Prep School Confidential, page 9
I stand there, gaping, before it sinks in that the conversation is over. She’s lying.
I’m still trying to work out why Upton would lie, as I pick a new seat at the back of the room. If I’m going to figure out the real reason Isabella dropped this class, I’m going to need to scope everyone out.
“Can, uh, I sit here?” The voice is small but familiar. Molly settles into the seat next to me, slowly, as if it’s radioactive.
I look up at her. She’s playing with the thick, messy braid over her shoulder. How did I not realize she was in this class? Probably because she sits here in the back every day, which means she’s asking my permission to sit in her usual seat.
“Of course,” I say.
Molly fidgets as she waits for her laptop to boot up. She can’t keep her hands off her braid or her glasses. I’m obviously making her really nervous, so I decide it’s probably best to wait until after class to talk to her.
We’re declining nouns today. Upton scratches out a chart of different cases on the chalkboard. She’s my only teacher who refuses to use a projection machine, and her room is wall-to-wall with books that desperately need a Swiffer Duster.
But I guess such a depressing room is fitting for learning about a dead language. I copy down Upton’s chart in my notebook, keeping one eye trained on the rest of the room. I barely know anyone in this class; Latin definitely attracts the nerdy types.
Upton turns and faces us. “We’ll start with the genitive of principus.” A few hands go up. “Mr. Andersen. Please.”
“Principus and principum.” The voice is a dull rumble from the table next to me. It’s Giant Clark Kent—the kid who bumped into me the morning after the police found Isabella’s body.
“Optime.” Upton gives him a clipped smile and writes his answers on the board. He hangs his head, twirling the pen in his hands. Then, as if he can sense me watching, he looks up at me with a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
I offer him a small smile, but he looks away quickly.
I’m starting to wonder if having a social problem is a prerequisite for being in this class.
* * *
“Hey, Molly, do you have a sec?” I ask when Upton lets us go.
She doesn’t look up as she slides her laptop into its case. “Um. I guess.”
“Cool.” I follow her out into the hall. We hang back and let everyone go past us. “I wanted to know if you knew why Isabella dropped that class.”
Molly pales. “I don’t.”
“I’m not stupid, Molly. She must have told you something.”
Molly yanks me inside an empty classroom, away from the stragglers in the hall. “So what if she did? I’m not stupid, either. I know what you’re trying to do, and trust me. It’s not going to work.”
I stand there, massaging my elbow, not because she hurt me when she grabbed it but because I’m so shocked she did. “If you’re too scared to go to the police, then—”
“You don’t get it,” Molly snaps, her voice low. “I’m not supposed to talk about what happened, or I’ll lose my scholarship. Isabella should never have gotten me involved.”
“You’d let your friend’s killer walk free so you can keep your scholarship to this school?” I shake my head in disgust and step toward the door. “Let me know if it’s worth it.”
Molly grabs my arm again. This time, she’s rolled up the sleeve of her sweater. Bile rises in my throat: There are discolored lines running across her wrist. Scars.
“It started with the girls at my old school calling me a dyke,” she says. “I went home and did this after they broke in to my locker and hid my stuff around the school. Now go ahead and tell me going back to public school isn’t so bad.”
I don’t know what to say to her.
“Upton lied to me about the work being too hard for Isabella. She was trying to get away from someone in our class, wasn’t she?”
Molly hesitates, which is all the answer I need.
The classroom door squeaks open, startling us both. Upton pokes her head in. “Did you need something, ladies? There’s no class in this room this period.”
“We were just talking,” I say brightly. “Sorry, Professor.”
Her eyes don’t leave us as we duck past her and back into the hall. I turn back once there’s a considerable distance between her and Molly and me.
Upton is still watching us, and her face says that she heard everything.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
The police have finally moved the crime-scene tape separating the forest from the edge of campus. I hate the idea of going to look, like some morbidly curious gawker, but after class, I find myself taking the back way to the dorms.
The sound of dead leaves crackling under my boots is the only noise on the path that leads from the athletic fields to the forest. The quiet here drives me crazy; it’s not the type of quiet that you hear in New York City once you get used to all the noise. It’s just silence, broken up every hour by the clanging of the bell tower in the middle of campus.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.
I pause at the edge of the forest, anxiety settling in my chest. Why did I come here? To give myself nightmares? Because the endless expanse of trees with bare limbs twisting into the sky like gnarled arms is creepy enough without picturing Isabella’s body lying cold in a pile of leaves.
The sound of my phone chirping startles me. I have an e-mail from antfern314@gmail.com.
anne,
I need to talk to you about Isabella. I don’t know if you’ll read this in time. I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you. I’ll be at Alex’s Auto Body in Somerville from 3–7 today. If you take the red line to Davis Station, it’s right across the street.
anthony
* * *
The auto body shop is so loud that I’m asking the guy in overalls out front for the fifth time if Anthony is here before I see him in the side garage. He’s wearing a grease-stained Pearl Jam T-shirt and has his hair pushed back with a navy bandana. His perpetually pissed-off expression softens a little when he sees me and waves me over.
“So you’re a mechanic,” I say, trying to ignore the smell of gasoline and motor oil hanging in the air.
