Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (21 page)

My head is swimming. “Why would Isabella do something like that?”

“Alexis was making her life hell last year,” Kelsey says. “Leaving her these sticky notes all the time. It got so bad Isabella had to use the bathroom on a different floor because Alexis was always picking on her.”

“But no one could prove Isabella made the video,” April says, her voice hushed. “Zach Walton was in charge of video for the speeches, and he swears he didn’t see anyone mess with his laptop.”

“But he’s friends with Peter Wu, who was running against Alexis. He’s probably the one who switched the tapes,” Kelsey says. “Anyway, all I’m saying is I believe she did it. I would have done the same thing if I’d heard Alexis saying that horrible stuff.”

“What kind of horrible stuff?” I ask.

“It was really bad,” Kelsey whispers. “Stuff that could destroy her father’s campaign.”

“Goddard said he’d expel anyone who even thought about putting the video on the Internet,” April adds. “I guess it scared Isabella enough, because almost everyone’s forgotten about it by now.”

Everyone except Alexis,
I think. If she publicly humiliated Alexis once, what was to stop Isabella from doing it again once she graduated and didn’t need the scholarship to the Wheatley School anymore? Alexis could have set Isabella up—lured her into the woods, maybe promising her a lot of money in exchange for the tape, only to decide killing her was the only way to shut her up for good.

“Anne, what are you going to do?” Kelsey asks, her face and voice anxious.

“Nothing,” I lie. “Just tell the truth if the police come to you, okay?”

None of us feels like watching the entire student body gossip about us as we eat our salads, so we agree to head back to Amherst together. Brent jumps up from his seat as he sees us heading for the door.

“Anne,” he says, his expression strained. Does he know his little girlfriend is setting me up to spend the rest of my life in jail?

“No,” is the best retort I can come up with, because I’m shaking. Because I know he’s probably been leading me on just like he’s been leading Jill on. I push past him, but Kelsey and April hang back to answer his demands as to what my problem is.

Good. I’d rather walk back to the dorm alone anyway. But as I take one final glance over my shoulder at Brent arguing with April, I collide with Alexis. She balances her bowl of fruit in time to keep it from spilling everywhere, but a strawberry topples out and lands on my shoe.

“Sorry,” she says. When she realizes we have an audience, she smirks and adds, “Don’t kill me.”

I want to lunge at her, to shove those strawberries down her throat until she chokes. But that’s what she wants, right? She wants everyone to think I murdered Isabella.

Well, she better try harder, because now that’s she’s made this personal, there’s no way I’m giving up on finding the real killer.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

All of my resolve crumbles when I get back to Amherst. I curl up on the couch in the first-floor lounge, seconds away from dialing home and asking my parents to come pick me up. When I get tired of feeling sorry for myself, I consider all the missing pieces to Isabella’s murder that I don’t have.

The tape Isabella used to humiliate Alexis. Isabella’s flash drive and Andreev’s research. The missing discipline report on Lee Andersen.

All I know for sure is that any of them could have killed Isabella.

I’m sitting upright again when I spot Remy, Kelsey, and April outside the lounge window. I really don’t want to talk to them anymore tonight, but it’s going to be hard to avoid them. Even if I try to make it upstairs quickly, they’ll probably be inside in time to ride the elevator with me.

I glance at the basement door. Hiding in the laundry room alone isn’t ideal, but I just can’t face the girls right now. I hurry down the steps.

As I expected, the laundry room is empty. Sure, it’s a little creepy down here, but it might not be a terrible place for me to hide until the rumors about me go away. Or until the end of the year. I walk the length of the laundry room, because I’m going to go crazy if I don’t keep moving.

That’s what I wanted to do tonight, I remember. I wanted to see if there is a floor plan of Amherst, if there are any other ways out of here that the police may have missed.

I run my hand over the walls beneath the stairs. It looks like it could be a closet of some sort. Like the type Harry Potter lived in. But there’s no door. I knock on one wall. I can’t tell if it’s hollow inside or not.

