aboveboard. Promise.”
Phoebe padded over to the pizza. I watched her, the anxiety in my chest flaring as her smile dimmed a few watts.
I wanted her to be happy. I needed her to be happy.
My reckless, wonderful childhood had shifted irrevocably with the birth of my sister; even at twelve, I found myself protective to a vicious degree, and that part of me grew along with her, exploding into an inferno when she came out to me last summer.
I’d never forget the shake in her voice, as if she truly believed something would change between us because she liked girls, or the joyful tears in her eyes when I’d told her I was bisexual.
It was scary, loving someone that much. I wanted to warp the world into a softer, more palatable place for her. Maybe, somehow, this was the first step.
Arden sidled up beside me, her fingers wrapping around my arm. “She’s smiling,” she hissed in my ear. I nodded stiffly.
“I know.”
“That’s big.”
“I know.”
“We have to pursue this.”
I shut my eyes, Phoebe’s smile seared into my memory, my eyelids, my very being.
“I know,” I said.