Wicked Little Secrets: A Prep School Confidential Novel

by Kara Taylor

  I nod. “I know it sounds crazy—”

  “It does.” Brent considers the photo. “Anne, someone wrote this to mess with people like you.”

  “People like me? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” He tilts his head back into the wall behind us. “It’s just … you’re new here. And Matt Weaver is this ridiculous urban legend meant to scare new people.”

  “Brent, he was real. I met his parents,” I say. “Someone knows what happened to him.”

  He surprises me by finding my hand in the dark. He laces his fingers through mine. “And you think that someone might be my dad.”

  “I didn’t say that. But something’s going on with the others … Westbrook, Tretter—”

  “Wait, you think Coach is involved?” Brent stares at me. “The only thing he’s guilty of is being a dumbass.”

  “I heard him and Casey talking about The Drop. Tretter sounded like he didn’t want you guys to do it … almost as if someone had gotten hurt before. Or worse.”

  Brent is quiet. “Trust me. The Drop is harmless. It’s not how Matt Weaver died.”

  “How do you know?”

  Silence envelops us. Suddenly it feels ten degrees colder down here. With the arm that’s not tangled with Brent’s, I hug myself.

  He finally says something. “Because my dad is the one who came up with The Drop. He knew Matt Weaver, and he says all of the rumors about him being murdered aren’t true. He was just a messed-up kid who couldn’t handle the pressure of going to school here.”

  I kind of wish he hadn’t said anything at all. How can he accept everything he’s been told so easily? That Matt Weaver simply went for a walk, never came back, and that’s all there is to it?

  He squeezes my knee. “Talk to me.”

  “What you guys did—The Drop—it’s really messed up.” My voice is almost a whisper. “You could give them a heart attack or something. I almost had one watching them.”

  “I know. But it’s a tradition.” Brent’s eyes are on the wall opposite us. “Anne … you can’t tell anyone what you saw. We’d be in deep shit. Goddard could end us.”

  “I doubt that. Goddard is really good at not telling anyone what he sees.”

  “I’m serious. This isn’t a joke. Rowing has won more awards for Wheatley than any other team or club.” He looks at me, pleading with me. “And the team didn’t kill Matt Weaver. That’s insane.”

  “Okay.” What else can I say? That I don’t believe him? That his own father might know who killed Matt Weaver?

  He squeezes my hand, but I don’t think it’s enough to close this new distance between us.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  My dad took a high-profile murder case in New Jersey when I was really young. Some eighteen-year-old girl was on trial for killing her parents. The prosecution said she was a manipulative teenager who hated her mother for not letting her date an older guy. She’d stabbed them both to death during an argument gone wrong. That was the theory, at least.

  The evidence against the girl was pretty bad. Neighbors had heard her screaming at her mother in the morning, and she was found at the crime scene covered in both her parents’ blood. My dad tells me he took the case after the girls’ aunt pleaded with him: Just keep her off death row.

  My dad doesn’t half-ass anything, though, and he noticed something off about the crime scene. The lights were off in the house when the police arrived: Either the girl had turned off the lights after killing her parents or she had really come home to find them that way, like she said she did. Why would anyone kill their parents, call 911, and turn off the lights while they waited for the police?

  If the lights were off when the couple was killed, my dad argued, it couldn’t have been a crime of passion. An intruder could have broken into the house and been waiting for the girls’ parents.

  After a hugely drawn-out trial, the girl was found not guilty. Reasonable doubt. Five years later, the real intruder was caught murdering someone else and confessed he’d killed the couple in a robbery gone wrong.

  My dad calls the case his “white rabbit.” He couldn’t ignore the lights being off in the couples’ home. No matter how nasty or publicized the trial got, and despite getting death threats, the lights were my dad’s white rabbit, and he couldn’t stop pursuing it. He knew the real story was out there, waiting for him to bring it to the surface.

  The photograph—the THEY KILLED HIM one—is my white rabbit. I know now that I’ll never be able to let Matt Weaver go unless I get the answers I’m looking for.

