Patty doesn’t sound as excited about it as I expect her to, though. Oh, she says I can borrow her dress—the red Armani she’d worn to the Grammys when she’d been seven months’ pregnant with Indy, and which I hope will consequently fit me—and all, but she isn’t exactly shrieking, “Ooooh he asked you out!”

Because I guess he hasn’t, really. Maybe it isn’t a real date when the guy is just going out with you to make sure no one kills you.

God. When did Patty get so mature?

“Well, just promise me to be careful, okay, Heather?” Patty still sounds worried. “Cooper says he thinks the whole murder thing is kind of…unlikely. But I’m not so sure. And I don’t want you to be next.”

I do my best to reassure Patty that my safety is hardly in jeopardy—even though, of course, I’m pretty sure the exact opposite is true. Someone in Fischer Hall wants me dead.

Which means I am definitely on to something with my Elizabeth-Kellogg-and-Roberta-Pace-were-murdered theory.

It isn’t until I’ve hung up with Patty that I feel someone’s gaze on me. I look up and see that Sarah is sitting at her desk, stuffing Tootsie Rolls into little plastic bags as a surprise for each of the RAs, all of whom she feels need a pick-me-up after the rocky start their semester had gotten off to, given the dead girls and all.

Only I can’t help noticing that Sarah has stopped stuffing, and is instead staring at me owlishly through her thick glasses—she only wears her contacts on special occasions, such as check-in (potential to meet cute single dads) or poetry readings at St. Mark’s Church (potential to meet cute penniless poets).

“I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation,” Sarah says, “but did I just hear you say you think someone’s trying to kill you?”

“Um,” I say. How can I put this so as not to cause her undue alarm? After all, I get to go home every night, but Sarah has to live here. How comfortable is she going to feel knowing there’s a dangerous psychopath stalking the floors of Fischer Hall?

Then again, Sarah lost her virginity on an Israeli kibbutz the summer of her freshman year—or so she’d told me—so it isn’t like she’s a potential victim.

So I shrug and say, “Yes.”

Then—because Rachel is upstairs in her apartment getting ready for the ball (she’d managed to find something to wear, but wouldn’t show it to us on account of “not wanting to ruin the surprise”)—I tell her my theory about Chris Allington and the deaths of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.

“Have you told any of this to Rachel?” Sarah asks me, when I’m done.

“No,” I say. “Rachel has enough to worry about, don’t you think?” Besides—I don’t mention this part to Sarah—if it turns out I’m wrong, it won’t look so good at my six months’ employment review…you know, my suspecting the son of the president of the college of a double homicide.

“Good,” Sarah says. “Don’t. Because has it occurred to you that this whole thing—you know, with your thinking that Elizabeth and Roberta were murdered—might be a manifestation of your own insecurities over having been betrayed and abandoned by your mother?”

I just blink at her. “What?”

“Well,” Sarah says, pushing up her glasses. “Your mother stole all your money and fled the country with your manager. That had to have been the most traumatic event in your life. I mean, you lost everything—all your savings, as well as the people on whom you thought you could most depend, your father having been absent most of your life to begin with due to his long-term incarceration for passing bad checks. And yet whenever anyone brings it up, you dismiss the whole thing as if it were nothing.”

“No, I don’t,” I say. Because I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I do.

“Yes, you do,” Sarah says. “You even still speak to your mother. I heard you on the phone with her the other day. You were chatting with her about what to get your dad for his birthday. In jail. The woman who stole all your money and fled to Argentina!”

“Well,” I say, a little defensively. “She’s still my mother, no matter what she’s done.”

I’m never sure how to explain about my mom. Yes, when the going got tough—when I let Cartwright Records know I was only interested in singing my own lyrics, and Jordan’s dad, in response, unceremoniously dropped me from the label—not that my sales had been going gangbusters anymore anyway—my mom got going.

But that’s just how she is. I was mad at her for a while, of course.

But being mad at my mom is kind of like being mad because it’s raining out. She can’t help what she does, any more than clouds can.

But I suppose Sarah, if she heard that, would just say I’m in denial, or worse.

“Isn’t it possible that you’re displacing the hostility you feel about what your mother did to you onto poor Chris Allington?” Sarah wants to know.

“Excuse me,” I say. I’m getting kind of tired of repeating myself. “But that planter didn’t just fall out of the sky, you know. Well, okay, it did, but not by itself.”

“And could it be that you miss the attention you used to receive from your fans so much that you’ve latched on to any excuse to make yourself feel important by inventing this big important mystery for you to solve, where none actually exists?”

I remember, with a pang, what Cooper had said outside the service elevator. Hadn’t it been something along these same lines? About me wanting to relive the thrill of my glory days back at the Mall of America?

But wanting to find out who’s responsible for killing people in your place of work is totally different from singing in front of thousands of busy shoppers.

I mean, isn’t it?

“Um” is what I say in response to Sarah’s accusation. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

All I can think is, Sarah’s lucky she met Yael when she did. The kibbutz guy, I mean. Otherwise, she’s just the kind of girl Chris would go for next.

Well, except for that habit she has of psychoanalyzing people all the time. I could see how that might get annoying.

I haven’t been to a dressy party in ages, so when I finally get off work that night, I have a lot of preparations to make. First I have to go to Patty’s to get the dress—which fits, thank God, but barely.