Get Even (12 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

COACH CREED STOOD AT THE FRONT OF THE LEADERSHIP
classroom, arms folded across his ’Maine Men shirt as Kitty and the rest of the class filed into the room and took their regular seats.

“So it turns out,” he started, as if they’d just walked into a conversation already in progress, “that little twerp Baranski was trying to protect those DGM criminals, which should be a crime itself. But the police have let him go.”

Mika leaned forward. “I’m going to talk to Coach Miles today,” she whispered. “See if we can get Theo in as manager before Creed tries to kill him with hill charges.”

“Good idea,” Kitty said out of the corner of her mouth.

Coach Creed began pacing the room. “The authorities have no leads at this time. They’ve failed, which means it’s up to us to find Ronny’s killer.”

Mika raised her hand. “I thought we were here to find DGM?” she said without waiting to be called upon.

“Same thing, Jones,” Coach Creed snapped. “Where there’s pirates, there’s booty.”

Kitty didn’t like the sound of this. At. All.

“So listen up!” Coach Creed continued. “’Maine Men, we’ll be upping your patrols. I want you around campus during class, before class, after class. All the time, got it?”

“Got it!” Rex said.

“And I want lists of students who have been exhibiting any kind of suspicious behavior,” Coach Creed continued. “Nervous tics, unexcused absences, isolationist tendencies. Work in groups. I want a comprehensive suspect list by the end of the period.”

Kitty turned around to face Mika. “Want to work togeth . . .” Her voice trailed off and her eyes drifted toward the back of the room, where Donté was waving at her.

Mika turned to see what Kitty was looking at, and smiled wickedly. “I see you already have a partner.” She winked at Kitty. “You can fill me in later.”

Donté swung a desk around for Kitty as she threaded her way to the back of the classroom, and the two of them huddled up, pretending to work on their suspect lists.

“This school is getting weird,” Donté said under his breath.

Kitty nodded, keeping an eye on Coach Creed. “Big Brother is watching you.”

“Creed’s totally off the rails,” Donté said, glancing at the coach. “He didn’t used to be like this, I swear.”

That’s right. Creed coached the men’s JV basketball team. He would have been Donté’s coach last year. Kitty recalled the conversation she’d overheard that morning between Creed and Father Uberti. Maybe it was time to do a little fishing?

“Oh yeah?” Kitty asked.

Donté shook his head. “Dude was always strict. Kind of old-fashioned. He was at a military school before he got the job here and I think he sort of preferred the discipline at his old job.”

“What school was it?” Kitty asked.

“Don’t remember. Somewhere in Arizona, I think.”

Kitty stared at Donté, her suspicions confirmed. Arizona. Could there be more than one military academy in the state? Possibly. But the link between Coach Creed and Ronny was feeling more tangible every moment, and all roads seemed to lead to Archway Military Academy.

“Got anything for me?”

Coach Creed loomed above them. Instead of creating his list, she’d been staring at the notebook page on her desk, pen in hand, while her brain grappled with anonymous clues and military academies in Arizona. Without even realizing it, Kitty had written a single word: Archway.

“Not yet,” Kitty said, trying to cover the page with her arm. “I haven’t noticed anything—”

“Let me see.” Coach Creed whisked the notebook out from beneath Kitty’s arm and held it up to his nose. “What the hell is this?” he roared.

Shit. “Nothing,” Kitty said, trying to laugh it off.

Coach Creed shoved the notebook in Kitty’s face. “What the hell did you hear, huh? What are people saying?”

Kitty flinched away from the page. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“None of it is true, do you hear me?” He stepped closer. “None of it.”

“Coach!” Donté said. He was on his feet, his massive frame towering over his former coach. “Leave her alone.”

“Greene, focus on your own list.” Creed glanced down at Donté’s page. “I see you haven’t done any better than our vice president here.”

Donté didn’t back down. “I don’t think this is an appropriate use of class time.”

“Appropriate use of class time?” Coach Creed said incredulously. “I thought you understood the severity of the threat to our school, Greene.”

“Maybe I don’t see it that way.”

Coach Creed looked as if Donté had slapped him across the face. He pointed at the ’Maine Men emblem on Donté’s shirt. “Greene, you’re a ’Maine Man. You swore an oath to protect the reputation of Bishop DuMaine Preparatory School. Are you telling me that means nothing to you?”

