Dying for an Education

by Stacey Alabaster

  My phone was buzzing.

  “Put that on silent!” Alyson scolded me. I know, I know, number one rule of skulking around—turn your phone off. But I was anxious about what Matt had to say to me. Maybe he had had a run-in with Chris. Maybe he knew why I had really run away.

  I tried to ignore it and turned it off as we followed Bianca into the tower and headed up to Sam’s floor. We would have to hang back while she knocked on his door and drew him out of the room.

  “Poor Bianca,” I commented as we watched.

  But she managed to charm him out of the room and within no time, she was flirting with him in the corridor.

  I was actually surprised by how smoothly this was all going. It was going to be quick and simple to slip into Sam’s room and grab something that he had written.

  Alyson went ahead of me. “He told me he had drafts of his latest essay all over his desk,” she said, snatching up pieces of paper.

  “We only need one!” I said, keen to get out of there.

  We high-fived once we were out. Like actually out in the fresh air. With exactly what we needed. “Yes!” Alyson said. I grinned at her. Yes, it had all gone completely to plan with no hiccups. That never happens.

  “All right, Princess, get reading.”

  I started to study the papers we had stolen from Sam as we crouched in the bushes waiting for Bianca. Then there was a tap on my shoulder.

  I squealed. I never squeal. How embarrassing

  “Rex…” Alyson said, looking up in fright.

  “Just what are you two doing?” he asked in a stern voice as he stared down at the papers I was holding.

  Oh. This must have been the famous Rex Lewis. Head of the English Department. Instiller of fear. Because Alyson looked completely petrified.

  I wasn’t thrilled either. I had just been sprung breaking and entering the room of an undergrad, and I was down on my hands and knees in the shrubbery.

  But it was Alyson who stood to lose the most. Oh goodness. She shot me a pleading look.

  “This was all my idea,” I said, straightening up. “Alyson had nothing to with any of this sir. You have to believe me.”

  It was kind of believable. I was admitting to it. And it was me with the assignment in my hands.

  “Give that to me,” he said in a low voice, holding out his hands.

  But I couldn’t let him take it. Not when we were getting so close to having the proof.

  So I ran.

  27

  Alyson

  “So, what is the verdict?” I asked breathlessly as we arrived in the cafe. We’d weaved our way through the quad and courtyard and lost Rex.

  Claire looked pleased with herself. She nodded. “It was Sam’s assignment that Belle must have copied…or he wrote it for her, at least.”

  Oh gosh.

  Claire just stared at me. “Why do you look so sick?”

  I was doubled over a little as it all dawned on me. All this time… Sam had been the killer.

  Claire asked me, “Do you think he is capable of it?”

  I nodded and looked at Claire glumly. “Oh yeah. You don’t know this guy as well as I do, Claire. He is definitely obsessed enough with his academic career to kill.”

  Claire kept her voice low. There were only a few people in the cafeteria, but this was a delicate subject. “Rick must have been threatening to come clean about the whole thing. Sam was trying to protect himself.”

  “I know.” In a way, none of this was a surprise to me. But you know, I was a little red-faced about the whole thing. I mean, my theory had turned out to be completely wrong, hadn’t it? That it was always the quiet ones—the nice ones—who were guilty in the end. Sometimes, it was actually the ones who were jerks all along.

  Someone familiar stormed into the cafe. From the look on her face, I could tell it was me she was trying to find.

  Belle. It was a little strange to see her and Claire in the same place, considering how identical they looked, at least from the back.

  But I was going to get in first. I asked Claire to give the two of us some space. “Tell me the truth about that assignment, Belle.”

  She went red in the face and tried to pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about. All her bluster was gone.

  We wandered outside to the balcony. She sat down at one of the empty tables. I took a seat next to her as she buried her head in her hands.

  “I got the dates mixed up on the assignments.” She spoke like she was telling the tale of the day someone had died. “I just marked it in my calendar wrong. I thought I still had a week to do the essay—which was worth forty percent of my grade—but I only had a night. And I hadn’t even started to research the topic. Had no books. The library was already closed.”

  I frowned. “I thought that’s what student life was all about—doing assignments the night before they are due.”

  She just glared at me like I had no idea what was true. “Not if you’ve got an average to maintain and you want your lecturers to respect you.”

  I guess I didn’t quite get it. I’d never been worried about impressing the teachers. At least, not the way that Sam and Belle and Melissa were. If anything, I’d always tried to do the opposite. I’d tried to annoy the teacher, get them off side.

  But then again, I’d also never murdered a teacher either, so I supposed my way was best in the end.

  “So, what did you do?” I asked Belle.

  She gulped. “I didn’t have time. At least, not on my own. Sam had already taken the unit the semester before and he knew the topic inside out. One of the essay questions was his area of expertise. And it was sort of perfect, because it was a question he hadn’t answered exactly before, so no one would know.”

  “But they did know,” I pointed out in a quiet voice.

