Dying for an Education

by Stacey Alabaster

  And by Tuesday, the ghost would be gone.

  Because Byron was waiting for me to get started. And this was the moment of reckoning.

  I turned the sign around to “Closed” even though it should have been turned to that hours ago. It was seven-thirty. It was dark. And creepy.

  I glanced up at the second level. This was not the best time for an exorcism.

  But Byron nodded toward the stairs and told me it was time we went up.

  “Oh. What— We don’t need to go up there, do we?” I could hear the panic rising in my voice.

  Byron looked at me with a blank face that held just the slightest trace of amusement there.

  “But that is where the presence is, isn’t it, dear?”

  “Yes, but I thought that we could just do it from a distance…from down here on the ground floor.”

  Byron gently acknowledged my fear but said she that we needed to get right up close and personal with it. It had a message for us, and we needed to be close enough to hear it. She had some tools with her for the clearing, including a bundle of white and green stuff.

  “Uh oh. I am allergic to sage,” I said, nodding toward the bundle.

  “Really?” Byron asked.

  I nodded. “I will be sneezing and coughing violently if you light that.” Much to the chagrin of Alyson, who loved to burn sage at her place. I had told her many times that she could not burn it in her apartment if she wanted me visiting there. One time, she had quite rudely threatened to choose the sage over me.

  Byron went first, and I followed until we were on the upstairs landing.

  “See?” Byron asked. “Not so scary, is it?”

  I had to disagree, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby so I nodded and gave a grim smile as though I agreed. I supposed it was slightly less intimidating with Byron there by my side. But it was really no less scary.

  Byron was brave enough to go down one of the aisles while I hung back. She had agreed to burn a candle instead of the sage, so it lit her way. She turned around to look at me. “Have you actually taken a good look back here?”

  Was she crazy? “NO.”

  Byron looked amused for the first time, as though she was really trying not to laugh. “What are you so afraid of seeing, Claire?”

  I took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling. “I am scared that I will see something that shouldn’t be seen…something that has no business being in this world.”

  Byron retained her amused look. “If something is in this world, then doesn’t it logically have business being here?”

  “I…” Gee. I had no logical response to that one.

  Maybe she was right. But there was no way I was stepping another step forward. Byron could go if she wanted to. But I was rooted firmly in position.

  Byron and both I heard a footstep.

  My heart stopped.

  “Hello?” Byron called out, moving toward the back of the shop where I had been too scared to venture. “This is the time,” she said in a soft voice. “For any final messages that you may want to impart on us.” She fell silent and her head fell forward. She looked as though she was praying.

  Oh my gosh. There was something there. A creature. A ghost. And it was coming right toward me.

  “Burn the sage! Burn the sage!” I screamed, running so quickly I almost tripped down the first step.

  But it wasn’t a ghost.

  It was a flesh and bone person.

  “BIANCA!?”

  Bianca swirled her straw around in her strawberry milkshake and told me the whole sorry story. Commuting back and forth from Eden Bay had taken a toll financially and she’d been unable to keep up with her job. Or her rent payments. She’d been evicted from her apartment.

  And so the loft of my shop had been her new home. I mean, she did own half the shop. But we weren’t supposed to LIVE there.

  “Where have you been showering?” I asked her.

  “The surf club,” she said glumly. “It’s gross.”

  “Yeah, but so is…living in the loft of a shop with no running water,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes drolly. “You don’t have to tell me that, Claire. I’m not exactly proud of myself. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  Most of me was just relieved that there was no ghost. But another part of me was extremely concerned about what we were going to do moving forward.

  “You can stay at my apartment,” I said. “You could have asked me right from the start, Bianca. That’s what cousins are for.”

  But Bianca was all about keeping up appearances. That was why she had never asked to stay, and it was why she was still hesitant about accepting the offer. “I will be back on my feet in no time,” she said, digging through the fries that I had ordered and paid for. “There’s no need for any permanent moves.”

  “Well, you can’t keep sleeping in the shop,” I said, folding my arms. “So you will stay at my place tonight, at the very least.”

  But for the following day, I had a very different plan indeed.

  19

  Alyson

  Belle crept forward with the flashlight as we walked down the hallway of the tenth level of the towers. This was where “Melissa” lived apparently. And she was one of the few who had chosen to stay on even after Rick had died.

  “Feels like we are in an Enid Blyton novel,” I whispered as the floorboards creaked below us. And I was surprised at the fact that I was referencing yet another piece of literature.

  Maybe I had been an undercover secret English lover all along.

  If only Rick Niemer was still alive. He could have been my mentor. My honors supervisor, if it ever got to that point.

  But he was dead.

  “So you had seen Rick up here before with her?” I asked, gulping a little. It was all getting a little too real now that I was essentially breaking in again, and I’d already been sprung once being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. What if Rex Lewis found out? It sounded like he kept a fairly tight rein over the English Department.

