“Stood on a block of ice,” Nate said. “Everyone knows that one.”

“Right,” Stevie said. “It’s just like the one about someone being found stabbed to death in a locked room and there’s no weapon. The weapon was an icicle. It’s so well known that no one can use that device in mystery stories. It’s like saying the butler did it, but worse. It can never be ice.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t a mystery story.”

“Don’t you wonder what Hayes was doing in the tunnel?”

“We know what he was doing,” Nate said. “He was making a video or something.”

“That’s what everyone thinks he was doing.”

“What else would he have been doing there? No one else was down there with him, and even if they were, you don’t bring a few hundred pounds of dry ice along to make out. I’m not up to date on my kinks but I don’t think that’s one.”

Stevie sat back and picked at her lasagna. She looked around the dining hall. She saw Gretchen coming in—rather, she saw Gretchen’s hair, but Gretchen was with her hair.

Of all the people here, Gretchen possibly knew Hayes the best. She had been with him last year, definitely longer than Maris. And out of everyone at the school, she looked the most consistently shell-shocked. Maris was getting the sympathy, but Gretchen genuinely looked caved in. Stevie watched her at the counter getting a salad in a to-go box.

“Writing is a lot of sitting down,” Nate said, finally answering the question. “It’s a lot of trying things out and screwing up. You saw it when we worked on the script.”

“But we used things that existed,” Stevie said. “What if you’re totally making it up?”

“It’s either amazing or it’s the worst thing in the world,” he said. “Sometimes it goes well, and it’s all you think about, and then, it’s gone. It’s like you’re taking a ride down a river really fast, and then all of a sudden, there’s no water. You’re just sitting in a raft, trying to push it along in the mud. And then you’ve become me.”

“But you seem to be writing now,” she said.

“Yeah, and if I talk about it, it will all go away.”

He had finished talking, leaving Stevie with her thoughts. Her thoughts would not settle. The more she was alone with them, the more they whistled and spun.

There was no point in trying to eat. Stevie composted the remains of her dinner and went back outside, loosely trailing Gretchen. She headed back to the art barn, and Stevie followed. Once inside, she lost track of Gretchen, but a few moments later she heard thunderous piano playing coming from one of the rooms. Stevie peered along the hall until she saw Gretchen at one of the pianos. She played wildly, percussing against the elements themselves. She wore tight athletic clothing to play, sort of like something dancers might wear—black tights, ballet-style slippers, a tunic top that tied at the waist.

Stevie knocked at the window and Gretchen stopped playing abruptly. Stevie stepped into the practice room. She hadn’t planned what to say. Luckily, Gretchen spoke first.

“You were with Hayes the other night,” she said. “You’re Stevie, right?”

“Yeah,” Stevie said. “Sorry. I heard you playing and . . . could I talk to you?”

“Weren’t you the one who found him?” Gretchen said.

“I didn’t find him. I was just there when they did.”

Gretchen nodded absently and looked at her salad container on the floor. She hadn’t touched it.

“The other day,” Stevie said, “I walked in on you guys talking . . .”

“Yeah,” Gretchen said. “Not a great last conversation to have. I was pissed.”

“I know you dated him,” Stevie said. “And I know you broke up. But I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Gretchen said. “Yeah. It’s weird, being the ex-girlfriend of the guy who dies. You’re actually the first person who’s said sorry.”

“Can I ask you about Hayes?” Stevie said, sliding in and sitting on the floor.

“What about Hayes?” Gretchen said.

“I just . . . I’m confused after what happened, and I feel like maybe if I knew more about him, I wouldn’t be.”

Gretchen considered this for a moment.

“You know what I am?” she said. “I’m pissed. I’m pissed that I can’t be pissed at him. It’s like he’s done it again.”

“Done what again?” Stevie said.

“Played me,” she said, shaking her head. “I feel stupid. And if I ever say anything bad about him, I’ll be a monster. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

“I don’t think it makes you a monster to tell the truth about someone.”

“It does if that person dies in a weird, tragic accident.”

“What was it he took from you that he wasn’t giving back?” Stevie asked. “That thing I walked in on?”

“Oh,” she said. “He borrowed five hundred dollars from me in the spring. That five hundred was money I got from teaching piano at a summer camp. It was pretty much all the cash I had. I wanted it back when we got back to school this year. I know he made money off that show. He’s been promising to pay it back, but I don’t think that was ever going to happen. You know, like . . .”

She shook her head and wiped away a tear quickly.

“God,” she said. “Why am I crying? I’m so mad.”

Stevie looked away as Gretchen settled herself.

“Hayes was one of those people who seemed like he had it all together,” Gretchen said, wiping her face. “He could act; that’s how he got in. But inside? There was no there there. People did things for him because he was handsome, and he has—had—that voice. You’d do him favors. You know when you like someone. You do dumb stuff. You do stuff you know makes no sense.”

Up until very recently, Stevie would not have known that. But now she had a pretty good sense of it. Maybe you go through their stuff, for instance.

“I was just so into him,” Gretchen said. “But last year . . . he used me. Like, really used me. First, he asked for a little help with his paper on Jonathan Swift. He asked me to read it, maybe make some edits. So I did that. Then he was doing a production of The Glass Menagerie and he was busy, and he said he didn’t have time to write an essay on Dryden, and would I help him out by just finishing a little of it? Then I was doing some of his French units so it looked like he was working on that. Then, one day, he asked me to write his ten-page midterm on Alexander Pope, and I realized just how much of Hayes’s work I had done.

“When I said no to that, he was annoyed at first, but then he was all apologies. He said he knew he’d asked too much. Everything went back to normal. Later, when we had broken up, I found out I wasn’t the only one doing his work. He met people online, other people around school. There were probably four or five of us doing everything for Hayes. Four or five of us.”

Gretchen sniffed for a moment.

“There was a week or two in there I thought I loved him,” she said. “When Hayes turned it on, it was on. But then things got bad. One night, we were all sneaking off campus to go to some party in Burlington. Ellie Walker had a few of her burlesque friends drive up along the back road with their lights off. We slipped out and were meeting them. There’s a spot where the cameras don’t work that well and if you time it right, you can get out. But it happened that some grounds guy was working out there that night because there was a report of a bear. He had a car on the road and was keeping watch and he caught us. The guy said he was going to report us. Hayes said to him, ‘Wouldn’t it be terrible if they found pot in your car? What if you got busted for dealing to students?’ The guy looked terrified, and Hayes smiled and said, ‘Just kidding.’”