Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (12 page)

“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?

I already checked Isabella’s desk, but now that I know what might be on the flash drive, it makes sense that she wouldn’t leave it where someone could find it easily. Problem is, that leaves about a billion places for me to look for it.

I start with her desk again, because Isabella was practical. If she wanted to hide the flash drive, she’d probably pick somewhere where it’d be easily accessible. Most of her stuff is packed up in boxes, waiting for Anthony to borrow a car to take them home or for his mother to get a weekend off work and pick them up herself.

I comb through her files of schoolwork, shaking each one gently to make sure the drive isn’t tucked into one of the pockets. Fifteen minutes later, there’s only one box left. This one is filled with her desk trinkets: her calendar, a box of thank-you cards, a framed picture of her ferret, Mr. Spock, and a painted clay box that looks like a middle-school art project. The initials
I.A.F
are etched on the bottom.

I open the box again; it’s filled with paper clips, mismatched earring backs, and other crap. At the bottom is a Post-it note folded into a tiny square.

Lexington Hall 108.

I don’t have any classes in Lexington Hall. I find the campus map Barbara gave me my first day and run my finger down the key. There’s no Lexington Hall on it.

The fact that Isabella wrote down the address and saved it could mean nothing. Her missing flash drive and Andreev’s research could also mean nothing, but I can’t afford to think that way. Not when I don’t have much else.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Remy and the girls are selling Valentine’s Day rose-grams at a table during breakfast, and Brent isn’t here. He rarely eats breakfast in the dining hall, so I guess he’s not a morning person. Or he’s more like a does-whatever-the-hell-he-wants person and no one says anything because he’s so damn cute.

The thought of eating with Cole, Murali, and Phil is only slightly more appealing than eating alone. They’re nice guys, really. But there’s only so much I can listen to as Murali diagnoses everything with a pulse (Brent: trust issues; Remy: ADHD; Kelsey: codependency) and Cole and Phil argue about their fantasy-baseball teams.

I find Cole on the omelet-station line, towering over a group of freshmen girls who still haven’t learned that giggling like a bunch of morons is not the way to get a cute older boy’s attention. He smiles when he sees me approaching.

“You ready for the art-history quiz?” he asks.

I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Crap.”

I totally forgot. I was too busy snooping through Isabella’s stuff. “Hey, Cole, is there a Lexington Hall here?” I ask without thinking.

Cole tugs at his tie. “There used to be. Who told you about Lexington Hall?”

“I heard someone mention it,” I lie. I don’t have a reason not to trust Cole, but at this school, I don’t really need one. I definitely can’t tell anyone about all my snooping around.

“That’s funny,” Cole said. “Cause Lexington Hall burned down when my grandparents were students here.”

Now
this
makes me pause. Why did Isabella care about some building that burned down before she was even born? The easy answer is that Isabella cared about a lot of weird things, but my gut tells me I need to find out more.

“Hey, Cole.” Alexis walks past us, giving a sweet little wave over her shoulder. Cole waves back, looking embarrassed.

“She hates me,” I say brightly when Alexis is gone.

“Nah. Lex is just … I don’t know.” Cole lowers his voice and looks over his shoulder. “She sucks. None of us guys like her, but she and Remy used to be a package deal.”

“Used to be?” I ask. “They seem pretty friendly. And they’re roommates.”

“It’s because Rem is too nice,” Cole says. “Me, her, and Alexis … we sort of grew up together in Concord. Our parents were friends.”

The only thing I know about Concord is that the British got their asses handed to them there. In my head, I’m picturing a place like Westchester. Only lamer.

“Anyway, Remy and I made a lot of new friends when we started school here, and for a while we tolerated Lex, but…” Cole’s voice trails off as we reach the front of the line.

I watch him load four pancakes onto his plate. “But what?”

“It’s nothing really.” Cole shrugs. “We just don’t hang out with her much anymore.”

I take a pancake for myself and follow Cole to the table. Don’t people realize that when they say “It’s nothing,” they’re pretty much guaranteeing that it’s something?

There’s got to be another reason my new friends are avoiding Alexis. I sit between Cole and Murali and let them argue about what format Robinson said the art-history quiz is in. I watch Alexis sit at a table with Lizzie, and Brooke and Jill, the two blond, athletic girls from the party. She looks up and catches me staring.

Her eyes fill with fear before she looks away. No, not fear. Paranoia.

Holy shit
, I realize. It was Alexis who was in my room. It had to be: Whoever stole my card has to live in Amherst to have gotten past the RA. And I didn’t see Alexis at dinner that night, which would have given her plenty of time to grab my card while the guys were getting food and then get back to the dorm.

My pulse is beating so loudly in my ears I can barely hear Cole and Murali.
Alexis broke in to my room
.