Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (23 page)

How could I let this happen? My only defense is that we were overcome with adrenaline and didn’t realize what we were doing. Not acknowledging the kiss was probably our way of confirming it was a mistake.

Because considering the position we’re both in with the police, getting involved with each other is
definitely
a mistake.

I force myself to stop thinking about Anthony. I need to focus on my schoolwork, on piecing together the information I have about Isabella’s murder, on keeping my latest encounter with the police from my parents. Kissing Anthony is a distraction I can’t afford.

When I get back to my room, I make myself a cup of chai tea and attempt to get my homework done. Except after fifteen minutes, I realize I’ve answered the question “What modernist painting movement depicts emotion instead of physical reality?” with “37.” I close my textbook.

I find myself Google-searching for
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
It takes me about three seconds to learn where the quote is from.

The Divine Comedy.
Dante. The inscription at the entrance to the tunnel is supposedly the same one as at the gate of hell.

I hope all it means is that whoever built the tunnels had a good sense of humor.

My mind is running in circles. I desperately want to know how Isabella found the tunnels, and if her killer knows about them, too. If Lee found an entrance to the tunnels from the boy’s dorm, he could have followed her to the forest. And as a teacher, Andreev might have been the one to tell Isabella about the tunnel entrances in the first place.

I suddenly remember the photos I took in Andreev’s office. I’d been so wrapped up in the fiasco with Alexis and Detective Phelan that I’d forgotten all about them. I look at the one of the foreign passport first, zooming in to get a better look at the insignia. It doesn’t match the one on the images of Russian and Ukrainian passports I Google. I have no idea what country it could be from, but since the name
Konstantin Milenko
doesn’t generate any search results, I’m guessing it’s a fake.

A false identity seems like a good way for Andreev to leave the country and evade American authorities.

I scroll to the next picture: the list of what I hope is passwords. There’s a good chance one of them opens the document I stole from Sebastian’s computer, since Andreev was the one who locked the file. Too bad there’s no Russian alphabet on my keyboard so I can type the passwords in.

But what if Andreev wanted to double-cover his ass in case someone found—or in my case, stole—his passwords? The passwords are probably in English, I realize, and he only wrote them down in another language as a type of code.

It’s a smart move, because how am I supposed to translate words when the alphabet is totally foreign to me? It could take me hours to look up each letter and try to make sense of the words.

Unless …

I scroll through the list of contacts in my phone to see if I have her number—Irina Peterson, who sometimes sat with my friends at lunch back at St. Bernadette’s. I was always kind of jealous of her killer hair. Anyway, she’s half Russian, and I’ve heard her speak to her mother in Russian on the phone before.

I find Irina’s number and send her the picture, along with a message asking if she can help me figure out what the words mean. Five, then ten minutes go by with no response. I imagine what Irina is thinking: First I disappear from St. Bernadette’s after burning a part of it down, now I contact her after weeks of silence with a request to translate a bunch of vague words that might not even be written in Russian, for all I really know.

So, yeah. I’d probably ignore me, too.

My heart starts hammering when a knock sounds at my door. I’m nervous it could be a detective wanting to grill me more, or the million other people who essentially have the power to ruin my life right now. I glance through the peephole, and let out a little sigh of relief when I see it’s only Remy.

“Hey,” she says as I open the door, “I wanted to— Oh! Your face.” She leans in a little. “Have you been kissing someone?”

I glance at the mirror on my closet door in a panic. My chin is red and raw from Anthony’s stubble. How am I supposed to fix this by dinnertime? I mean, I’ve got some calming toner with chamomile, but I’m not a miracle worker or anything.

Remy’s reflection blinks at me.

“It’s just a rash,” I blurt.

She nods like she’s still trying to figure out who I could have been kissing. But she doesn’t push it. “Anne…” she says, “I had no idea what Alexis was doing.”

I pause, because I hadn’t even considered that Remy might have known. “Okay.”

