Wicked Little Secrets: A Prep School Confidential Novel (17 page)

“I’ll stay,” I offer. “I’m really not hungry.” It’s the truth.

“Are you sure? You need to eat.” Remy looks at me, obviously torn between her motherly instincts and her neurosis over losing the perfect study table. “We could bring you something back.”

“It’s fine.” I wave them on. “I’ll grab something on the way back to Amherst tonight.”

The girls collect their bags, leaving their books behind. Brent kisses me on the cheek before he stands up. “Everything okay?”

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll see you later, maybe.”

And I’ll definitely see you at the race on Saturday.

*   *   *

I’m not the only one skipping dinner in favor of studying. Lee Andersen’s roommate, Arthur Colgate III—AKA Peepers, due to the lenses that magnify his eyes to twice their size—is at the table next to me. He’s created somewhat of a fortress around himself with textbooks.

I turn to my page of biology notes, tapping my pen against it. There’s no way I’ll be able to focus now. Not when Brent is being so weird about me going to his race.

“Hey,” I say to Peepers. He looks at me. Or not. I can’t really tell, with the way his eyes move behind his glasses.

“Would you mind watching this table for a couple minutes?” I ask him. He nods.

I head for the second floor, bringing my purse with me. I’m not really sure what I’m doing until I find myself standing in front of the old-yearbook shelf again.

If a picture tells a thousand words, maybe there are enough in these to tell the whole story about what happened to Matt Weaver.

I find the 1981 yearbook and find my usual armchair. It’s occupied by a sleeping freshman boy. I return to the stacks where the yearbooks are and sit on the floor.

Vanessa Reardon’s photo is in the 1981 sophomore class section, on the same page as Lawrence Tretter. She’s cute, in a tomboyish way: Her hair is in a pixie cut, and there are freckles on her nose.

I look through the rest of the yearbook, even though if there were any mentions of Matt Weaver in it, the school would have sanitized the yearbook. I’ll bet Isabella’s photo won’t even appear in this year’s edition.

I stop at a page titled “Spotted Around Campus.” Below the title is a collage of candid photos. Steven Westbrook is in a third of them, flashing his stupid horsey smile and putting his arm around whomever he’s with. As if he were already campaigning for senator.

The image quality is different for each picture, and some are Polaroids. I’m guessing students volunteered their personal photos, so my chances at finding something incriminating are pretty slim.

I turn to the next page of photos. A picture at the center catches my eye. It doesn’t look like it was taken anywhere on campus—the furniture is too nice, too expensive. The crew team guys are in it, except for Pierce Conroy.

Travis Shepherd sits at the center of the couch, his arm around Cynthia Durham. Matt Weaver is next to Travis, and Larry Tretter sits on the arm of the couch, sulking. Steven Westbrook is on the other side of Matt Weaver.

None of them looks happy to be having the picture taken—probably because of the plastic cups in their hands. I’d bet anything it’s not apple juice in there. But what really grabs my attention are the two girls off to the side. Their expressions say they don’t think they’re in the photo at all.

I recognize one: Vanessa Reardon. The other is unfamiliar. She’s rail thin and wearing a paisley dress that’s too big for her. Her hair is supercurly and black.

I flip back to the student portraits. My eyes are drooping by the time I’ve been through all of them, but I don’t find the mystery girl. I’m not surprised, because she doesn’t look like a Wheatley student, anyway.

I turn back to the photo. Even though the picture isn’t the best quality, it’s obvious the girl is beautiful. Her eyes are almond shaped, and she wears her sadness in her expression.

I consider the yearbook in my hands. All the books on this floor are considered reference materials—meaning nobody is allowed to check them out. There’s no visible security device on the yearbook, so I’m willing to bet there’s one of those invisible stamps inside that will set off the door alarms.

I glance down the aisle to make sure I’m alone. Very carefully, I tear the page with the collage out of the yearbook, almost positive I’ve found Sonia Russo.

*   *   *

I need to find Dan Crowley. It’s a Friday night, so it doesn’t take a private investigator to figure out he’s probably in his dorm playing
Call of Duty
with Peter Wu.

I coax a freshman into signing me in and I head to the fourth floor of Aldridge. I have to bang on Dan’s door a few times before it swings open. He gapes at me and says, “Give me five minutes,” into his headset.

