Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (35 page)

Beneath an older version of the same biology textbook I have in my room is a familiar-looking book with gold lettering.

A History of the Wheatley School.

The library book Isabella never returned.

I swallow and flip through the pages, stopping at a chapter that’s flagged with a Post-it note. The heading reads: “Closing of the Tunnels, 1960.”

So that’s how Isabella found out about them.

I’ve been reading the book for nearly an hour, I realize, by the time I get to the chapter about Wheatley athletics. My heart catches in my throat when I see a sepia-tone photo captioned
Nationally Ranked Wheatley Crew Team.

I recognize Matthew Weaver from the newspaper article I read. But I also recognize the broad-shouldered blond guy standing next to him.

Steven Westbrook.

I swallow away the dryness in my throat, and I read about the crew team’s victory at the Harvard Invitational. There’s no mention of Matthew Weaver specifically, or of his disappearance.

I turn the page. A photograph is sticking between the pages. It’s identical to the one in the book, but it has a glossy finish and the quality is slightly better.

I turn it over, and a chill runs through me. Someone has written something on the back.

THEY KILLED HIM.

Read on for a head start on

Anne Dowling’s newest investigation

AVAILABLE IN 2014

Copyright © 2013 by St. Martin’s Press, LLC

CHAPTER

ONE

Revenge, at first though sweet,

Better ere long, back on itself recoils

—
Paradise Lost,
Book IX

They say only the good die young. At least, that’s what they
used
to say about Isabella Fernandez.

Now, no one talks about Isabella at all—even though she was murdered two months ago, and our vice-principal is the one who killed her.

I guess that’s the type of thing the Wheatley School—ranked #2 on
U.S. News and World Report
’s list of best prep schools—would like to pretend never happened. Or maybe everyone sleeps a little better at night now that they know Isabella was screwing Dr. James Harrow before he cut her throat in the middle of the woods. Almost as if they believe she deserved what happened to her, or at least brought it on herself.

A little known fact: Almost 80 percent of people who get murdered know their killers. My dad used to remind me of this when I was ten and going through a phase where I couldn’t sleep because I thought I’d get stolen from my bed in the middle of the night. He actually told me that as if it would make me feel
better.
But then again, my dad also brushes his teeth in the shower to save time and explained the scientific impossibility of Santa Claus to me when I was four.

Isabella was my roommate, so my parents are making me see a therapist in Boston every few weeks. His name is Dr. Rosenblum, and he always tries to get me to play Uno with him. He likes to use phrases like “Our goal here.”
Our goal here is to help you accept that the ordeal of Isabella’s murder is over, and that James Harrow is no longer a danger to you.

He says I need to make peace with Isabella’s death, because even though I only knew her for a week, we were friends. Isabella didn’t care that I got expelled from my old school for burning part of it down. She said that being an arsonist officially made me the coolest person she’d ever met. (Which is totally false, by the way. It’s only arson if you set something on fire on purpose. I Googled it.)

The fire I set at St. Bernadette’s Preparatory School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was an accident. And, for the record, it wasn’t my idea. It was Martin Payne’s idea, and I was only hooking up with him because I was bored. I know having the nerve to be bored in the greatest city in the world makes me seem like a spoiled brat. I told Dr. Rosenblum I felt this way, and he suggested that maybe all of my acting out and getting into trouble back home was my way of trying to get my father to notice me. Like, from a young age I knew I could never live up to his impossible expectations, so I tried to subvert them by mouthing off in class and filling up Jake Crane’s gym locker with tampons. Or whatever.

Anyway, I don’t know if Dr. R. is right about all that, but he was right when he said that Isabella’s murder turned my world upside down. I thought seeing her killer get arrested would flip it right side up again, but I’m learning that things are never that simple. The dead leave lots of things behind. Like messes you can’t see. Or sometimes, actual things.

Like the photograph I found in an old library book Isabella checked out before her death—the one of Matthew Weaver, a student who disappeared almost thirty years ago, standing with the Wheatley crew team.

The one with
THEY KILLED HIM
written on the back.

For a while, I wondered if there was more to Isabella’s death than Dr. Harrow blackmailing Senator Westbrook over his affair. Did Isabella know about the photo? Did she figure out what happened to Matt Weaver before she died?

Dr. Rosenblum is the only person I’ve told about the photograph. He says the Matthew Weaver story is something of an urban legend burned into the collective consciousness of Wheatley. The appeal of the story is that people are drawn to the unknown. Dr. Rosenblum said a student was probably playing a prank when they wrote
THEY KILLED HIM
on the back of the photo.

He also asked me if I found myself bored in the weeks after Dr. Harrow’s arrest. I’m not an idiot: He thinks I want there to be more to the mystery. Sort of like I’m having mystery withdrawals.

But part of me thinks he has a point.

Either way, I have too many questions and no way to get answers. When I told Dr. R. I felt this way, he agreed.

“Sometimes, it’s best for our sanity to let sleeping dogs lie,” he said.

I hope he’s right.

*   *   *

I sit on the sun-warmed steps outside the dining hall. Its proper designation is the William J. Brown Refectory, because if it didn’t have an unnecessarily pretentious name, this wouldn’t be the Wheatley School. Brent said he would meet me here after crew practice.

A few minutes after I sit down, strong arms wrap around my middle and a thin layer of stubble grazes my neck. “You’re warm.”

“And you’re wet.” Still, I turn and run my hand through Brent’s damp curls. He hasn’t had time to get a haircut now that training for crew season has begun, and while I’m a clean-shaven-guy type of girl, Brent manages to pull off the extra scruff.

Brent leans into me and closes his eyes, as if he’d be happy if I kept playing with his hair all day. A sharp cough sounds from behind us.

