by Meg Cabot
16
Allington Is What Ails New York College
For students at New York College, tuition keeps creeping up, which means we have to take on more debt to pay the bills. Yet our college president, Phillip Allington, who owns a $4.5 million home in the Hamptons, lives rent-free in a luxury penthouse at the top of Fischer Hall. And his son drives around in a convertible Mercedes and is a co-owner of the nightclub Epiphany (try the mojito, by the way, it’s delish).
Something stinks in Greenwich Village and we here at the Express say its name is Allington.
All week long, this blog will be reporting on how your tuition dollars may be going to fund the Allingtons’ extravagant lifestyle. Our first report is called “Who Pays for Mrs. Allington’s Birds?,” a hard-hitting exposé on the exotic birds belonging to the wife of our college president, and how much she might be spending on them.
New York College Express,
your daily student news blog
Lisa cries the whole way back to our office.
“I’m sorry,” she says between sobs as we walk through Washington Square Park, dodging black squirrels, tourists, and young nannies pushing baby strollers. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t even necessarily disagree with them. Those RAs are such rotten shits. They deserve to be kicked out. I just c-can’t stop crying. Like I can’t seem to stop puking.”
“Yeah,” I say. “About that . . .”
I have a hand on her arm and am steering her through the crowds—it’s another beautiful warm fall day, and the park is packed—since I’m not sure she can see through her tears. No one pays any attention to crazy Asian girls walking through the park crying because there are so many other distracting things to look at, such as the barefoot guitar players, overturned-plastic-can drummers, incense sellers, proselytizers, and cute dogs.
“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” I ask.
Lisa stops walking in the middle of the park, or as close to the middle as we can get without walking directly into the huge fountain, the jets of which are shooting twenty feet into the air.
“What did you say?” Lisa demands. She isn’t crying anymore.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. I probably should have saved this conversation for when we get back to the office, only I’m not going back to the office now. I’m going to make sure you get there, then I have to go run an errand—”
“Heather!” The tips of Lisa’s ears begin to turn red.
“It’s a work-related errand,” I say. “Don’t worry. But even if I went back to the office with you, you know we hardly ever have any privacy there. I just talked to Sarah”—I wave my cell phone in front of her—“and she says there’s another line of parents out the door—including Kaileigh’s mom, who’s heard about Jasmine being dead. She isn’t too happy that her daughter is not only assigned to a floor with a dead RA, but that her roommate Ameera is now weeping all the time instead of out sleeping around. Plus you have that RA candidate arriving at two, and Jasmine’s parents scheduled to arrive at three, plus nine RAs to fire. When are we going to have another chance to talk about this? I’m guessing this is my only opportunity.”
“To ask me if I’m pregnant?” Lisa’s eyebrows have shot up to their limits.
“You’re showing a lot of the early symptoms,” I explain, having to raise my voice to be heard over a guy who has come strolling by playing the bagpipes. “Breast tenderness, moodiness, nausea, vomiting. I could be totally wrong, but Eva thinks—”
“Eva?” Lisa’s voice too rises. The bagpiper, who is wearing a kilt, has decided to stand near us. He’s gathered a small crowd of admirers. “You told the medicolegal investigator that I’ve been moody lately? And that my boobs hurt? For God’s sake, Heather!”
“Well, you clearly don’t have the flu, because you’re fine right now,” I point out. “Except for the crying. When’s the last time you had your period?”
“When’s the last time you had yours?” she fires back, outraged.
“Three years ago,” I say. “I’m on continuous birth control pills for my endometriosis. Lisa, even if I weren’t on the pill, I couldn’t get pregnant. I have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant, and I doubt I ever will. I know it’s none of my business if you are, but I sit in the office outside yours all day, five days a week, so I know you pretty well. And if you are pregnant, I just want to make sure you know it, and take care of yourself.”
Lisa turns sober. “Oh, Heather,” she says, and reaches out to squeeze one of my arms. “Of course. I’m so sorry. Things have been so crazy lately. Honestly, I can’t even remember when I last had my period.”
The bagpiper ends his dirge on her last words, so that everyone nearby hears her shout “I can’t even remember when I last had my period” and looks over at us with varying degrees of pity, confusion, and amusement.
Lisa lifts her free hand to her now pale face. “Oh my God,” she says, and tightens her grip on my arm, then begins dragging me around the opposite end of the fountain, away from the bagpiper and his audience. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I just did that.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t think anyone heard you.”
“Are you kidding me? They all heard me. Oh, crap.”
Her face pales even further. I’m not sure why until I turn my head in the direction she’s looking. Moving swiftly toward us is a large crowd of people, some of whom look familiar—
And no wonder, since they’re residents of Fischer Hall.
“Hi, Lisa!” Jasmine Tsai calls, waving cheerfully as she steers a group of her residents across the park. “Hi, Heather! Hey, you guys,” she informs her residents, who are clearly all first-years. “That’s the director of Fischer Hall, Lisa, and the assistant director, Heather Wells. Say hi.”