Dan Crowley was useful when I needed to hack into the school’s record system a few months ago. He has a lisp, which I’m not sure is natural or from his tongue ring. His hair isn’t gelled into a Mohawk tonight.

“Hey,” I say, at the same time the person on the other end of his headset asks, “Is that a
girl
?”

Dan yanks it off. “Wassup?”

“Got a second? I need your help.”

“Step into my office.”

Dan Crowley’s side of the dorm room is a geek’s wet dream. His desktop computer is hooked up to two thirty-inch monitors, and he’s converted his closet into a nook with a television, mini fridge, and Xbox.

“I need some e-mail addresses,” I say.

Dan’s brow furrows. “They’re all on the student directory.”

“No,” I say. “Like … alumni e-mail addresses. Important alumni.”

Dan scratches his goatee with his thumbnail. “So you need master list access.”

“Master list?”

“It’s how mass e-mails go out without everyone seeing all the recipients. If the people you’re looking for are subscribed to the alumni master list, you’d just need the address and you could e-mail all of them.”

My head is swimming. “But I don’t want to e-mail all of them.”

Dan sighs. “I could
probably
get you individual addresses if you tell me their names.”

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting on Dan’s beanbag chair, splitting a bag of Starbursts with him as he bends over his desk, typing things I can’t see into his computer. Coach Tretter was easy, since he’s on the Wheatley faculty web site, and I already have Thom Ennis’s e-mail.

“Shepherd and Conroy are on the alumni master list,” Dan finally announces. He scribbles their e-mail addresses on the Post-it and hands it to me. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone I hacked it.”

I cross my heart. “Snitches get stitches.”

I get up from the beanbag and realize I’m looking at Zach Walton’s bed. At least, that’s his jacket lying on it. The windbreaker he had on the other night.

“Zach is your roommate?” I ask.

Dan nods. “Since freshman year.”

I sit back down on the beanbag. “Have you noticed anything weird about him lately?”

Dan fiddles with his tongue ring. “Maybe. Depends.”

“On what?”

Dan glances at the door. “Those e-mail addresses you asked me for—do they have anything to do with Zach?”

I level with him. “Maybe.”

Dan swivels his chair so he’s facing his computer. He logs on to a Web site and turns one of his monitors on. “C’mere.”

I stand and watch over his shoulder as he pulls up a video feed of the Aldridge common room. It’s empty except for a senior in pajamas who’s making Ramen.

“There’s a
camera
in the common rooms?” I ask.

“Only ’cause I put one there.”

I stare at Dan. He sighs. “I wanted to catch who was eating all of my mom’s baked mac and cheese.”

I look at him.
Really?

“You don’t understand. She puts bacon in it,” he says.

I watch Dan enter a date and time into a drop-down box on the site. As the recording loads, I realize he’s going back to a few nights ago.

I feel my jaw drop. Brent and Murali are on the screen. He and Cole barricade the common-room door with a couch. Casey Shepherd, Erik, and Justin stand over a bunch of guys lying on their stomachs, wearing nothing but their boxers.

“What are they
doing
?” Cole, Erik, and another senior are holding boxes of table salt. They pour it over the backs of the recruits.

“The salt-and-ice challenge,” Dan says. On screen, the older team members are placing huge chunks of ice on the guys’ backs, on top of the salt. I watch in silence as the minutes tick by. The guys begin to wriggle in pain.

“It burns their skin,” Dan explains. “Whoever gives in to the pain first loses and gets punished. Whoever can put up with it for the longest gets a reward of some sort.”

After a while, the half-naked recruits succumb, like toy soldiers. One boy stands up and runs to the garbage can. He pukes his brains out. Before long, Zach and one other guy are the only ones left lying on their stomachs. There’s no sound on the tape, but Brent and the other guys stand off to the side, clearly cheering them on.

The recruit who isn’t Zach finally gets up and runs to the sink. Cole rushes over to Zach, but his eyes are closed. He passed out. Casey Shepherd runs over and smacks him in the face. While Zach regains consciousness, Erik and Brent argue as Casey and Cole drag Zach outside.

“You okay?” Dan asks me. “You look like you’re gonna faint.”

