Last Seen Leaving (27 page)

“Yes,” I said tersely. I was getting tired of answering this question, especially when it came from people who had barely acknowledged my existence before.

“I knew it!” she squealed happily, as if my inclination toward kissing boys was somehow a personal accomplishment of her own. “Listen, just between us? You can do way better than Mason Collier.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Excuse me?”

“Well”—she drew the word out for a good five seconds—“he
happened
to mention how you tried to hit on him the other day, and how he had to shut you down? He's being kind of a dick about it, actually. I know he's pretty, but, Flynn? The boy is both straight
and
undateable.” She tossed her flame-red hair over her shoulder and leaned in, her manner both gossipy and familiar. “Here's what, though: Like, three different guys have told me they think you're cute, and all of them are A-double-pluses. If you're not too hung up on Mason, just say the word, 'kay?”

I spent the rest of fourth period burning with embarrassment until I was certain my chair would melt underneath me. As flattered as I was that Ashley wished to play matchmaker for me—and that there were three mysterious guys out there who maybe
actually
wanted to kiss me—the whole situation felt weird. I wasn't used to this kind of attention, and I hated being the subject of gossip.

One thing was clear, however: I needed to stop asking Mason for favors that he could misconstrue. That meant that there was only one person I knew who both had a car and would probably be willing to enable my errand, and again it was the last person I wanted to call.

Kaz was waiting for me after the final bell, though, leaning against the Lexus in the looping drive on the side of the school that faced the river; I'd tried to give him an out when I'd asked if he was free, but he'd assured me he had no afternoon classes and was more than happy to be of assistance. Surrounded by minivans, soccer-mom SUVs, and thirdhand lemons, he stood out like a tuxedo at a hootenanny, and about a hundred curious eyes followed me as I headed his way. I was starting to get used to being tracked in the hallways like some kind of exotic migratory bird, and I wondered what Ashley and her friends would do with this piece of news.

I made a beeline for the passenger seat, hoping we could just get out of there, but Kaz intercepted me en route, drawing me into a “friendly”—and utterly clueless—hug. “Hey! So this is where you go to school, huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” I confirmed, writhing from his grasp and darting around the front of the vehicle.

“It's pretty big.” He took his time looking the building over while a bunch of idle students took their time looking
us
over, and I tugged futilely at the door handle. It was locked. “Makes me realize how much I miss my old high school. Which is to say, not at all.”

“Great story. Can we go?”

He blipped the locks open, and just as I was about to get in, I caught sight of a familiar face staring back at me from a group on the sidewalk. Micah. He was frowning, and when I raised my hand to wave, he pointedly turned his back to me and pretended to engage in conversation with Tessa Horton, a girl I happened to know for a fact he couldn't stand. With a heavy sigh, I climbed into the posh, climate-controlled environment of Kaz's luxury auto, feeling another small piece of my spirit slip back away with the tide.

“Buckle up,” Kaz advised cheerfully, putting the car in drive, “because it's gonna be a long ride!”

“You said it.”

The ride was actually just long enough for me to explain my plan to Kaz—which amounted to: find some of Reiko's friends and ask them if they knew anything—and for him to try, unsuccessfully, to talk me out of it. I didn't flatter myself with the notion that I could figure out something the cops couldn't, but I had my own inquisitive nature to appease, and who knew? Maybe I
would
detect something significant that they had missed. I knew the players better,
and
I believed that Reiko's death and January's disappearance were related, so I might have something of an advantage after all.

I left Kaz in the theater lobby, where a new poster exhorted students to attend an assembly there the next day after school to remember their two departed classmates, and made my way along the side corridors leading to the backstage door. I didn't want to go in through the audience and risk being intentionally embarrassed for interrupting rehearsal again, and I figured I might find some people hanging out on the dingy sofa where I'd first seen Reiko.

