by Lucy Auburn
The other says Cole Masterson was driving the car when it crashed.
It takes me a while to figure out the details, but the more I see, the more I freak out. Apparently, Cole was involved in a car crash last year that killed the driver in the other car. There was a passenger in the car, a Michael Yates Jr., whose name is vaguely familiar.
I don't bother trying to place him, though, because there's another detail about the crash that's bothering me.
The original report says there were thirteen crime scene photographs taken by the responding officer. But the doctored report, the one that claims it was just a deer in the road that cause the crash, claims there were only twelve photographs. Both reports only have twelve photographs stapled to them, though, and they're each identical.
Laying the photos out on my comforter, I study them, letting my eyes unfocus. First I look for any differences between the two that I might've missed—but no, they really are identical. Then I take one group of them and lay them out, trying to figure out if there's a missing piece.
The office took photos of both bumpers of the cars, front and back. The sides of both cars—that's eight photos total. Then four wide shots of the cars from each direction, further away to get them in.
There aren't any detail shots, which is what the thirteenth photo would've had to have been. I can't figure out what it might be, though—a picture of the interior of the car, maybe, or of the victim. But according to the report, the driver was taken away in an ambulance and died in the hospital; they wouldn't have stopped to take pictures of her in the middle of saving her life. That scratches that idea.
My face itches from the makeup, so I get up and grab my makeup remover wipes, as well as the tweezers Mariana recommended to help me take the latex off. Holly is still out; she said she'd be crashing at Cole's until curfew tonight, which is just as well for me, because I don't want her to catch me with the envelope.
As I wipe the makeup off my face, I pace back and forth in front of my bed, restless. It feels like my mind is close to figuring this out. There's something there, something I'm missing.
Going through the photos one by one again, I stare at them and wait for my instincts to kick in and give me a clue.
When I hit the photo of the Mercedes, taken from the back, I pause. There's a little detail that's off: the trunk is halfway open, mangled from the car bouncing back and hitting a tree on the side of the road.
In the little sliver of the open trunk is something that sits queasily in my stomach. Something... sinister.
A tarp, and just beneath it, sticking out a little... the edge of a foot with bright pink nails.
No. It can't be. But... it is.
Mind whirling, I go back to the report and study the line that mentions fatalities.
In the original report, the scrawled handwriting says "one fatalities." I though it might be a typo, but it isn't. The word "one" is in different handwriting—the same messy handwriting on the front of the envelope. The ink isn't photocopied to death on the word "one" like it is on the rest; whatever other number was there was whited out and replaced by a clever hand that wanted me to know certain things—but not others.
There were two fatalities the night Cole Masterson drunkenly crashed his car into another.
The driver of the other car.
And the dead body in the trunk of his Mercedes.
I don't know what to do with the information. As soon as I figured out what it meant, I shoved it all back into the envelope and slid it between my mattress and the boxspring, heart pounding.
It's a big scoop. An impossible one. The kind of dirt that would actually take down one of the Elites–permanently. And without Cole around, the other three would drift apart, leaderless and rudderless.
But because it's such a big story, I don't feel like I can just publish it as is. I need some kind of corroboration—proof it was his car, that he was driving that night, and that he really did that.
It all seems so impossible. I don't even know how something like this would be covered up—or who would cover it up in the first place. The name of the driver of the car in the falsified report seems to suggest that he had something to do with the cover-up, though.
So I look up details about him first, wanting to know more. It's hard to find the exact Lawrence Dawson I'm looking for until I narrow down the results by the state the crash happened in: New York, specifically near Albany. That's when I find the public profile of a Communications Director working in the Office of the Governor of New York State.
The Governor of New York State... Michael Yates. Of course; that's where I know that name. He's been in the news a few times lately, giving stump speeches in the lead up to his run for re-election. And the passenger in the car, listed in the report that has Cole's name on it, is a Michael Yates Jr.
So the privileged Cole Masterson went on a drunken joy ride with a friend of his, and when there was a crash, they got his daddy's little lap dog to take the fall. Not that Lawrence Dawson was brought up on charges, of course—the accident was deemed no fault, the fatality simply brushed aside.
But if that really was a body I saw in that trunk...
I need to figure out more. So I pull the envelope out one last time, eyes on the door in case Holly comes home early, and skim through the papers with my finger.
Almost immediately, I see something I missed.
I heard you're into takedowns of the public variety. This one is particularly juicy. Make sure everyone knows what your classmate Cole Masterson really did.
Signed, your benevolent source.
The handwriting is looped and distinctive, messy like the word LEGACIES scrawled on the front of the envelope. The lowercase letter Es are like little loops, their shape barely discernible as the correct letter. But there's nothing about the handwriting that lets me figure out who it is.
Hearing distinctive footsteps down the hall, I shove the envelope back into its hiding place, heart pounding.
This information will need to stew for a while. In the meantime, I've got a party to finish planning—and a bet with a terrible boy to win.
Chapter 36
By the time the Hallow's Eve Festival rolls around, I still haven't decided what to do with the info packet on Cole. It feels like something I should investigate further and confirm before publishing.
Murder is a pretty big accusation to make.
