by Kara Taylor
I follow Tretter out of Aldridge, keeping a safe distance behind him. There are a couple of people hanging outside the dorms, killing time until curfew. A group of guys is huddled off to the side of Aldridge: Dan Crowley, Peter Wu, and Zach Walton. And the thin trails of white coming out their noses is probably not frost.
My plan to sneak after Tretter undetected implodes as a male voice calls my name.
A French male voice.
I squeeze my eyes shut as Sebastian Girard practically gallops toward me. “Anne. Hello there, belle.”
“Hi, Sebastian.” I force a smile. Sebastian doesn’t mean to be such a relentless pain in the ass. It’s just in his DNA or something.
“What are you up to?” he asks.
“Just headed back to my room.” I punctuate the last few words, in case he’ll get the hint, but he starts to prattle on about how he just got back from a Bruins game in the city.
I strain to get a look at Tretter, who has paused by the bike rack outside of Aldridge, cell phone pressed to his ear. He’s staring at the group of guys hanging to the side of the dorm. When Zach Walton notices Tretter, he throws down his joint and crushes it with his heel.
“Thom, can I call you back in a few?” Tretter hangs up and stalks over to the group of guys. “Better be a cigarette you were smoking there, Walton.”
Zach looks as if he’s going to need a new pair of underwear soon. “Y-yes it was, Coach.”
Tretter glares at all of the guys and heads down the path that cuts across the quad. The one that leads to the parking garage.
“Hey, Sebastian, I’ve gotta go.” Just for shits and giggles, I give him a good old European send-off. I kiss both his cheeks and say “Au revoir.”
Sebastian is so shell-shocked he doesn’t say anything when I head in the opposite direction of Amherst. I can’t follow Tretter through the quad; he’ll know I’m behind him—and the security guards usually patrol the main path this close to curfew so they can herd everyone back to the dorms.
Shit. Curfew. I glance at the screen of my phone. There’re twenty minutes until I need to sign back into Amherst and check in with Darlene. The parking garage, where I assume Tretter is headed, is a seven-minute walk from here, at least. But I have a strong feeling he was on the phone with Thom Ennis before, and he could be calling him back any minute.
I cut through the path between the humanities building and Harriman Hall. There’s not a lot of light behind the buildings, but I’m parallel to Tretter and out of his sight. Something scurries through the leaves in the wooded area on the other side of me. Probably just a squirrel.
I peek through the space between the administration building and the campus coffee shop. Tretter moves quickly down the path, slowing when a security guard nods to him. He stops to talk to him, and I press myself against the side of the administration building. My foot jiggles as I watch the minutes pass by on my phone. Hurry up, Tretter.
I hear a muffled “Good night” and see Tretter make a right toward the parking garage. I make sure I’m hidden away from the streetlamps as I cut across the path, following him.
My phone chimes in my hands. Shit.
Tretter stops in his tracks and does a 360 turn. I power my phone off and freeze where I’m standing.
Tretter’s enormous jaw sets. It’s too dark for him to see me. He pulls out a set of keys from his back pocket and enters the ground level of the parking garage. I creep around the side, keeping him in my line of sight as he walks to a huge black SUV and leans against it.
He’s talking on his phone within seconds, but I’m too far away to hear him. I get on my knees and crawl under the cables separating the ground level from the outside, as quietly as I can. I flatten myself against the back of a silver BMW a few cars down from Tretter’s.
“You’re sure it was a girl?” he asks.
The expression on Tretter’s face hardens at Ennis’s response. He obviously doesn’t like it.
“Who said I’m calling you a fool? You got a lot of nerve, Thom, calling me after all these years because some kid pranked you—”
Thom’s response is almost loud enough for me to hear. I make out the words … said she knows about Matty.
The color drains from Tretter’s face as my blood runs cold. Thom Ennis is talking about me—about the phone call.