Donté stared at Coach Creed for a moment, the muscles around his jaw rippling. Finally, he nodded. “You know what, Coach? That oath does mean something to me.” Then he reached over his head, grabbed the collar of his ’Maine Man shirt, and pulled it off. “And this is the best way I can think of to protect our school.” Without another word, a shirtless Donté left the classroom.

Coach Creed stormed after Donté. “Greene! Come back here. I’ll fail you. I swear to God!”

As his voice faded, Kitty battled the urge to cry. She’d tipped Creed off about Archway, plus Donté had gotten into trouble on her account. Not exactly a stellar start to her detective career.

“You okay?” Mika asked, taking the seat Donté had vacated.

“Yeah.”

“Kitty Cat,” Mika said, smiling wickedly. “What have you done to poor Donté?”

Kitty slumped forward on her desk. “He’s going to fail leadership and it’ll be all my fault. He’ll hate me.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mika laughed. “You’ve got that boy whipped. What did you do, put out on the first date or something?”

Kitty’s head snapped up. “No, I just—”

The bell rang without Coach Creed or Donté having returned to the classroom. Mika slowly rose to her feet. “Well, whatever you did, share it with me when I meet Mr. Right, will you?”

Kitty absently packed up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She’d been so panicked by Creed’s reaction to Archway, she’d kind of missed the fact that Donté had come to her defense and dropped out of the ’Maine Men.

“You forgot this,” Mika said, handing Kitty an envelope.

Kitty was about to say it didn’t belong to her, when she caught sight of the familiar label with her name on it.

“Oh, thanks.” She hoped Mika couldn’t see her hand shaking as she grasped the envelope to her chest.

Kitty waited until Mika had headed off for her chemistry class before she dared to peek inside. She walked slowly, scarcely aware of the throng of bodies bustling through the hallway around her. She paused at the top of the stairs and slid the contents of the envelope into her hand.

It was a photo.

There were two people. One of them—a boy, by the outfit—was missing a head. It had been cut clean out of the photo. The other definitely had a head, and she looked familiar. Her hair wasn’t styled like a twenties flapper, cropped short in the back with a heavy fringe of bangs, and the clothes weren’t thrift-store chic, but there was no doubt in Kitty’s mind that the smiling girl in the photo was Bree Deringer.

She turned the photo over and saw a caption scrawled across the back.

Best friends and Fighting Jesuits: Bree Deringer and Christopher Beeman.

TWENTY-FIVE

“AND WE’LL BE TEAMING UP IN PAIRS FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT.”

Margot’s head snapped up. Short of “I’m accusing you of murder,” Mr. Heinrich had just spoken the words Margot dreaded most in her school experience: “teaming up.”

Whether it was kickball on the elementary school playground or a presentation for first-period AP Government, Margot would inevitably be the odd girl out, paired up with whomever was unlucky enough to still be standing in the game of musical chairs once the iPod shut off.

“Pick your partners,” Mr. Heinrich continued, “and remember, this will count for twenty percent of your final grade.”

Alarms bells went off in Margot’s head. She was in a class full of seniors, which is what happens when your parents insist you enroll in summer semester every year so that you can load up on AP classes before you even start applying for college. She only knew one person in the room, and despite the fact that she was probably the smartest student in the class—a niche that occasionally meant a classmate with failing grades would beg her to be their partner on an assignment like this—it was only the second week of school, so no one knew that about her yet.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. “Margot?” Logan asked. “Do you have a partner yet?”

“No,” she managed.

He paused, looking embarrassed. “Do you want to pair up with me?”

Margot could have hugged him. “Sure,” she said simply, hoping it sounded somewhere between “OMG THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME” and “I might be more terrified of pairing up with you than being left unpartnered.”

“This looks like a lot of work,” Logan said, flipping through the packet of materials Mr. Heinrich handed out. “What are your nights and weekends like?”

Totally open as long as my parents think I’m doing schoolwork
. “I can work something out.”

“Okay.” Logan’s eyebrows drew together. “Mine are a little wonky. I’ve got rehearsals for the school play almost every night for the next three weeks.”

“Why so intense?” Margot asked.

“We’ve got this special performance of
Twelfth Night
for some Big Kahuna director.”

“‘If music be the food of love,’” Margot said softly, quoting the opening line of
Twelfth Night
, “‘play on.’”

“You know Shakespeare?”