  Belle shone the flashlight in my face for a second and then pulled it away. “You look anxious.”

  Yeah, well, I was. I didn’t want to lose my place at the school now that I had decided it was really what I wanted.

  But I had to press forward.

  The floorboards, which were at least a hundred years old, didn’t just creak underneath us now. They sounded like they were cracking “There’s really no way of doing this subtly, hey?” I asked.

  Belle shook her head and pointed as we got to the end of the tenth floor where there was a little study room with a light on. There was one girl in there on her own, and she didn’t appear to be reading or studying. She had long mousy-brown hair and oversized glasses. She was teeny tiny and pale.

  “What is she doing?” I asked, keeping my head down.

  She appeared to be weeping silently.

  Belle had little sympathy. “All for show,” she whispered to me. “She is probably thrilled that Rick is dead and now her secret will never be discovered.” She looked at me gravely. “It is against the school rules to have relationships with the teacher. All of her grades would have been examined if Rex had found out. And Rick would have been fired.”

  I thought we should go in and comfort the poor girl. But apparently, I was alone in that thought.

  “Come on,” Belle said, with a roll of her eyes. “There is live music on at the quad tonight. I’ve had enough of this.”

  The quad was lively on a Friday night and apparently, this was an international band from the UK with plenty of fans who were cheering between every song and getting drunker and drunker, having the time of their lives. But the band was playing music I had heard a thousand times before. Nothing to excite or inspire me. I kept thinking about that weeping girl. I hadn’t seen her in any classes, even though Belle had said she was an English major. Now that told me the girl was going through real grief. Not whatever weird thing Belle was going through.

  S
o while Belle was busy mashing along, I snuck back to the towers.

  And this time, I really was risking everything. Because without Belle with me—someone who really did live there—I had no excuse to be on the property alone.

  “Hello?” I said, clearing my throat outside the study room. The poor girl was timid as a mouse and jumped as I approached her. “My name is Alyson… I am a friend of Belle’s,” I added.

  Strangely, that didn’t do anything to endear me to her, though I would have thought Belle was a popular student in the tower. She certainly seemed popular in all of her lectures. Popular with teachers too.

  “Melissa,” she mumbled, staring down at the tissue she held in her hands.

  “Belle told me you’ve been having a hard time with everything,” I said softly.

  “As if Belle cares at all,” she said bitterly.

  Hmm. She was the second person who had said that to me, almost word for word. Sam had told me the same thing.

  I sat down beside her. “Can you tell me what Belle’s problem was with Rick as a teacher? I thought she really admired him… But now that I am investigating his death, it appears that that wasn’t actually the case.”

  Melissa looked at me with newfound hope in her eyes. “You’re investigating his death?” she asked, sitting forward. “Are you some kind of detective?” Her eyes were wide.

  “Er, yeah, some kind,” I responded.

  Melissa hesitated a moment. “Please don’t tell Belle that I told you this,” she said worriedly. I had to reassure her that she could trust me and that nothing she told me would ever get back to Belle.

  “Maybe Belle liked Rick. Once,” she whispered, looking around nervously. “But she has had a grudge against him ever since the…incident…last semester.”

  I leaned forward. “What is the incident?” I whispered.

  Melissa’s voice wavered. “She handed in an assignment that was well below her usual standard. Belle pretty much had a breakdown over it. She tried to appeal the mark, but in the end, he had to give her a credit only. It brought down her whole average and meant that she wasn’t a viable honors student any more. Not unless she repeated a subject or appealed again. And Rex already told her no once.”

  I thought about this.

  And the blood on Belle’s hands.

  It wasn’t looking good for my new bestie.

  20

  Claire

  “At least it’s cooler up here,” Bianca said, shivering as she glanced through the window of the car as we entered the gates of Ferguson U.

  “It will be boring,” I warned her as I turned off the engine. “But at least it will be a change of scenery.” I was hoping it would help take her mind off her terrible troubles. And it might help to take my mind off mine as well. I had left town with only quick texts to Matt and Chris to tell them where I was going. Chris was shocked that I was ‘running away.’ Well, maybe I was. But I needed to clear my head.

  Knowing that’s where Alyson was, Matt wasn’t surprised.

  Bianca didn’t seem to mind about the boring part. She was probably just pleased to have somewhere to stay with an actual bathroom. I had already booked the motel, so that was taken care of.

  Ferguson University was surrounded by the mountains, and the campus had a cool arts vibe to it. I could see the appeal. It kind of made me want to return to my studies as I opened the door and took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air.

  “It’s pretty,” Bianca commented, looking around. “So where is Alyson then?”

  Very good question.

  She didn’t know we were coming, so it was going to be a surprise. An amazing surprise for her, I could safely assume. She’d probably been bored out of her mind for the past five days. I knew she wasn’t exactly scholarly. Whatever weird thing she told me on the phone about joining the English Department was just a blip. Maybe just for show. Maybe trying to impress me.

