Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (17 page)

The door closes, and Sebastian looks from me to his closet, clearly torn. I can practically see his thought process: There’s alcohol in his room, which is bad, but there’s also a girl in his room, which probably doesn’t happen often. Luckily, the fear of getting expelled wins out, because Sebastian lets out a grunt and starts loading the beer in his closet into his laundry basket.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells me.

“Don’t walk too fast,” I say innocently. “The bottles will clink together.”

He nods and then he’s gone.

Phase two: complete.

I don’t waste any time digging into the pockets of his messenger bag. I push past an expensive-looking wallet, a pair of Armani sunglasses (gross), and empty gum wrappers. I nearly stab myself on an uncapped pen when I get to the bottom of the pocket, but there’s no key.

Trying not to panic, I search the main pocket. There’s nothing but notebooks and stray papers.

Okay, so the key isn’t in his bag. I look around the room, my palms beginning to sweat. Where would I keep a key, if not in my purse? My gaze lands on Sebastian’s desk. I yank open the main drawer.

It doesn’t take long to find a key on a frayed MIT lanyard that looks as old as Andreev. Jackpot. I pause with my hand on the key, suddenly aware that Sebastian left his Wheatley ID on his desk, next to his laptop.

The fact that he left his room key here only buys me another minute, tops. But Sebastian left his laptop on, the “level failed” screen of some military shooter game still blinking.

I can’t help it. I minimize the game and open Sebastian’s documents. I type “Andreev” into the search bar, my breathing growing shallower with every second it takes the results to load.

“Come on,” I whisper. The search brings up two documents, as a knock sounds at the door. Brent.

I ignore the second knock and log into the Wheatley e-mail portal. I don’t have time to read the documents, and even if I did, I couldn’t risk Sebastian seeing that someone opened them in Word. I compose an e-mail to myself and attach the documents to it, my legs threatening to give out beneath me as I wait for them to upload.

Brent’s knock at the door grows frantic as I send the e-mail and click out of everything. I slip the key into my back pocket and stumble out into the hallway, my heart racing.

“What the hell took you so long?”

“What the hell took
you
so long?” The amount of adrenaline surging through my body is making my voice hysterical. “He actually asked to touch my hair!”

As we approach the elevator, the panel overhead lights up to let us know the door is about to open.

“Shit. That might be Sebastian.” Brent takes my hand and pulls me into the supply closet across from the bathroom. He closes the door just as the elevator pings outside.

Brent and I are sandwiched between two shelves filled with rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. Our chests are pressed together, his rapid heartbeat matching mine. He hasn’t let go of my hand yet. His warm breath on my neck sends sparks all the way to my toes.

“That was close,” he whispers. I can barely make out the shape of his face in the dark.

“Yeah,” I say, waiting for my normal breathing rate to return.

“So,” he says.

“So.”

“How are you going to get him his key back before he realizes it’s missing?” Brent lets go of my hand. My cheeks burn with disappointment, but luckily it’s too dark for him to see that.

“I was hoping I could just slip it back into his bag before he meets with Andreev again,” I say. “But I don’t know if that leaves me enough time to break into Andreev’s office.”

“I have a better idea,” Brent says. “As long as you’re comfortable with breaking a couple of Massachusetts laws.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

An hour later, Brent and I are waiting for the T. In my possession is a fresh copy of the key to Andreev’s office, courtesy of Hank’s Hardware. Brent agrees to play
Call of Duty
with Sebastian tomorrow so he can slip the original back into his desk before he even realizes it’s gone.

“You’re pretty useful,” I tell him, over the sound of the train grinding to a halt in front of us. “I think I’ll keep you around.”

“You owe me,” he grunts, but I can tell he doesn’t mind that much. I have to pause for a minute and wonder why he’s helping me, especially when one wrong move could get us both expelled. Could all of this just be an excuse for him to spend time with me?

I study his profile as the train doors open and we find seats. His knit cap is pulled over his ears, and his cheeks are pink from the cold. I can make out faint freckles on his nose that probably get darker in the summer.

