by Kate Brian
Josh knew about my latest brush with death, of course, but I’d yet to tell him about MT and the potential connection between the accidents. As he looked into my eyes now, part of me wanted to keep it a secret. Clearly the last thing he needed right now was more stress. But nothing good had ever come of the two of us keeping secrets before. I pressed my lips together and turned toward him fully.
“Promise not to freak out,” I said.
“Uh-oh. No good conversation ever started that way,” he joked. “What’s up?”
So I told him. I told him the whole story of the mystery texter, all the way up to the message I’d received last night to avoid the awards banquet. Josh listened the whole time, his expression growing more and more tense with each passing second. Finally, his knee started to bounce up and down and I had to place my heavy cast on top of it to stop him.
“So? What do you think? Do I trust this person or not?” I asked, really hoping for a definitive answer. For some sort of direction. “Do I say screw it and go to the awards banquet, or do I stay home?”
“First, let me just ask you this,” he said. “How could you not tell me about this?”
I balked, leaning back. “Okay, pot, go ahead and call me black.”
Josh blushed. “Okay, fine, but my secret wasn’t potentially life-threatening,” he said. He shook his head and looked out across campus. “God, I can’t wait to get the eff out of this freaking place. I don’t even care where I’m going, I just want to get out.” Then he looked at me seriously and took both my hands. “I just wish you were coming with me.”
“Me too,” I said, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly sad.
Josh looked at me for a long moment, as if trying to see inside, as if gauging exactly what I could handle and what I couldn’t. Finally he squeezed my fingers.
“You know what? Screw it,” he said with a devil-may-care smile. “We’re going to the banquet. You’re getting two huge awards and you should be there to accept them. Don’t let this latest freak scare you off.”
My chest instantly felt ten times lighter, and just like that I knew this was what I’d wanted to hear. “But what if something happens?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen,” he assured me, looking me in the eye. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t. I’ll get a bunch of the guys together and we’ll all be on high alert. No one will be letting you out of their sight.”
“Yeah?” I said, raising my eyebrows hopefully.
“I swear,” he said, looping his arm around me and pulling me to his side. He kissed the top of my head and held me close. “I won’t think about school and you won’t think about Billings or this MT nutbag and we’ll just have fun.”
I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to look up at him. “Is that even possible around here?”
Josh smirked. “Well, we can at least try.”
THE PAYOFF
“Josh is right. You can’t just hide out in your dorm room for the rest of your life,” Ivy said that afternoon as she pawed through my jewelry box, holding an earring up to her ear, then trying out a necklace. She’d decided she wanted something new to wear with her blue Easton Academy graduation gown, and had apparently chosen to shop for it at the House of Reed. “If there’s some kind of threat at the banquet, then we’ll deal with it head-on, right? You have to show them you won’t be intimidated. That you won’t run scared.”
“You sound like you’re running for Senate or something,” I said, looking up from my history textbook. Then I lowered my voice to a deep grumble. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“Who knew you could apply that policy at private school?” Ivy smiled as she clasped a beaded necklace around her neck. “Whatever. I’m just trying to get you psyched up.” She sat down next to me on my bed and closed my book. “You do know everything’s going to be fine, right? Because it is.”
“Wow. You are seriously upbeat today,” I said, tossing the book aside. “What’s your deal?”
Ivy grinned. “I woke up this morning and realized that in one week, I’m graduating. One week and I will never have to sit in one of those awful hard chairs and listen to some obnoxious Easton teacher spout off about something no one in the real world will ever care about. And then I can spend the entire summer looking forward to Pepperdine, looking forward to getting as far away from Easton and Boston and my depressing-ass family as I possibly can, and taking whatever classes I want to take while staring at the Pacific Ocean all day long.” She grabbed my arm and shook it. “One more week!”
I groaned out my jealousy and flopped back on my bed. “I’m really starting to think I should have fewer senior friends.”
