Premeditated (15 page)

Behind him, high on the wall, hung a life-sized painting of him when his hair only had a few silver streaks in it. A beautiful young woman with dark hair and Brooks’ smile stood beside him, and he held a small boy in the crook of his elbow. I supposed that was Brooks; it had to be a family portrait.

“I told him he had to be mistaken,” he said. “That it had to be someone else’s teenage son accused of theft, because mine knows better.
My
teenage son would know the consequences of something so foolish.”

“He didn’t do it,” I said, not sure at what point I’d hidden behind Brooks’ shoulder.

Brooks’ dad stiffened and stood taller, though I don’t know where he found the extra inches; he somehow managed to look like he was crossing his arms even though they were straight down at his sides.

“I was with Brooks this morning, Mr. Walden,” I said. “He only gave security your lawyer’s name because they wouldn’t stop asking him questions.”

“I didn’t realize you had brought company, Brooks.”

“She’s not company.”

“Then who exactly are you?” he asked. Claire would have melted under that laser stare of his, but I let a bit of myself bleed through the impersonation and stared right back. Stodgy aristocrats in suits were nothing compared to the sort of fear you feel when you find yourself in your underwear in a locker
room with fifteen other girls who think you’re a freak because you’d rather dye your hair black than blond.

“I’m Dinah,” I said. “I’m in Brooks’ class at Lowry.”

Brooks’ father looked me up and down without bothering to hide his opinion of the way I was dressed. Maybe there wasn’t that much difference between a crusty aristocrat and a teen queen with a padded bra after all.

“I wasn’t aware the Board of Regents had approved another scholarship for this term.”

Brooks winced, but this was something I could handle. He was nothing but my mother made into a man.

“Actually, if I knew enough to get a scholarship, I wouldn’t need your son to tutor me.”

And just like that, the old man’s mood changed; I became invisible.

“You didn’t tell me you had decided to reinstate yourself as a tutor, Brooks.”

“It wasn’t planned,” Brooks said; it sounded like his throat had gone dry. “Dinah’s new, so I told her I’d help her catch up. It’s not that big a deal.”

“On the contrary, it’s one of the few sensible decisions you’ve made in months. Your mother would approve.”

An interesting way to put it, I thought, especially knowing that Brooks’ mom didn’t exist in his school records. I had assumed a divorce, but that wasn’t likely if Brooks’ dad still considered what she would and wouldn’t like about her son’s behavior.

Brooks’ dad went back to the green leather chair behind his desk and reached for the phone. “I’ll inform Ryland that his services won’t be required. You may go.”

* * *

I texted while I waited in Brooks’ room for him to shed his “charity superstar” persona and turn back into the evil villain/trig tutor version of himself I knew and loathed.

His profile picture and obsession with doodling made a lot more sense after seeing his personal space. There were concept sketches of houses and high-rises, even sci-fi-style future palaces scattered over his desk, the one place not kept completely spotless. Tubs of high-end colored pencils and markers divided the top into sections dedicated to drawing and schoolwork. A charcoal-stained tablet and stylus had been shoved under a pile of discarded papers, leading me to make another mental note about Brooks’ personality—he was more analog than digital.

And he absolutely could not draw people. Any time there was a person in one of his pictures, it was a stick figure used to hold a place, or a cutout from a magazine.

appeared on my phone.

If I’d had on a skirt, it would have been possible, but in shorts, I’d have had to strip. And despite Tabs’ opinion that being caught bottomless would speed things up on the getting-Brooks-to-like-me front, I wasn’t planning on that sort of tutoring session. What good would it do to add one more pair of panties to the collection of a guy who’d probably already taken possession of underwear from every girl in class?

she asked.

I actually hesitated on that one. Hacking someone’s computer could lead to serious trouble if we got caught, and it was one more digital trail, but she was right. If we wanted to really ruin Brooks, then any messages or emails had to look like they came from him. To do that, we’d need his IP so Brucey could work his magic.