The residents—the majority of whom are overexcited girls dressed to meet boys, under the auspices of taking a walking tour of the campus—all squeal and wave. “Hi, Lisa! Hi, Heather!”
Lisa and I wave lamely back, noticing that there are a few boys trailing along behind the group, but not the kind of boys the girls on the tour appear to be interested in.
“Hi, Lisa. Hi, Heather,” Howard Chen and Christopher Mintz call sheepishly.
“Hi, you guys,” I call back, and give them a thumbs-up. “Looking good! Way to show your school spirit.”
Neither boy waves back. I can hardly blame them.
“Oh God,” Lisa says, when they’re out of earshot. “They heard me. They totally heard me. Now the whole dorm knows I might be pregnant.”
“No,” I say. “They didn’t hear you.” They probably did. “Anyway, what do you mean, you can’t remember when you had your last period?”
“I don’t know.” Lisa turns to stride quickly toward Fischer Hall, looming before us on the west side of the park like the elegant—if slightly battered—brick lady that she is. “The truth is, it’s been so busy, what with my wedding and then starting this job and moving in, then everything we went through when they were filming that reality show in the building, then RA training and check-in. I’ve barely had a minute to myself. I must have had it in June. I’m almost sure I had it in July—”
“Lisa,” I say, having to jog a little to keep up with her rapid steps. “It’s almost September.”
“Oh my God.” She looks like someone punched her in the stomach. “Oh my God. How could this happen to me? I’m the hall director. I’m supposed to be a role model. How could I let this happen?”
“You don’t know that anything’s happened yet,” I say. Except that quite a lot has happened. A member of her staff is dead, and most of the rest of them are about to be fired. I don’t feel I need to belabor this point, however. “You’re probably only late because of the stress of check-in. But it’s better to know, right? Why don’t you go to the drugstore right now, get an early pregnancy test, then go up to your apartment and take it before you go back to work?”
I turn her bodily so that instead of f
acing Fischer Hall, she’s facing the dog run, behind which (a block away, on Bleecker Street) the nearest pharmacy is located.
“If you want me to go with you,” I say, noticing that her knees have locked and she’s not budging, “I will.”
“What?” Lisa asks in surprise. She’s begun to move again, thankfully in the direction of the drugstore. “No. I’m an adult, I can go to the pharmacy by myself, thank you. Besides, I thought you said you had an errand to run.”
“I do, a quick one. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Lisa says. She’s trudging as if her feet are encased in cement blocks. “See you then.”
I turn around and head for a horrifically designed building once described as a “miracle of modern architecture,” but which really is just a spiky tower of windows and black metal triangles, called the Gottlieb Student Center. As I stride toward it, I pull out my cell phone and return one of the many messages Cooper has left.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s me.”
“Jesus,” he says. “I thought you died. Where have you been?”
“Having finger sandwiches with the president of New York College and his millionaire cronies,” I say. “One of them birdied the sixth hole at Maidstone last weekend.”
“I put a guy in a headlock in a bar in Jersey City last weekend,” Cooper says. “Where’s my finger sandwich?”
“I’ll have a finger sandwich for you when I get home, big boy,” I say, lowering my voice to a sexy growl.
Cooper sounds surprised, but delightedly so. “Whoa. Is that a promise?”
“Uh . . .” I was actually joking. I’m not even sure what a finger sandwich is, in sexual terms. Is it a thing? I realize it must be and I’ve promised to do something in bed with my husband-to-be I have no idea how to do. I’m going to have to Google it. This is what I get for getting carried away on the phone with my fiancé during working hours. “Definitely. Anyway, what’s up?”
“Oh, not a whole lot,” he says. “Nicole’s only called me seven times begging me to forgive her. Your mother’s left three messages back at the house for you, your dad’s left one, and Perry the wedding planner refuses to call back to reschedule our lunch from yesterday. I think she’s trying to teach us a lesson for canceling on her. She’s incredibly important and sought after, you know.”
“Damn,” I say, forgetting about the finger sandwich. “We need to go over those seating charts, especially in light of the fact that your sister’s invited an additional—how many people? Do you even know?”
“Nicole says no more than twenty, but I’m guessing she’s afraid to fess up to the real number.”
My smartphone chirps. I look down at the screen and see that Eva from the OCME is trying to get through to me.
“Cooper, let me call you back,” I say. “I’ve got the medical examiner’s office on the line.”
“Don’t forget your promise,” he says in a sexy voice before hanging up.
Maybe his voice wasn’t purposely sexy, I think to myself as I press to accept Eva’s call. It sort of always sounds that way.
“Eva, hi,” I say, crossing the street along with a crowd of excited freshmen, a few parents, and some orientation leaders in blue-and-gold “Welcome to NYC!” T-shirts. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Heather.” Eva sounds a bit friendlier than she had before, though no less harassed. She’s still all business. “So I wanted to give you a heads-up. Your dead girl must be somebody pretty important—or connected to somebody pretty important. They just completed the autopsy.”
“No way. I thought you said—”
“That we’re completely backed up? Yeah, we are. We got bodies in here that have been waiting for autopsy since the weekend before last. But the chief got a call. A few calls, actually.”
