Page 88 of The Wrong Play

The roommate. A little creepier than I’d anticipated, but we couldn’t control what happened to us. Only how we reacted to it.

Or at least that’s what I would be advising Matty on later.

I braced myself, fully expecting Matty to choke, to panic, to possibly scream. But no. The man did somethingincredible.

He smiled. Tilted his head just so. Dropped his voice to the kind of murmur that probably had the freshman girls sighing into their overpriced lattes.

I actually felt proud.Look at him go. Matty, in the wild, putting on a clinic inwingmanning.

Emma blinked up at him, her expression blank.

Then, after he said something I couldn’t hear, and a long pause in which I held my breath the entire time…she stepped out of the room.

Matty walked her down the hall, and I decided he’d just moved up in the friendship rankings.Per se, of course.

Mission. Freaking. Accomplished.

As they got closer to where I was hiding out, I noticed Emma was a little…off.

Not in the usual freshman girl trying too hard kind of way. Not even in the sorority girl who thinks she’s better than you kind of way. No, Emma moved like she was floating just slightly above the ground, like her feet barely touched it, like she wasn’t quite tethered to this plane of existence.

But it was herfacethat made the back of my neck itch.

Her eyes werewrong. Wide.Toowide—pupils dilated like she’d just crawled out of a sensory deprivation tank and hadn’t yet adjusted to reality. She didn’t blink. Not once. She just…stared. Right at Matty’s ear. Not his face. Not his body. Hisear.

Matty, to his credit, looked like he was holding back the kind of full-body shudder you get when a bug skitters across your skin.

I could see it all over him. The way his face had gone pale. The way his movements were stiff, almost robotic, like he had just survived some kind of horror movie encounter and wasn’t fullyprocessingit yet.

A man above men right there.

He pulled out his phone, and a second later, I got a text.

Matty: I don’t think she blinked once the whole time we talked.

All right, well, not ideal. But if he could manage Darla, he could manage this chick…hopefully.

Me: You’re doing your country proud.

Matty: She said something about how the stars tell her secrets.

I grinned, watching as they passed before I slipped around the corner toward Riley’s door.

Me: Maybe that means you’re soulmates.

I thought the middle finger emoji he sent back was a littledramatic, but we couldn’t all be patient kings.

Sliding the key from my pocket—the one I’dborrowedlong enough to make a copy—I opened Riley’s door.

Slipping into her room was the easy part. The harder part was not laughing at Matty’s suffering in real time. I eased the door shut behind me and took in her room. It was easy to know which side was hers, she didn’t have a creepy poster on the wall of my worst enemy—a certain red-haired clown. I shivered, resisting the urge to tear it off the wall.

Moving closer, I took in the small things that made it hers—the faint scent of vanilla in the air, the books stacked neatly on her desk, the sweater draped over the chair that I had seen her wearing just days ago.

On her desk, a hair tie sat next to her laptop. I picked it up, running my fingers over the soft fabric before slipping it onto my wrist. It was warm from the sun streaming through the window, but I imagined it was warm fromher.

Her dresser was next. I opened the top drawer and nearly groaned. Lace, silk, delicate fabrics in muted colors—things that clung to her body, things I had imagined peeling off her. I reached in and pulled out a pair, pressing it to my nose and inhaling deep. The scent of her made my head spin, and before I could second-guess myself, I slipped them into my pocket.

Then I moved to her desk, pulling open the drawers one by one. Pens, notebooks, folded letters I didn’t dare open. And then—a photograph.

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