Wicked Little Secrets: A Prep School Confidential Novel

by Kara Taylor

  “Where did you go to school?” I ask Ms. C.

  She cocks her head at me, as if she’s surprised I asked. “I went to UNC. Chapel Hill.” She rolls her eyes. “Go Tar Heels.”

  I think that’s when I decide I’m in love with her. She sends me off with a “Junior Year Checklist” of things I have not done, like Schedule interview at first choice college and Take the ACT exam.

  “Anne,” Ms. C says when I’m halfway out the door. “I’ll give you ’til six tonight to get me that translation.”

  I could seriously hug her. “Thanks.”

  She beams at me again, and I think maybe I don’t give this school enough credit. They had enough sense to hire someone like her, at least.

  * * *

  I swing by the library before dinner to type up my translation and e-mail it to Ms. C. When I finish, I find myself at the circulation desk asking where I can find old Wheatley School yearbooks.

  “Second-floor stacks,” the librarian tells me. “But if you want editions older than 1930, you’ll have to go to the archives.”

  I thank her and head upstairs. The second floor of the library is only one of many places at the Wheatley School where I don’t like to be alone. The first floor was renovated years ago to look like a replica of the Harvard Library, but the upstairs was left intact. Everything, especially the spiral staircase, creaks upon contact, and the ceiling is claustrophobically low. It stinks of old books and mold.

  I find two rows of yearbooks on the shelf opposite the volumes of history books on the Wheatley School. I left the missing edition in my room. Since Isabella never returned it, I definitely don’t want to get caught with it.

  I run my fingers across dusty spines: 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982. Matt Weaver went missing in 1981. I take all four yearbooks and find an armchair in the corner.

  The photograph in my bag feels like contraband. Which is obviously silly, since I have real contraband in there. (Pepper spray. My dorm was broken into. I’m not screwing around.) I smooth down the peeling corners of the photo and flip through the 1980 yearbook until I find the student portraits. Matt Weaver would have been a sophomore that spring.

  I scan the sophomore class for Pierce Conroy. For a split second, I fill up with hope that I was wrong about Brent’s father being in the picture. But when I turn the page to the junior class, there he is, looking up at me with that familiar impish grin.

  My mouth is dry. I flip back to the sophomore class. Right next to Matt Weaver is Steven Westbrook. I confirm that it’s him in the crew team photo and see if I can attach any more faces to names.

  It doesn’t take me long to make my first match. Lawrence Tretter, a chubby boy with sand-colored hair in a crew cut. Then, Thom Ennis, the scrawny freckled guy on the other side of Matt Weaver. Travis Shepherd, who is good-looking in an odd way, despite having hair down to his shoulders and a small space between his front teeth.

  I enter the names into a note on my phone. As I motion to check out the senior class, someone says my name.

  I snap the yearbook shut, the photo tucked between its pages. Cole Redmond gives me a funny look, his laptop case slung over his shoulder.

  “Hey. What are you doing up here?” I ask.

  “Typing up my reflection on the Rembrandt slides.” Cole and I have art history together. “Too many people downstairs.”

  What he really means is too many talk when they see Cole nowadays. In a school with only two hundred students, there are no secrets.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, his eyebrows knit together. He nods to the yearbooks in my lap.

  “You’re going to think I’m a loser.” I feign sheepishness. “I met Brent’s dad this weekend, and I wanted to check out what he looked like in high school.”

  If Cole thinks it’s bizarre I need four yearbooks to accomplish this task, he doesn’t show it. A smile plays on his lips. Cole is ridiculously good-looking, but unlike Brent, he’s unaware of it. Most of the time. “I’m sure Brent was thrilled about that.”

  “Elated.” I play with the charm around my neck and meet Cole’s eyes. “Hey. Are we okay?”

  “What do you mean?” His hands go into his pockets.

  “I mean, if you want to hate me, I understand.”

  “I could never hate you.” Cole’s hazel eyes are honest. And sad. “I hate what my mom did. And my dad for being a prick and driving her to do it.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” I say. “There’s no excuse for cheating.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I used to say.” Cole sighs. “Then someone you love does it. Hey, we’re gonna be late for dinner.”