I shut off my conversation with Tabs and ran my finger across the trackpad on Brooks’ laptop where it sat open on his desk. All of my muscles tightened, anticipating, maybe even hoping for, a locked screen or alarm. I was already running through viable excuses to explain away why I’d been on his computer when it switched on, no password required.

So much information right there for the taking …

It was too tempting not to try and scan for anything useful, so after shooting a blank email to Tabs’ phone, I went exploring.

For a guy with no extra security on his system, Brooks was meticulous. He’d wiped his chat logs when school started, and the only photos were of people at Lowry—mainly Dex and Chandi, but almost never at the same time. And despite appearances to the contrary at school, it seemed that Jordan was as much a part of the inner circle as the other two. Considering how antagonistic she was to Dex, and how often Dex’s eyes were glued to her chest or her butt, it was possible that they had once been a happy foursome, with she and Dex being an item. That was an information gap I needed filled, and quick. Angry exes of best friends were gossip gold mines.

“What are you doing?”

Brooks stood in the door, staring at me in his newly changed clothes. The greenish halo of a nearly healed bruise was now visible on his leg where he’d changed into a pair of shorts, and it seemed that the scratches on his face were part of a matched set that went with the ones on his arm.

“Making Dex regret running out on you at the mall,” I said, switching the screen to something that would back me up. Thankfully, he couldn’t see it from the bathroom.

“With my computer?” he asked.

Brooks came closer, circling around for a better look, so I showed him my cover story. The home page for Uncle Paul’s brainchild filled the screen with a superpowered avatar in the “launch” position.

“You said he’s a Meta nut, right?” I asked. “He plays Empyrean?”

“Since before the game went global, but I don’t—”

“As of now, you’re immortal and carry a bottomless bag of ambrosia chips. Challenge him to a duel; he’ll last ten seconds. I can give you the kill code if you want to cut that down to two.”

“Isn’t this the sort of thing that gets people banned?”

“My uncle created the game. I used his override code.”

“Your uncle Paul is Paul Reed?”

“Yeah, and I’m
still
not used to that reaction.” I cringed, certain he was about to add me to Uncle Paul and come up with Claire. But it seemed that her enrollment in Lowry wasn’t the only secret she never told him.

“You might want to keep that to yourself,” he said. “Otherwise, Dex will never give you a moment’s peace for the rest of your life or his.”

Brooks took the seat I yielded at his desk and started playing with his new avatar. A slow smile spread over his face as he took it through some basic test motions in the game’s training area.

“You like?” I asked.

“Definitely,” he said, then lopped the heads off a row of goblins. “Dex’ll be furious. I’ve never gotten a single point off him … this’ll kill him.”

He laughed.

It must have been terrible for the little prince to not excel at something by virtue of his reputation, especially when the guy who was beating him didn’t need cash to win. I felt a pang, remembering Dex’s caution that just because we all wore the same uniform, it didn’t mean we were equals.

I took a seat on Brooks’ bed, as there were no other chairs, and crossed my legs.

“Did you tick off a feral cat or something?” I asked, pointing to the marks on his arm.

He glanced down and flexed, as though he were testing the muscle.

“I said Chandi
hardly ever
draws blood—not that she
never
does. You get used to it.”

Another block of ice dropped into my stomach. He said it so casually, and without stopping the test slaughter on-screen, as though provoking a girl to physical (and most likely self-protective) violence were a normal part of life. That thought dovetailed with another, darker one: for Brooks, maybe it was.

Maybe evil didn’t look like the half-mangled ghoul in a slasher movie. Maybe it didn’t come with any sort of obvious sign that screamed “Run from me or I will destroy you.” Maybe it came in designer clothes, and wore the face of a friend because the slow fall paid off better in the long run.

I’d seen the way Chandi stuck to Brooks.… Real evil didn’t need to chase someone down with a chain saw. Its victims were volunteers.