“Part-time.” His gaze travels up and down me. “Nice uniform.”
“I know you didn’t have me take the subway out here so you could make fun of me.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you. And it’s not called the subway here, Derek Jeter.” He smirks. “Now I’m making fun of you.”
A thought crosses my mind: Why didn’t Anthony just give me his number and tell me to call him? Did he ask me here because he wanted to see me again?
He ushers me to an office the size of a closet at the back of a garage. Under different circumstances, I might be excited to be sneaking off into a small space with such a hot guy. But this one is kind of a jerk; he’s dirty, and he’s my dead roommate’s brother.
He’s also the type of guy who punches people at memorial services.
“Before you say anything,” I begin as he closes the office door, “I have to ask you something.”
Anthony folds his arms across his T-shirt. They’re not big, like someone who works out a lot, but toned, like he’s always using them. “You want to know why I punched out my cousin at the wake.”
“How did you—”
“I saw you outside the funeral home when it happened. And I could tell you were about to explode trying not to ask me about it the other day.”
I let the silence settle around us for a moment before I ask: “So why’d you do it?”
Anthony sits on the desk. We’re at eye level now. “My cousin Paul’s side of the family loves to run their mouths. They’ve been saying for years that going to that school was going to mess Isabella up. All those drugs and privileged brats.” His expression hardens. “When we found out she was dead, Paul said Iz never would have had to leave public school if it weren’t for me.”
I think of Molly and the pink scars on her wrists. It sends a shiver through me. “She had to leave public school?”
“No. She’d been working her ass off to get into the Wheatley School since the fifth grade. But that’s not how everyone remembers it.” Anthony lets out an annoyed noise. “My parents wanted to get her away from me. I was in some fights in middle school. They were afraid of their little genius being known as the girl with the fuck-up brother.”
Something clicks in my brain. “You didn’t like her much, did you?”
Anthony shrugs and shifts in his seat. “We didn’t get along.”
I remember the horrible sound of Anthony’s fist connecting with his cousin’s face, and I wonder if there’s anyone with a pulse Anthony does get along with. And then there’s this unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I need to put as much distance between him and me as possible. He’s obviously got a violent side, and as much as I don’t want it to be true … what if he killed Isabella? It could have been an accident. Maybe they were arguing, and he lost his temper.…
I shake the thoughts out of my head for now. “So, why did you ask me here?”
Anthony blinks, as if he’d forgotten I’d come for a reason. “Oh. Yeah. You know how you helped me sort through the crap in Isabella’s desk? You don’t remember seeing a flash drive, do you? A purple one?”
“No. Maybe the police took it.”
Anthony shakes his head and slides off the desk so he’s standing. “It wasn’t on the list of items they gave us. And I checked her room at home.”
“What’s on the flash drive?”
“I don’t know for sure. But she came home for a weekend last June and almost had an aneurism because she thought she lost it. I only remember ’cause I made a comment about her having national security secrets on the thing, and she screamed at me that it wasn’t a joke. It’s weird no one’s found it.”
My toes curl in my flats as I try to process this. I’m suddenly nauseous. Whoever was in my room could have stolen the flash drive. “Did she say anything else about it?”
Anthony’s face clouds over. “Just that if her teacher found out she almost lost it, she’d be dead.”
I almost forget to breathe for a moment. “Did Isabella tell you the teacher’s name?”
“I can’t remember it. But it was something weird, European maybe—”
“Andreev.” The name tumbles out of my mouth. Anthony’s expression lights up. “Yeah, that’s it. You know him?”
“He was at the wake,” I say. “He’s older, maybe sixties. Kind of overweight, big glasses.”
“That’s weird,” Anthony says. “Most of her teachers came up to talk to my parents, but I don’t remember him.”
It is weird. Sounds like he was avoiding them.
One thing is clear though: I need to find that flash drive.
* * *
I’m so busy combing through Isabella’s desk that I forget I promised Remy and the girls I’d go to the library with them before dinner. The knock at the door nearly gives me a stroke, because the last thing I need right now is to be caught snooping through my dead roommate’s stuff.
I ignore my father’s voice in my head. There’s no way anyone here thinks I could have hurt Isabella. My dad is a defense attorney, and defense attorneys are paranoid. I’m not going to let him make me paranoid, too.
I consider bailing on Remy because I’d rather stay here and see what I can dig up on Andreev, but her overeager smile reminds me that I really have to commit to landing my new spot at the top of the food chain. So I return her smile and pretend I’m so, so psyched to be studying with the Headband Club.
Besides, I’m obviously not finding the flash drive tonight.
Since Isabella preferred to do homework at her desk and I followed suit, this is the first time I’ve been to the library. I hope it’s not obvious how far my eyes are popping out of my head as I take it all in: the chandeliers hanging from the million-foot-high domed ceiling, the rows of polished mahogany tables. Everything and everyone is silent and bathed in an amber glow, as if this is a magical place where the seeds of excellence blossom in young minds.
I’m pretty sure this is the first place they bring parents who are skeptical of the thirty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year price tag.