  Cole tries to help me put the yearbooks back, but I insist on doing it myself so I can sneak the photo back into my bag. I didn’t realize Cole was an only child like me, so we commiserate together on the way to the dining hall. (Number-1 Only-Child Misconception: Everyone thinks our parents are indulgent and doting, when in reality we can’t catch a break from their neuroses and nit-picking. As if they’re afraid if we become screwups, their entire existences will have been wasted.)

  Our friends are at our usual table. The girls—Remy, Kelsey, and April—are huddled together, looking at something on the screen of Remy’s phone. Brent, Murali, and Phil have a total of about eight trays of food between them.

  “Fat Tuesday passed, you know,” I say, putting my bag down on the empty seat next to Brent.

  “We have to bulk up. All protein.” Murali bites into a hard-boiled egg. He’s got a chicken fillet, no bread, and a bowl of peanut butter on the plate in front of him.

  “You have to bulk up,” Cole says. He’s got three inches and fifteen pounds of muscle on all of them, easily. “I get to have some of that fatty-looking chocolate cream pie over there.”

  Brent grunts. Although muscular, he’s the smallest guy at the table. “Wonder what Tretter would say to you having PIE the night before a piece.”

  I pause in the middle of searching through my bag for my antibacterial. “Tretter?”

  Brent looks at me funny. “Coach Tretter.”

  “Oh. Right.” I excuse myself and head for the salad bar.

  What are the chances the crew coach isn’t the same Tretter as the one in the photo? Lawrence Tretter.

  Looks like I won’t have to go too far to find the first person on my list.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  A “piece,” in rowing terms, is a simulated race that’s just as exhausting as the real thing. The next morning, Brent slumps into British literature looking so defeated that Fowler doesn’t even have the heart to ream him out for being five minutes late.

  Brent slides into the seat next to me and squeezes my hand beneath the table. “You okay?” I mouth at him.

  He squeezes my hand again.

  I turn to the poem we’re reading—Book II of The Faerie Queene—and sigh loud enough to get a laugh out of Brent and the girl sitting in front of me. I don’t mean to be obnoxious, really, but I’m at my saturation point for boring poetry by British dudes who take themselves too seriously. And I love reading. I guess my poetry-appreciation mechanism is broken or something.

  I rifle through the pages as Fowler drones on about allegory. It’s the same garbage every day: Blah, blah, Catholicism is evil, blah blah. I really should focus, seeing as how we have a midterm in a few weeks, but I find myself turning to the inside cover of my anthology and tracing the name scrawled there in blue ink.

  If it weren’t for this textbook, I probably wouldn’t even know the name Matt Weaver. He was one of a handful of people who had the anthology before me. He’s also the only person who used felt-tip pen to make notes in the margins. I have firsthand experience with said notes, because a couple of months ago, I (unsuccessfully) tried to pass off his commentary on Paradise Lost as my own.

  Something pings in my brain. I didn’t notice any of Matt’s notes in The Faerie Queene. Assuming Fowler has been following the same exact syllabus for the past thirty years—not a stretch at all—Matt n
ever got to read The Faerie Queene.

  Which means he was reading Paradise Lost around the time he went missing.

  Probably it means nothing. I’m making connections where there are none, just like the people who thought Matt disappearing on the thirteenth meant he was a satanist. But I can’t shake the feeling that something, anything, he was thinking at the time might be revealed in one of his notes.

  As I flip through the book in search of Matt’s trademark blue ink, I stop somewhere in Book VIII of Paradise Lost. There’s an explosion of writing on the page. I look over at Brent. He’s mastered a half-interested expression, his face resting on his palm. I know he’s actually semi–passed out. I study the markings on the page more closely.

  I have to stifle a gasp. They aren’t markings but an incredible drawing of Adam and Eve. It must have taken Matt hours to draw this: Every vein in the leaves, every strand of Eve’s hair is sketched out with painstaking detail.

  Eve’s hair falls in front of her face like a curtain, ending at her naked hip. There’s something familiar about the way Adam’s hair reaches his ears, curling up at the ends. I look closely at his face.

  Holy crap.

  Matt Weaver drew himself as Adam. I’ve looked at the photo in my bag enough times that I’ve memorized his face. His attention to detail is almost frightening, down to the freckle on his upper lip.

