5.

"Let me just, I dunno, clarify."

Percy gestures in the air with a limp, ketchup-dipped fry, and Indy sighs and tosses another chicken nugget—which she heavily doubts is really chicken—into her mouth. The sun is setting, the sky beyond the dusty window of the burger joint they're currently sitting in turning vibrant shades of orange. Exhaustion is a weight settling heavy on Indy's eyelids, but she can't rest. Not yet.

"The handyman murdered this woman some fifty years ago or something like that, but the trial wrapped up pretty quickly and wasn't based on an abundance of evidence, so you don't think he did it," Percy says. He bites the fry almost perfectly in half. "Good so far?"

"Good enough. Go on."

"You try to talk to a cop for some reason. Cop doesn't tell you anything—shocker!—so you break into the woman's house, which has been sitting abandoned since all of this happened," Percy goes on, dusting the remaining crumbs from his fingers, and frowning when they simply make their way onto his hoodie instead. "And now you have this journal that might be hers, and thus might be integral evidence to this whole case. And you're just going to hold onto it?"

Indy lets her gaze fall to the floor, her voice small when she responds: "When you say it like that, it sounds stupid."

"Because it is, Indy! Not to mention it's obstruction of justice, isn't it? Withholding evidence?"

"They'd probably toss it anyway!" Indy argues. She glances at her backpack, leaned up against the booth's window, her fingers itching to reach in and pull the journal out again and trace over the years' worth of words etched into its pages. What all could they tell her, she wonders? What story has she just been granted access to?

Indy adds, "Either that or they'd give it back to the family."

Percy scoffs at that. "Oh yeah, what a terrible thing to do."

"I know it's—questionable," Indy admits with a grimace, and Percy raises his eyebrows at her, but doesn't interrupt. "But I need to hold onto it, at least for long enough to page through it all and get everything out of it that I can. This is a man's life on the line, Percy."

"You don't even know for sure that he's innocent," Percy says quietly, with something like genuine concern in his eyes. "That's just what you're banking on. But none of us know, do we?"

"They wrapped up the trial so quickly, like you said, and there were hardly any witnesses for the whole thing," Indy says, and shakes her head. "I know you're right, really, but I just can't shake the idea that there's something else going on here. Until I figure out what it is, can you just bear with me?"

Percy doesn't answer right away, and thanks to his silence Indy is forced to listen to the tinny country song playing over the speakers, the scraping of stools across the linoleum as another crew of customers settles in for their three-dollar meal.

Percy pinches the bridge of his nose, destroying another handful of fries. "Bring it to that detective, Indy."

"What?" And here she'd been thinking he would be on her side. "No way."

"It's the right thing to do."

"Is it?"

"You're getting yourself into deeper trouble for something that might turn out the way you're thinking," Percy says, and now he looks at her squarely, his brown eyes at once earnest, stern without being holier-than-thou, which only aggravates Indy more. She's beginning to think she might like him more when he's drunk and with less inhibition. This levelheaded version of her best friend—she just can't compete with him. "Just do us all a favor and turn it in before something goes wrong."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," Indy argues, though by now she knows Percy isn't really listening, that once his mind has been made up, there's no swaying him. "They don't even know it's missing. They don't even know it exists."

"Indy," Percy says.

He doesn't say anything more than that, and nor does he need to.

Indy finishes off her chicken nuggets even though her appetite has gone, a noxious mix of both guilt and worry eating it away. "Fine," she concedes at last. "I'll turn it in first thing tomorrow morning."

Some part of her expects Percy to look proud, like a prince celebrating his victory. Instead, he just sits back in his seat with a sigh, his face filled with the sort of weary relief that comes after defusing a bomb just in the nick of time.

Indy's well-prepared to stay up late into the night dissecting Dobbs's diary. She doesn't know what to do when the entries stop only five pages in.

Dobbs writes that the journal was a gift from her mother for her forty-second birthday, the birthday that would be her last. Indy traces the words with a finger: She wants me to start being more "mindful." I think she's been spending too much time doing yoga lately. Dobbs writes surface-level things. What she made for breakfast. Her plans for the evening, for three days only. Then the ink runs completely dry.

So much for integral evidence, Indy thinks.

It's nearly midnight, Indy still flipping anxiously through the journal, trying to decipher the code Dobbs's words doubtless must be seeped in, when Sylvia comes in. She's carrying her keyboard case on her back, hair half swept up into two mini buns and her eyeliner sharp and dramatic.

Indy asks, "Where was the gig?"

"Some Irish pub out in town," Sylvia grumbles, shucking off her shoes and tossing them almost angrily against the wall. "Set was good. Crowd was dead."

Indy grimaces. "Oh."

"Got a girl's number afterward. So that's a plus. Crowd was still dead, though."

"Oh?"

"Speaking of dead things," Sylvia says, pointing a glittery nail in Indy's direction. "What's with you? Exam tomorrow or something? Shit. Do I have an exam tomorrow or something?"

"Nah," Indy answers, letting the journal fall closed. "It's nothing, really. Just some personal research that's not going anywhere."

Sylvia looks at Indy for a long enough time that Indy figures—knows—she is going to ask.

But it seems Indy has underestimated just how exhausted Sylvia is, because instead, Sylvia jumps onto her bed facedown and mumbles into the pillows, "Sounds boring. You know what's not boring? Sleeping."

Indy tosses the journal onto the desk beside her. "Good point."

But Indy sleeps fitfully, the night passing in intermittent moments of consciousness and unconsciousness, sheets clammy and uncomfortable and wrong beneath her. Lamar Pine and Elizabeth Dobbs and the thousand questions surrounding them both have turned her mind into a terrain she can no longer navigate, and though she fights to gain even a few hours of peace, in the end she loses.

