by Kate Brian
My lungs burned from the cold as I ducked through the line of trees, branches snapping at my face. I threw my back against the fence and sucked in a breath. Then I held it and listened. No air sirens, no shouting, no rabid guard dogs lusting for blood. Walking sideways, I slowly made my way along the fence until I found the hole. Flashes from the night of the Legacy accosted me. Cold, wet feet; mud-stained skirts; Josh's hand as he helped me through. The look on his face when he'd told me they'd found Thomas. That Thomas was dead. My heart seized just thinking about it. If anyone needed proof that Josh was innocent, they needed to have been there at that moment. Unfortunately, I couldn't replicate my memory and play it for the judge and jury. I shoved myself through the opening, caring little for the thousand-dollar coat Kiran had given me, then headed for the road. When my feet hit asphalt, I felt home free, but then I saw it, out of the corner of my eye: the media camp. At least four vans, their satellite antennae looming up into the sky. Dozens and dozens of reporters, cameramen, and various lackeys. They were all grouped around the Easton gates as if they might open at any second, like the gates of Oz, and admit them to the story of their lives.
Holding my breath, I sprinted across the street and ducked into the forest of trees on the opposite side of the road. Under cover, I made my way through piles of wet leaves and over fallen branches, the wet permeating my sneakers and soaking my socks. As I passed the crowd, I saw a man in a blue jumper perched on a ladder, affixing a security camera to a pillar at the side of the gates. The reporters shouted questions up at him. "How do the students feel, knowing the administration has allowed a murderer to walk among them for the past few months?" "Is there a feeling of terror on campus?" "What are the boy's friends like? Do you believe he had any accomplices?"These people were evil. I could only imagine the salivating they would do at my feet if I stepped into the clear and offered up my story. But that wasn't me. I didn't want a spotlight. I just wanted my boyfriend back. Half a mile up the road, I emerged onto the street again and speed-walked toward town.
ACCOMPLICE
The windows along Main Street in the Village of Easton glowed with welcoming warmth. Even with the cold, the streets were bustling, pairs of ladies strolled the sidewalks, popping into shops as tiny bells tinkled overhead. A woman in a black suit whisked the priceless jewelry out of the display window of one store as I passed by, getting ready to close up for the evening. She caught my eye and smiled quizzically, probably amused by the odd sight of a teenage girl in a designer coat and a tattered gray, sweatshirt hood pulled tightly around her face. I ducked my head, sidestepped a couple on their way into a swank steakhouse, and kept walking toward the center of town. VILLAGE OF EASTON, ESTABLISHED 1840. That was what the plaque on the quaint brick police station read. I stepped through the doors into a small, well-lit office, bustling with uniformed officers and detectives. I had a feeling that this was not a normal scene. That the place was usually a lot less active than this. After all, they had a murder suspect in custody. I bet no one had clocked out since they'd brought Josh through the doors. This was far too exciting for them. Two people jumped up from chairs near the wall the moment they saw me. One shoved a tape recorder in my face.
"What's your name, Miss? Do you go to Easton Academy?" There was a blur of movement and suddenly I was being roughly escorted toward the wall by Detective Hauer. He gave me an exasperated look and turned around, effectively blocking me from the reporters. "Look, you two already have our official statement. You're going to get nothing else here, so why don't you just go look under some other rock?" The reporters scurried out, and I removed my hood and stood up straight. This was not going to be easy. "What are you doing here, Reed?" the detective asked me. His blue shirt was wrinkled and the sleeves rolled up. There was some kind of tattoo on his forearm, but when he saw me looking, he crossed his arms over his chest. "I want to see Josh," I told him, lifting my chin. "I'm afraid that's not possible," he replied. And just like that, there he was. Past Hauer's shoulder, Josh appeared. His hands were cuffed, and a woman with a severe bun and pointy features gripped his arm. They were all the way on the other side of the bullpen area, putting at least a dozen officers between him and me. It would take a miracle to get one word in, but I had to try. I stepped aside, out from the shadow of Detective Hauer's bulk, and Josh's eyes lit up. "Reed!" Every cop in the place looked from him to me and back again. "Josh! Are you all right?" "I'm fine! I--" "Get him out of here!" Detective Hauer bellowed, exasperated. Josh's eyes filled with terror as the woman yanked on his arm. I took a few steps forward but was blocked by a security counter. He was just a few feet away, but I couldn't get near him. I could have clawed my way out of my skin.
