Ovenshine

9.

A heavy fog settles over Proudley College the next morning, disguising all the spires of the buildings in clinging clouds of gray, casting a dim shadow upon everything it touches. Indy wakes up in the stillness of her dorm and looks out the window above her desk, where the campus looks like a faded image of itself, a painting in desperate need of restoration.

Out of some strange, dismal curiosity, she brushes her face with her hand. The skin of her cheeks is puffy and salt-roughened, and old makeup grits beneath her fingers. She groans. It's a good thing she got Aunt Jocelyn to give her the weekend off for homecoming. It leaves her an excuse to lay her head back on her pillow, to sink into the cushions and pretend to disappear.

Her roommate, it seems, has other plans.

She doesn't know the dorm isn't empty until a pillow sails across the room and hits her in the back of the head.

Indy grabs it and annexes it into her cave of pillows and blankets. "Good morning, Sylvia."

"Thought you were awake."

"I certainly am now."

She hears a soft plop as Sylvia hops from the ladder of her loft bed, the subtle susurration of her bare feet shuffling across the thin carpet. "Hey," she says, and knocks gently on Indy's bed frame. "A little birdie told me you had a rough night."

"The little birdie is Gatz, isn't it?" Indy murmurs. "You should ignore little birdies."

"Not when they tell me important things," Sylvia says with a wink. She sighs, resting her chin on the top of the ladder. This early in the morning, she's without makeup, subtle freckles across the bridge of her nose and the acne between her brows made beautiful for the scarce opportunities anyone has to see them. Her eyes, however, are no less sharp. They're dark, impenetrable, like a sea ten thousand leagues down. Who knows what all lurks there.

"I'll give you two options."

"Is one of them laying in bed all day?" Indy asks.

"No," Sylvia says. "One of them is I go bring us the greasiest, fattiest, most delicious food ever and we talk about whatever the fuck's bugging you. Two is, well. I still get us the food but I distract you instead."

Indy smashes another pillow on top of her head as she considers it. She tries to think of talking, to conjure the words that might explain the knotted, twisted up feeling inside of her besides wrong, wrong, wrong. But she can't. Her tongue is sand in her mouth, dry and formless and impossible to wield.

Indy just shakes her head, and thankfully, it's a message Sylvia understands.

"To be honest, I was hoping you'd say that," Sylvia says, turning around. She tears her bonnet from her head and tosses it in no particular direction, sitting down at her desk and fussing around in her wig drawer before she selects her choice for the day: lavender purple, long and layered, with retro fringe. "A little birdie also told me your visit with Lamar Pine may have given you a place to start."

"If you mean looking for witnesses, I asked that the first time I met with that cop. He refused to tell me anything."

Sylvia shimmies the wig onto her head, then turns, lifting an eyebrow. "And that surprises you?"

"No," Indy pouts. "And don't look at me like that. Obviously I tried googling some things, but it didn't get me very far. They quoted some neighbor in an old, old newspaper article about the case—I think her name was Mary Chernenko or something?—but that was all I could find about her."

Abruptly, Sylvia stops moving.

"What?" Indy forces herself up onto her elbows, not sure if the rise in her heartbeat is from excitement or panic. "What is it?"