“Don’t you ever mention his name to me again,” Tretter hisses. “So help me God, I will hunt you and your family down and you’ll be the one—”
A chorus of laughter from the opposite side of the parking garage nearly sends me toppling over. Tretter snaps his phone closed as a familiar voice comes toward us: Professor Robinson.
I peek around the BMW. Robinson is flanked by Matthews—my history professor—and the new physics teacher. They both appear to be holding Robinson up.
“Lawrence!” Robinson booms. He stumbles toward him and clasps Tretter’s enormous hands. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Long evening at the office,” Tretter mumbles, unable to make eye contact with Robinson, whose nose is bright red. His hair, which is always parted down the middle, is sticking up in all different directions. He looks more like the Mayor of Who-ville than my art-history teacher.
“I’m afraid I had a little too much champagne at Professor Matthews’s symposium on the crisis in the Middle East.” Robinson slaps Matthews on the back. “Can you believe this lad was sitting in my classroom not too long ago? How long has it been since you were in my class, Lawrence?”
Tretter mutters something that sounds like “thirty years.”
“All right then.” Robinson shakes Tretter’s hands again. “Rowan here has kindly agreed to drive me home.”
Tretter grunts a good-bye to everyone and slips into his SUV. Matthews tells Rowan—Dr. Muller—and Robinson he’ll see them on Monday and heads for the staircase to the second level of the garage.
Dr. Muller turns and walks straight for the BMW.
Of all the freaking cars for me to hide behind.
“There you go, chap,” Muller says as he helps Robinson into the passenger seat. I crouch down lower, praying that Muller doesn’t turn around before he gets in the car.
My pulse is working so fast my ears are ringing. As Muller makes his way to the driver’s side, he looks right at me. Confusion registers in his eyes as he opens his mouth slightly.
And gets into the car without a word.
When the lights on his BMW disappear out the parking garage entrance, I fumble my way to my feet and bolt out the back. I don’t have time to worry about why Muller pretended not to see me hiding behind his car: I’m too busy replaying Tretter’s conversation with Thom in my head.
It sounded like Tretter knows where Matt’s body is.
And I am so not making curfew.
* * *
I blow through the front entrance of Amherst at ten after eleven. Darlene looks up at me from the front desk and sighs.
“Please,” I say. “Just this once.”
“I really can’t. You know why we have to be so strict.” Darlene frowns at me. “Where were you? Actually, I don’t want to know.”
She’s looking at my sweater. It’s gray with little black birds embroidered on it. But you can’t tell, because it’s inside out.
My cheeks are hot enough to speed global warming up about a thousand years. “It’ll never happen again—”
“It can’t,” Darlene says. “Because if you’re written up again after this, you have to see Dean Tierney. Sorry, Anne.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. I trudge upstairs, not stopping by the common room when I see Remy and the girls watching a movie. When I get to my room, I flop on to my bed and flip to the last page of the first notebook I see on my desk.
I write their names in a circle: Larry Tretter, Thom Ennis, Steven Westbrook, and Travis Shepherd. I put Matt Weaver’s name in the middle, and next to his, Cynthia Durham. I chew the inside of my cheek and add Pierce Conroy to the outer circle, even though I don’t want to.<
br />
I draw a line from Cynthia Durham to Steven Westbrook and Travis Shepherd. She dated Travis but married Steve. Matt was in love with her. Could that have been what got him killed?
I tap my pen against Tretter’s name. Maybe he and Thom weren’t involved at all.… It could be that they’re covering for either Steven or Travis.
Or maybe I just want to believe that because it would mean Brent’s father wasn’t involved.
I roll onto my side and turn on my phone so I can read Brent’s message.
It’s a picture of the elf from latest The Lord of the Rings movie we watched. The one with really long hair. Someone’s added the caption BITCH I’M FABULOUS.
It completely cracks me up, considering what a fail this night has been. Brent’s not big on sending me texts, but when he does, they’re worth the wait.