“I take it they weren’t only from the victim’s parents.”
“No way,” Eva says with a snort. “State Department.”
It’s my turn to snort. “How funny. Special Agent Lancaster just got through telling me the bureau’s only job is to provide for the safety of those they are protecting.”
“Oh?” Eva’s voice turns casual. “You’ve seen Special Agent Lancaster today? How is he?”
I’ve hurried up the steps to the student building and am flashing my staff ID at the security guard at the entrance. He nods and allows me through the gate. “Special Agent Lancaster seemed just fine, Eva. Why, do you miss him?”
“That jackass?” Eva sounds indignant. “No! He’s so not my type. He looks like he goes home every night and listens to podcasts about the rise of the Aryan Nation while polishing his gun.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on him,” I say, fighting my way through the crowds of students to the elevator, “but whatever. What’s the news on the autopsy?”
“Oh,” Eva says. “So I told the chief what you said to me this morning about the party the vic was at the night before she died. Even if we put a rush on the tox screens, it will still be a few days before we get the results—better than a few weeks, though. Hey, what’d you hear about the trash from the party the vic went to? Get anything?”
“I don’t know yet, I’ve been away from the office almost all day. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Anyway, they looked a little closer at your vic during the postmortem because of your info and also, I’ll be honest, because of all the pressure they were getting from upstairs. And guess what they found.”
I’ve pressed the up button for the elevator. “I have no idea.”
“Nothing. No sign of sexual assault, no sign of overdose, no sign of obvious trauma. The vic was in perfect health . . . except for one thing, which the chief wouldn’t even really have looked for if you hadn’t said anything.”
“Really? What?”
“Teeth imprints. And you’ll never guess where. Inside the victim’s upper lip.”
I stand in front of the elevator bank, pressing my smartphone as hard as I can to my ear, since it’s difficult to hear with all the noise from the students. The Gottlieb Student Center, in addition to being an architectural blight on the south side of Washington Square, houses many of New York College’s student clubs, the student government, and a dining center that offers selections from such culinary luminaries as Pizza Hut and Burger King, making it one of the campus’s most popular eateries. This is why the student center is always packed and why the wait for an elevator can sometimes be as long as the wait for an elevator in Fischer Hall.
I can tell that Eva is expecting some kind of reaction from me, but I have no idea what, since I don’t understand what she’s talking about. Tooth imprints inside the victim’s upper lip? How could someone die from that?
“I don’t understand,” I finally admit.
“Heather,” Eva says, in a tone that suggests she believes I’m a little slow. “Jasmine didn’t die of an asthma attack. Well, the asthma certainly helped speed things up, but we’re listing the manner of death as homicide.”
“Wait,” I say. A group of musical theater students nearby me have burst into a chorus of “Magic to Do” from Pippin, which I’m sure they find charming but I’m finding extremely annoying since I can barely hear Eva. I stick a finger in my nonphone ear. “What?”
“We see this kind of thing a lot, almost exclusively in women and children. Someone of superior strength holds a hand over the victim’s lips and nose until she stops breathing. If they hold it there hard enough, it can cause lacerations inside the victim’s mouth. The teeth imprints were Jasmine’s own as she struggled to open her mouth, trying to breathe.”
The elevator doors slide open in front of me, and a flood of students comes pouring out. I’m buffeted by the tide, but can’t move out of the way because I’m too stunned by what I’ve just heard. Behind me, the musical theater majors are still insisting that they’ve got magic to do.
“You mean—”
“That’s right,” Eva says. “Jasmine was suffocated to death.”<
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17
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I knock on the open door beside the sign that reads nyc express. It’s a single office in a hallway on the fourth floor of the Gottlieb Student Center. Unlike the lobby of the building, the fourth floor, which is carpeted in New York College blue and gold, is not at all crowded.
I used to do a lot of media and press tours back in my “Sugar Rush” days. As far as press rooms go, the one for the New York College Express is not very impressive, housing only four desks containing a few computers and a single phone.
Then again, as the sign says, they’re a poor, student-run organization.
There is only one person inside the office, a boy wearing jeans and a blue New York College hoodie. He’s typing on a laptop in front of one of the building’s massive floor-to-ceiling windows, which is covered in crooked blinds that have seen better days.
The boy doesn’t answer my knock. I soon see that that’s because he’s wearing earbuds. I enter the office—which is mostly devoid of human activity, but filled with empty pizza boxes and soda containers—and tap his shoulder.
The boy jumps, startled, and pulls out the earbuds, allowing them to dangle from a thin white cord down his chest.
“Oh, shit, you scared me,” he says, leaping from his chair. His smile is crooked and charming. He’s a white boy with adorably mussed dark hair. He clearly belongs to the Gavin McGoren why-bother-showering-before-work? school of thought. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I think you can,” I say, looking around for a place to sit. It’s impossible to find one that isn’t covered in empty food containers. “You know if you don’t take the trash out once in a while, you’ll get mice in here, right?”