Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (31 page)

“But you wanted him to be.”

Pressure builds behind my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t kill her.”

Now Brent is the one forcing a smile. His voice cracks a little as he says, “Then you’re going to need help proving it.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-THREE

I hate myself for what I’m about to do.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the station with me?” Remy asks, checking herself out in the mirror hanging on my closet door. She meets my eyes in it, and I nod.

“Nah, I’d be waiting, like, five hours for my train,” I say.

“It sucks you couldn’t get an earlier one.” Remy pouts. “You’re going to get to New York after midnight.”

I shrug. “That was the only train available on short notice.”

At the soft knock on my door, I feign exhaustion and yawn. “Can you get that, Rem?”

She nods and skips over to the door like an obedient puppy. When she sticks her head out the door, I reach into her purse and find my target in one fluid motion. Brent stalls outside the door until I hear Remy say, “Why are you here, anyway?”

I give Brent a thumbs-up, and he steps past Remy into my room. “I’m keeping Anne company until I need to accompany her to the station.”

“That’s sweet,” Remy says, distracted. “I guess I’ll go, then.”

Remy gives me a hug good-bye. When the door clicks behind her, Brent sits next to me on the bed. “You got it?”

I reach under my pillow and pull out Remy’s ID card/room key. “What if she notices it’s gone before she gets to the station?”

“Remy’s lost her key twice this year already,” Brent says. “If she notices, she’ll just get a new one when she gets back on Tuesday. But she might call to deactivate this card, so we shouldn’t waste time. I saw Alexis leave an hour ago.”

There’re at least two feet of space between us, and I suddenly hate how formal his tone of voice is. “You don’t have to help me. I mean, I’d understand if you didn’t want to.”

Brent sucks in a breath and studies Isabella’s wall. His eyes move over her
Where’s Waldo?
and
Star Trek
posters. “She was a really cool person. It’s hard to believe so many people wanted her dead.”

I tuck my feet beneath me. “Who do you think did it?”

“Not her brother.” Brent sighs, as if he wishes he
did
think Anthony did it. “If he stole money from her, why would he risk getting in even more trouble by killing her? I think whoever did it figured they had no other option. Someone like Andreev.” Brent looks over at me. “Who do you think did it?”

Anyone,
I want to say. Instead, I do that trick where you empty your mind, close your eyes, and wait for the first thing that pops into your head.

“Lee,” I say. Even though Isabella was clearly involved in so much more before her death, my gut tells me that Lee Andersen thought if he couldn’t have Isabella, no one could.

I reach under my mattress and hand Brent the envelope holding Lee’s letters. He reads one and sets the rest aside. “This is sick shit.”

I explain how I found the letters, watching the shock spread across Brent’s face. I also tell him about what I found in Goddard’s office, and my suspicion that Harrow was the one spying on him. When I get to the part about Harrow blackmailing Senator Westbrook, Brent shakes his head.

“Dude, I can’t even. Are you sure about all this?”

“I’m not sure how everything fits together, but if you’re asking if I’m sure all this really happened, then, yes.” I pause. “Is Isabella’s video of Alexis really worth extortion and murder?”

Brent considers this, his teeth finding his lower lip. “Hopefully you can decide for yourself shortly.”

*   *   *

The hall is empty. Even Darlene and Emma went home for the holiday weekend, so there’s only one RA on duty. She’s downstairs at the desk, reading
The New York Times.

Brent keeps an eye on the elevator as I swipe Remy’s key. I enter her pass code, exactly like I watched her do yesterday when we stopped by her room so she could get her French textbook. My stomach feels hollow and sick all at once. Remy will never forgive me for this if she finds out. I wouldn’t blame her.

“We’re in,” I whisper as the light on the lock turns green. Brent follows me into the room and turns the light on.

“Leave it off,” I say. “Everyone knows Alexis and Remy are gone.”

“Okay.” Brent flips the switch off. It’s early enough in the evening that there’s plenty of natural light in the room for us, anyway.

“How do we know Alexis didn’t take the video with her to Concord?” Brent asks as we comb through her stuff. I’ve got her desk covered, and he’s poking through her closet as if something might jump out at him.

“We don’t. She may have even destroyed it by now,” I say. “But I’m hoping we’ll get lucky.”