I lay flat on my back. I got really mad at my dad once, for telling me I couldn’t have coffee with Sal anymore. Sal was my favorite homeless guy in New York. He used to hang outside the coffee shop I stopped at on my way to school in the morning, so I’d buy him a cup and sometimes we’d chat. Turned out Sal hadn’t always been homeless. He lost his house after September 11, and then the FBI kidnapped him and implanted tracking devices in his brain. Or so he says.
My dad said Sal is a paranoid schizophrenic and I need to stay away from people like him. I got really upset at the way my dad talked about Sal. The poor guy has no family or anyone who cares about him. I got into a huge argument with my dad about why he couldn’t do more—he’s a lawyer, after all. Why couldn’t he help Sal?
Daddy put on his You’ll never understand this, Anne voice and said that you can’t change the way things are by saving one person. He said the best we can do in life is surround ourselves with people who make us happy, because the rest of the world is too big to find meaning in.
And that’s what hit me when I read Brent’s text message: Maybe he could be that person. The one who makes it okay that horrible things are going to happen and I’m going to be too powerless to stop them. That there are questions out there I will never be able to answer.
But if everyone just forgets about terrible things they can’t understand—like what happened to Isabella and Matt Weaver—who will be left to remember?
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
News travels fast in a school with a student body smaller than the average church congregation. When I get to breakfast the next morning, the whole table apparently knows I got written up for missing curfew.
“I saw you sneak in last night,” Remy says, before my butt is even in my chair. She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “Were you and Brent a little—”
“A little what?” Brent slides into the chair next to me, a bowl of granola in his hands.
“Oh nothing.” Remy grins. “Just wondering what you and Anne were up to last night that made her miss curfew.”
Brent’s eyebrows knit together as he looks at me. I can see him calculating: I left his room with half an hour until curfew. The confusion on his face turns to hurt, and I think he’s going to call me out on it. But he mumbles something about forgetting coffee and gets up from the table.
I follow him. “You’re upset.”
“No. Just curious … What were you up to that made you miss curfew?”
My defenses fly up. “I got held up.”
His expression is strained. “For over half an hour?”
I shut my eyes and breathe in, because I can’t bear to look at the disappointment on his face anymore. “It was nothing. I promise.”
“Okay. It was nothing.”
Sometimes I can’t figure Brent out at all. But right now, he’s crystal clear: He doesn’t believe me.
“Be honest with me,” I say. “Do you trust me?”
He swallows and meets my eyes. “I want to.”
I almost wish he hadn’t been honest with me.
* * *
I don’t get the chance to gauge how bad things between Brent and me really are, because he has an SGA meeting after breakfast. Sometime around eleven, I decide I’m pissed. That he doesn’t trust me, and that he had the audacity to tell me to my face.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t make the best decisions when I’m mad. But it doesn’t stop me from tracking Casey Shepherd down that afternoon. None of my friends have brought up his after-party again, so like I thought, I’ll have to secure the invite myself.
On the way inside, my phone pings. I have a text from Anthony.
is something wrong???
I delete it, like I’ve done with his last few messages, and put my phone on silent. I know if I accuse him of lying about how he got the Weavers’ address, I can say goodbye to the new, calm Anthony. First, I need to figure out why he lied.
And why he wouldn’t want me to find out he knows more about the Weavers than he let on.
I find Casey Shepherd alone in the library, cloistered behind a study carrel with headphones in. I come up behind him and tap him on the shoulder. He jerks in surprise but smiles and takes his earbuds out when he sees me. “Hey, you.”
“Hi. Got a sec? I need a guy of your stature to get a book down for me.”
“Your boyfriend can’t reach it?” Shep smiles and leans back in his chair. The front two legs come off the ground a little bit, and I sort of hope he falls back and cracks his skull open. But that would defeat my purpose.
“Nope. You gonna help me or what?”
Casey stands. “Lead the way.”
I direct him to the European literature section. “See that book on Spenser criticism? On the top shelf?”
Casey reaches it without exercising the balls of his feet. “Here you go. Reading The Faerie Queene?”
