Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (27 page)

“We get it, Murali.” Remy rolls her eyes. “Jeez, give Anne some space before she starts to think
you’re
the one that sent her that rose-gram.”

“What rose-gram?” Brent’s eyes are suspicious. Only me, him, and Murali know about the threatening message.

“From her secret admirer,” Remy says with a grin. Brent quirks an eyebrow at me to let me know this is news to him.

“You mean the one Zach Walton sent to her?” April pipes up. We all turn to her. “What? I saw him write Anne’s name on one of the ones he bought from a freshman.”

“I don’t even know him,” I say, feeling my jaw go numb. “Why would he—”

“Because you’re a hottie,” Remy giggles. “Poor Zach’s got a crush.”

But I know Zach didn’t send me
that
rose-gram. Anthony did.

“Where is Zach?” I demand.

A few fingers point to Dan Crowley’s table. Next to Peter Wu is a kid with a mushroom cut that almost covers his eyes. He’s in one of my classes—I can’t remember which right now—but he’s also the boy that stood up on the train going to Isabella’s wake so I could sit next to Molly.

Why would he threaten me? I’ve never even talked to him before. I’m still staring when he looks up and sees me. Something barely detectable flashes in his eyes.

He gets up, his back to me, and acts like he’s heading for the soda fountain.

And then he slips out the door.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

I don’t stick around to hand out explanations. I abandon my chicken salad and take off after Zach. He’s fast, but my ever-unflinching willingness to cause a huge scene gives me the upper hand here.

“HEY! Don’t run from me!” I scream once we’re in the lobby. Zach is almost at the door. The woman who checks our cards to let us into the dining hall looks up, and Zach is forced to stop. He hesitates for a minute and I catch up to him.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m Anne. But you already knew that, since you threatened me and everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mutters.

“Bullshit, you don’t. April Durand saw you write that rose-gram to me. That should be enough to convince Dr. Harrow.”

Zach’s ferret-like face pales.

“Not a smart move, Zach. I’m probably not the only one who thinks your message makes it look like you killed Isa—”

“I didn’t kill her! Isabella was my friend,” he says. “And I didn’t want to send you that rose-gram. I had no choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

Zach pushes open the dining-hall door, and for a second I think he’s going to run again. But he steps outside and waits for me to follow. He wants to be out of earshot.

“Someone made me send that rose-gram. I’m sorry. Please don’t tell Dr. Harrow.”

“What do you mean, someone made you?” I demand.

“Isabella and I were friends,” he says. “We did something together last year … something that could have gotten us in serious trouble.”

“You mean the video of Alexis Westbrook,” I say.

“Could you keep your voice down?” Zach says, even though I’m barely speaking above a whisper. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Our friend Peter was running for SGA president against Alexis and Brent Conroy. Someone was taking Peter’s posters down. Isabella thought she could catch Alexis admitting to it on tape, but she said something else.”

“Where do you come in?” I ask.

“It was my idea to show the tape at the SGA debates, anyway. Isabella gave me the footage, and I edited it on my computer to make the sound louder and everything.” Zach’s expression darkens. “When Alexis told Dr. Harrow what we did, we deleted everything so we wouldn’t get in trouble. And I thought no one else had a copy of the video … until I got an e-mail last week saying Isabella saved the original.”

“Who sent the e-mail?” My head is spinning.

“It was a fake address.” Zach swallows. “Whoever it was uploaded the file to the e-mail to prove they have the video now. They said they could prove the video was edited on my computer and they would tell Dr. Harrow if I didn’t do exactly what they said.”

“And they told you to threaten me?” I ask, a little incredulous.

Zach nods. “They told me exactly what to say. I didn’t want to, but this person could get me expelled. Or the Westbrooks could sue my family. Please don’t tell on me.”

I search Zach’s face for a sign he’s lying. But all I see is the same scared, sad face I saw on the way to Isabella’s wake.

“It was really stupid of you to threaten me,” I tell him. “I won’t tell Harrow about it if you promise to tell me if you get another e-mail like that.”

Zach nods. “I just … Isabella promised me she destroyed all copies of the video. The old Isabella would never lie about something like that.”

I feel a prickle on the back of my neck. “What do you mean, ‘the old Isabella’?”