“How would this look on me?” Brent holds up a sweater with pearls for buttons. It’s covered in horrendous silk daisies.

I stifle a laugh. “Salmon isn’t your color. Can you focus, please?”

“Sure, sure.”

We freeze as footsteps sound in the hallway. They disappear as quickly as they came. We share a look and begin to work more quickly.

“Hey. Check this out.” I hold up one of the papers tucked away in Alexis’s bottom drawer. “Little Miss Perfect got a C-minus on her latest Spanish essay.”

“Now who needs to focus?” Brent says, but he snatches the paper away from me and scans it. “Hah. Looks like she got busted for using an online translator.”

I turn my attention back to Alexis’s drawer. The next paper on the pile is a B
−
paper from Matthews.

“You look deep in thought,” Brent says.

“The rest of Alexis’s schoolwork is in the first drawer,” I tell him. “It’s almost like this bottom drawer is stuff she wants to hide. She had that file folder covering the Spanish paper.…”

My eyes connect with Brent’s briefly before I dig to the bottom of the drawer. When I feel a key, a triumphant feeling stirs in me. I hold it up for Brent to see.

It doesn’t take us long to find the locked box in Alexis’s closet. The key clicks and I open the top, revealing some cash, jewelry, and a CD. There’s also a photo of two toddlers—a boy and a girl—sitting on a pretty blond woman’s lap.

Alexis’s real mother. I swallow, because I can’t let myself be derailed by guilt when I’m so close to answers.

I hold up the CD for Brent. “How much do you want to bet this isn’t the latest Taylor Swift album?”

He smiles with half his mouth. “That could be anything.”

My gaze travels to Remy’s desk. She has a desktop computer; it’s on, her background a photo of her and her older brother on a beach somewhere. Cole’s voice fills my head.
Remy is too nice.
Too trusting too, I think, with a wave of guilt.

I slip the CD into the drive. Brent and I stare at the computer as it makes grunting noises, reading the disc. Remy’s media player pops up, and a still frame of Amherst’s second-floor lounge fills the screen.

“This is it,” Brent says.

I swallow and sit in Remy’s chair as the video plays. The shot is at an awkward angle, but I can clearly make out Alexis’s face and the back of Remy’s head. The sound quality is terrible—so bad I’d have to blast the volume to hear what they’re saying. Brent reaches into his pocket and hands me his iPod headphones. I plug them into the computer and turn the volume up.

“I can’t believe you think I’m that pathetic,” Alexis says to Remy.

“I didn’t say that.” Remy’s voice is almost a whisper. She turns and looks right at the camera in a way that makes my heart jump, almost as if she’s looking at me. “Lex…”

“She can’t hear us.” Alexis gestures to her ears, as if to say
Headphones, duh.

I picture Isabella on the other side of the camera. Pretending to be in her own little Isabella world, when she was really spying on Alexis. Is this the moment that decided her fate—the decision that may have gotten her killed?

“I bet Brent is taking the posters down and trying to make it seem like I’m doing it.” Alexis takes a sip from the Starbucks cup in front of her. “He’s such a little thorn in my ass. It’s exactly the type of thing he’d do.”

I turn and raise an eyebrow at Brent. “This is what the big fuss is all about?”

Brent nods to the screen. “Keep watching.”

I comply, watching Remy shift uncomfortably in her seat. It’s almost as if she knows Isabella really
can
hear them.

“Peter Wu has a decent shot.” Remy shrugs. “People like him.”

“
Fuck
Peter Wu,” Alexis announces. “No one wants the token Chink as their class president. He should be mopping the floor at Dynasty Buffet, not telling us what to do.”

“Alexis
,”
Remy hisses. “That’s horrible.”

“Come on, Remy.” Alexis yawns. “Like you’re not thinking it.”

Remy rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t, actually.”

“This is all we saw at the assembly,” Brent cuts in. “Someone stopped the video. But it looks like there’s still a minute left.” I shush him, even though Remy and Alexis are quiet.

“Anyway, who do you think paid for the new computers in the SGA office? My father gives too much money to this school for me to get screwed over by this election,” Alexis continues. “I
need
to be president to get in to Penn. Since I’m not poor or a minority.”

