Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (11 page)

“I’m not afraid of these people because their parents are senators or diplomats or whatever,” I say.

“Yeah, well. Maybe you should be.”

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

I was in an episode of
Law and Order
when I was seven. Mom and I were in line at the post office when a casting director approached us. They were shooting at the courthouse across the street, he said, and I was perfect for an extra role they were trying to fill. All I had to do was let some lady hold me while screaming about how no one could ever take her babies away from her. Even though she’d kidnapped me.

Anyway. In the episode, the lady was in some cult, so the detective went undercover pretending he wanted to join, and that’s how he got the rest of the members to implicate her in a string of murders.

What I’m getting at is that’s all I really know about how the police do their thing when no one will talk to them. So that’s why I’ve decided that if I’m going to get any sort of useful information about what got Isabella killed, I need to do it from the inside.

I can’t just float around on my own and hang out with the alpha crowd when I feel like it anymore. I need to become one of them.

But when I get to the dining hall Monday morning, Kelsey is the only one at the table. She’s picking the blueberries out of a muffin and arranging them in rows on her napkin.

“What’s wrong?” I take the seat next to her and sprinkle pepper on my egg whites.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Kelsey’s hands fly to her face. “Why, are my eyes puffy?”

“No.” I point to her napkin. “But that’s the kind of behavior they institutionalize people for, you know.”

Kelsey sighs. I follow her gaze across the room, where a guy is waiting on the waffle line. The top button of his shirt is undone and his hair is swept to the side. Gross.

“Is that Justin?” I ask.

“Sh! What if he hears us?” Kelsey hisses.

“He’d need to have our table bugged to hear us from over there. Besides, he hasn’t looked over here once.” I adjust my voice a bit, knowing I probably need to be gentler with Kelsey. “You’re gorgeous. You can do better than a creep who preys on freshmen.”

“He broke up with me so he could focus on college stuff,” Kelsey sniffs. “But he texts me all the time saying he misses me and doesn’t want to lose me.”

Now I’m the one sighing. “Kels, he wants you to be his back-burner girl. He wants to hook up with whoever he wants and know that you’ll still be there when he’s mature enough for a girlfriend again.”

Her face screws up, and I’m praying she doesn’t have a meltdown right here at the table, because people who cry in public make me super uncomfortable. But instead, she says, “Oh my God. You’re right.” She balls up her napkin of blueberries. “What am I supposed to do?”

I reach across Kelsey for her phone and scroll through the contacts until I find Justin’s number. I hold it up and make her watch me delete it, her eyes wide with panic. “You go cold turkey. That way he knows he’s busted, and he feels like a dumbass.”

Kelsey looks dumbstruck for a minute as I hand back her phone. But by the time Remy and April find us, she’s smiling to herself and eating her muffin like a normal person.

Both girls look surprised to see me at the table, but April’s mouth hangs open when she sees Kelsey. “She’s eating.”

Kelsey shrugs. “Anne and I talked. I’m feeling a lot better now.”

Remy and April gape at me, totally unaware that they’re still standing with their trays. Their faces are frozen with awe, like I’ve performed a miracle.

“Wow.” Remy sits next to me. “Just wow.”

One week, I estimate. One more week of this, and I bet Kelsey will tell me anything.

*   *   *

Professor Upton is five foot one with a frizzy blond bob. Her face is forty while the rest of her is obviously sixty. She gives me an icy smile when I approach her before Latin class. “Yes, Ms. Dowling?”

“I was wondering if I could ask you a question,” I say. “About Isabella Fernandez.”

Upton pushes her glasses down the bridge of her nose. “I’m not certain I can answer it. But go on.”

“Why did she drop this class?” I ask.

Professor Upton’s jaw sets. She shuffles the papers in her hands and avoids my eyes. “I’m not entirely sure why you’re interested in that, Ms. Dowling.”

“I’m just curious.” I bite my lip until my eyes well up, hoping it’ll make me look like the traumatized roommate.

Upton studies my face. “This is a high-level class. Not everyone can keep up with the demanding level of work. Isabella was struggling,” she adds, before turning away from me.

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 [email protected].

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.”