Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (19 page)

Alexis’s hand flies up, and for a split second I’m sure she’s going to slap me. I think maybe
she
does, too. Instead, she smoothes her headband down and hisses, “I didn’t kill that meddling little bitch. But it doesn’t surprise me that someone did.”

That’s when Remy opens the door. Her face says she can tell she’s walked into a war zone. “Um. Hey, Lex.”

“I’m going to go,” I say to Remy, and she doesn’t question why. With one foot out the door, I see Alexis give me a look that makes me remember something Anthony said the day he came to collect some of Isabella’s things.

You might as well attach a target to your back.

I think I just did.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Change of plans

Anne,

I hate to do this, but I forgot there was an SGA meeting after classes today. Normally I’d roll in late (surprise), but I’m already on thin ice with our advisor. Let me know if I can make it up to you.

Brent

P.S. Be careful.

Annoyance surges through me. He’s backing out of breaking into Andreev’s office with me. At least he had enough sense not to use those exact words in the e-mail. Who knows who’s reading them?

Whatever. I don’t need him there. I mean, I wanted him there, but I don’t need him.

I follow Dan’s instructions and meet him in the basement computer lab. Luckily, it’s empty, but I get the feeling Dan knew it would be.

“No one comes down here,” he explains. “The computers are ancient.”

I look up at the water-stained ceiling. Somewhere in the walls, pipes clang together. “Let’s get this over with,” I say.

The computer we sit at loads painfully slowly. I notice Dan eyeing me before he finally says, “Is it true that fire you started shut your school down for a week?”

An annoyed sigh escapes me. “The school only closed for a day. And I didn’t start the fire on purpose.”

“Oh. Still, it’d be cool if someone burned a building here down and we didn’t have to go to class.”

“Careful what you wish for.” My thoughts drift to Lexington Hall, room 180. A room that doesn’t exist anymore. I wish I knew what used to be there. Or what Isabella thought was there.

The computer rasps and honks its way to life, and Dan enters an address into the Internet browser. Slowly, a page titled ICampus loads.

“There’s no way they can trace this back to us, right?” I ask.

“Technically, they could trace the IP address to this computer, but they’d have to notice suspicious activity first,” Dan replies. “Just poking around on here isn’t suspicious. Especially since I make sure to log in as a different teacher every time.”

“How did you figure out how to do that?”

“It was easy, once I figured out their pattern for generating passwords. Teachers can’t create their own.” Dan pauses. “We’re not the only ones at this school who aren’t allowed to think for ourselves.”

The layer of bitterness to Dan’s voice surprises me a little. But it also makes me feel like I can trust him, so once he’s logged on, I ask him to search the student directory for Lee Andersen.

“Andersen?” Dan’s eyes widen. “What do you think he did?”

I ignore Dan and peer at the search results. There’s a tiny red flag dated last April next to his name. “Does that mean he got in trouble?”

“It means a teacher wrote an incident report. We should be able to access it.” Dan clicks on the red flag, but an error page loads.

“Something wrong with the Internet?” I ask.

“Computer says the connection is fine.” Dan’s upper lip creases and he goes back a page. He clicks the red flag again but gets the same error message.

“That’s so weird,” he says. “It’s like someone deleted the report.”

“Yeah. Real weird,” I mutter. “There’s nothing else?”

“Not on here,” Dan says. “But teachers and RAs can always go straight to Dr. Harrow. Reporting stuff on the portal is a formality.” Dan looks like he’s deep in thought. “I wonder if that report on Lee had anything to do with his broken nose.”

“Lee had a broken nose?” I ask. “When?”

Dan rubs the faint outline of a goatee on his chin. “End of last year. I don’t know, the busted nose was weird. The kid doesn’t talk to anyone. Hard to imagine him getting into a fight.”

Did Isabella break Lee’s nose? It’s hard to imagine her hurting even a lab rat, but I get the feeling she could be fierce if she needed to protect herself.

“Do you think Lee Andersen killed Isabella?” Dan looks absolutely enthralled. I want to slap him.