“You can’t be talking about bribing Matthews to fix the election,” Remy whispers.

“Why not?” Alexis shrugs. “Everyone does it.”

That’s when the video runs out. I don’t even know what to say. So I remove the CD from the drive and study myself in its reflective surface.

“What are you going to do with that?” Brent asks uneasily, as if I’m holding a vial of smallpox.

“I’m going to hold it ransom,” I say.

Brent raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

Isabella’s fingerprints are probably on this disc. And I’m sure the police have the technology to prove Isabella made the video on her computer. It’s convincing evidence connecting Alexis to Isabella. I don’t have to think about it for long. “Answers.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-FOUR

“Now what?” Brent asks after I get my purse from my room and hide the video at the bottom. I’m not letting this thing out of my sight, especially after what happened with Harrow and the recording device.

“Beats me.” I know Brent is really asking
What are we going to do for the rest of the night?
We’re finally alone together. My answer should be easy. Except it’s not, because I can’t stop thinking about Anthony and whether he’s made bail.

Brent sighs, as if he can read my thoughts. We settle on getting frozen yogurt from the dining hall and watching some Judd Apatow movie I’ll probably think is gross.

On the way back to Brent’s dorm, I check to see if I have any messages. Brent glances at the picture of Abby on my phone’s wallpaper.

“You have a dachshund,” he says.

“Nice observation.”

Brent holds his phone in front of me. His wallpaper is also a dog. It’s darker and hairier than Abby, but it’s clearly a dachshund.

“Mine’s cuter,” I conclude.

“Bet mine has a cuter name,” Brent says. “Stitch.”

“Like the Disney character?”

“Yup.”

We walk in silence until Brent says, “It sounds lame, but my dog is the thing I miss the most about home.”

I look at him and feel a surge of warmth, because I feel the same way about Abby, and also because right here, with him, is the first time I’ve felt happy all week. “It’s not lame.”

We grow progressively quieter the closer we get to his dorm. We’re probably thinking the same thing: We’re going to be alone in Brent’s dorm. Will we watch the movie in his suite’s living room or his bedroom?

It’s as if something zaps the thoughts from my brain when I see a tall figure leaving the dorm. Lee Andersen. I feel all the blood drain from my head as he walks past us, his eyes on the ground.

“I wonder why he’s still here,” Brent says. “He usually goes home every weekend.”

I don’t want to think about why Lee is hanging around campus when everyone else is gone. For my own sanity, I make a vow to myself to not care, either. Not tonight. I need a break from Isabella’s murder. I need tonight to be normal.

“So,” Brent says as he unlocks the door and we step inside his dorm room.

“So.” I look into his eyes, and notice some of the color has drained from his face. I take his hand and squeeze it. “Thanks for staying here with me this weekend.”

“There was no way I was going home if you were here.” He gives me a weak smile. “I’m gonna use the bathroom quick.”

I sit on the couch while he’s gone, trying to fight off memories of the party. Was I sitting on this couch the very moment Isabella died?

“Anne.” Brent is back after what seems like an eternity. I know something is wrong as soon as I hear his voice. His face is white and covered in sweat. I jump to my feet.

“Help,” is all he manages to say before collapsing in my arms.

*   *   *

I sit in the infirmary waiting area. A woman in jeans and a scrub top comes out and gestures to me. “He’s asking for you.”

“I’m going to go,” says Brent’s RA, Kyle, who’s sitting beside me. He helped me get Brent here. “He’s probably going to have to spend the night here.”

I nod and follow the doctor-nurse-infirmary-person through a door and past a white curtain. On the other side, Brent lies on a cot, his face still empty of color. But he’s conscious now, so I guess that’s an improvement. He smiles when he sees me.

“What the hell are you trying to do to me?” I sit in the plastic chair next to him and grab his hand. With the other, he traces the outline of the silver Tiffany heart pendant around my neck.

“You were wearing this the day we met,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “I was afraid it meant you had a boyfriend.”

I pull his hand closer to my face and kiss it. Brent closes his eyes. “So this is what I had to do to get you to kiss me.”

“Stop it. Please tell me what’s going on.”

Brent opens his eyes and fixes them on a point on the ceiling. “Type-one diabetes. Only Cole and Remy know. And now you, I guess.”