“You’re staring at me,” he says.

The train lurches forward and my body slides into his. “I was just thinking of something. How did you know I was in Brit lit before I even got my schedule?”

“I have resources.”

“Yeah, well, your resources might help me get information I need about Isabella.” I glance around, just to make sure no one from school is on the train. “Do you have access to class rosters?”

“Let’s say I do.” Brent cracks his knuckles. “How would that help you?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I’m pretty sure Isabella dropped Upton’s Latin class to avoid Lee Andersen. I want to know if they had any other classes together.”

“They were both in my calculus class last year.” Brent’s brow creases. “I know we call him Creepy Lee and everything, but as far as I know, he’s never even talked to a girl.”

“He wouldn’t have to talk to Isabella to stalk her.” Acid swirls in my stomach at the thought. “I confronted Isabella’s friend Molly about it, and she got all freaked out. Said Isabella never should have gotten her involved.” I stop myself from picturing the scars on Molly’s arms. “Whatever happened between Isabella and Lee, someone definitely told Molly to shut up about it.”

Brent bobs his head and taps his foot in rhythm, considering this. “If you had access to the teachers’ portal, you could pull up anyone’s schedule and transcript. And any history of disciplinary action.”

The thought sends a thrill coursing through me. St. Bernadette’s had a teachers’ portal, but I never could crack that bad boy. My skill sets are more old-school: lock picking and smooth talking.

If I had my very own hacker, there’s no limit to what I could do.

“If I had access,” I repeat, waiting for the punch line.

“Yes. If you had access, it would mean you probably talked to Dan Crowley,” Brent says. “This is all hypothetical, by the way. I’m not saying Dan got me onto the portal so I could play a prank on Murali involving fake reports from all his teachers about his excessive gas passing in class.” He pauses. “That would be really immature.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re unbelievable. My surprise at you getting kicked out of your old school is wearing off.”

“That’s not good. I’m all about the surprise.”

*   *   *

Remy, April, and Kelsey are watching
Sex and the City
in the third-floor lounge when I get back to Amherst, but I sneak past them and go straight to my room. If I wanted to watch a bunch of rich women drink wine and complain about their problems I’d hang out with my mother’s friends. Plus, I have to check out those documents I e-mailed myself from Sebastian’s computer.

I send my mother a text to reassure her I haven’t been murdered this week and wind up scrolling through my old messages. A lump rises in my throat when I find the message my father sent me the night before Isabella was killed.

It’s a picture message of Abby curled on the sitting-room couch, with the caption
We miss you, princess.
I burst into tears when I first read it, not just because I was crazy homesick, but because the note from Daddy meant he finally forgave me for getting kicked out of St. Bernadette’s.

I should have been happy he wasn’t pissed at me anymore, but the message had really made me lose it. Isabella came into the room and saw me crying. To get me to stop bawling and smile, she played me this totally ridiculous video of a honey badger killing and eating snakes.

I really, really wish I were home, or that Isabella were here. For a moment, I consider calling Anthony. Even though he couldn’t be more different than his sister, they have the same crystal-gray eyes. And since I can’t go home, I just want something to feel familiar right now.

I check the news alerts I set for any mention of Isabella’s case. There aren’t any new stories since I last checked this morning.

The files I found on Sebastian’s computer take forever to load. They’re probably nothing of value to me; I didn’t exactly have time for a well-thought-out search of Sebastian’s documents.

The first file looks like a half-finished report of some sort. It’s titled “Antihypertritons and Colliding Nuclei Experiment.” I try to read it, but before long, my brain is spinning and I’ve accepted that trying to understand science this advanced is a waste of time.

The next file asks me for a password before I can open it.

This document has been locked by user E. ANDREEV.

I’ve officially hit a wall.

Before I shut my laptop off, I realize there was something else I wanted to look into. I Google “Margaret Watts” and browse the results. The first hit is her faculty page on the school’s Web site.

The page you requested cannot be found.