And I have no idea if what I saw in the trunk really was a body. After all, I reflect as I cover the Rosalind staircase with fake cobwebs and shove a zombie mannequin into one of the bathroom stalls, it could've been a Halloween decoration.
Although the change of the police report indicating more than one fatality seems damning.
It's a good thing Holly is too busy putting the finishing touches on our haunted house to do much socializing, because I'm not sure if I can meet her eyes knowing what I know about her boyfriend now.
"Hand me that knife, will you?" Sasha reaches a hand over towards me, fingers curled, perched on the edge of the stairway. "I want to make it looks like this corpse thing is hanging from the upper balcony."
"Uh, sure. I'm done with my part of the decorating anyway."
We work side by side for a while, and I lose myself in the rhythm of getting things done. Soon enough, it's time for us to get into costume and prepare to scare the visitors to our hall. Whoever has the best haunted house between the four dorms gets bragging rights for the rest of the semester—until the Rosalinds have our Blind Ball and everyone has something else to put their minds on, besides schoolwork.
I recruited Tricia, Chrissy, and a girl from my history class, Lauren, to be part of my scare squad, along with Mariana. The girls are waiting for me in the Rosalind dining hall when I enter, getting their makeup done.
"There you are!" Chrissy jumps up out of her chair, making the fake eyeball swinging from her closed socket jiggle back and forth. "I swear I've barely seen you the past few weeks. I was starting to think you were literally ghos
ting on us."
"Hey guys." Sighing, I flop down into my chair and crack my neck, making Tricia grimace. "I know I've been M.I.A. as of late, it's just that when I'm not preparing for tonight, I'm studying, and when I'm not studying I'm... well, asleep probably, because that's about all I have time for."
Glancing over at Lauren, I curiously ask her, "What are you going as?"
"A banshee." She holds up her arms and makes wave motions with them. "My mom says I have the best scream she's ever heard. Bone-chilling and everything."
"Great. Chrissy is going to be a dead girl," the blonde smiles and tilts her head, making Mariana's creepy fake eyeball makeup swing towards her mouth, "and Tricia is going to be... did you decide on a zombie or Lizzie Borden?"
"Borden for sure. I've got a fake ax and everything."
"And you all already know I'll be going as Martha Hayes."
Lauren asks, "What about you, Mariana?"
"Mariana is contributing more than enough with her makeup," I point out, swiftly stepping in before things get awkward. "She doesn't have to do jump scares if she doesn't want to."
"Actually, I was thinking I might join. I have a great scary doctor costume. Holly said there was an old stretcher from the clinic I could set up in one of the room to bring 'patients' through and freak them out with needles." Mariana's eyes are positively aglow with wicked excitement. "I think it could be fun."
"Let's do this then. Together, we can scare the absolute shit out of every student on this campus."
Halfway through the haunted house, after dozens of screams from frightened students and enough jump scares to make me break a sweat, my phone buzzes from inside the old school Coleridge blazer I'm wearing.
I lean up against the fireplace and pull the phone out. My assigned space is the lounge near the lobby, sectioned off by plywood painted black. There's a whole route to force visitors through a disorienting maze on their way to being frightened by yours truly. My station is set up with candles to create gloomy lighting, as well as an upside down cross over the fireplace to really emphasize the story of Martha Hayes' death.
Putting in my lockscreen code, I check my messages and smile. It's Chrissy, letting me know that Blake Lee just walked through the front door—though she has no idea why it is I wanted to know about him in the first place. I text her my thanks and slip my phone back into my pocket, preparing myself.
First I make sure the candles are in exactly the right spot to cast shadows on my face. Then I double check my makeup in the mirror above the fireplace, a trick mirror with dozens of little cracks that throw back a reflection of me over a dozen different times. Mariana really outdid herself with the finishing touches today—I look even scarier than I did during our test run, and that's saying something.
I can hear footsteps further down the maze's path. Most of the students have come in giggly, gasping, and screaming groups, but this particular set of steps don't have any companions. That's a sure sign that it's Blake. Settling into the darkest corner of the room, I pull the stringy, waxy dark hair Mariana gave me in front of my face and tilt my chin down. All I have to do is wait for the right moment, and I'm absolutely sure I can scare the shit out of Blake.
Maybe this is stupid. Childish, even. But I want him to feel a fraction of what I felt when I was running up soft, rain-soaked ground, towards a tree on top of a hill where I knew my brother wouldn't be alive.
Before he even enters the room, I feel his presence. There's a distinct weight to him, as if the air is disturbed when he walks across a threshold. I watch him from the shadows, silent and still. He observes the broken mirror, the ash-filled fireplaces, and the candles burning on the mantle and the ground.
Then his eyes move to the corner, where I'm standing in the shadows, behind a broken pew we dragged here from Hayes Chapel to really set the mood.
A smirk lifts up the corners of his eyes. "A jump scare, really? That's what you thought would get me?"
I don't answer. Instead I stumble forward, out of my shadowed darkness, and stare at him with wide eyes. Then—in a move I don't want to admit I practiced—I grab onto my throat, gasp for air, and fall forward dramatically onto the ground.