  Belle nodded. “Eventually. But I never thought anyone would find out. I told Sam that if he wrote it for me, then I would stand back and let him have the last spot as Rick’s honor student. At that point, I didn’t mind, as long as I got to do honors. And impressing Rick, being his best student, meant everything to Sam.”

  Of course. That was how she got him to do it.

  She stared off into the distance. “I got a High Distinction. It all went perfectly to plan.”

  “But then Rick found out, didn’t he?”

  Belle nodded glumly as she looked out at the scenery. It looked like snow was falling in the distance on the mountaintops. All of a sudden, I had a longing for the beach, for the sun on my back and my face.

  “He found another one of Sam’s assignments where he had used similar phrasing and he put it all together,” Belle said, her voice thin and weak.

  I blinked a few times. “But I don’t understand why he only put your mark down to a Credit. Why didn’t you just fail the whole assignment?”

  This was where her voice became stronger again. “Because I knew about him and Melissa.” She didn’t look proud of what she had done, but she did look defiant, like she had just done what needed to be done, and it didn’t much matter who had been hurt in the process.

  “So, you came to some sort of compromise.”

  Belle sighed heavily and leaned forward. “Yep. Seemed like just one compromise after another. First, I gave up having Rick as my supervisor just so I could do honors. But then I had to give up honors just so that I wouldn’t be kicked out. And all because I marked the date wrong in my calendar.”

  I couldn’t help but point out one last thing. “Couldn’t you just have asked for an extension? Or worst-case scenario, handed the assignment in late?”

  Belle rolled her eyes at me. “You lose ten percent a day for handing an essay in late. And asking for an extension without a good reason? Good luck, you’re pretty much stuffed.”

  I thought back to the car ride up to Ferguson when Troy had assured me that this would be a relaxed and laidback campus where I would fit and not feel like an outsider. A fraud. But these kids made it seem terrifying here—like swimming in shark-in
fested waters. And I had enough of those back home.

  Belle looked at me with slightly watery eyes. She bit her lip. “I didn’t kill Rick.”

  I nodded. “Sam did it.”

  “Oh gosh.” She leaned her head back and tears welled in her eyes. “And I was devastated that he died. I never wanted it to end like that. I just didn’t want to lose my place here.” And with that, she burst into tears as months—possibly years—of academic stress and frustration came to the surface and all spilled out at once.

  I empathized. “I understand. I am also facing expulsion…”

  Belle looked up at me sharply with tears still swimming in her eyes. “How can that be? You aren’t even enrolled. You can’t be expelled when the university hasn’t even accepted you.”

  Wow. Way to be accurate with the truth.

  “Sam would do it again if he had to,” Belle said in a low voice before she stood to leave. “So you should tell someone before he does it again.”

  But Sam was nowhere to be found.

  And neither was Bianca.

  28

  Claire

  Troy came storming over to me, up the empty street of the campus. It was the first time I’d seen him in a week. “Hey,” I said. “Did you like Ice Cream Girls?”

  “Now is not the time to talk about books, Claire.”

  Well, he was probably right. But we knew Sam was the killer. All we had to do was tell the police and our work was done.

  “Have you seen Alyson?” Troy asked. He looked worried. I wasn’t sure how much to tell him.

  I didn’t know the full story, but from what she had told me, Alyson was avoiding Troy a bit because she was sure that he was going to drag her back to Eden Bay the first chance he got. Apparently, there had been a mix-up with the petrols in the engine, and I was pretty sure that Alyson had something to do with that.

  But now that he was asking, I had to admit that she had been gone a while. Hours, actually. Maybe I should have been worried.

  “No,” I said, looking around. The last I knew, she was speaking to some blonde chick who looked a bit like me but did not have my same sense of style. I mean, I saw what she was going for. She was TRYING to go for my style, but she didn’t have the budget to pull it off so she ended up looking like a dime store version of me. Apparently, she was this “Belle” chick that had plagiarized Sam’s assignment. I wasn’t too impressed, to be honest. Looked like she plagiarized her style as well.

  Troy looked worried. I didn’t think he had any cause to be concerned, though. Alyson was probably just sucking on another iced coffee in the cafeteria. “She couldn’t have gone far. She loves this place,” I pointed out to Troy, but when I tried to phone her, there was no answer and only a message that the phone wasn’t working or had been disconnected.

  And I was starting to get a bad feeling about the whole thing.

  Troy started to walk away. “Hang on!” I called out. “You don’t even know your way around the campus!”

  It turned out he had been there before to give a guest lecture at the business facility. I wondered what he would make of Alyson’s decision not to study business at all now as I chased after him. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I made of that decision. Alyson had always hated English, and now she wanted to do it as a major? I wasn’t sure if this was a great growth moment for her, or just one of her erratic decisions that she would change her mind about later. I wasn’t sure whether to encourage it or give her a stern talking-to.

  I finally caught up with Troy and we agreed that we should work together to find Alyson. I tried to call Bianca. The same thing. There was also no response, like her phone was turned off or was in a dead spot.