  Adam/Matt is frowning, a tear pooling at the corner of his eye. In his hand is a half-eaten apple. A serpent with hollow black eyes is coiled around his arm.

  I flip back to The Faerie Queene, doing a quick glance around the room to make sure no one saw what I saw. It’s just a drawing, yet I feel like I’ve looked into someone’s most private thoughts.

  Matt Weaver saw himself as Adam. So what did he do to get kicked out of Paradise?

  * * *

  Brent and I are quiet as we leave class. We haven’t gotten to spend any time alone together since the baseball game on Saturday. It must frustrate him as much as it frustrates me, because when we’re alone on the path leading to the quad, he pulls me behind Harriman Hall.

  He places one hand behind my neck and one on my hip, finding a sliver of skin between my skirt and sweater and tracing it with his thumb. I close my eyes as his lips find mine. My hands hang at my sides.

  Brent pulls away. “Is everything okay?”

  I look down and pluck an imaginary piece of lint from my skirt. “Yeah, of course. Why?”

  “Don’t know. Just seems like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  For the first time, I wish Brent were an unperceptive idiot like every other seventeen-year-old guy I’ve met. I want to be honest with him. Whatever this thing is we’re doing together, I want to do it right. But I can’t show him the photo. There’s no way around the implications that his father could have been involved in a murder.

  “I’m fine.” I lean forward on the balls of my feet and plant a kiss on his forehead. “Just stressed.”

  Brent seems satisfied with this. And it’s the truth: Ever since I realized his father is in the photo, I can’t stop thinking about Matt Weaver. About the person who knows what happened to him—the coward who wrote on the back of a picture instead of coming forward with the truth.

  And what bothers me most of all is this pressing weight I feel now. Almost like if I don’t try to uncover the truth, no one will. Matt Weaver’s parents will die never knowing what happened to their only son. If they haven’t already.

  I lace my fingers through Brent’s as we head to lunch. How could I even begin to tell anyone about this? They’d say the joke is on me this time. That my brain wants to believe Matt Weaver was murdered because I’m still not over what happened to Isabella. That if I don’t cut the crap, I’m going to wind up like one of those lunatics who spends all day on conspiracy-theory forums and keeps an arsenal of guns in the basement.

  There’s only one person who would believe me. And I’m definitely not calling him.

  * * *

  It’s a quarter to the ass crack of dawn on next Saturday, and I’m on line at a coffee shop by the Wheatley T station with Remy. She has to be at the Boston College Athletics box office at 8:00 A.M. to pick up tickets for her brother’s lacrosse game. At some point in the week I guess I agreed to go with her. I yawn—a little too loudly, with a dramatic arm movement—and Remy elbows me in the ribs.

  “To your right,” she whispers.

  I rub my eyes and glance over at the area where you pick up your drinks. I curse under my breath and angle my body so I’m facing Remy and not him.

  Headmaster Goddard. He accepts a mug of coffee from the barista with a nod. His white hair is combed neatly to the side, and he’s wearing a beige fisherman’s cable sweater. A copy of The Boston Globe is tucked under his arm.

  “I’ve never seen him off campus.” The way she says it, the headmaster may as well be a unicorn.

  We watch Goddard choose a table by the door. He unfolds his newspaper and takes a sip from his coffee, black. Like his soul, I imagine.

  Professor Upton’s voice fills my head. I’m wondering if we should have done more about his … obsessive behaviors. She meant Lee.

  And then Goddard’s: If he never touched that girl, this isn’t even a conversation.

  He couldn’t even use Isabella’s name.

  “I hate him,” I say.

  Remy is quiet as we approach the counter. I order a cinnamon dolce latte, extra foam. She pretends to think about what she wants for a moment before ordering the same thing. It’s our pattern.

  When our drinks are ready, Remy practically hides behind me. We have to pass Goddard on our way out, and her eyes are on the floor as if we’re doing something wrong by daring to be in his presence. I want him to see me, though. I want him to know I haven’t forgotten anything.

  I don’t even have to feign a cough or a sneeze to get him to look up. “Ladies. Good morning.” Goddard’s lips spread into a patronizing smile.