“I don’t know. Can you get me Lee’s and Isabella’s schedules from last year?” It’s a place to start: If Lee was harassing Isabella and a teacher reported it, I can narrow the teachers down to the ones they shared.

“Sure.” Dan pulls up Lee’s in one window and Isabella’s in another. I scan the screen, but Dan is faster. “Looks like they had calculus, American history, and Latin together.”

This turns my stomach. Isabella had to see this creep three times a day. “What about this year?”

Dan clicks around. “Doesn’t look like they had any classes together.”

“They did, until Isabella dropped Latin,” I say.

Dan is studying the screen. “Take a look at this. Isabella took the first half of AP calc last year, then switched to statistics this year. That’s weird.”

Not if she custom-made her schedule to avoid Lee. I check his schedule, and sure enough, he’s taking the second half of AP calculus this year.

“So what are you going to do with all of this?” Dan asks me.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “This isn’t enough to prove Lee was stalking Isabella. Don’t say anything to anyone about this, okay?”

“I won’t.” Dan looks unsettled though. “Dude, Lee lives on my floor. I could be sharing a bathroom with a psychopath. I’m dead-bolting my door tonight.”

I think of how I couldn’t find the clothes Alexis was wearing the night of the murder. I don’t tell Dan that it’s possible there are two psychopaths in the junior class.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

After I part ways with Dan, I take the stairs up to the third floor, where the science teachers’ offices are. Andreev is the last teacher to leave. He locks the door behind him and stuffs his key into his briefcase, oblivious to the fact that I’m watching him from behind a statue of Ben Franklin inscribed with the words
GENIUS WITHOUT EDUCATION IS LIKE SILVER IN THE MINE
.
After the stairwell door closes behind Andreev, I wait five minutes before I emerge and cross the hall to his office.

I have to battle with the key once it’s in the lock. Panic fills me as I think maybe I have the wrong key after all, but when I lean against the door, the doorknob clicks. I’m in.

I close the door behind me and take in the room. Really, where am I supposed to start? I’d call this place a pigsty, but that wouldn’t even be fair to pigs.

Andreev’s desk seems like the most logical place to store a flash drive. I comb through his drawers, my eyes peeled for something purple. The bottom drawer doesn’t open when I yank it.

It’s locked. I jiggle the handle just to be sure. But any thirteen-year-old with a bobby pin can pick a file cabinet. I would know, because that’s what I did when I was thirteen and my dad took my cell phone away and hid it in a file cabinet in his office. He upgraded to a more heavy-duty lock after that.

I slide the bobby pin out of my hair and wiggle it around in the drawer’s lock. I’ve done this lots of times before, but it’s still frustrating and takes lots of patience. A thin line of sweat is forming at my brow by the time I hear the satisfying
click
.

I open the drawer, and I’m shocked to find it’s empty except for a plastic bag. Andreev’s passport is inside. There’s also a red book with a gold crest on the front. This looks like a passport as well, but I don’t recognize the language on the cover. I rifle through it: There’s a picture of Andreev inside, but this passport is issued to “Konstantin Milenko.”

I compare the photo with the one in Andreev’s U.S. passport. They’re definitely of the same person. So who the hell is Konstantin Milenko? The foreign passport has got to be fake. With my phone, I take a picture of the cover of the red one so I can figure out later what language it’s in.

As I make my way through the rest of the bag’s contents, I’m certain of one thing: It looks like Andreev was, or is, planning to leave the country. There’s a red ATM card printed with the same Slavic-looking letters as on the passport, and more than a thousand U.S. dollars.

My palms are sweating as I place everything back in the bag, trying to arrange the items like I found them. Being a suspect in a murder investigation seems like a compelling reason to leave the country to me.

There’s only one other thing in the drawer besides Andreev’s
how to disappear from the United States
kit: a Post-it note with a list of four words. They’re not in English, and on a closer glance, I realize they’re not even words. There are numbers sandwiched between the unfamiliar letters.

Passwords. They’ve got to be passwords.