"No. Wait a second!" Josh struggled away, took a step toward me. "Talk to Lewis-Hanneman and Blake! They saw me that night!" he shouted as the woman took hold of him again, this time with a lot more conviction. Lewis-Hanneman and Blake. The dean's assistant and Thomas's brother, Blake Pearson. I'd heard rumors. Was he saying the rumors were true? That they were still having an affair? "The art cemetery! Reed! Please! Get them to tell the truth!" Then he was shoved through a door and the door was slammed. That was all I needed. The slam popped a balloon inside of me, and I burst into tears. "Come with me, Reed." The detective's voice was low and soothing and right in my ear. "Come on, kid. Come here."
My hands were over my face as I sobbed. I choked for breath. I felt his palm on my back, leading me somewhere. I fell into a chair without seeing it. Folded my arms on a table and cradled my head. Soft words were spoken. A door opened and closed. A chair was pulled out. When I could finally breathe again, I lifted my head. My nose was so clogged I had to breathe through my mouth, and my face was tight from the tears. "This is so wrong!" I wailed, throwing my arms out straight. Detective Hauer was sitting across from me. He leaned forward and placed the tips of his fingers together. "Reed--" "You can't keep him here! He didn't do anything!" "Reed--" "No! You have to let me talk to him," I begged. "Please!" "Reed!" His shout brought me up short. I sniffled and wiped under my nose with the end of my sleeve, shaking as I looked away. The detective pushed a cup of water toward me and nodded at it. I took a drink. Until that moment I hadn't realized how empty my body was.
"I'm very sorry that you're mixed up in all of this," the detective said calmly. "But you need to go back to school now. You need to try to get back to your life." I snorted. "Come on, you've got school. You've got your friends. Don't you have finals to study for?" "Like any of that matters," I said. He scooted closer to me. "You have to trust that we're doing our job. You have to trust that we're going to get this right. You need to stay out of it, Reed. For your own good." "But. . . but what about what he just said?" I asked, sitting up. "About Blake Pearson and the secretary from school. Were they there? Does he have an alibi?"
"We've looked into it," he said impatiently. "And?" "And I can't divulge any details of our investigation," he told me. "But you have to tell me! I need to know what's--" "We have our suspect, Reed," Hauer said through his teeth. "Don't go giving my superiors a reason to think he had an accomplice." A cold finger of dread slid down my spine. He wasn't serious. He couldn't be. "Now, we are going to get up and leave this office quietly," he said. "I'll drive you back to campus." He glanced at the one window high in the wall. It was already pitch-black outside, courtesy of December. "I don't need a ride. I'm sure it's perfectly safe," I told him, finally regaining control. I stood up and lifted my hood. "After all, you've got the big, bad killer all locked up, don't you?" I added sarcastically.
He sighed, puffing out his cheeks. Like he didn't know what to do with me. Well, he didn't have to do anything. I could take care of myself. I turned around and strode out of the room, proudly surprised that my knees didn't so much as quiver along the way.
* * *
That night I took a long, extraordinarily hot shower, and when I emerged, my room was empty--which I had been counting on. Natasha often vacated it at about this time to go up to the roof and call her
girlfriend, Leanne Shore. Her cell never worked in our room, and considering that it had started snowing and gusting about a half an hour earlier, I had to give the girl points for effort. She must have really been in love.
I needed this time to myself, to think about what Josh had said. To figure out what I was going to do next. But first things first. I dropped my towel on my bed and sat down at Natasha's computer. I had been aching to e-mail Taylor Bell ever since the night before, when her mysterious IM had been abruptly cut off. I opened up an e-mail window and typed, happy to find that my fingers were no longer trembling, as they had been since my encounter with Detective Hauer.