There was a quick rap on my door and it flung right open. I sat up straight in surprise as Carolina rushed in, out of breath, a laptop tucked under her arm and a pencil shoved behind one ear. She looked Go Green! camera-ready in a plaid shirt unbuttoned over a lace-trimmed tank top and jeans flared over tan work boots, but the intense vibe she was giving off was definitely not fit for TV. Unless she was guest-starring in a new episode of Southland.
“Carolina!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but you have to see this.” She shoved aside my own computer and placed her laptop down on my desk. Ivy and I exchanged a nervous look as we both stood up from the bed and gathered behind her. It took Carolina about thirty seconds to boot up her computer and open up a video screen. “We were going through some of the footage from yesterday, and you’re never going to believe what we found.”
I gulped back a surge of fear as I leaned in toward the screen. The Go Green! trailer appeared in the shot, the logo painted in bright kelly green on the side next to the door. Carolina walked out, talking to the camera. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound.
I reached for the volume button.
“There’s no audio on this one,” Carolina said. “What I’m saying in this clip is not what matters.”
“Carolina, what’s going on?” I asked.
Her face was like stone. “You’ll see in about five seconds.”
On the computer screen Carolina gestured to her right and Mike panned the camera in that direction, taking in the moving construction vehicles, the other trailers, and eventually the foundation of the new Billings. It looked like they were trying to give the viewer a tour of the site—a kind of “before” shot.
“What are we looking for?” Ivy asked, leaning one hand on the desk’s surface.
‘There!” Carolina hit the space button and the video paused. She pointed at a spot near the top right-hand corner of the screen, her finger trembling. Ivy and I both leaned in as far as we could, but all I could really make out were two people standing close together, one in a hard hat, the other in a straw fedora, and the person in the fedora was handing over a heavy-looking duffel bag. “That’s someone paying off one of the workers. The worker who was operating the crane,” Carolina said pointedly.
“How do you know there’s money in there?” I asked shakily.
“Oh, come on! Just look at it! Haven’t you ever seen a spy movie?” Carolina exclaimed, her face reddening. “What else could it be?”
Ivy and I exchanged a dubious look, but said nothing.
“Do you realize what this means?” Carolina continued. “Someone paid him to drop that pallet. Someone was actually trying to kill us. You see it? Do you have any idea who that is?”
I leaned closer. Whoever was handing over the bag was wearing a black trench and jeans. It was obviously a girl, by the short height and the thin waist, but I couldn’t make out her face. Still, the idea of a stylish female hanging out around our construction site, handing things off to one of the workers, didn’t exactly sit well.
“Hit play,” I demanded.
Carolina did. The video kept rolling, and the girl turned away from the camera. There was never a good shot of her face. But as she walked off, I saw something that stopped the breath in my lungs.
“Holy crap,” I said unde
r my breath. “Rewind it.”
“What? What did you see?” Ivy asked.
My mouth was so dry I could taste my lunch from four hours ago. I reached for the space button and waited. And waited. As soon as the girl started to turn, I hit pause. Now I was certain that Carolina was right—there was money inside that bag, and probably a ton of it.
“There!” I stood up straight and looked at Ivy. “You see her hair? I only know one person with hair like that.”
Ivy squinted at the screen, taking in the one, short, silky auburn curl that flew out from under the fedora’s brim. Slowly, realization flooded her face and she straightened her posture.
“Who?” Carolina asked, whipping out her phone.
Ivy and I nodded slowly. My blood pulsed in my ears. “That’s Paige Ryan.”
HONORS
For once, the arrests weren’t made on Easton Academy grounds. The police found the crane operator at his favorite bar. Apparently, Paige had done her research to figure out who would be the most likely crew member to take a payoff, because the guy had immediately and tearfully confessed, saying he needed the money or he was going to lose his house, his family, and pretty much everything else he had in the world. Paige, meanwhile, had been holed up in her parents’ vacation home near Mystic, having her feet exfoliated by her personal pedicurist, when the cops came calling. According to my good buddy at the Easton Police Department, Detective Hauer, when she was hauled off for booking, her hair was wet, she had no makeup on, and her toenails were unpolished.
