Wicked Little Secrets: A Prep School Confidential Novel (16 page)

“You’re about to be tied to the cinder block you carried up here. On the count of three, you’re all going to do a little cliff diving. Last one to jump and the last one to untie himself will face the jury. They’ll pick a loser to be publicly humiliated at next week’s race.

“Meet your jury,” Casey cackles.

He motions for the three guys to step forward. Erik, Cole … and Brent.

“Wait, you’re gonna tie us to those blocks?” One of the guys squeaks. “We’ll die!”

“The water’s only eight feet deep,” Casey barks. “But if I were you, I’d start thinking about how you’re going to untie yourselves.”

I swallow down a gag. They can’t do this—the guys could get seriously hurt—

“You’ve got to be kidding,” one of the other guys says. His voice is tiny, as if he hasn’t even hit puberty yet. “You guys are nuts. I’m not doing this.”

Casey gets in his face. I don’t want to imagine the kid’s expression behind the potato sack. “You sure about that, Halpern?”

Halpern’s voice shakes. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to die, yeah.”

Casey nods to Erik, who yanks the potato sack off Halpern’s head. “Don’t bother showing up to practice Monday, then.”

“But—”

“You think I’m messing around?” Casey grabs Halpern by the neck. I swallow away a whimper.
Please stop him, Brent.
“You think being on a nationally ranked team is a joke? You think everything we do is a fucking joke?”

“No,” Halpern stammers.

“Then get out of my sight, dipshit. And don’t. Show up. For practice Monday.”

Halpern shakes himself free of the rope around his wrists and hurries down the side of the cliff. He runs back toward the forest without a glance at the rock I’m hiding behind.

“Anyone else have a problem?” Casey asks. The guys are silent, unmoving. Except for Zach Walton: His legs look as if they’re going to collapse. I picture his face beneath the potato sack, pale and sweating.
Leave,
I want to scream at him.
Being on the stupid team isn’t worth it.

I can barely watch as the upperclassmen rest the cinder blocks behind the recruits. Each block has rope tied around the middle; the guys loop the other end of the rope around each recruit’s bound hands.

I’m shivering and sweating at the same time.
Please don’t do this, you guys. Please don’t get hurt.

“Ready?” Casey asks.

When no one replies, he counts down from three. The recruits jump off the cliff.

And a scream rips from my throat.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

I take off running as soon as I realize what I’ve done. In the split second it takes me to get on my feet, I look at the lake.

All of the recruits are … floating?

That can’t be right.

Casey’s voice booms across the night. “What the fuck was that?”

I keep running until my chest feels as if it’s going to explode. With a surge of panic, I realize that I don’t know how to get back to the tunnel that leads to school.
Find the shack.
Footsteps sound in the leaves several yards behind me.

“Who’s there?” It’s Casey’s voice. He’s pissed off.

“Go cover the entrance,” Brent says. “I’ll get them.”

One set of footsteps takes off in the other direction. I can’t breathe. And the other set is closing in on me—

My foot snags on a log sticking out of the ground. I stick out my hands to break my fall and cry out in pain. I’m trying to drag myself to my feet when Brent jumps over the log and lands on the ground next to me.

“Anne?” His eyes are wild, his knit cap pulled down over his ears.

“I—” I can’t get the words out. I lean over, giving into dry heaves.

Brent pushes me down until we’re hidden by the log. “Did you follow us here?”

I nod. “The recruits—”

“We replaced the cinder blocks with foam ones,” Brent whispers. “It was all a prank. Anne, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I thought … I thought The Drop was how … how he died.”

Brent’s eyes are worried, like he’s watching someone who has gone completely batshit out of their mind. “How
who
died?”

My eyes sting. My chest stings. Everything hurts. “Matt Weaver.”

Brent’s mouth hangs open.

Casey’s voice makes us jump. “Conroy, what’s going on?”

Brent turns to me. “Stay here. I’ll distract him. When I yell something about a bird, run for the tunnels.”

I nod as he launches himself off the ground and runs toward Casey. “Got away.”

“It sounded like a girl,” Casey says. “You got outrun by a
girl.
”

“It was kids. Two of them.” Brent sounds out of breath. “They were just messing around.”

I can’t hear the rest of what Casey says, but it sounds like an angry rant against whoever screwed up The Drop.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing my heart to calm down. When Brent yells, “Dude, was that a hawk?” I force myself to get up and make a break for the tunnel entrance.

*   *   *

Over an hour later I get a text from Brent.

Meet me in the basement of Amherst

I’m shaking as I get out of bed. I’m still in my black jeans and sweater, and my hair is an eagle’s nest.

I want to shrivel up and disappear and never have to face Brent. This could be the end of us, and it’s all my fault.

And worse, I don’t want this to be the end.

I slip my room key into the pocket of my sweater. As an afterthought, I stick the crew team photo in there, too. It’s the only thing I’ve got other than an insanity plea.

Brent’s sitting against the wall near the tunnel entrance when I get to the basement. He’s not smiling, but his voice isn’t angry when he speaks. “I never used this entrance before. The bookcase is a nice touch.”

I sit next to him so our shoulders are touching. “You never responded to my text. The one asking if we were okay.”

A sigh escapes his nose.

“Well, are we?” I ask.

“Anne, what is going on with you?” He turns to me. From the light of the moon leaking into the basement, I can see all of the freckles on his nose.

I draw in a breath and pull the photo out of my pocket. Brent takes it, his eyebrows knitting together. “Where did you get this?”

“It was between the pages of a history book from the library,” I say. “Brent … turn it over.”

He does. I watch his eyes move across the words. He sets it down on his knee, the back facing up. “You think this is about Matt Weaver?”

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.…”