Murali Thakur is looking at us as if we might as well be hard-core making out all over the steps. He raises a thick black eyebrow. “Hello to you too, Anne.”

I shrug and grin at him, although an anxious feeling settles at the bottom of my stomach. If Murali is here, Cole Redmond must be nearby.

“Where’s Cole?” Brent asks, his hand moving to my lower back as if he can feel me tensing up.

“Showering.” Murali squirts water into his mouth from his bottle.

Cole’s mother, Elaine, was having an affair with Senator Westbrook when Dr. Harrow tried to blackmail him with incriminating photos. Since the district attorney put a gag order on anyone involved with the extortion until Dr. Harrow’s trial is over, no one knows Cole’s mother is the reason Senator Westbrook resigned. But his father moved out a couple of weeks ago, and even though Cole swears he doesn’t hate me, every time I see him, I wonder if we’ll still be friends in a year or so when the media is allowed to talk about the affair and I ruin the Redmonds’ lives all over again.

And here’s the other awkward thing: Cole and Brent are best friends. And not just typical teenage guy, “Hey dude, wanna go to the gym?” best friends. Cole is the only guy at school who knows about Brent’s diabetes. They actually argue about things like what nature noise they’re going to set their sleep sounds machine to before they go to bed every night. Brent likes the whale calls, while Cole prefers the musical waterfall.

I’m totally interrupting their bromance by dating Brent.

Brent and I say good-bye to Murali. When he turns the corner to the boys’ dorm, Brent grabs my face and kisses me. I let myself get lost in the feeling of his stubble grazing my upper lip, his thumb in the crook behind my ear. I still can’t believe I get to do this with him, whenever I want.

“Hi.” He breaks away and leans his forehead against mine.

“Hi back. Where are we going today?”

I was taken aback when Brent told me he had a surprise for me today, since my seventeenth birthday was last weekend. We went out for my favorite food, sushi, and he snuck me into his dorm so we could stay up late watching a hidden camera show where these comedians make strangers completely uncomfortable. I didn’t even remember telling Brent that I love the cookie crumble on ice cream cakes, but he hid a small one in his freezer and we polished it off together.

“You’ll see,” Brent says. “But we have to leave now if we want to catch the train.”

The walk to the station takes almost fifteen minutes. Even though it’s only early April, I have to take off my cardigan. There are no clouds in the sky, and what seems like the entirety of the Wheatley School’s population is crowded on the campus quad sunbathing.

Brent and I pass the time on the train by playing Would You Rather? I’ve just asked him if he’d rather get his nipples pierced or show up to class in his underwear every day for a month when the automatic voice on the T announces we’re at Fenway Park.

Brent motions for me to get up, and I barely stifle a groan.

“Oh, come on,” he says, laughing as we step off the T. “They’re playing the Yankees. I thought I’d bring a piece of New York to you.”

“I’m not dressed for a baseball game.” I gesture to my strapless Free People dress.

“Good thing I’m so prepared.” He pulls two balled-up Red Sox caps out of his pocket and unrumples them. Unable to figure out the mechanics of fitting a baseball cap around my ponytail, he slides the elastic off and onto his wrist. My hair falls around my bare shoulders.

“Shouldn’t this be a Yankees cap if you’re bringing New York to me?”

Brent’s eyes gleam. “Trust me, this is for your safety. Red Sox fans won’t care how pretty you are. They’ll throw beer on you.”

I grab the neck of his T-shirt and pull him toward me. “You think I’m pretty.”

He kisses my forehead, then my nose, and finally lands on my lips. The world seems to dissolve around us until he tugs my hand.

I was eleven the last time my father took me to a game at Yankee Stadium, but my memory is good enough that I realize Fenway Park is smaller and louder. I follow Brent to the row of seats behind home plate.

A leggy blonde in a Sox T-shirt holds up her hand, and I think she’s waving at someone behind us until Brent waves back. My brain automatically demands,
Who is this pretty bitch?

“Forgot to mention my sisters were coming,” he says to me with a devious glint in his eyes.

“Oh.”

My heartbeat picks up and we wriggle our way to the seats. It’s not that I’m nervous, or anything. It’s just that usually I like to have advance warning about meeting a guy’s family.

“Anne, this is Claire,” Brent says. Claire smiles at me, and my nerves dissolve. Her smile is perfect, unlike Brent’s, but they have the same pointy nose and warm brown eyes. Claire tells me she’s a senior at Brown and says she heard I was from New York. I nod, thankful she leaves it at that and there’s no mention of me shooting anyone.

“Where’s Holly?” Brent nods to the empty seat next to Claire. She gnaws her bottom lip.

“Don’t be pissed. She’s only home for a few days and wanted to see her friends.” Claire’s eyes move to the aisle, to a man talking into a cell phone and making his way toward us. Brent’s cheery expression clouds over.

“You let
him
come?”

From the way Claire hisses, “They’re
his
season tickets, Brent,” I conclude that
him
is their father.

Things I know about Brent’s father:

1. He owns the biggest newspaper in Boston.

2. Brent doesn’t see him much.

“Sorry in advance.” Brent squeezes my hand as his father makes his way toward us.

“Does he know who I am?” I blurt. “I mean, like, what I did?”

“I don’t know. But Steve Westbrook has sued his paper three times in the past year, so you’re good.”

I look over at Brent, unsure if he’s serious. He gives me a lazy grin that makes my toes curl in my sandals.

Brent’s father ends his phone call when he gets back to the seats. He’s Brent’s height—which is short for a guy—with wavy gray hair. He and Brent do an odd little standoff type thing before he extends a hand to his son. It’s all really bizarre to me, seeing someone give his kid a handshake. My father always hugs me.