“She changed after the whole video thing,” Zach says. “She stopped hanging out with me. When I confronted her about it, she admitted she was seeing someone. A guy.”

“I thought the police said she never had a boyfriend?”

Zach shrugs. “I don’t know. She was probably lying to me about that too. She wouldn’t even tell me his name.”

My mind is running in circles. Isabella may have had a boyfriend, after all—or she could have lied to Zach to distract him from something else she was doing. Like trying to break the code for Andreev.

There’s only one person who would have gotten Zach to threaten me: Alexis. I’m almost positive she stole my ID to get into my room and steal Isabella’s copy of the video.

With a surge of anger, I remember the sleepless night after she broke into my room. I think it’s time for me to teach Alexis that it’s not nice to go through someone else’s stuff.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

“You know, a person’s coffee says a lot about them,” Brent tells me over the rim of his hot chocolate. I glance down at my own nonfat soy cinnamon dolce latte.

“That’s so not a thing,” I say. It’s Tuesday after classes, and we’re in a coffee shop off-campus so we can talk in private.

“Sure it is,” Brent said. “You ordered the most complicated thing they offer.”

I glance at his hot chocolate, not sure if he meant that as a compliment. “You didn’t even get coffee. What does that say about you? Mysterious? Not to be trusted?”

I realize what I’ve said, as Brent’s smile melts a little. Oops. There’s that Awkward Thing between us again.

Brent clears his throat. “Ask me anything about myself, and I swear to tell you the truth.”

“Are you trying to prove I can trust you or something?” I roll my eyes, despite how tantalizing the offer is.

“Go ahead. Anything.”

“Fine. Why’d you get kicked out of your last school?”

Brent leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head. He lets out a half whistle/half sigh. “Anything but that.”

“Nope. Not interested in anything else. Sorry.”

Brent scratches his neck as I stare him down. For the first time, I notice the fleck of copper in his right eye. “I got caught cutting class … with a girl.”

“They expelled you for that?”

“It wasn’t so much the cutting class part.… Anyway, you don’t want the details.” Brent actually looks embarrassed.

“Oh,” I say.
“Oh.”

“Hey. No judging.” Brent’s cheeks are pink. “Now it’s your turn. What do you have to tell me that you couldn’t say on campus?”

I put Brent’s story out of my head, because I don’t like thinking about him doing expulsion-worthy things with another girl. In the
eighth grade
no less. So I tell Brent everything Zach told me, watching a small crease form between his eyes.

“Honestly, Zach sounds like he’s full of shit,” he says when I’m done. “Why would Alexis go through the trouble of blackmailing him? If she wanted to threaten you, why not do it herself?”

“Why would she do it herself if she could have Zach do it?” I shoot back. “Let’s say I did report the threat to Harrow. April saw Zach write the message to me. There wouldn’t be any way to trace it back to her.”

“Okay, say that’s true. How did Alexis get her hands on that video?” Brent asks. “And why would she risk sending it to Zach and having him upload it for the world to see?”

“I’m pretty sure she stole it from our dorm room right after Isabella died.” I tell Brent about the break-in. “And Zach has nothing to gain from uploading the video of Alexis except getting kicked out of school and being slapped with a lawsuit.”

Brent contemplates this. “True.”

I let the silence sit for a moment as we sip our drinks. “I just don’t know how I’ll be able to pull off getting the video from Alexis’s room. She’s going to be guarding it like a cobra now that she caught me snooping once.”

“This is President’s Day weekend,” Brent says.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well … everyone goes home President’s Day weekend.” He lifts an eyebrow at me.

“Huh.” I sit back in my chair. “Go on.”

“We could stay and do some poking around. Of course, you don’t want anyone getting suspicious, so you’ll have to tell anyone who’ll listen that you’re going back to New York for the weekend,” Brent says. “But think of the damage we could do.”

My stomach flutters, and I don’t know if it’s at the thought of having Brent to myself for the weekend, or the realization that I really could go back to New York this weekend if I wanted to. I could hop on a train Friday night, and I wouldn’t even have to come back until Monday afternoon.

The thought is tempting, but I can’t waste the opportunity to look for answers. Not when I feel as if I’m finally close to the ones I want.