I’m saving a picture of the Post-it note to my phone when I hear the stairwell door slam. My heart leaps into my throat, and I close Andreev’s desk drawer. I grab my bag and peer out the pane of glass on Andreev’s door.

It takes all I have not to vomit everywhere when I see Sebastian and Andreev at the end of the hallway.
Shit.
I was positive Andreev had left for the day. He took his coat and briefcase with him!

There’s absolutely zero chance of me getting past them. My only option is to cry hysterically and hope Andreev feels badly enough for me to leave my body in one piece so my parents can bury it.

I’m almost paralyzed with fear until one word pops into my head.
Hide.

I spin around and examine my options. Under the desk is not one of them. They’d see me in a second. But then there are the cabinets beneath Andreev’s counter where he keeps his lab equipment.

There’s about five square feet of free space under the sink. I crawl into it, curving my body around the pipes. My head is practically touching my toes as I close the cabinet door, and my heart is slamming against my chest so hard I’m seeing black spots.

Andreev’s door clicks open and I suck in a breath. “This had better be important, Sebastian. I’m late for a meeting.”

Breathe. Breathe. Just don’t let them hear you.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sebastian says. “I didn’t know who else to go to.”

“Well, what’s this about, then?” I hear the sound of groaning leather. Andreev must have sat down. The thought of him getting comfortable makes me even more aware of the way my joints are complaining.

“There’s a detective watching me,” Sebastian blurts. “He stopped me and asked me about Isabella yesterday morning.”

The silence that follows is so painful, I’m sure they’re going to hear my heart beating. Finally, Andreev speaks. “Well … what did you tell him?”

“I said I only knew her through class, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.” Sebastian drops his voice to just above a whisper. “Sir, I e-mailed her asking for help a few weeks ago. She never responded, so I kept trying—”

“You imbecile,” Andreev growls. “How many times did you e-mail her?”

“Three or four.” I can practically hear Sebastian wincing.

“Didn’t I forbid you to contact her about our work together?” Andreev’s voice shakes, as if he’s trying not to yell. “Surely you know how this looks to the police. Harassing a girl through e-mail weeks before she’s killed.”

“I wasn’t harassing her!” Sebastian sounds panicked. “You threatened to fail me, and I knew she’d made more progress than I did—”

“I did no such thing. I simply alerted you to your incompetence, which you have proved yet again.” Andreev pauses. “Sebastian, you are aware of my life’s work, correct?”

There’s a short silence, so I assume Sebastian’s nodded, because Andreev continues, “Then I do not need to remind you what could happen to both of us should we be dragged into a murder investigation.”

“But I had nothing to do with that,” Sebastian says.

“I know you didn’t, dense boy. But think of how this will look to the police.” Andreev’s chair groans again. “Tell them you needed Isabella’s help with homework if they bring up the e-mails. Say nothing about your position and the work we do together.”

“I don’t want the position anymore,” Sebastian says. “Not if it’s going to get me into trouble.”

Andreev lets out a sharp laugh. “You say that as if you are not replaceable. Go ahead. Quit. Maybe I will then find someone of value to me.”

Sebastian is silent. I wonder if, like me, he’s considering the fact that the last person to quit Andreev’s internship wound up dead.

The muscles in my legs are cramping to the point that I’ll be shocked if I ever regain use of them, so I just want this conversation to be over so I can get the hell out of here. But then Andreev says something that sends me reeling:

“I suggest you go to the dean or vice-principal if this detective becomes bothersome to you. You’d be surprised how … well equipped they are to handle these situations.”

There’s acid at the back of my throat, and I’m sure I’m going to throw up, stop breathing, or both.
Please let me get out of here.

“You have complicated things, Sebastian,” Andreev says before the door closes behind both of them.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

This time, I’m not as stupid. I wait ten minutes until I’m sure Andreev has left for good. Ten minutes to regain feeling in my legs and let my raging heartbeat calm down.

Then I get my ass out of there. I don’t even slow down as I’m going down the stairs. My legs are still weak from being cramped in that horrible position, so my ankle gives out beneath me and I slip down the last three steps.