As it turned out, I didn't even have to go that far; rounding a corner, I nearly tumbled over a trio of girls who were sitting on the floor, speaking in hushed voices. Two of them were the ones I'd seen Reiko with on my initial visit to Dumas, and although I didn't know the third, it was immediately apparent that all three of them had been close to the dead girl: Each one sported a bright pink streak in her hair—presumably as a tribute to their friend's memory.

“I'm sorry to interrupt,” I began timidly, “but you guys were friends with Reiko, right?”

The question got one of the girls sobbing, her cries almost absurdly loud and expressive, while a second girl—with feather earrings the same pink as the streak in her hair—huddled next to her, stroking her back. The third girl stood up and looked me over. She was tall and thin, with black hair that contrasted against a starkly pale face, her blue eyes dry but red-rimmed. “We are. Wait, I know you … you were here last week, yeah?”

Her voice was still shaded by grief, but she nevertheless sounded like she was doing such a preposterously bad impersonation of Hermione Granger that I had to struggle not to laugh. Clearly, I'd just encountered the girl January had dubbed FBA—Fake British Accent. “Uh, yeah. I had dropped by to see Reiko.”

“Right. And she was bloody well brassed off when you left,” FBA replied imperiously. “What did you say to her, anyway?”

“I asked her some questions about January McConville,” I revealed, and the sobbing died out almost immediately as both girls on the floor turned their attention my way. I looked from one wary face to the next. “You guys knew her, too, right?”

“Yeah,” FBA answered suspiciously. “We weren't
friends
with her, though.”

“Why not?”

The girl who had been crying answered with a congested snort, “Because she was a bitch.”

“Melanie!” her comforting friend admonished. Then, quietly, but still deliberately audible, “What if this guy is, like, her brother?”

“I don't care,” Melanie snapped. “If he is, then he probably already knows she was a stuck-up bitch—I'm not ruining the surprise.”

“You guys thought
January
was stuck-up,” I stated, beginning to feel angry on my ex-girlfriend's behalf. I'd had it from Reiko's own mouth that January had been ostracized at Dumas, and her commitment to despising Jonathan Walker's wealth made Melanie's claim ludicrous, to say the least.

“Well, yeah,” FBA said defensively, crossing her arms. “She acted like she was better than us or something, just because she came from a public school.” She said
public school
as if it might be some kind of cult. “Like it made her more authentic than us. We all tried to be nice to her at first, but she was really rude. She made fun of the way we dress for school, the things we like to do, and just … the whole way that we live! It was insulting and, honestly, nobody wanted to put up with it.”

I looked at what FBA was wearing—a little black dress, four-inch heels, and diamond teardrop earrings—and I could hear January's voice in my head:
Who wears diamonds to school? Does she think she's fucking Beyoncé?
My ex-girlfriend might not have been a snob in the way that these girls were snobs, but that didn't mean she never felt or acted superior to others.

What I said was, “Reiko seemed to like her just fine. She told me that she and January were best friends.”

“Well, that whole situation was bizarre,” Melanie put in disdainfully from the floor, sniffling and wiping her nose with the heel of her hand.

“How do you mean?” I asked. “Why was it bizarre?”

“Before we answer any more questions about Reiko,” Feather Earrings interjected shrewdly, “maybe you better tell us who you are?”

Obligingly, I introduced myself. “I just want to know what happened—to January
and
to Reiko.”

FBA's mouth shifted. “Well, look, I'm sure she was the dog's bollocks back at Riverfront or wherever, but January … she didn't belong here. She didn't
want
to belong here, and she let everybody know it.”

“It was impossible not to make fun of her,” Melanie cut in bluntly. “She wanted it that way. She'd arrive at school in a Mercedes or a Porsche or a Rolls or a Lambo—a different car every single day—and she'd get out wearing a ratty sweatshirt and some beat-up old hobo shoes! If you tried to be polite to her, she'd just
glare
at you until you shut up and went away.” With a pert smile, she added, “We all talked shit about her.
Including
Reiko.”