A pause. He mutters, "I'm not falling for this."
I hold my breath for all I'm worth. I made sure to land so that my face was only partially obscured, and I let my mouth fall open, a dramatic foam flying from my lips. It's just a little bit of costume makeup Mariana gave me that makes actors look like they have rabies mouth.
"Seriously?" Blake approaches me and kneels down; I can hear him, but I don't dare open my eyes. "It's going to take more than this to 'scare the shit out of me,' Brenna. I'm not a little kid."
He isn't.
But he was one once, a long time ago, in a world full of hospitals and germs. And I haven't been spending the past few months here learning nothing from my observations of the Elites.
All at once, I reach out, grab his hand, and jerk him towards me. Then I lean up and blow the foam at his face before he can react.
He stiffens, eyes wild, staring down at me in shock. Then he shudders all over, a full-body thing that's a sight to behold, the careful expression on his face dissolving into one of pure panic.
Fear. It's there plainly in his eyes. Which means I win.
"See?" I smirk at him as he yanks his wrist out of my hand and wipes his face frantically with the front of his shirt. "I told you that I could scare the shit out of you. Also, it's harmless. If it weren't, I wouldn't have put it in my mouth."
"You're a hateful, wretched thing." He mutters something I don't understand that must be Korean—or Latin for all I know, given how annoyingly studious he is. "That was a low blow, even for you."
I prickle in irritation at his words. "In love and war, anything goes. You tried to get me to fail out of calculus, so I'd say what I did to you was barely anything in comparison." Pushing up to my feet, I dust myself off and stare down at him. "More people are going to come soon, so you should probably skedaddle on to the next station."
"Fuck you," Blake says, with more emotion than I've ever heard from him outside that video. He stands up from his crouch and wipes his face one more time for good measure, then straightens out his impeccably white shirt. "How did you even figure out that would work?"
"Women's intuition. It just made sense you'd be a germaphobe. I figured there was probably a reason why you've never kissed anyone."
He goes still all over at my words, a shadowed expression in his eyes. "How did—how would you possibly know that?"
There was more to the video than what I posted online, and after a quick request for translation from the source, I found out part of what started Blake's fight with the girl. Apparently, in addition to calling him jealous and mean, she made fun of him for being a teenage boy who has never kissed a girl.
It wasn't that part that got to him—there seemed to be something else going on, something the video that never caught—but it was another interesting piece of information that I filed away for later.
Of course, I can't reveal that to him without revealing that I'm Legacies. So I settle for saying, "The girls around here talk about everything. Including their past at other private schools, and who's doing whom—and who's not doing anybody. Your never-been-kissed status is a hot topic of conversation. Wasn't hard to figure out all that time in hospitals as a child made you a repressed germaphobe."
His eyes boil over with anger, fists clenching. "I am not repressed."
I can't help but raise my eyebrows at this a little bit. If you looked up repressed in the dictionary, Blake Woo Bin Lee Garrison would appear in a photo of his starched and ironed uniform. Even right now, he's still tugging at the hem of his shirt, like he thinks he can un-rumple it through sheer willpower.
"Just teach me math so I don't fail out, like we both agreed to, okay? Then you can go back to ironing the creases on your pants in your spare time."
He stalks towards me, and despite myself, I feel the urge t
o step back. But I refuse, planting my feet and looking up into his face as he looms over me. He has his father and uncle's height, I'll give him that, but I'm not going to let him intimidate me.
"I've never been repressed in my life."
"Okay." I don't know why he cares about my opinion so much. Then it occurs to me. "I won't tell anyone about you not having kissed anybody. Er, at least, I won't tell anyone who doesn't already know."
Blake snorts. "As if I believe that. You've been gunning for me since the start."
I frown at him, wondering what he's talking about—especially since he doesn't know it's me behind the blog. "No I haven't been," I lie.
"You have. You're angry that your brother was revealed for the charlatan he is, and that he dropped out of school."
I can feel my pulse skyrocketing, my mind on the verge of a flashback, and I want to talk about something else.
"I don't like you," I admit, which is an understatement. "You're too privileged. I mean—both of your parents are millionaires in the entertainment industry? What, one famous parent wasn't enough for you? And on two continents, too. But I literally couldn't give a shit who you've kissed. You can kiss your own ass and call it a momentous revelation of self-love for all I care."
"You're intolerably frustrating, you know."
A silent laugh escapes my lips. "I aim to misbehave."
Moments pass between us. I'm looking up into his eyes still, for some reason. I won the bet, but somehow nothing feels settled or certain. It's like the whole damned house around us is on tilts, and it's moving back and forth, up and down, a ship at sea without a captain.
A group of giggling girls stumble into the room then back out again, confused by the stillness and lack of horror happening here, clearly drunk from pre-gaming before they showed up.
I wonder if it's madness that makes me look at his lips.
Surely it's insanity when I lick my own, then flick my eyes up into his.
I've lost all control of my faculties, but I actually sway forward towards him. Maybe the house really is moving. Maybe the Earth, in its wisdom, is heaving the ground beneath us in an effort to remove the rich from its surface before they're fully grown and dangerous.