Huh. I check the links to Dr. Harrow and Dean Tierney’s pages, but they’re not broken. I return to the search results and click on the next hit on the school’s Web site, a news story about the award Dean Watts received in the fall.

The page you requested cannot be found.

Okay, seriously, what the hell? The school really needs to fix their Web site—unless someone took down the pages mentioning Dean Watts on purpose.

The limited bits of information I have on Watts swirl around in my head. I know that she wasn’t pregnant in the fall, which was only a few months ago. That definitely means she couldn’t have been having her baby when I got here two weeks ago. So why does the school want everybody to think she’s on maternity leave?

I look up Margaret Watts in the White Pages, but there are no hits for the Boston area. Every other Margaret Watts is either too old or too young to be Dean Watts, according to the search results.

I lean back in my chair and press my fingers to my temples, feeling a killer tension headache coming on. My leads aren’t giving me much to follow through on. First I had a roommate who’s invisible to security cameras, and now I have a disappearing Dean of Student Activities and Affairs.

I knew the administration at the Wheatley School was powerful … but powerful enough to make people disappear?

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

The girls want to go to a place called the Good Beane for brunch the next day, so tracking down Dan Crowley will have to wait until dinner. I’m trying to decide what annoys me more, the crappy coffee or the waiter wearing an
I HATE NEW YORK
T-shirt, when April suggests we go shopping somewhere called Newbury Street.

Naturally, that gets my attention. “Where’s Newbury Street?”

So far, all that anyone’s mentioned of shopping since I got here is the Wheatley Mall. And the only time I’ve even been to a mall is when we visited my dad’s family on Long Island. Why anyone would want to shop in a place that smells like stale pretzels is beyond me.

“Oh my God, you’ve never been to Newbury Street?” April pauses, her hand poised to adjust her hair. She’s wearing it down, with a lock of hair on one side pinned back. The same way I wear my hair most days.

“Anne, have you been into the city at all yet?” Remy asks me this with the same voice my mother uses to ask me if I’ve been taking my vitamins. I shake my head.

The three of them babble on about how we
have
to go now, and all I can think of is how I don’t want to lose any more time I could be using to follow up on my leads.

But I guess I have been kind of obsessed with this whole murder-investigation thing, and it wouldn’t kill me to take today off to act like a normal person. Especially if there’s shopping involved.

Newbury Street, as it turns out, is the only thing I’ve seen in Boston so far with the potential to rival the awesomeness of New York. The buildings are a lot like the ones on the Upper East Side—charming, made of brick and brownstone—and they house everything from a Betsey Johnson to a Pinkberry.

It’s enough to think that maybe if I get stuck in Boston forever, I won’t have to shoot myself after all.

Everyone humors me as I bounce from one side of the street to another, trying to take everything in, even though it’s clear it’d be impossible to do that in a day. I feel some of the weight on my chest lift: I’m in the city again, even if it’s not
my
city.

We stop in the Sephora on Boylston because I’m almost out of rosebud salve. Watching my new friends play with all of the makeup testers confirms that we’re finally in a territory where I know more than they do. In fact, once you take away the prep school uniforms and dump them into the wild, they seem pretty self-conscious and vulnerable.

Here in the city, no one knows Remy’s father is the mayor of Concord or that April’s father is the president of Boston University. Away from campus, I’m not such an outsider.

Kelsey is sniffing her new shampoo as we leave the store, and with a pang in my chest, I’m thinking how it’s exactly something Chelsea would do, when Remy stops us. It takes me a moment to realize that they know the blond woman carrying a Whole Foods reusable bag walking toward us.

“Hi, Mrs. Redmond,” Remy says, her voice getting pitchy like it does when she’s nervous.

The woman gives us a thin smile and I realize, duh, Redmond. This is Cole’s mother. They have the same tall, lean build and angular face.

“Hi, girls.” Mrs. Redmond pauses awkwardly. Her hands go into the pockets of her coat. It’s one of those ugly quilted ones that look like a giant oven mitt.

“Mrs. Redmond, this is Anne,” Remy says, saving me from standing there like a mute idiot. “She’s new at school. She’s from New York.”