“I’m fine.” My voice is far off. I can’t stop seeing the recruits jumping off the cliff at the quarry. Any one of them could have broken his neck on the way down, easily. “Dan, you have to show this to someone.”

“Hell no, I don’t.” Dan shakes his head. “I’m not messing with those guys. If that’s what they do to their own teammates, can you imagine what they’d do to me?”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

I meet Remy in her room Saturday morning so we can go to the race together. While she curls her hair, I sit on her bed, trying not to be weirded out by the empty side of the room that used to be Alexis’s.

“Rem, why didn’t Brent tell me about the race?”

She doesn’t look away from the mirror. “He probably forgot. You know him.”

“I’m not dumb. He doesn’t want me there. Why?”

Remy turns to me, her face guilty. “Brent didn’t say anything to me, but I’m guessing it’s because Cole’s mother will probably be there.”

“Oh.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” she says. “I mean, no one
blames
you for what Dr. Harrow tried to do, but things could get awkward since the Westbrooks are friends with a lot of the parents that will be there. And people talk.…”

“It’s okay. I get it. What about the Shepherds?”

Remy looks surprised. “What about them?”

“Are they friends with the Westbrooks?” I ask.

“Oh, my God, no.” Remy wraps a cranberry-colored scarf around her neck. “Casey’s dad donated a million dollars to Mr. Westbrook’s opponent last election.”

Ouch. “Pretty harsh way to treat a former rowing buddy.”

“Mm-hmm.” Remy surveys herself in the mirror. She’s wearing a Wheatley School sweatshirt, which is, of course, cranberry. She turns to me. “You’re not wearing any Wheatley gear! How will people know who you’re cheering for?”

I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’m not exactly oozing Wheatley pride. “I dunno.”

Remy takes her scarf off and wraps it around my neck. The Wheatley crest is sewn onto the tail ends. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I humor her while she adjusts it; I’m desperate to get the conversation back to the senator. “So did they have a falling out or something?”

“Who?”

“Travis Shepherd. And Mr. Westbrook.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so.” Remy spritzes some perfume on—Philosophy Amazing Grace—and we head downstairs. “When Alexis’s dad ran for Senate last term, some people accused him of doing whatever he could to get elected, even if it meant flip-flopping on important stuff. Mr. Shepherd stopped supporting him when he changed his policy on tax breaks for corporations.”

I say silent thanks that Remy is well versed in Massachusetts’s politics, as we wait for the Wheatley sports shuttle bus that will take us to the harbor. I consider everything she said about Shepherd and Westbrook, wondering if there’s another reason they had a falling out.

When Remy isn’t looking, I pull up the draft of the e-mail I wrote this morning, addressed to the members of the 1972 crew team.

I just hope they remembered to bring their BlackBerries to today’s race.

*   *   *

There’s already a lot of other Wheatley students camped out on the sides of the Charles River. Most are sitting on blankets, which I wish I’d thought of, since the grass is damp in that early May way. Luckily, I’m with Remy, who not only remembered a blanket but trail mix, bottled water, and a copy of
Marie Claire.

“In case we get bored,” she explains. “The men’s eight is after the lightweight race.”

I have no idea what a lightweight race is, but I know that the men’s 8 is Brent’s race. I help Remy lay the blanket down, eyeing the white tent set up to our right. Jill, Lizzie, and Brooke, Alexis’s former peons, stand outside of it, putting the finishing touches on a homemade “GO WHEATLEY!” banner. They’ve painted brown oars all over it, and now they’re writing the names of the guys on the oars with glitter pens.

I’m not surprised to see Jill filling in Brent’s name. When she senses me staring, she nudges Brooke and whispers something to her.

Sometimes I worry that Jill and Brent have more in common than he and I do. She’s taller than him, but that’s okay. Her hair is the color of corn silk, and she plays every sport Wheatley has to offer. She’s editor in chief of the newspaper, and she’ll probably go to Dartmouth or UPenn or Northwestern.

And she’s probably not the type of girl to lie to her boyfriend.

A few teachers emerge from the tent with Styrofoam cups of coffee, along with people in Wheatley sweatshirts whom I assume are parents. Inside the tent is a banner reading “WHEATLEY SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION.”

I think I know where the members of the 1981 team will be when they get here. I glance at the screen of my phone: We’re twenty minutes early.