To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: IM Don't leave me hanging, Taylor. I have to know. What do you mean, it's all lies? Where are you? What's not true? Please write back asap. –Reed I sent the e-mail, and two seconds later a new message icon appeared on the screen. I clicked it. It was a terminal failure message. The account [email protected] had been deleted.
PROVE IT
There was this new sensation inside my chest. It had sparked up when I'd seen Josh, so helpless and alone, in the police station, and it had only grown stronger since then. Taylor's "deletion" had fueled the fire, and when I'd woken up the following morning, the feeling had taken over. It was a sort of buzzing that started deep inside my core and was now radiating outward. It was a desire to do something. To figure out what the hell was actually going on in the hallowed halls of Easton. A desire to get off my ass and fix this.
Screw Hauer. Someone had killed Thomas and it wasn't Josh. Maybe he thought it was okay to have the wrong person in jail, but I didn't. I was desperate to do something. I was my own person. It was time to start making my own decisions. As my last class drew to a close the next day, I was out of my desk so fast my chair might as well have been an ejector seat. I speed- walked out of the crowded class building, nearly tripping a few people along the way, and went directly to Hell Hall. After bounding up four flights of carpeted steps, irritating several teachers and administrators along the way, I opened the door to the dean's outer office, winded like I'd just run a marathon. Ms. Lewis-Hanneman looked up from her desk. There was an almost imperceptible twitch of her eye when she saw me. Her grip on her pen tightened. She looked small at her monstrous desk, surrounded as she was by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with leather-bound books.
"The dean isn't in," she said, her tone clipped. "If you'd like to make an appointment..." I stepped up to her desk and really looked at her for the first time. And for the first time, I saw it. Sure, she had the austere hairstyle and the big glasses, but add to that the blond hair, high cheekbones, and big blue eyes and she was like the saucy, repressed librarian in that fantasy that all guys seemed to harbor. No wonder Blake was attracted to her. All she had to do was take the pins out of her hair and you could cue the sexy music. "I'm not here to see the dean," I told her. "I want to talk to you." My heart was in my throat, but my adrenaline allowed me to take on a commanding tone, one that made Lewis-Hanneman's eyebrows arch. "If you're selling that sinful fudge for the field hockey team, I'm not interested," she said.
I clutched the books I was still carrying to my chest. "Actually, I wanted to ask you what you were doing in Mitchell Hall the night of Thomas's murder." Ms. Lewis-Hanneman lost all color. It was like watching a milk bottle empty. "I don't know what you're talking about."Oh, you so do. My heart pounded. She was lying right to my face. Did she not know what was at stake here? "You don't," I challenged. "No. I don't?" she replied. "Now, if you'd like to make an appointment to see the dean, I can arrange that for you. Otherwise, I have a lot of work to do."
Her pen shook in her grasp as she pretended to make some important note on her legal pad. I didn't move a muscle. I had gotten to her. I had this adult squirming. And I felt . . . powerful. I wondered if this was how Noelle felt every moment of every day. I stepped closer to her desk to see how much "work" she could get done with me breathing down her neck. Finally, she blew out a sigh and placed the pen on the desk. "I believe I asked you to leave," she said firmly, looking up at me. "I know you were there," I said, channeling Noelle. "And I know who you were with." Let's see how you take that. Her eyes never left my face. "Are you attempting to blackmail me, Miss Brennan?" I blinked. Okay. So maybe I'd been thinking about blackmailing her, but just hearing her say it made me back off. That was Noelle's M.O., not mine. And I wasn't about to go there, as tempting as it was. A girl had to draw a line. Eventually.
