“Are you in Julien’s bed?” I ask.
Rowan sniffs back some tears. “What’s it to you?”
I lick my bottom lip, place my hands on my hips, and scan the room. “Was he your boyfriend?”
He scoffs, but the sound quickly transforms into a deep sob until the man breaks in front of me. His head folds into his hands, elbows on his knees. Theweepingfrom his lungs makes my eyes heat with both empathy and embarrassment for witnessing it.
“He wanted to come out… I wanted to… But we didn’t. Ididn’t.”
“Oh,” I whisper, because I can barely speak.
What am I supposed to do? Offer him a pat on the back and athere, there? I’m not built for tenderness. But his cries crack open a vault of feeling in me anyway. So I sit next to him. A silent companion to his ruin.
It’s all I know to do. I refrain from actual words, but I simply…lingeron the hard mattress edge. Hovering a hand over his shoulder. Thigh inches away from his.
“So, um. You know I didn’t kill him, right?”
Rowan stands and shrugs off my concern, reaching for his tissue box. After he collects himself and cleans his face, he nods at me slowly. “Yeah, I know. But I don’t know who did it. And I’m so angry that I lost him that I wanted to blame someone. Anyone nearby.”
“So instead of being a dick about it,help me. We could figure this out.”
His eyebrows pinch. “How?”
I stand and pace, sipping my beer. Because it helps me think. Plus, the room kind of smells like someone’slivedin it for a few days without a shower. If I move, I won’t gag.
“I was backstage. Mutton was there,” I mutter, mainly to myself. “The ringleader. There was a guy who was wheeling him to the stage around the back area. That was the last person I saw him with. Maybe he knows something.”
Rowan glances up at me, running a hand through his black curls, then rubs his patchy black beard he’s grown out. “What’s he look like? Which fraternity was he with?”
“Uh…” I try to remember, but I wasn’t really paying attention to who he was. “Plain. He wasplain. Nothing distinguishable. Brown hair?”
Frustrated, Rowan pierces me with questions. “Tall or short? Big or small? Give mesomething, for fuck’s sake.”
“He wasn’t big. It was hard to tell with his costume on! It covered him up, you know! I remember his hat. And he was really, um,haughty. In his attitude. I should’ve paid more attention.” But I was more hung up on Aiden that night.
“An average height, not fat guy, with brown hair and a tall hat. Wow. Really narrowed it down there.”
“You’re a dick— Oh!” I snap my fingers in Rowan’s face. “Wait. Did you know that Julien had a hole in his side? Not…not like a bullet, but moresurgical. As if an instrument was used to make it.”
“Side? Which side?”
“Here.” I point to my upper right side between a couple of ribs.
“Like a biopsy?”
Rolling my eyes, I frown. “I don’t know what that is.”
Rowan shoves me aside and heads toward his laptop on the messy desk, scooting anatomy textbooks and chemistry equations written on index cards to the side. “Like this?”
On the screen is a gross picture of a small bloody hole in someone’s side, surrounded by a blue surgical tarp.
“Yes! Just like that! In that same spot, too!”
“Why would someone want to biopsy Julien’s lungs?” Rowan mutters with disgust.
My stomach flips. Harvest him like cattle? The scientific-ness of the word tastes like metal on my tongue. “Would that kill him?”
Rowan seems perplexed. Hand around his neck, he tilts his head. “No. Not right away.”