  It turned out that the Ferguson University campus on a late Sunday afternoon was a scary place to be…especially when it was after 4:00 pm and the sun had started to set. It set even earlier in the mountains, and there was an eerie wind blowing around campus. I did not like it one bit. I just wanted to get back to the motel and watch some lame Sunday afternoon program like I did when I was young. Comfort TV.

  Nothing about this was comforting.

  It was getting quieter and quieter on campus. I was pretty sure we were the only two people on the grounds as we searched for Alyson. I kept trying her phone and then Bianca’s. Nothing.

  I stopped and took a deep breath. “Okay, we need to think about this Troy,” I said. “Where in the school would there be no reception?”

  He was thinking hard, but before he could respond, I already had my answer. I actually slapped my own forehead.

  “Of course! The library.”

  Troy looked at me skeptically.

  “Trust me,” I said. “That’s where they are.”

  The library did not look so welcoming this time. It had the same scent as the day before, only this time, it didn’t just smell like old books and history. It smelt like death.

  It was just like one giant bookshop.

  One giant haunted bookshop.

  In the dark.

  I gulped and looked up at the second level. Troy and I both heard the footsteps and the cries coming from up there.

  Oh my gosh. Not again.

  We heard Alyson’s voice. “Help!” she screamed, and then her cries were muffled.

  A shock of red hair ran past the banister of the second floor. Sam. With Alyson in his grip. He was dragging her.

  Troy took a step forward. He shot me a stern yet sympathetic look over his shoulder when he saw that I was paralyzed. “It’s okay, Claire, I’ve got this. You just stay back here…”

  Part of me just didn’t want to be left alone because that was possibly just as terrifying as going up to the second level. But I also hated to be told what to do, to stand back, to stay out of the action.

  I wasn’t scared. Well, I was scared. But I was going to do it anyway.

  I closed my eyes and started to sprint up the stairs. I immediately tripped, and Troy shouted at me to keep my eyes open. “You have to be able to see where you are going.”

  Easier said than done. There were things up there I just didn’t want to see.

  Once again, I was confronted with the sight of Bianca on the second floor. Only this time, she wasn’t camping out. She was frantic.

  “What happened?” I asked, running up to her.

  “Alyson came looking for me! She was trying to help me, save me from him, but he’s got Alyson now!” Bianca exclaimed.

  I turned to Troy. “We just have to let him know that we are here. And that we all know what he has done. He can’t kill all of us. That is just not possible.”

  Bianca pointed toward the window. “Look! He’s going out to the balcony with her!”

  I knew that Sam liked to push people off balconies. This one wasn’t high enough, though.

  But there were higher levels than the second floor and with Alyson in his grip, he changed direction and started to head toward the elevators. Oh my gosh. The fifth floor might just be high enough.

  Troy took the stairs, and I just stood there. Terrified.

  Move, Claire. Just move.

  There was a balcony, and I went out and craned my neck upwards.

  But upwards was not where Sam was. I heard screams from downstairs and realized that it had been a misdirect—he had taken the elevator down. He was dragging Alyson away from the library and across campus. Toward the towers.

  “TROY!” I screamed out. “LOOK DOWN!”

  I was already flying down the stairs. And this time, I had had my eyes wide open.

  Bianca, Troy, and I were all racing toward the towers. I couldn’t help but feel a little competitive. I should have been the fittest of the three and by far the fastest, but Bianca was gaining on me and started to just overtake me while I was huffing and puffing.

  Troy caught up as soon as Bianca and I reached the bottom of the building.

  But by then, Sam had taken her to the top of the tower.

  And it was just the three of us looking up.

  Were
we too late? Was it all over?

  I screamed as I saw someone being dangled over the edge of the balcony. Oh my gosh. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t really be about to watch my best friend tumble to her death.

  But then I saw that the figure had bright red hair.

  Someone gave one final push. And Sam went toppling over the side.

  I looked up and saw Melissa’s face staring down at us all.

  A satisfied look on her face as she dusted off her hands.

  Her revenge finally taken.

  The injuries weren’t fatal, but Sam was going to be in a cast for a while under police custody. We all watched him being taken away in the ambulance while sirens rang out and Melissa was taken away. She wasn’t a murderer, but she was going to face the consequences for what she had done.

  Alyson was shaken and not just from her close brush with death.

  “I never thought it would turn out to be Sam,” she said, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “He was such a jerk.”

  “But that’s exactly why. BECAUSE he was a jerk. I thought it was the nice ones you had to watch out for.”

  I shrugged. That was why we should never make presumptions.

  Troy took a deep breath. “So, are we ready to head back to Eden Bay yet?”

  Alyson nodded. “I could do with some sea air and some surf. But I am enrolling here in the autumn.”

  Epilogue

  Claire

  I stared down at the futon still on the floorboards of the second floor. This was the thing I really needed to burn. I thought about the poor stool that had been lost, pointlessly, to the flames, when it had really done nothing.

  I heard footsteps and screamed before I turned around.

  Someone was there in the dark. Or something.

  I placed my hand over my heart and felt it. It was beating fast. “Oh my gosh, Matt, you scared the living daylights out of me.”