Influenced Eva Robinson (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📖

marching band that played techno covers. Horns and a bass drum blared in her ears. Sublime.

Michael’s desk was next to hers, his space hung with a few colorful images—the London skyline at sunset, a train through the city. When he wasn’t there, Ciara occasionally peered over at his photos as she worked, imagining she was in another country.

She’d didn’t think she’d put up her own pictures. Besides music, her primary interest was in the grimmest aspects of history. If she were to decorate her space, it would likely be an unsettling combination of smiling marching bands and women in nooses.

Best to leave it blank, really.

She clicked on Arabella’s Instagram account. Her Facebook was locked down, but Instagram might give some idea of the woman’s mental state before she’d died. Ciara had read once that a machine learning tool could determine how depressed you were by the number of people who showed up in your social media pictures. When she opened the profile, she found six images—all showing flowers in Mount Auburn cemetery, all taken on the same day.

When Ciara clicked to see the photos Arabella was tagged in, she found something much more interesting: six photos, professional quality. Really, Arabella looked like she could have been a model in addition to a PhD candidate. Ciara clicked on a picture of two beautiful women—one with chin-length dark curls, her arm draped over the shoulders of a platinum blonde with bright red lipstick, their foreheads touching. The tag indicated the blonde was Arabella.

Their faces were so close that it almost looked like they were about to kiss. The sun lit them up from behind, streaking their hair. Rowan Harris was the name on the photographer’s account.

When Ciara clicked on Rowan’s photo grid, she saw that Arabella was one of the few guest stars in Rowan’s photos. The rest were just Rowan herself. In one, they were taking a bath together, both wearing black dresses that clung to their bodies, covered in suds. There was something mesmerizing about these photos, a remoteness to their beauty that seemed otherworldly.

Ciara was snapped out of her trance by a white plastic bag dropping onto her desk, and she looked up to see Michael.

She pulled out her earbuds, and horns blared from them.

“Salt and pepper tofu, as requested,” said Michael.

“Ah, thank you.” Her stomach rumbled as the scent hit her nose, and she immediately started opening the container.

Michael dropped down at his desk next to her and opened a container of rice. “I spoke to Arabella’s husband. I’m going over to interview him in the morning. Do you want to come?”

“Yes, absolutely.” She was intensely curious about Arabella now. “I spoke to Arabella’s PhD advisor. He said she was brilliant, nearly done with her dissertation. He was shocked that I would even ask about mental illness. If she were suicidal and ingested a poison on purpose, you’d think a psychology professor, of all people, might notice the warning signs ahead of time.”

“Did he know of anyone who might have been competitive with her? Or angry?”

She shrugged. “There was another PhD candidate she’d gotten into an argument with about counseling methods or something, and they both accused each other of being incompetent in a public argument. But that woman has been in San Francisco for weeks.”

Gripped by hunger, Ciara dipped her scallion pancake in the soy sauce. It was just the right mixture of salty and crispy, with the faintest hint of sweetness. Harvard Square’s China Express deserved a Nobel Prize for this. “I just found these photos of her with this Instagram chick. Maybe they were romantically involved? They’re in a bath together.”

Michael leaned over the divider and shrugged. “The popular Instagram models often have vaguely sexual poses like that with other women—hanging out on beds together, covered in soap, straddling each other, that kind of thing.” He cleared his throat. “Not that I’m an expert in that area.”

She quirked a smile. “Right. What did the coroner say?”

“Inconclusive. Irritated stomach lining, which can suggest poison, but not a particular type. We still won’t know anything definite until we get the toxicology report.”

As she ate, she clicked Rowan’s Instagram profile again, which featured a tasteful nude photo on a bed, Rowan’s nipples just barely concealed by her fingers. The image had garnered over a hundred thousand likes. It was immediately apparent to Ciara why she had so many followers. The woman knew how to take a selfie.

It took her a moment to realize that Michael was staring over the divider, chewing as he stared transfixed at the picture.

“This was Arabella’s friend,” Ciara explained. “Arabella hardly had any photos of herself online, but Rowan has six of them.”

As Ciara scrolled down the page, she glimpsed images of the Harvard campus and luxurious hotel rooms. Several pictures featured the Eiffel Tower. The photos were a combination of sex appeal and privilege. Arabella, as a gorgeous elite student, was the perfect prop.

Ciara scrolled down to a photo of Rowan sitting on Arabella’s lap on an upholstered antique sofa, flanked on either side by rows of bookshelves. White ceilings arched above them, chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Creamy white light streamed over them from the right of the photo.

The photo had been taken at the Boston Athenæum, a private library nearly as old as the country itself.

Ciara could not tear her gaze away from that picture, and she felt a strange tug, a yearning to part of that world. “I know this place. My twin sister Jess loved it. We went on a tour ages ago. It was the place where Hawthorne and John Quincy Adams read their morning newspapers. It was so old that they used an ‘æ’ in the name, and a half-number in its address, like some kind of Harry Potter portal.” She cocked her head. “It looks like Arabella was a prop for this other girl’s whole elitism vibe. Arabella was English, a Harvard student… It’s all very old-money Boston. Like sexy twenty-something Brahmins. It’s actually really compelling.”

“Charles!”