I half-listen to April and Remy bicker back and forth about what chapters their teacher said would be covered on the biology test. Kelsey shoots me an appreciative smile when I look over at her.
Okay, so maybe I don’t feel totally out of place with Remy, April, and Kelsey, like I do when I’m sitting in class listening to everyone talk about the political fund-raisers and galas their parents drag them to. From what I can gather, almost everyone here has super-powerful parents. For once in my life, I’m kind of an outsider.
I wonder if this is what Isabella felt like as a townie. Her murder might be last week’s news to everyone else around here, but I can’t stop thinking about her and her dorky socks and goofy laugh. Could someone really have hated her enough to kill her?
Someone taps my shoulder. When I turn, no one’s there. Brent slides into the empty seat on the other side of me.
Remy looks up at Brent, her forehead creasing. “Are you okay? I thought you were going to look at skis with Cole at the mall.”
“Change of plans,” Brent says. “That all right with you, Mom?”
Remy rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to Kelsey, but I catch her glance from Brent to me, her heart-shaped lips pinched together.
Brent pulls out a newspaper, and while I wait for my laptop to boot up, I check out the front page. In the corner is a tiny box with this headline: STILL NO SUSPECTS IN CASE OF SLAIN STUDENT.
One week, and that’s what Isabella has been reduced to. A quarter-page headline with cheesy alliteration. I tug on the front page to get Brent’s attention. “Can I see this for a sec?”
He hands the front section to me and I peek at what he’s reading: RED SOX EYEING ROOKIE PITCHER. How studious of him. For a second, I wonder if he’s only here because I am. I ignore how close he’s sitting to me and turn back to the newspaper.
Police say they are following a number of tips in the murder of Isabella Fernandez, 17. Fernandez’s body was found early last Sunday with significant neck lacerations. In a televised statement last night, Police Commissioner Frank Allan confirmed that no arrests have been made, and detectives have not yet identified any persons of interest. Fernandez was a student at the prestigious Wheatley School, where faculty and students remain baffled by the brutal murder of a young woman one friend called “quiet and well liked.” Dean of students James Harrow remarked, “The Wheatley School is dedicated to working with investigators in order to provide the community with answers to this senseless crime. Security has been increased on campus merely as a precaution; we do not believe there are any threats to our other students or staff.” Investigators say there is currently no evidence a student was involved in the homicide.
I resist the urge to crumple the paper into a ball. What a crock of shit. The administration isn’t dedicated to anything except covering their asses and doing PR damage control. I fold the paper and push it back to Brent, a little too roughly.
He looks up at me and then down at the front page. “I know you’re not annoyed over the rising price of gas.”
“This article about Isabella is bullshit,” I whisper back. “Harrow is acting like a little puppet for Goddard. I bet they paid off whoever runs that newspaper to say that there’s no evidence anyone here was involved. The media is the scum of the earth.”
I’m suddenly aware that Kelsey, who’s sitting close enough to hear us, is staring at me awkwardly. Brent’s eyes are smiling.
“Brent’s dad owns that paper,” Kelsey whispers to me.
“Oh.” My face is about a million degrees. “Sorry. I mean, I’m sure your dad is a lovely man.”
“I wouldn’t know. Don’t see him much.” Brent’s smile gets bigger as my face gets hotter. Foot, meet mouth. I pretend to be totally immersed in composing an e-mail until he looks away.
I discard the fake e-mail and do a search on Eugene Andreev. The first two hits are his faculty page on the school’s Web site. I check it out, but there’s not much there except contact information and a brief bio, which tells me he has a degree in physics from the University of Moscow and a doctorate from MIT. It doesn’t say what he got that doctorate in. Probably some advanced science that only exists at MIT.
I copy down Andreev’s office number and return to the search results. The only other hits are for some Russian actor.
There’s got to be more out there on Andreev. I twist the silver ring on my thumb, thinking back to my literature class at St. Bernadette’s. In one of the Russian books we read, there was this guy named Yevgeny who got typhus, and I remember Mr. Crane saying that Yevgeny is the Russian form of the name Eugene.
I quickly type in Yevgeny Andreev. Nothing, but the search engine asks me if I mean Evgenie Andreev. Sure, why not. I click, and feel a rush of adrenaline to my fingers when I get a ton of hits. Half of them are in Russian, but I can tell I’ve got the right Andreev.
A bunch of the links lead to articles Andreev wrote for scientific journals. I can’t access most of them, because the Wheatley School doesn’t have subscriptions to the journals. One string of words keeps popping up in the abstracts though: antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion.
I copy and paste it into the search engine. There’s an online encyclopedia entry for it. I scan the page quickly, knowing that I wouldn’t understand any of this stuff anyway.
I freeze when I hit a phrase that makes my stomach fold over. Even I know this one:
nuclear bomb.
* * *
I can’t sleep that night. I roll over to face Isabella’s empty bed. What were you mixed up in?
What if Isabella discovered something in Andreev’s research that got her killed? It took me thirty seconds to figure out the guy was a major creep at her wake. Brent’s conspiracy theory might not be so crazy after all.
I’ve got to find out if Andreev has Isabella’s flash drive. What if he killed her to get his hands on it?