“Yep. Fowler’s giving us an exam on Thursday.”
Casey props his elbow up on the shelf and leans into it. “I just might have a copy of that exam from last year.”
“Might you now?” I raise an eyebrow at him.
He smirks. “I bet Conroy can’t give you that.”
I give Shep a shy smile. “You know, I’m sure he can’t.”
Casey’s blue eyes flash with satisfaction. “I’d watch out for Brent, if I were you.”
I try to keep my tone teasing. “Are you trying to tell me he’s the big player around here?”
“Heard you met his dad.” Casey closes the space between us. He smells like Axe and a touch of weed. I try to stay expressionless and not show him I’m a little freaked out that he seems to be keeping tabs on me.
“Rumor has it Conroy Senior was into some freaky stuff back in the day.” Casey’s eyes move down my body in a way that makes me want to climb out of my skin. “Between you and me, I think you can do better than Junior.”
I tighten my grip on the Spenser criticism book. “Thanks for the tip.”
He smirks and runs a hand through his hair. “What are you doing after spring formal?” He says it as if it’s not a question. My stomach flutters.
“I don’t know.”
“I do. You’re coming to my house on the Cape.”
I return his knowing smile. “Can’t ditch my friends.”
“Bring them. Just make sure Conroy can hold his liquor.”
A laugh bubbles in my throat, because Brent told me the last time he had vodka he woke up without eyebrows. My chest muscles clench. I suddenly want to be wherever he is, even if it means apologizing for this morning and pretending I never heard what Shep said about his father.
Someone clears his throat behind us. Cole waves at us, his eyes trained on me as if to say What the hell are you doing?
“’Sup C?” Shep says. Cole grunts in response, clearly not appreciating being called C.
“Shep and I were just talking about spring formal,” I say quickly.
“Yeah,” he cuts in. “You guys are coming to my place afterward”
“Are we now?” Cole is still looking at me.
“Yup. Catch you guys later.” Casey nods to me and pushes past Col
e, purposely knocking shoulders with him.
“So,” Cole says to me.
“So what?” I can’t keep the annoyance from seeping into my voice. Cole has a lot of nerve, judging me for talking to Casey Shepherd. Because last time I checked, I’m not the one who helped him burn Zach Walton’s skin until it turned purple.
“I’ve gotta go,” I mutter, brushing past Cole. He calls my name.
“He’s not a good guy, Anne,” Cole says. “Be careful.”
“I know.” I level with Cole. “I wouldn’t want to get burned, right?”
He doesn’t say anything as I turn and leave him in the stacks.
* * *
When I leave the library, I have two missed calls from Anthony. As I’m turning my volume back on, he calls back, and I accidentally answer it. Damn it.
“Um. Hey.”
“What the hell is going on?” He asks. “I’ve been trying to get you for three days.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“That’s crap. I told you I had something important on Sonia Russo. What happened?”
“Maybe I should be asking you that,” I say calmly. “I talked to Dennis yesterday.”
“Dennis?” Anthony sounds confused.
“Yes. Funny how he has no recollection of giving you the Weavers’ address.”
“You called him to check up on me?”
I wince. I can’t tell him the real reason I called Dennis. “Don’t deflect, Anthony. I need to know I can trust you.”
“This has nothing to do with you. Drop it, okay?”
“You agreed to help me,” I say. “It has everything to do with me.”
“Well, here’s your help,” Anthony snaps. “Someone went to the police after Sonia went missing and said they saw her on the Wheatley campus the day before. Her name is Vanessa Reardon.”
Reardon. Reardon. I chant it in my head, since I’m walking and have nowhere to write it down. “I have to find this woman.”
“Don’t bother. She took back her statement and said it may not have been Sonia she saw after all. Then Reardon transferred schools. Last known record of her is from 1993, when she got married. She’s moved three times since, all unlisted phone numbers. Phones, cars, everything registered under her husband’s name.”