She wakes dazed and vaguely irritated. She's alone in the dorm room, Sylvia's bed already empty and left unmade, thin early morning sun glinting off the lava lamp on Sylvia's desk.

Groaning, Indy rolls from her bed, cursing when her sleep-deprived, clumsy body bumps into her desk on the way. Paper flutters, and something lands with a thump on the floor.

She recognizes the gold-rimmed pages of Dobbs's journal, flittering about in the breeze of the air conditioning. Indy sighs, crouching to pick it up, but freezes in place.

She went through every entry last night, over and over again, triple and quadruple-checking so much that she worried it became illusion rather than curiosity. Yet she knows she didn't see this entry before, doubly so because it's brief and undated:

They have the wrong guy.

But we can fix it.

Indy stares at the page, paralyzed. Same script. Same ink color. But somehow it's different than the other entries; it isn't a woman speaking to herself. It's a woman speaking to her.

Indy shudders, the air in the room suddenly feeling ten degrees colder. The air conditioning whirs; down the hall, someone clicks the door shut to their dorm. The world around her is normal, perfectly so, and yet here, in this tiny world of her own, everything shifts.

Indy closes her eyes. "Elizabeth?"

The door opens then, and Sylvia shuffles inside, bundled in a luxurious white fur coat that Indy recalls her finding at a thrift store a while back. She says very genially, "Who the fuck's Elizabeth?"

The gust of air from the opening door blows the journal shut, and Indy sweeps it from the floor and gathers it close. "Is it just me or are you up unusually early?"

Sylvia lifts a faintly grease-stained paper bag in response. "It's hash brown day at the dining hall, remember? You have to be fast. Everyone and they mama wants these bitches."

"Right."

"Well?" Sylvia says, pulling out her desk chair and dropping into it, rolling over to where Indy stands. "You want ketchup or hot sauce?"

They have the wrong guy.

Every word in class is a blur to Indy, every sentence a thought she can't follow.

But we can fix it.

We. In her mind, she folds over the journal entry's words, analyzing every piece. Who exactly is we? And how can they fix it? Does this person, this entity—does she dare to say it's Dobbs?—know who really did it? The journal sits like contraband in Indy's backpack, dangerous not only because of what it is, but what it could be. She was supposed to return it. Before this morning, she'd been ready to return it.

"Indy?"

To her immediate horror, she looks up into the concerned face of Dr. Clover, eyebrows pulled towards each other in a subtle, watchful frown. The class around her has gone silent, watching, waiting. She catches Percy's eye, the flick of his brow, before she drags her focus back to the professor again.

"Sorry," Indy stammers. "What was the question?"

"I was just asking for a general progress report on everyone's projects," Dr. Clover says, planting a casual hand on his hip. "Out of my own curiosity, really. Wanted to see what direction the class is moving."

"Right," Indy says. "I—it's going well, Professor. Very well."

Dr. Clover looks unconvinced for a moment, before he just gives a warm smile. "Glad to hear it. Let me know if you have any questions."

Indy forces a smile in return, though she feels it squirm into more of a grimace. "Will do."

The quiet lingers for a painful beat, before thankfully everyone's attention switches back to the powerpoint slides currently glowing from the screen at the front of the room. Beside her, Sylvia pats her shoulder in silent solidarity.

By the time class ends, her blunder in front of everyone and the still fresh discovery of the text in the journal has left her mind reeling, and she wants nothing more than to get away. She's already halfway down the hall, one strap dangling from her backpack, when she hears her name behind her: "Indy!"

Percy. Of course it's Percy.

She stops walking, only because she knows she'll have even more to explain if she doesn't.

"Indy," Percy says once he reaches her. "You promised me you'd hand it in."

The words buffer in Indy's tired mind. "What?"

"The journal. I know you kept it; that's why you're being all weird," Percy snaps, and though Indy hates it, she's wounded by the disappointment in his tone, the way the skin between his dark eyebrows furrows with frustration. "If you feel bad about it, that's probably a sign, don't you think? The universe telling you maybe this isn't the right direction?"

Indy groans, rubbing her eyes. She notices Sylvia and Gatz down the hallway, noticing the ruckus and headed in their direction. She sighs, partially turning away from him. "You don't understand, Percy."

"What? What don't I understand? I think I understand pretty clearly, Indy. You have some idealized version of this case and it's already driving you crazy."

"I'm not crazy!" Indy yelps.

A few others passing by shoot her unpleasant looks.

Indy lowers her voice. "I'm not crazy, Percy. I know how it sounds, but there was...there was a new journal entry in it today. That's why I didn't turn it in. I think...I think Dobbs is trying to communicate with me somehow."

Percy's mouth opens, but no sound comes out. She doesn't want to hear what he has to say, not with the way he's looking at her, like he's afraid of all that's conspiring within her mind.

"What's going on here?" Gatz interrupts, placing a hand on Percy's shoulder, grabbing a fistful of his fleece-lined flannel. Sylvia joins the group without a word, her arms folded, eyes bleeding pure judgment. "Is this oaf bothering you?"

"Indy," Percy starts. "She's—"

There is a voice inside of her head that tells her what she's doing is foolish, perhaps more foolish than breaking into a house and taking evidence from it. But there is another part of her, perhaps some conglomeration of mind and heart both, that tells her this is the only decision to make.

"None of you are busy right now, are you?" Indy interjects before Percy can finish. "I don't think explaining it to you all is going to accomplish anything. So I just have to show you."