“And then one day, out of the blue, the two of them come into rehearsal together, all arm in arm like long-lost sisters or something.” FBA picked up the thread with a tone of wonderment. “We all thought it was some kind of a joke or whatever at first, but…”

“But when we asked about it, Reiko Hulked out on us,” Melanie concluded. “She said that January was ‘actually really cool,' and that we ‘just didn't understand where she was coming from.' Whatever the hell that meant.”

It meant that January and Reiko had something terrible in common, but if these girls didn't know the details, I wasn't going to share them. Trying to sound neutral, I asked, “What about guys? Were there any guys here who were into January? Anyone that, like, Reiko maybe didn't like in particular, for some reason?”

Melanie gave a sour laugh. “Not unless you're talking about—”

“He isn't talking about that,” Feather Earrings interrupted under her breath.

“About what?” I jumped on it. “Who?”

The eagerness in my tone made them abruptly cautious, and the silence in the hallway rose to a deafening crescendo as they seemed to be considering whether to respond. The three of them were trying desperately to communicate in thought waves, their eyes flicking back and forth as they struggled to keep their faces blank, until at last Melanie gave a loud huff. “OMG, gimme a break, you guys! This is the same shit we've been talking about all over school for the last two months, and all of a sudden you're acting like we're guarding the CIA kill list or something!”

“Melanie…” Feather Earrings warned, but her friend was not to be deterred.

“The only ‘guy' at Dumas who was into January was
Cedric
,” Melanie blurted with a malicious giggle.

“
Melanie
.”

“Oh, whatever.” Melanie rolled her eyes. “I'm not saying they were secret lovers or anything, but he paid
way
too much attention to her. Like, he basically told her that if she agreed to audition for the play, he would just
give
her the part of Angelique! It was such bullshit. Sylvie is a senior and she deserved that part, and then just because Cedric got a boner for some
sophomore
who wasn't even an actress, he offered it to her on a silver platter! Total bullshit.”

“Cedric?” I repeated stupidly.

“He talked about her all the time.” Melanie was really warming to the topic. “‘Perhaps we can style Angelique's hair like January's,' and ‘January had a brilliant idea the other day,' and ‘Sylvie, try to smile like January'! I mean …
gross
.”

“
Cedric?
”

“He was always trying to talk to her during breaks, telling her what kind of clothes she should wear, offering her rides home from school … I mean, Cedric's always been kind of Uncle Bad-Touch, but she
really
brought it out of him.”

“‘Rides home from school,'” I repeated, barely feeling my lips. Just the other night I had challenged Kaz to explain how January's clothes could have gotten from Dumas to the mansion, and his response had been
misdirection.
Had he been right? It finally occurred to me that Cedric had been the one who'd found January's things in the meadow. I could still picture the first time I met him, on the front porch of the Walker mansion.
She was a very lovely girl. I hope you appreciated her, son.
Was I remembering correctly? Had he really used the past tense before anyone else thought she was dead? “Do you really think Cedric was … that he wanted to … with January?”

“Considering the way he left his old school, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised,” Melanie replied with malevolent sweetness.

“That's not fair, Mel,” Feather Earrings said with a troubled frown.

My head was spinning. “Why? What happened at his old school?”

“Nobody knows, that's the point.” Feather Earrings was clearly unnerved, glancing around like she feared we were being spied on. “People just make stuff up.”

“Whatever it was, it was bad enough that he's not allowed to be a teacher anymore,” Melanie revealed triumphantly. “
That's
the point.” To me, she elaborated, “My sister's friend's cousin went to Hazelton, and apparently Cedric taught English there; then, all of a sudden, he left and moved here. He had an actual job at one of the most prestigious private schools in the state, and now he coaches a drama club for a living? Either he had a total nervous breakdown, or he did something awful.”

“He's not a teacher here?” The information was coming almost too fast for me to soak it all in.