  * * *

  “Anne. Wake up.”

  A soft elbow connects with my shoulder. I rub my eyes and sit up. Kelsey is peering at me through her red-framed Ray-Bans. She only wears her glasses in dire situations.

  It’s midterm week. And apparently I fell asleep facedown in my biology notes.

  Kelsey points to my face. “Hey, I was working on the genetic-dominance problem set, too.”

  I retrieve my compact mirror from my purse and examine myself. In addition to the gray bags under my eyes there is a perfect imprint of AaBbCc on my cheek.

  “I give up,” I say around a yawn, as Remy returns from one of the library printing stations, weighed down by a stack of papers. She doesn’t talk to us as she sits at the table and begins highlighting. The look on her face is scary. I’d hate to see her right before the SATs.

  Less than a minute later, Brent tracks us down, wearing his crew sweatshirt and gym shorts. His hair is wet.

  “This is cute.” He traces the letters imprinted on my cheek and goes off to find a free chair. He may as well be shopping at Walmart on Black Friday.

  “I don’t see how their coach can make them have practice during midterms,” Kelsey whispers to me. “That’s inhumane.”

  I don’t miss the irony in her statement. Brent returns from the circulation desk, chair in hand and smile on his face. I don’t know who is better at convincing people to do things for them—me or Brent.

  “I don’t see how your coach can make you practice this week,” Kelsey repeats as Brent sits between us.

  He shrugs, but Remy looks up for just long enough to say, “Their first race of the season is on Saturday.”

  I eye Brent. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” he says.

  “Don’t say that in front of your dad,” Remy mutters.

  Brent suddenly looks uncomfortable. “Your dad is going?” I ask.

  “Says he is. We’ll see about that, though.”

  “I want to go,” I say. “Especially if your family will be there.”

  Brent is quiet. Is this about the other night, and me messing up The Drop? Is he mad he had to lie to the team about the kids in the woods?

  “You really don’t have to.” Brent isn’t looking at me. “It’ll be boring.”

  I feel kind of like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. He doesn’t want me there. Is it because his family will be there? That doesn’t make sense, though: I already met his sister and dad.

  Something else occurs to me. If Brent’s parents will be there, so will the other guys’. My blood rushes to my head. Travis Shepherd will probably be there, and Tretter definitely will be.…

  That’s almost half the people in the photo in one place.

  I watch Brent, who is playing with the strap on his watch. Is he thinking the same thing—that if I show up to the race, it will only be to stick my nose where he asked me not to?

  “I’m hungry,” Kelsey moans. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “Can we take a dinner break?”

  “I guess.” Remy sighs. “But we might lose the table.…”

  “I’ll stay,” I offer. “I’m really not hungry.” It’s the truth.

  “Are you sure? You need to eat.” Remy looks at me, obviously torn between her motherly instincts and her neurosis over losing the perfect study table. “We could bring you something back.”

>   “It’s fine.” I wave them on. “I’ll grab something on the way back to Amherst tonight.”

  The girls collect their bags, leaving their books behind. Brent kisses me on the cheek before he stands up. “Everything okay?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’ll see you later, maybe.”

  And I’ll definitely see you at the race on Saturday.

  * * *

  I’m not the only one skipping dinner in favor of studying. Lee Andersen’s roommate, Arthur Colgate III—AKA Peepers, due to the lenses that magnify his eyes to twice their size—is at the table next to me. He’s created somewhat of a fortress around himself with textbooks.

  I turn to my page of biology notes, tapping my pen against it. There’s no way I’ll be able to focus now. Not when Brent is being so weird about me going to his race.

  “Hey,” I say to Peepers. He looks at me. Or not. I can’t really tell, with the way his eyes move behind his glasses.

  “Would you mind watching this table for a couple minutes?” I ask him. He nods.

  I head for the second floor, bringing my purse with me. I’m not really sure what I’m doing until I find myself standing in front of the old-yearbook shelf again.

  If a picture tells a thousand words, maybe there are enough in these to tell the whole story about what happened to Matt Weaver.