For some reason, this visual made me giddy, no matter how many times I conjured it up.
“What are you smiling about?” Josh asked me, squeezing my hand atop my knee at the Driscoll that night. We were seated at our table in the crowded banquet hall, surrounded by other couples—Astrid and Trey, Kiki and Marc, Noelle and Dash, Ivy and Gage. Well, they weren’t exactly a couple. Just two people who randomly hooked up whenever it was convenient. But whatever anyone was doing on the side, it was nice to be here among friends. Here and relaxed and out of the danger zone. The bad guy had been arrested, after all. Which meant that whatever MT had been warning me about tonight was not going to happen.
And I was beyond glad about that, because if I’d listened to MT’s warning, I wouldn’t have been here to accept the junior girls’ scholar-athlete award, which I still couldn’t believe I’d won.
“Nothing,” I said, running my fingers along the gold plate on my plaque, where my name was spelled out in pretty cursive letters. “Just happy to be here.”
Josh leaned over and kissed my temple, careful to avoid my stitches. “Me too.”
As Headmaster Hathaway presented the junior award for excellence in French, I let my mind wander slightly, looking around the room at all the proud senior-class parents, the texting classmates, the hustling waiters. Kiran and Taylor were both there, sitting near the windows with some random, hot alumni fawning all over them. After the banquet we were all going back to Noelle’s room for an old-school-style Billings celebration. This night that I had been dreading all day was going to end up being beyond cool.
I did, of course, still have my questions for Paige Ryan. Like, why? Why was she trying to kill me? Was she just trying to finish the job her mother had begun down in St. Barths over Christmas break? Did she want to be the one who got to rebuild Billings so badly that she’d actually commit murder? Did she still hate me for hooking up with Upton Giles that week? Or did she hate me because, in some twisted way, she blamed me for the fact that her mother was in jail? Then there was the off chance that she actually subscribed to all that Billings curse mumbo jumbo Mrs. Kane had been spouting before she was arrested back in March. Maybe she thought I needed to die in order for Billings to live on free of bad luck.
Any way you sliced it, the girl was mad crazy.
“And now for the awards for overall academic achievement in the junior class,” Headmaster Hathaway announced. I sat up a bit straighter, my heart prickling with nerves. Now that I had won scholar-athlete, I knew I had a shot at snagging this one as well, and I was beyond proud of myself for managing to get good grades this year even with all the insanity that had gone on. “As with the freshman and sophomore classes, this award is given out to one female student and one male student—the two students who have achieved the highest GPAs for the first three quarters of the year. And those students are . . . Reed Brennan and Sawyer Hathaway!”
Josh’s face lit up as my heart all but burst. He gave me a quick kiss and a hug. “I’m not worthy,” he joked as the room filled with applause.
“What?” Marc blurted under his breath. “Sawyer wasn’t even here the first half of the year.”
“They used his grades from his last school,” Noelle explained.
Marc slumped, blowing out an annoyed breath. “Please. This is nepotism at its finest.”
Everyone laughed and Josh squeezed my hand one more time before I got up to accept the award. I smiled and smoothed out the full skirt of my blue silk Chloé dress, scanning the room for Sawyer. His father looked out at the crowd as well, applauding along with the audience, but Sawyer didn’t appear. As the moments passed, a crease of confusion deepened just above the headmaster’s nose. Everyone was looking at me, so I made my way up to the podium to collect my second plaque and gift certificate. It took a couple of minutes for me to weave around all the tables and chairs, but still, no Sawyer.
“Well,” the headmaster said, leaning toward the microphone. “I guess I’ll have to give my son a little talking-to later.”
The crowd responded with polite laughter and Headmaster Hathaway turned his attention to me.