My gaze locks on the bookshelf against the stair wall. Now why would a laundry room need a bookshelf?

I approach it, my heart racing, and examine it from every angle. It could definitely be blocking a door. I grab hold of one side and pull it toward me, wincing at the awful sound the wood dragging across the concrete floor makes.

The bookshelf only budges a few inches, but I have a clear view of what’s behind it.

A door.

I tug at the bookshelf until there’s enough space for me to fit behind it. The door is made of a heavy wood; I have to lean my shoulder against it, but it opens.

I step into the tiny space beneath the stairs and use the screen of my phone as a light. The space beneath the stairs extends into some sort of hallway.

Except it’s not a hallway exactly. It’s sloping downward, and there’s a stone arch over it. I get closer and hold up my phone for more light as I read the inscription on the arch.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

I can’t help it: I shiver. Suddenly everything makes sense: the system of dotted lines linking the buildings on that old campus map. Isabella never leaving the dorm, according to the security tape. Even Remy’s comment:
Unless we dig ourselves out of here, looks like we can’t sneak out anymore.

This hallway is a tunnel.

My first instinct is to follow it all the way to the end, but I know that would be stupid, with only an almost-dead iPhone for light. The tunnel is pitch-black. I hold my phone up to the side and see there are empty sconces on the walls. It smells like mildew and dirt down here. These tunnels probably haven’t been used in years.

I have so many questions: How did Isabella find out about the tunnels? Who else knows about them? I definitely need to be careful who I let know about this. If Isabella used the tunnels to sneak out the night she died, her killer could have met her down here.

Which means he or she knows about it, too.

Using my feeble light, I make it about twenty feet down the tunnel until it splits off in two directions. On the wall in front of me is a plaque engraved with four words.

LIBRARY
   
→

REFECTORY
   
←

AMHERST DORMITORY
   
→

This is crazy,
I think. There are entrances to the tunnel in at least three places on campus. Who knows where else it leads?

Panicked, I think of how I left the Amherst entrance to the tunnel uncovered. I need to leave now and come back when I can think of a better way to cover my tracks. Also, I’m going to need a real flashlight if I’m going to go farther into the tunnel.

I replace the bookcase and hurry back upstairs. I can barely contain myself once I lock my door behind me. I figured out how Isabella evaded the security camera! Suck on that, Wheatley Police.

I’m dying to tell someone about the tunnel—and about Sebastian’s conversation with Andreev—but I don’t trust anyone here anymore. Trusting Brent didn’t exactly turn out too well, and if I thought people were watching me before, it’s only going to be about a thousand times worse now.

There’s really only one person I can talk to about any of this. I don’t even wait until I get back to my room to text Anthony:
I found something. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

Just as I’m thinking I’m not being totally fair to be so pissed at Brent, he strolls into Brit lit and sits two tables away from me. No wave hello. No smile. He won’t even look at me.

White-hot anger surges through me again. No wonder I got the sense Isabella was holding something back about Brent. His
I don’t hook up with boarding school girls
act is just a way for him to lure us in and string us along, and now that he got caught, he wants nothing to do with me.

The way Brent seemed to ignore Remy and the other girls when I was around makes sense now. Why pay attention to the girls who already have you figured out when you can go after the clueless new girl?

But at least focusing on picturing heavy objects flying into the back of Brent’s head distracts me from the people who are staring at me. Because there are a lot of them. And the few who have seemed to learn that staring is rude are whispering to their friends, carefully shooting me glances when they think I’m not looking.

I wince as a crumpled piece of paper lands on my desk. I squeeze my eyes shut and open it.

KILLER, someone has written in purple ink.

I whip my head around. Alexis is two tables behind me, her hair falling in a curtain to the side of her face as she talks to Brooke, Jill’s snobby, pig-nosed other half. I glare at Alexis until she looks up at me and mouths
What?