The threat of Brooks’ father being so close put him on his best behavior and got me stuck having to endure an early trig-tutoring session for real. For forty-five minutes the only thing we discussed involved numbers and angles. I was at the point of reconsidering Tabs’ panty drop when he shut his book.

“Are we done?” I asked.

“You’ve got the idea well enough to make it through next week,” he said, “and I’m fried. If I don’t switch gears, my brain’s going to toss one. We can take a break. Dad should be gone by now.”

Finally. Progress.

Brooks stood up and stretched. I set my borrowed paper and pencil on his bed and did the same, while trying to mimic the sort of innocent, bewildered look I’d seen on Claire’s face a million times. This had to be the setup he used. Empty room. Empty house. It was perfect … which is why it was such a shock to hear him say: “Wanna stretch your legs?”

He twisted his head far enough to the side to pop it and headed for the door.

“Where are we going?”

“Away from anything trig-related. I hate being cooped up in here. Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”

I followed him out the door into a second-story hall that started with his bedroom and led to what were apparently a lot
of empty ones for guests. (Though if Brooks’ dad was so averse to having people over, I couldn’t see why he needed them.)

It was very nearly like my first impression of Lowry, the way the scale and grandeur eclipsed the more interesting details of the place. I’d first noticed things like how the hall was so long it could have been used for a perspective study in some art composition class, but not the way the rug was only worn from the space between Brooks’ room and the stairs, as though he was the only who ever walked on it.

I’d noticed how all the pictures on the wall were framed in the sort of gold gilt that belonged in a European museum with thick red ropes to protect them from the fingerprints of anyone who got too close, but not how they were actual paintings.

I’d noticed the stained-glass window at the end of the hall with its swirls of pearly color, but not how clouds banking up outside had turned iron-gray to say a storm was coming.

Brooks cleared his throat to draw my attention away from the portraits.

“Awful, isn’t it,” he said. “Now do you get why I hate all that blue-blood insanity?”

“Wait … you mean these are relatives? They’re not just paintings?”

“Paintings? Mademoiselle, I am highly insulted. This is the pedigree of kings.” He did a dead-on impression of his father’s accent and straightened his spine until it looked almost painful, taking on the bearing of some snooty museum docent. It didn’t exactly fit the T-shirt and shorts, but it definitely made an impression. “You’re lucky they’re all dead, or else they would be highly insulted as well, and then they would be forced to
pay someone to mock you or smite you or something else they couldn’t be bothered to get off their cushioned seats for.”

I hadn’t snorted a laugh since I was ten and doing so sent chocolate milk through my nose, but right then, I snorted from trying to hold back, and had to slap a hand over my nose and mouth.

Brooks took the sound as his cue to make things worse and give me the introduction to a seemingly endless list of people with too many names and too many titles. There were earls and ladies, and dukes and duchesses, and even something called a viscount (which, apparently, is not the same as a count). When I said a marchioness sounded like she should have a baton to twirl, the glaze over Brooks’ features cracked and he laughed, too.

I was falling back into that space I’d landed in during class when something about him tamped down my defenses, so in my head I kept repeating “He really is a royal pain in the ass” until I was able to get a grip on myself. It was preferable to thinking how he probably spun things with girls like Claire to paint himself as an authentic Prince Charming.

“I don’t get the hate,” I said. “What’s wrong with knowing where you come from?”

“Nothing, so long as there’s not someone trying to drag you back into the Dark Ages. Dad puts way too much emphasis on this stuff. I’ve yet to figure out why he moved to a country without royalty.”

“For your mom?” I guessed.

“Then that would make it the first and only concession he’s ever made.”

Just like that, the light mood broke and Brooks headed for the stairs as a perfectly timed thunderclap rattled the chandeliers.

Brooks was starting to remind me of a puzzle I had when I was little—one of those cubes with the different-colored squares scattered over the sides. Every time I’d come close to solving it, I’d make the last turn only to realize that the corners didn’t match up the way I expected. I’d missed a step somewhere.