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it until she could do it perfectly. Then she’d go up to Gottfried and do it, and if he was incredibly shocked, she’d know the handshake was personal between him and Corn Flakes.
    And then what? she thought, suddenly discouraged. What would that even prove? That Gottfried and Corn Flakes were buds? So what? Total myopic fixation.
    â€œMyopic fixation” was what Benny called Virginia’s principal weakness as an investigator. She’d looked up “myopic” in the dictionary; it meant being shortsighted. And “fixated” meant being obsessed. Together they meant a tendency to get sidetracked by small details.
    Zoom out, she thought, and found herself envisioning the Earth from outer space. Christ, not that far, she told herself. She closed her eyes. What did football, boobs, and a German exchange student have in common?
    She sighed, opening her eyes. She just wasn’t good at seeing the big picture. All she saw was a big blank.
    Virginia closed the Google tab and folded her pathetically inadequate field report on Gottfried. Then she left the common room and went back to her hall. A pair of white-and-blue pom-poms was lying in a fluffy pile next to one of the doors. Her door. Virginia looked around. The pom-poms hadn’t been there before. Someone must havedropped them there while she was in the common room.
    There was a Post-it note stuck to the door, written with messy handwriting in blue ballpoint pen:
    You left these in my car. Hope your OK
    Chrissie White was the only cheerleader in the Boarders; someone must have mixed up Virginia’s room with hers. Virginia picked up the pom-poms and crossed the hall to knock on Chrissie’s door. Virginia and Chrissie hadn’t talked in ages, though they used to be best friends. Chrissie was a total social climber, which Virginia could have respected if she weren’t so bad at it. She got way too drunk at parties, gave blow jobs to the wrong guys, and then bragged about it to the wrong girls. And the fact that she’d started snubbing Virginia was proof that she had zero sense of social strategy. Not that Virginia cared anymore. She had her own reputation rehab to deal with, which was challenging enough without getting sucked into Chrissie’s downward spiral.
    The door cracked open. “What?” Chrissie’s voice was small, and she looked like she’d been crying. She was still wearing her nightgown even though the afternoon was half over.
    â€œSomeone left these at my door,” Virginia said, handing her the pom-poms.
    Chrissie wiped her nose on the sleeve of her nightgown. “These aren’t mine. They’re Corny’s.”
    â€œOh. How can you tell?”
    â€œThey have glitter on the handles. Corny puts glitter on everything.” Chrissie sighed sadly, as if everything—even glitter—was ugly and meaningless now that Brittany was gone.
    â€œOh . . . ,” Virginia said. “Well, someone left them at my door. Will you take them?”
    â€œSure,” Chrissie sighed again. Then she closed the door, presumably to resume weeping in her nightie.
    Virginia stood in the hall for a second. Who was clueless enough to think Corny Davenport lived in the Boarders? None of the really popular girls were resident students; they were all Atlanta-born-and-bred types whose parents had also gone to Winship back in the day. Winship had a reputation for being one of the more cliquish schools, which its students wore like a badge of honor. Everyone knew where everyone belonged. And in no universe did Corny Davenport’s pom-poms belong at the Boarders.
    Virginia turned and crossed the hall and opened the door of her room. The air felt different inside, muggy and sticky. Was her window open? She looked; it was closed. But the air was thick and smelled like the magnolia tree outside. She gave the window a closer look. There were smudges from fingertips at the bottom of the glass. She