  I find the 1981 yearbook and find my usual armchair. It’s occupied by a sleeping freshman boy. I return to the stacks where the yearbooks are and sit on the floor.

  Vanessa Reardon’s photo is in the 1981 sophomore class section, on the same page as Lawrence Tretter. She’s cute, in a tomboyish way: Her hair is in a pixie cut, and there are freckles on her nose.

  I look through the rest of the yearbook, even though if there were any mentions of Matt Weaver in it, the school would have sanitized the yearbook. I’ll bet Isabella’s photo won’t even appear in this year’s edition.

  I stop at a page titled “Spotted Around Campus.” Below the title is a collage of candid photos. Steven Westbrook is in a third of them, flashing his stupid horsey smile and putting his arm around whomever he’s with. As if he were already campaigning for senator.

  The image quality is different for each picture, and some are Polaroids. I’m guessing students volunteered their personal photos, so my chances at finding something incriminating are pretty slim.

  I turn to the next page of photos. A picture at the center catches my eye. It doesn’t look like it was taken anywhere on campus—the furniture is too nice, too expensive. The crew team guys are in it, except for Pierce Conroy.

  Travis Shepherd sits at the center of the couch, his arm around Cynthia Durham. Matt Weaver is next to Travis, and Larry Tretter sits on the arm of the couch, sulking. Steven Westbrook is on the other side of Matt Weaver.

  None of them looks happy to be having the picture taken—probably because of the plastic cups in their hands. I’d bet anything it’s not apple juice in there. But what really grabs my attention are the two girls off to the side. Their expressions say they don’t think they’re in the photo at all.

  I recognize one: Vanessa Reardon. The other is unfamiliar. She’s rail thin and wearing a paisley dress that’s too big for her. Her hair is supercurly and black.

  I flip back to the student portraits. My eyes are drooping by the time I’ve been through all of them, but I don’t find the mystery girl. I’m not surprised, because she doesn’t look like a Wheatley student, anyway.

  I turn back to the photo. Even though the picture isn’t the best quality, it’s obvious the girl is beautiful. Her eyes are almond shaped, and she wears her sadness in her expression.

  I consider the yearbook in my hands. All the books on this floor are considered reference materials—meaning nobody is allowed to check them out. There’s no visible security device on the yearbook, so I’m willing to bet there’s one of those invisible stamps inside that will set off the door alarms.

  I glance down the aisle to make sure I’m alone. Very carefully, I tear the page with the collage out of the yearbook, almost positive I’ve found Sonia Russo.

  * * *

  I need to find Dan Crowley. It’s a Friday night, so it doesn’t take a private investigator to figure out he’s probably in his dorm playing Call of Duty with Peter Wu.

  I coax a freshman into signing me in and I head to the fourth floor of Aldridge. I have to bang on Dan’s door a few times before it swings open. He gapes at me and says, “Give me five minutes,” into his headset.

  Dan Crowley was useful when I needed to hack into the school’s record system a few months ago. He has a lisp, which I’m not sure is natural or from his tongue ring. His hair isn’t gelled into a Mohawk tonight.

  “Hey,” I say, at the same time the person on the other end of his headset asks, “Is that a girl?”

  Dan yanks it off. “Wassup?”

  “Got a second? I need your help.”

  “Step into my office.”

  Dan Crowley’s side of the dorm room is a geek’s wet dream. His desktop computer is hooked up to two thirty-inch monitors, and he’s converted his closet into a nook with a television, mini fridge, and Xbox.

  “I need some e-mail addresses,” I say.

  Dan’s brow furrows. “They’re all on the student directory.”

  “No,” I say. “Like … alumni e-mail addresses. Important alumni.”

  Dan scratches his goatee with his thumbnail. “So you need master list access.”

  “Master list?”

  “It’s how mass e-mails go out without everyone seeing all the recipients. If the people you’re looking for are subscribed to the alumni master list, you’d just need the address and you could e-mail all of them.”

  My head is swimming. “But I don’t want to e-mail all of them.”