“I should have stood up for you from the beginning,” she says, “but I was afraid of hurting Alexis’s feelings, because she already thought I was replacing her with you. Even though she and I don’t even talk that much anymore.…”

I don’t know what’s funnier—the thought of me needing Remy to stand up for me, or the idea that Alexis has feelings. “She’s not just pissed because she thinks I’m going to become your new best friend, Rem. She feels threatened by me, so she’s trying to destroy me.”

“Why would she feel threatened—”

“Remy, I know Alexis hated Isabella. I know about what happened with her SGA speech. And unlike everyone else, I’m not just going to look the other way.”

Remy looks like she’s been slapped. “What are you say— Oh my God, Anne.” Horror registers on her face. “There’s a difference between hating someone and actually
killing
them!”

“Not if the person you hate has the potential to ruin you,” I shoot back.

“You don’t know Alexis like I do,” Remy says. “She’d never
kill
anyone. And I don’t think you really knew Isabella, either.” There’s an angry urgency to Remy’s voice that shocks me. I’ve never seen her worked up like this. “Making that video was manipulative.
She
was manipulative.”

“I thought no one could even prove she made it.”

“Prove it, no, but I know she did,” Remy says. She bites her lip, and her face scrunches like she’s holding back tears. “I know because I saw her watching us in the lounge. I’m in the stupid video, too.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

Now I understand why Remy sounded so annoyed when she said Alexis did something embarrassing: She meant that it was embarrassing for her too. I have to sit down, because the thought of Remy being involved in all of this makes my head spin about a hundred times faster.

Remy sits next to me. “We thought Isabella couldn’t hear us. She was on her computer in the lounge with us, but she had her headphones on. I never would have thought she was listening to me and Alexis the whole time, let alone
taping
us with her Webcam.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, as if she’s fighting off a headache. “It was a week before the SGA elections, and Alexis was mad because people were accusing her of taking down Peter Wu’s campaign posters. She said some pretty awful things about him. All I did was sit there and let her rant like always, but it was still mortifying when the whole school saw the video, you know?”

I nod. I think I know who Peter Wu is, since I’ve only seen one Asian guy in the junior class. He sits with Dan Crowley and two other guys in the dining hall.

“Anne, you have to believe me that Alexis didn’t have anything to do with Isabella being killed,” Remy says. “Sure, she was really pissed about not getting to be president, and she was worried about the video getting out and embarrassing her dad, but that was almost a year ago. Why would Alexis wait until now to do anything about it?”

I don’t tell Remy that there are a million reasons why, because I’m not ready to consider the fact that Isabella may have decided to blackmail Alexis with the video. I don’t want to believe that Isabella was
that
manipulative. I want to keep remembering Isabella as I saw her before she was killed—as the quiet, helpful girl who kept to herself.

Even though I’m realizing that was probably never the real Isabella.

*   *   *

I’m dying to get my hands on that video, but Remy’s made it clear that if she knows who might have a copy, she’s taking that information to the grave—which obviously only makes me more curious. What could Alexis have said that was so bad?

After the scene I made yesterday, I’m dreading going to dinner. Remy doesn’t need to twist my arm too much to get me to go with her, April, and Kelsey, though, because if I start holing myself up in my room during meals, it’ll look like I’m hiding.

Brent is already at the table when we get to the dining hall. He nods to all of us, avoiding my eyes. It almost depresses me, how cute he is. He threw a gray-and-black-striped sweater over his button-up uniform shirt and even styled his hair tonight. For a minute, I’m paranoid he’ll see the redness lingering on my chin and figure out what I was doing earlier. Then I remind myself that even if I hadn’t been making out with Anthony earlier, Brent and I would be just as awkward with each other right now.

I don’t have time to worry about all that, though, and I’m barely in my chair when Cole says, “Guys. My dad called me today. The DA is trying to get a warrant from the judge for the police to search all the dorms.”

Everyone is quiet, processing what this means. It’s April who finally speaks up. “But that would mean they think a
student
killed her.”

“You’re a genius, April.” Brent spears a tomato in his salad. “They’ll never get a warrant.”