Margot dropped her chin, hoping he wouldn’t notice the blush creeping up her neck. “We did a Shakespeare module in AP English last year. I’m good at remembering things.”

Logan pointed at her. “You know, Mr. Cunningham is totally overwhelmed with this show. I bet he could use someone like you to help run lines with the actors.”

Slipping out of the house once in a while for a Don’t Get Mad meeting couched as a study group was one thing, but hanging out in the theater department every night for the next three weeks? Margot wasn’t sure her parents would buy it.

“Come on,” Logan said. He bumped her shoulder playfully. “We can work on our AP Government project whenever I’m not in a scene, so it’s academic
and
extracurricular. They keep telling us it looks good on college apps, right?”

He had a point, but Margot wasn’t sure she could sell her parents on it. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good enough.”

The bell rang, and the class began to pack up. Logan laid his hand lightly on her arm. “Do you think . . .” He blinked several times. “Um, do you think I could get your phone number? So we can coordinate?”

It’s just for school
, Margot told herself, trying to suppress her excitement. “Sure.”

She rattled off her cell phone number as Logan typed into his phone. “Sweet. I sent you mine. So you have it.”

Margot sat at her desk, dumbfounded, as she watched Logan bound out of the classroom. Had that really just happened? In the course of an hour, had Margot agreed to join a theater production and given her phone number to the cutest boy she had ever met in her life?

Margot slipped her hand into her backpack and pulled out her cell phone. She needed to see Logan’s text, to make sure it was real and not some elaborate practical joke engineered by Amber Stevens. There was an incoming text on her screen.

It’s Logan! Now you have my number.
☺

Nausea. Fear. Excitement. Panic. It all swamped her at once. Part of her wanted to text Logan back and say, “No! I made a mistake. Can’t do this!” But fear had motivated so much of her life, Margot refused to give in to it this time.

Margot was still in a haze as she walked down the hall, but as she swung her locker door open, all thoughts of Logan evaporated.

Sitting on top of her textbooks was another manila envelope.

Margot had never been late to a class in her entire academic career, but she didn’t regret the decision to duck into the ladies’ room before second period, even with the ’Maine Men patrolling the halls during class. Whatever was in the mysterious envelope was not something that could (a) wait for the break, or (b) be opened in a crowded classroom.

And while a toilet stall wasn’t exactly her first choice for privacy, it was the only place she was likely to get it.

She was oddly calm as she studied the envelope in her hands. It was exactly like the first—a generic office supply with a single piece of tape meticulously centered on the flap—and left in exactly the same way. And though part of Margot cringed at what she might find, her hand was steady as she popped the tape and peeked inside.

More photos. Three of them.

But unlike the first, Margot had never seen any of these.

She thought of the first photo, the one of her overweight body wrapped in plastic.

It had all been part of Amber’s plan. But Margot was too naive to realize that it had been a setup when she overheard Amber in the locker room, telling Peanut and Jezebel about this amazing new weight-loss sensation. All you had to do was bind yourself in plastic wrap before bed each night, and you’d sweat the pounds off in your sleep.

It had sounded like the miracle she’d been waiting for. As soon as she was free of her parents for the night, she’d stripped down and swaddled herself before bed.

It wasn’t until the next day, when the photo of her chubby body encased in plastic wrap was infecting every phone in school, that Margot realized the whole thing had been a horrible joke.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, a group of eighth-grade boys had come to school with plastic wrapped around their arms and legs and stomachs. Wherever Margot went, someone was mocking her, pointing, laughing. It had been too much. Margot had left school at lunch, walked six miles home, and taken her dad’s straight razor with her into the bathtub.

She would have succeeded, too, if the cleaning lady hadn’t shown up.

For four years, Margot had nursed a secret hatred of Amber Stevens. Amber, who had set her up, taken that photo, and circulated it to the entire school.

Margot stared at the photos in her hand, cycling through them slowly. The first two were from outside Margot’s house, but too far away from the bedroom window to see what was inside. The third was closer, probably taken from behind the sycamore tree outside Margot’s window. It showed Amber standing near the windowpane, turning to the camera with a wicked smile on her face and flashing two thumbs up. But there was a second figure in the photo, reflected in the darkened window. The flash from the camera phone obscured the photographer’s face, backlighting her to a vague, monochromatic silhouette. All Margot could make out was that she had long, curly hair.

The realization made Margot’s hands turn ice-cold. Amber wasn’t alone that night.

And Amber didn’t take the photo.