  Dan sighs. “I could probably get you individual addresses if you tell me their names.”

  Ten minutes later, I’m sitting on Dan’s beanbag chair, splitting a bag of Starbursts with him as he bends over his desk, typing things I can’t see into his computer. Coach Tretter was easy, since he’s on the Wheatley faculty web site, and I already have Thom Ennis’s e-mail.

  “Shepherd and Conroy are on the alumni master list,” Dan finally announces. He scribbles their e-mail addresses on the Post-it and hands it to me. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone I hacked it.”

  I cross my heart. “Snitches get stitches.”

  I get up from the beanbag and realize I’m looking at Zach Walton’s bed. At least, that’s his jacket lying on it. The windbreaker he had on the other night.

  “Zach is your roommate?” I ask.

  Dan nods. “Since freshman year.”

  I sit back down on the beanbag. “Have you noticed anything weird about him lately?”

  Dan fiddles with his tongue ring. “Maybe. Depends.”

  “On what?”

  Dan glances at the door. “Those e-mail addresses you asked me for—do they have anything to do with Zach?”

  I level with him. “Maybe.”

  Dan swivels his chair so he’s facing his computer. He logs on to a Web site and turns one of his monitors on. “C’mere.”

  I stand and watch over his shoulder as he pulls up a video feed of the Aldridge common room. It’s empty except for a senior in pajamas who’s making Ramen.

  “There’s a camera in the common rooms?” I ask.

  “Only ’cause I put one there.”

  I stare at Dan. He sighs. “I wanted to catch who was eating all of my mom’s baked mac and cheese.”

  I look at him. Really?

  “You don’t understand. She puts bacon in it,” he says.

  I watch Dan enter a date and time into a drop-down box on the site. As the recording loads, I realize he’s going back to a few nights ago.

  I feel my jaw drop. Brent and Murali are on the screen. He and Cole barricade the common-room door with a couch. Casey Shepherd, Erik, and Justin stand over a bunch of guys lying on their stomachs, wearing nothin
g but their boxers.

  “What are they doing?” Cole, Erik, and another senior are holding boxes of table salt. They pour it over the backs of the recruits.

  “The salt-and-ice challenge,” Dan says. On screen, the older team members are placing huge chunks of ice on the guys’ backs, on top of the salt. I watch in silence as the minutes tick by. The guys begin to wriggle in pain.

  “It burns their skin,” Dan explains. “Whoever gives in to the pain first loses and gets punished. Whoever can put up with it for the longest gets a reward of some sort.”

  After a while, the half-naked recruits succumb, like toy soldiers. One boy stands up and runs to the garbage can. He pukes his brains out. Before long, Zach and one other guy are the only ones left lying on their stomachs. There’s no sound on the tape, but Brent and the other guys stand off to the side, clearly cheering them on.

  The recruit who isn’t Zach finally gets up and runs to the sink. Cole rushes over to Zach, but his eyes are closed. He passed out. Casey Shepherd runs over and smacks him in the face. While Zach regains consciousness, Erik and Brent argue as Casey and Cole drag Zach outside.

  “You okay?” Dan asks me. “You look like you’re gonna faint.”

  “I’m fine.” My voice is far off. I can’t stop seeing the recruits jumping off the cliff at the quarry. Any one of them could have broken his neck on the way down, easily. “Dan, you have to show this to someone.”

  “Hell no, I don’t.” Dan shakes his head. “I’m not messing with those guys. If that’s what they do to their own teammates, can you imagine what they’d do to me?”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  I meet Remy in her room Saturday morning so we can go to the race together. While she curls her hair, I sit on her bed, trying not to be weirded out by the empty side of the room that used to be Alexis’s.

  “Rem, why didn’t Brent tell me about the race?”

  She doesn’t look away from the mirror. “He probably forgot. You know him.”

  “I’m not dumb. He doesn’t want me there. Why?”

  Remy turns to me, her face guilty. “Brent didn’t say anything to me, but I’m guessing it’s because Cole’s mother will probably be there.”