His dig at April is so quick, so subtle, that I wonder if I’m the only one who notices it. April’s face is frozen, her lips parted as if she doesn’t quite get what just happened.

“You never know,” Murali says. “They could have probable cause.”

“To search every dorm room on campus?” Brent shakes his head. “Not a chance. Probable cause means they would have evidence against a specific person.”

My stomach plummets as I wonder if it could be me, although the only “evidence” against me is a steaming pile of Alexis Westbrook’s bullshit. Plus, the police have already searched my dorm room.

Could it be that they have something on someone else—someone like Lee or Alexis?

I push myself away from the table and wander to the line for wraps. Three freshmen girls in front of me whisper to one another and look away from me. They look like a pack of scared baby deer, so I can’t even gather the energy to be annoyed.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles as I inch forward on the line. I hear his breathing behind me. There’s a foot of space between us, but his presence is suffocating me.

I glance over my shoulder to confirm it’s him. Lee stares back at me in a way that tells me he’s been watching me the whole time.

I quickly look forward again, unease spreading through me. I sense him shifting behind me. My insides go cold, and I can’t explain it, but I just know he’s the one who hurt her.

I keep my eyes trained straight ahead. I smile at the wrap lady and nod, yes, I would like grilled chicken with sun-dried tomato, my usual. I grip the corners of my tray and don’t look back at Lee until I’ve put a safe distance between me and him.

And I watch him get off the wrap line empty-handed.

Bile rises in my throat. Was he just trying to freak me out? Why else would he wait on line and not get anything?

Head bowed, he skulks over to a two-person table by the window, where a scrawny kid with a really round head and even rounder glasses is sitting. Even sitting down, Lee towers over the other kid by a foot or two.

The boy acknowledges Lee, then shoots uncomfortable glances around the dining hall as if he doesn’t want to be caught dead with him. I see Cole refilling his soda from the corner of my eye and approach him.

“Who’s that kid with Creepy Lee?” I ask him.

Cole glances over. “That’s Peepers. Lee’s roommate.”

For some reason, Lee having a roommate feels bizarre to me. I guess in my head I pictured Lee living alone in some dank cave like an ogre, instead of in a dorm room with an actual person.

It dawns on me how valuable Peepers could be. With glasses that big, he’s bound to notice something like his roommate leaving in the middle of the night just before Isabella’s body was found.

“Hey. He’s really bummed,” Cole says.

“Who? Peepers?”

“No.” Cole nods his head toward Brent. When I look over at him, he pretends to be completely absorbed in tearing a dinner roll in half. His cheeks are pink, though, and he looks miserable. Was he watching me and Cole because he’s jealous?

“Is that supposed to be my fault or something?” I grumble.

“He thinks you’ve been avoiding him.”

“I have been. Whatever I have to do to stay out of jail,” I say.

Cole rests a hand on my arm. He smells like an Abercrombie & Fitch store. “Look, Brent’s really messed up over this. He doesn’t like Jill … he’s just afraid of hurting her feelings.”

“Cole, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but nothing is stopping him from talking to me himself.”

Cole looks over at our table and back to me. “Before this all went down, he was talking about asking you to stay with him over spring break. Meet his mom and stuff. I’m the only one who has even met Brent’s family.”

“So I’m supposed to feel special or something? He had a million opportunities to make a move and he didn’t.”

“You’re special,” Cole says. “He actually likes you, and he’s afraid of screwing things up.”

For some reason, this hits me really hard. Back at home, I could have dated any guy I wanted, but I chose losers like Martin and seniors that were about to leave for college anyway. The ones I avoided were the ones I actually liked—I mean, I’d have rather had them around as friends instead of hooking up with them and making things weird.

I allow myself to look at Brent again, briefly, as Cole and I walk back to the table together. I miss him, a lot, but the last thing I need right now is him projecting all of his trust issues onto me.

I’ve got enough issues of my own right now.

*   *   *

Cole tells me I can probably find Peepers in the library after dinner. Also, I probably shouldn’t call him Peepers, because he doesn’t know that’s his nickname.