“Don’t look now, but lover boy is outside,” Brent deadpans.

I nearly knock my coffee over. Does he mean Anthony? Because the thought of Brent and Anthony in the same room tops the list of things that make me seriously uncomfortable. Right above people using the word
delicious
to describe things that aren’t food, and men’s UGG boots.

Stomach in my throat, I look outside. “Oh. It’s just Sebastian.”

Brent’s eyebrows form a V. “Who’d you think I was talking about?”

I ignore him and watch Sebastian press a button at the crosswalk. He looks up at the red light barring him from crossing the street and rocks back and forth on his heels.

“Brent, does something seem off about Sebastian to you?”

Brent shrugs. “His new mustache makes him look like a sex offender, I guess.”

Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid Sebastian since that night in his room. I only have a view of his profile from here, but his face looks thinner. Paler. I wonder where he’s going.

Find out,
a voice in my head says.

The crosswalk light turns green.

“Be right back,” I tell Brent.

*   *   *

I stay twenty feet behind Sebastian. He’s moving quickly, so if I put any more distance between us, I might lose him.

Sebastian turns onto Massachusetts Avenue and pauses outside a coffee shop. I can’t help feeling a little disappointed, until I realize we passed about a bajillion other coffee shops on the way here.

There’s got to be something special about this one.

Sebastian goes inside, and I wait a few minutes on the sidewalk, blowing warm air into my hands. My alpaca wool gloves aren’t cutting it today.

I peer into the window of the café. It’s crowded, but Sebastian towers over everyone. He’s sitting by the far wall, staring at … a computer screen.

This is an Internet café.

My breath catches in my throat. We have perfectly good Wi-Fi back at school. Why else would Sebastian walk twenty minutes away from campus to use the Internet unless it’s to do something he doesn’t want anyone to see?

I pull my crocheted cap over my ears and step inside the café. I perch myself at a table in the corner with a diagonal view of Sebastian. He reaches into his messenger bag, looks over his shoulder, and plugs a flash drive into the computer.

A purple flash drive.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

I’m up and leaning over his shoulder in an instant.

“Nice flash drive, Sebastian.”

His whole body tenses, but he doesn’t turn around. Slowly, he reaches to pull the flash drive out of the computer.

I lay a hand on his shoulder. “Going somewhere? You just got here.”

Sebastian turns his head up at me, fear skirting across his face. “Anne,” he squeaks, “funny seeing you here.”

“Yeah. Real funny. Where’d you get that flash drive, Sebastian? Did you steal it from Isabella before or after you killed her?”

“Whoa, hold on.” Sebastian lifts his hands up, as if he’s surrendering. “It’s mine.”

“
J’accuse,
Sebastian.” I sit in the empty seat next to him and drag myself uncomfortably close. He flinches. “I wonder if the police will buy that, once Isabella’s brother says that’s the same flash drive missing from her stuff. Doesn’t help your case once you add that to the e-mails you sent her before she was killed.”

Sebastian pales, and squirms in his chair. “You know about those?”

“I know a lot more than you think, Sebastian.” I put my face inches from his and lay a hand on his knee. To the casual observer, we probably look like a couple. “Now tell me why you have Isabella’s flash drive.”

“I didn’t know it was Isabella’s,” Sebastian blurts. “He gave it to me. Andreev.”

My stomach twists around itself. “Your internship isn’t really an internship, is it?”

Sebastian hesitates.

“C’mon. He’s using you, isn’t he? To figure out some sort of code?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Sebastian says.

“I’ve got time,” I tell him.

Sebastian swallows. “Andreev came to me at the end of last year. After the AP exams. He said he was impressed with my scores and wanted to offer me a job.” He lowers his voice. “Technically, students aren’t allowed to be paid for on-campus internships, but he said as long as I didn’t tell anyone what we were working on, he would pay me when the time came.”

Sebastian looks at the door and wipes his hands on his pants. “He had lots of odd rules. I had to turn in fake papers at least once a week so the administration would think I was actually doing independent research. And I wasn’t allowed to use a campus computer to do the work he gave me. I thought it was just Andreev being himself. You know, a little…” Sebastian twirls his finger next to his ear.