“Congratulations, Miss Brennan.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
He handed over the prizes and shook my hand. We posed for the requisite photo, and then I was done. On my way back to my chair, Noelle shot me a bemused look and I shrugged. We both knew it wasn’t like Sawyer to miss something like this. He loved school almost as much as Noelle loved Calvin Klein.
“What happened to your partner in brilliance?” Josh joked as I sat down next to him, tucking the plaque under my chair.
“I don’t know. Now that I think about it, I don’t think he was in class all day. Maybe he’s sick.”
“But then wouldn’t his own father know about it?” Astrid asked, taking a sip from her water goblet.
A slight tickle of foreboding skittered down my neck. I reached for my bag and pulled out my phone.
“What’re you doing?” Josh asked.
“Texting him,” I replied.
I knew Josh wasn’t Sawyer’s biggest fan at the moment, but I’d hoped we’d cleared up the facts that (a) I wasn’t interested in Sawyer in a boyfriendly way, but (b) he was my friend. I typed a quick message and hit send, then left my phone on the table between my silver knife and Josh’s salad plate to wait for his response.
Forty-five minutes and ten awards later, he still hadn’t written back. Finally, the seniors were done being honored, and the awards part of the evening was over.
“Let’s have one last round of applause for all our honorees!” Mr. Hathaway announced as he finished his closing speech. The resounding cheers were so loud a few people actually laughed in surprise. “And now, go ahead and enjoy your meals! Thank you all for coming!”
Almost instantly, waiters scurried to deliver the main course. A few people got up from their seats to stretch their legs and visit other tables.
“I’m gonna go hit the bathroom,” Josh said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek. “Be right back.”
“I’ll just be here devouring this salmon,” I replied.
He and Trey headed off for the bathroom while Gage started to nuzzle Ivy’s ear, making her giggle. Noelle rolled her eyes in disgust and dragged Dash off to go say hello to some alumni. As the rest of us dug into our food, I saw Missy Thurber, of all people, winding her way around the many tables as if headed for ours. I was even more surprised when she walked all the way arou
nd until she was right behind me.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she said, pressing her hands into the back of Josh’s vacated chair. I almost choked on my food. So she was actually talking to me now? Our relationship was no longer going to exclusively consist of evil glares?
“Proud of myself?” I asked.
“You seem to be picking off the Billings alums one by one,” she said, looking me up and down in an obnoxious way. “Guess I should stay away from you. Who knows what lies you’ll come up with about me to get me sent to jail?”
Astrid let out an indignant grunt. “Back off, you troll. Reed hasn’t lied about anyone.”
“You do know there’s actual proof that Paige paid off some guy to kill me and Carolina,” I said, turning in my seat to face her. “The guy confessed.”
Missy laughed. “Proof. Ha. Everything can be doctored these days, Reed. I’ll bet you a million dollars that video gets thrown out before it even makes it to court. And that guy was drunk when he blabbed. No one’s going to believe a loser like him over Paige Ryan.” She stood up straight and squared her shoulders, looking right into my eyes. “Either way, don’t think for a second that this is over,” she said through her teeth.
Then she reached over, plucked the fresh, warm roll from my bread plate, and took a bite out of it before walking off.
I gaped at Astrid, stunned.
“Did she really just steal your bread?” she asked.
“I think she really just did,” I replied.
And we both cracked up laughing. Honestly, when it came to villainous behavior, Missy had some brushing up to do. But still, something inside of me stirred. What did she mean, this wasn’t over? Did she have something to do with all these “accidents” too? Had she been working with Paige? They were cousins, after all, and Missy had hated me since our first day of sophomore year.
I watched her carefully as she crossed the room and sauntered over to Graham Hathaway. She ran her hand lightly over his shoulders, then picked up her clutch purse from his table and disappeared out a side door. It was a side door I knew all too well. I’d met Dash McCafferty in a little alcove through there last fall for one of those stolen moments between the two of us that I wasn’t too proud of. Graham took a last bite of potatoes and got up to follow her, buttoning his blue suit jacket as he went.