  “Morningheadmaster.” Remy is practically twitching next to me.

  “Ms. Dowling.” Goddard nods to me.

  I can’t think around the buzzing in my ears. All I can think of is the missing tape—the one that proves Goddard knew Lee was stalking Isabella and did nothing. Dr. Harrow is the last person that had it, but the police couldn’t find it in his house. Could Goddard have gotten to it first?

  My temperature rises at the thought. At the memory of how casual Goddard sounded on the tape, as if Professor Upton were coming to him about a leak in her classroom ceiling, and not about a student stalking another.

  Ah. Diana. Come in. I’ve just brewed a lovely Ethiopian roast.

  Harrow may be in jail and Upton may have retired, but it’s done nothing to stem the corruption that’s happened on Goddard’s watch.

  I finally find my voice. “Good morning, Headmaster.”

  Goddard nods to us. “Enjoy the lovely spring day, ladies.”

  My voice quavers as I say, “Enjoy your lovely Ethiopian roast.”

  Remy drags me out the door before I can see the expression on his face.

  * * *

  I’m an only child. So naturally, I take issue with the concept of doing a pain-in-the-ass favor solely because a sibling says you have to.

  “Why can’t your brother go to the box office himself?” The train car is crowded, so we have to stand and hold on to the rails. Every time we stop at a station, I make sure to squeeze some antibacterial onto my and Remy’s palms.

  “He says he’s busy.” Remy chews the inside of her cheek. “Also, he said if I don’t do it, he’ll tell our parents we went to a party at his frat house a few months ago and April threw up in the bathtub.”

  The T lurches to a stop. The doors open as a voice overhead announces the stop. Next is Boston College. A tall blond girl wades through the crowd to the doors, not bothering to say excuse me. Her horsey face is pinched as if she’s annoyed the crowd hasn’t automatically parted for her.

  “Holy Cow,” R
emy says, wobbling as the train begins moving again. “Was that—”

  “Alexis.” I let my fingers curl around the pole more tightly. “Yes.”

  At school, there’s some sort of unspoken agreement not to discuss Alexis Westbrook. She’s as embarrassing a subject as an ingrown butt hair. Before everything went down with Alexis’s dad and he was forced to resign, Isabella had exposed Alexis for being a racist lunatic, and most of her longtime friends, including Remy, abandoned her.

  Personally, I don’t understand the element of surprise. I knew Alexis was a lunatic after being around her for five minutes.

  “She’s probably visiting her mom’s and brother’s graves.” Remy’s voice is small. “Her mom was born in Chestnut Hill; Alexis goes every month to see them.”

  Alexis’s mother and younger brother were killed in a car accident when Alexis was pretty young. I try to imagine what growing up without my mom would be like. Not hearing her tap on my door every morning before school to make sure I was awake. I mean, I miss having that now, with my mom in New York. I don’t want to think about never having it again.

  My experiences with death are pretty limited. I’ve been lucky that way. Grandpa Harold died when I was six, and I didn’t even know Isabella that well. How different would I be now if I hadn’t been so lucky?

  It’s hard for me to feel sorry for Alexis Westbrook after she tried to frame me for Isabella’s murder and made my life a living hell for months. But it’s also hard not to.

  * * *

  Alexis haunts my thoughts until Remy and I get back to the dorms. After lunch, I Google Steven Westbrook’s wife.

  I skip over all the recent news articles about the senator’s resignation and go straight to the Personal Life section of his Wikipedia page.

  Steven Westbrook married Cynthia Durham in 1989. The two met at the Wheatley School while Westbrook was a sophomore and Durham a freshman. They later reconnected while pursuing MBAs at Harvard’s Business School. The Westbrooks had two children together: Alexis and Bryce.

  Death of Durham-Westbrook

  Sometime after midnight on July 7, 1995, Cynthia Durham-Westbrook and her son left their vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard. Senator Westbrook said his wife regularly took the infant Bryce on car rides when he would not go to sleep. When Durham-Westbrook had not returned two hours later, Westbrook called the police. The Westbrooks’ family car was found overturned on the side of Blue Star Highway. Durham-Westbrook and her son both sustained fatal injuries.