I roll my eyes at her. She didn’t even bother to hide the purple pen resting on her notebook.

I turn around and rip the paper in two, completely aware that everyone is watching me. I’m glad they’re watching, because it’s all the more reason I’m not going to show that Alexis is getting to me.

There is one person who doesn’t seem to care that people are calling me a killer, though. Dan Crowley plops down next to me before class starts, like we’re BFFs now or something. For the most part, I don’t mind. Until he opens his mouth.

“Hey, Anne. Um…” He uses his pinky to twirl the silver ring in his ear. “Did you talk to Kelsey yet?”

“Not to be rude, but I’ve had more important stuff on my mind.”

“Oh. Yeah, I heard about that.” Dan drops his voice. “Look, it’s just a stupid rumor. Try to ignore them. That’s what I did in ninth grade. My roommate was a dick and lied about me looking at naked pictures of Zac Efron before bed. The whole thing blew over in a week.”

“Really, Dan, I appreciate your concern, but two
totally
different things.”

Professor Fowler slaps his literature anthology down on his podium. “Mr. Crowley and Ms. Dowling. I’ve started class. If you’d like to continue your conversation outside, by all means…”

At least this has the effect of shutting everyone up. I watch the back of Brent’s head for a reaction, but the most movement he makes is borrowing a pen from the kid sitting next to him.

I turn to the next blank page in my notebook and notice that Dan’s become twitchier than usual. He’s drumming one set of fingers against the table, and the other against the keyboard of his laptop. He keeps stealing glances at me, until I finally mouth,
What is it?

He tilts his laptop screen to me so I can get a better view, and loads a blank page. Then he types,
I found out something.
He erases it right away.

I swallow and write a single question mark on the corner of my notebook so he can see.

I got curious about why someone would delete a discipline report
. The words are gone almost as quickly as he types them out.
So I looked into who has the power to do that.

When he pauses, I raise an eyebrow at him as if to say
Go on.

Only an administrator can delete reports. So that means Goddard, Harrow, Watts, or even Tierney, depending on when it was deleted.

My stomach sinks, even though I had a suspicion someone high up was covering for Lee. But there’s more, because Dan is still typing.

Teachers can also delete reports they wrote.

I check to make sure Fowler isn’t watching us, before I scribble across the top of my page,
Is there
any
way to find out who wrote the report?

Dan hesitates, then types,
There’s no way to prove it, but I logged in as the 3 teachers Lee shared with Isabella. Only one has filed a discipline report in the last nine months.

“Who?” I whisper, completely forgetting where we are.

Dan puts a finger to his lips. The name is gone from his screen before I can even process it.

Professor Upton.

*   *   *

Why?

That’s what I want to know. Why did Upton file a report on Lee? I’ve only been in her class for three weeks, and it’s obvious to me that he’s her shining star. She’s always calling on him and making that approving clicking noise and staring at the rest of us as if to say
Why can’t you all be as smart as Lee?

Something changed since last year. Upton went from being willing to turn Lee in, to a spy for Dean Snaggletooth. She let Isabella drop her class, and if the administration told her to stay out of the whole thing, she may have even let Lee kill her.

Why?

Or rather, how? How could she let something like this happen? Just so she could keep her job?

The thought makes me so sick I almost forget Anthony is waiting for me in the visitors’ parking garage. I insisted that he meet me there this time. Security is bound to recognize his motorcycle by now, and getting caught for an unpaid ticket won’t help his not-so-squeaky-clean public image.

Not that mine would be any better, should the media get wind of Alexis’s story. The thought is so paralyzing I have to think of other things so I don’t turn around and find the quickest way out of Massachusetts.

But when I see Anthony, leaning against the wall of the parking garage, one foot propped up behind him, I almost lose it. Everything floods my brain at once: almost getting caught in Andreev’s office, Isabella humiliating Alexis, Detective Phelan showing up yesterday, Jill and Brent.

Brent—the perfect example of how cute guys always get me into trouble.