  I had a map of the school grounds pulled up on my phone and I tried to locate the English Department. Even though it was a Saturday, I wanted to have a quick peek inside the building. It wasn’t completely dead. There were weekend classes, and there were some students milling about. The libraries were open and some of the fast food franchises that operated on campus still opened on weekends.

  The name of the English wing was the “Wooley Building.” I found it as Bianca trailed behind me. There was one glum guy sitting on the steps out front reading a Phillip K Dick book.

  Inside, there was a Saturday catchup class taking place, but there were only two students. That struck me as low even for a Saturday.

  “What’s been going on?” I asked the kid on the stairs.

  This kid with the red hair just stared at me in dismissal. Like I was a real pleb that didn’t know anything. “There’s been a murder here. You didn’t know?”

  No. I didn’t.

  21

  Alyson

  I was trotting along campus on a sunny Saturday morning, minding my own business. Well, not really minding my own business of course. Looking for someone else’s business that I could get involved in. Because now I was more intent than ever on finding out who had killed Rick.

  Hmmm. That was a very expensive rental car.

  I paused for a moment and wondered who it could have belonged to. Surely no students drove anything with that price tag, even as a rental and even with their rich parents.

  But I didn’t think too much of it. I just kept walking toward the English building where I was going to hang out to show just how dedicated I was. And also hoping to bump into Melissa or Sam so I could ask them some more questions about Belle.

  I saw someone with short, pale blonde hair.

  Is that Belle? Oh no. I ducked behind a pillar. I had been sort of avoiding Belle ever since my conversation with Melissa, and now it was super awkward to see her, considering I was investigating her.

  There was a tap on my shoulder and I spun around. There was a blonde face staring at me. Hang on. That was Belle! Then who was that outside the Wooley Building?

  Belle was looking at me with angry eyes.

  “I heard you had a little chat with Melissa last night…”

  I was still looking over my shoulder at the woman on the stairs. Oh my gosh. Was that Claire? And Bianca?

  “Belle, I really need to go. Can we talk about this later?”

  “No, we cannot talk about this later! You are not really a prospective resident of the towers, are you?” She crossed her arms. “I heard you are a mature-aged student.”

  I…I didn’t know which problem to deal with first.

  I stared at Belle in defiance. “She told me that Rick gave you a bad grade. And that you were mad at him because of it. Carrying a grudge.”

  Belle crossed her arms. “And you just believed what that random mouse told you?” she asked scornfully. “There was a lot more to it than that, Alyson.” She looked hurt. But I didn’t have time to deal with her just then. What the heck was Claire doing here at Ferguson University?

  I told Belle I had to go and braced myself as Claire came storming toward me.

  Great. I’d just been accosted by one disapproving blonde, and now I was dealing with another. Claire’s face was full of questions as we approached each other.

  “You’ve been investigating a murder and didn’t even tell me?”

  Yep.

  Sprung.

  She had to admit that it was the best iced coffee she had ever tasted.

  “I don’t know what they put in these things, but I am addicted,” I said, sucking up the last of mine. “I have three of these bad boys a day.”

  “Three a day?” Claire asked, sounding concerned. “Alyson, that’s an excessive amount of iced coffees. I really think you should cut back.”

  I was staring at something over her shoulder, so she turned to see what I was looking at so intently.

  It was Bianca, deep in convo with a kid with bright red hair. Oh my gosh. She was talking to Sam. Was she…flirting with Sam?


  “He is a little young for her, don’t you think?” Claire asked, turning back to me.

  I was going to need another iced coffee. “He’s a little too everything for her. Have you met this guy?” I asked incredulously.

  Claire nodded, which surprised me. “Oh,” I said. “I actually never thought that you and Sam Clapton would ever meet. Then again,” I added, raising my eyebrows. “I never thought you’d come all the way up here to see me, you little stalker.”

  Claire looked a little sheepish. “Yeah, well, there’s been a lot going on back in Eden Bay.”

  Oh, what? I was always missing all the fun. No fair, as my niece J would say. “Why, what’s the goss?”

  Claire took a big gulp of iced coffee before she filled me in on the whole story. About how she thought there had been a ghost in the bookshop all week. I was speechless, honestly. Claire was sounding like a completely different person. She was sounding like me.

  She thought I was going to be shocked and scandalized by the whole thing.

  But I just shrugged. “I mean, sure. I would have thought it was a ghost as well. It’s only logical, isn’t it? How amazing is Byron, by the way?”

  Claire nodded and agreed with me. But it looked like she had something else to tell me. She grimaced as she told me. “There was a real ghost in the end. My ex-boyfriend, Chris. And he wants me back.”

  I leaned forward, my eyes bugging out of my head. “What are you going to do?”

  She shrugged. “That’s why I’m here. Sort of escaping from the whole thing. I just didn’t realize that you were up here solving a murder mystery.” She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling of the cafe. “Looks like I can’t escape from the ghosts no matter where I go.”