"No. I'm asking you to just do the right thing," I said, deciding on a different tack. "If you have an alibi for Josh Hollis, you have to go to the police. This is his whole life we're talking about here." She held my gaze for a long moment. There was a second in which I saw the pity in her eyes. Saw that she knew what I was dealing with here. Knew how scared I was. In that second I was sure she was going to agree with me, but it passed as quickly as it had come. "Miss Brennan, I already told the police everything I know, which is exactly nothing," she said coolly. "I was at home by myself that night. My husband was away on business, and he and I spoke on the phone. That is the extent of my memory of that night." "You're lying," I spat. "At the risk of sounding like a five-year-old here, Miss Brennan... prove it." I wanted to smack her across the face. Pull her hair out. Rip her glasses off and throw them at the wall. But at that moment, the door opened and the dean walked in, and I never had the chance to find out if I was actually capable of such a tantrum.
"Miss Brennan," Dean Marcus said, surprised to see me. He removed his tweed hat and held it before him. "How are you?" I took a step back from Ms. Lewis-Hanneman's desk. Putting some distance between us seemed to assuage the need to hurt her. "I'm all right," I said, my voice quaking. He looked at me as if I was some foreign creature. Something he was wary of approaching. Should he hold his hand out under my nose so I could sniff him out, or would I bite? "I ... I know this must be a difficult time for you," he said finally, squaring himself to me. "If you ever need to talk . . ." Part of me wanted to laugh. Like Dean Marcus was the person I'd come to in that situation. But then I realized he was trying to be kind, and guilt squashed the laughter.
"That's okay," I told him. "Thanks for the offer." I glanced at Ms. Lewis-Hanneman, and there was a triumphant look in her eye at the level of discomfort in the room. At that moment I resolved that I was going to get her to confess what she knew. One way or another, she was going to help me get Josh out of jail. Whether she liked it or not.
THESE ARE MY FRIENDS
I needed Noelle. That much was clear. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that she would have gotten the truth out of Ms. Lewis-Hanneman. She wouldn't have backed off. She wouldn't have stopped until she'd gotten what she wanted. I couldn't do the things Noelle could do. Maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe it was a good thing. I hadn't entirely decided yet. But at least in the meantime I had the girl who was capable of anything in my corner. At least, I was pretty sure I did. '
As I walked across the frigid campus toward Billings House that night, I had to wonder. Yes, Noelle had been a good friend to me. At least, she had since we'd gotten past the Walt Whittaker double- blackmail debacle. All she had done was try to protect me. There was no denying that her methods had been somewhat questionable, but that was just Noelle. Whatever her tactics, her motives always seemed clear. She wanted to keep her friends from making mistakes. She wanted to make sure we were on the right path. And she would do pretty much anything to ensure that we stayed out of trouble.
But then there was Taylor. She'd told me I couldn't trust the other Billings Girls. That they had been lying to me. But about what? And why? Had they only lied about Taylor's reasons for leaving, or was it bigger than that? And if they had lied about Taylor, then where was she, and why had she left school? Maybe I should start by confronting Noelle about that. I deserved to know the truth, after all. Taylor was my friend. They were all supposed to be my friends. So why was I always the only one in the dark? I stopped
outside the front door of the dorm. In the distance a siren wailed--the town of Easton's fire siren. I listened to the sound echoing through the bare trees. Did I really need Noelle's help? I knew Lewis-Hanneman was lying. Maybe I should just try to break her myself. But how? I didn't even know where to start. Begging? Back to blackmailing? No. She'd already seen me back off of that option. She'd know I was bluffing. That I was too weak. And this was Josh's life we were talking about here. I couldn't afford to mess this up.
Noelle would know what to do. Noelle would get results. Noelle was my only option. Finally resolved, I grasped the cold door handle and walked into Billings. "We have less than three weeks left until finals and he wants to keep us caged up in here like we're animals? As far as I'm concerned, he's just asking for trouble." Noelle. Her voice as authoritative as ever. I paused in the entryway. The lobby area was deserted. Noelle was holding court in the parlor to my right. "But you heard what he said," Cheyenne Martin replied. I recognized her voice by its superior tone. "We have to stick together right now. For Easton." "Screw Easton," Noelle said.
