Confessions: The Private School Murders (6 page)

Since I’ve been so busy
listing all the
negatives
of being off the drugs, I’ve decided to share with you—and only you—one of the positives. I know what you’re thinking.
There’s a positive? Then what’s she been whining about all this time?
I apologize if I’ve been in a morose frame of mind. But with all the deaths and the jail visits and the random strangers taking over my life, I’m hoping you can forgive me.

So here it is, the positive: I am starting to remember James. And I’m not talking about the weird dreams. I’m talking about actual memories. At least, I think they are. I hope they are. See, there were always little bits and snippets that I could recall, vague feelings, hazy shadows, flashes of a face or a knee or a hand. But now I was starting to see real 3-D images. I was starting
to hear his voice, sense his touch, smell his scent. I was starting to remember that I had been in love.

Not only that. I had experienced love at first sight.

There was a party one night about a year ago. A party I, of course, had to sneak out to go to, Malcolm and Maud not believing in fun, as it were. It was exactly what you’d expect from the children of the New York elite. Huge apartment, tons of breakables worth untold thousands, and at least a hundred kids drinking, smoking, and partaking of all kinds of drugs their parents had definitely not formulated especially for them.

I hate to say “our eyes met across a crowded room,” but they did. But it wasn’t just like “Oh, he’s cute,” or even “That’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.” It was like I knew him. And he knew me. And we just hadn’t seen each other in a really long time. Locking eyes with James felt like coming home.

We made small talk about travel and school and our families, but what I really remember was all the smiling. All the anticipation. All the skin-tingling uncertainty.

I had loved every minute of it.

And then it had happened. Just as I’d started to get that awful, gut-deadening feeling that nothing could possibly come of this—that it was too good to be true—James had leaned in and kissed me. And I had felt it in every inch of my body.

Me. The girl who never felt
anything
. The girl who was on so many drugs I’d barely cried when my favorite person in the
world—my sister, Katherine—had died. That was how I knew for certain that I was in love.

After that, sneaking out became a much more common occurrence. But here’s the strangest, most unbelievable part of this: Aside from the clarity of our first meeting, I couldn’t remember most of the time James and I had spent together.

Because when my parents did find out about us—because eventually they always found out about everything—they’d had my memory
purged
. Chemically purged, electrically rubbed out, scoured down to the bloody nubs.

My parents were rich and powerful and connected enough to know people who could do that. They’d not only taken me away from James physically, but done everything they could to make sure I’d never so much as dream of him again.

But I did now. All the time. Since I’d gone off the drugs, I was finally starting to remember, more and more each day, the details.

After all this time, I had real and tangible hope that one day I’d remember everything. And that once I remembered, I’d find a way to get James back.

8

The next morning,
Jacob was actually up before me and had laid out a huge breakfast of chocolate-chip pancakes, eggs, sausage, and coffee, which resulted in Hugo’s declaring his undying love for the man. I, however, was kind of annoyed that my morning ritual of breakfast making had been brusquely taken from me without my consent. But that didn’t stop me from eating everything in sight. Which made us late.

After thanking Jacob, Harry, Hugo, and I charged up Central Park West and across the avenue at Seventy-Seventh Street to our school, All Saints Academy. All Saints is a privately owned, Gothic-style former church, all massive stone walls, stained-glass windows, and soaring
roof lines. Our tiger parents had loved this school because of its small and very exclusive enrollment, but they’d also been obsessed with its headmaster, Timothy Thibodaux. The man was highly intelligent, even by Angel standards.

I had a like-hate relationship with Mr. Thibodaux. He was sharp, of course, but I didn’t trust him. Not since he’d refused to let us return to school once we were under suspicion for our parents’ deaths. Not
charged
with their deaths, just under suspicion. Yet he’d turned us away at the front door like a bunch of beggars in a Charles Dickens novel. At least he’d apologized for that slight a couple of weeks later when he’d been forced to take us back.

Even I had to admit that Mr. Thibodaux was good at handling the twenty kids in his class, nearly all of them privileged and untouchable. Harry and I, these days, were the exceptions. Our parents were dead and we were broke. But Mr. Thibodaux hadn’t turned us away again—not yet, at least—because we were paid up through the school year. Next year, of course, I had no idea what would happen.

Harry and I were panting as we left Hugo at the door to the rectory, where the fifth graders had their classroom, and the two of us trotted up the front steps of the large stone church. We took a right turn off the narthex and climbed the stairway to the choir loft under the vaulted
ceiling. This was our classroom, with its stunning long view of the nave and the altar.

Mr. Thibodaux was waiting at the top of the stairs. He wore an impeccably cut brown suit, green-framed glasses, and a mournful expression.

“I’m happy you Angels could make it,” he said. And I actually couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

I noticed the grief-shocked faces of our schoolmates as Harry and I took our seats, and I gave C.P. a nod. We stowed our book bags and sat perfectly upright with our hands folded in front of us.

“Due to your incessant texting, I’m sure you all know that Adele Church has been killed,” Mr. Thibodaux said. “I would be grieving at the loss of any of you, but Adele, in particular, was a very promising student, a talented musician, and a generally sterling person.”

A few of the kids sitting behind me began to cry. Mr. Thibodaux noticed but went on.

“You may not know this, but my relationship with my students doesn’t end at graduation. In a way, that’s when it begins. I see all our graduates every year, and I am amazed at how each of them has grown. The brilliant ones don’t always go straight to the top but take a winding and unique path. The slackers sometimes spring into action, and sometimes they turn slacking into a fine art.

“But whatever my students do, whomever they become as adults, I take pride and pleasure in knowing that we all crossed paths here, that we learned from one another here, that we helped one another become…”

He trailed off, and one of the girls behind me gulped back a sob.

“Adele lost her life, and we all lost her. We will never see her become who she was meant to be, but I know we will all always remember our dear, shining Adele.”

Mr. Thibodaux crooked a finger in front of his lips, holding back tears as he looked across the room at an intricate stained-glass crucifixion scene in one of the windows.

“Please pray for Adele, keep her in your thoughts, honor her in whatever way you feel appropriate,” he said finally, clearing his throat. “There will be a service for Adele this Saturday at St. Barnabas. Grief counseling will be provided here immediately. If you will all gather at my office door and form a line along the green wall, a therapist will see you forthwith.

“Class is dismissed.”

Everyone slowly rose from their seats, but I was frozen in place. Harry looked back at me just as I started to shake.

“Tandy?” he said.

Grief counseling
. The reason my parents had given for
sending me to Fern Haven. At the time I’d believed them, since I couldn’t remember a thing from the months leading up to my incarceration. But they’d actually sent me there to have my memories wiped. To have James and everything we’d seen and done together plucked from my consciousness.

I would never trust a grief counselor again.

9

C.P. stood at the end
of the line outside Mr. Thibodaux’s office as I walked right by my classmates toward the side door. Harry was the only one missing, so I could only assume he was already pouring his guts out to the shrink. There weren’t many things Harry loved to do more than talk about his feelings.

“Tandy? Where’re you going?” C.P. asked me. She was wearing a zebra-print coat over a black dress, her short blond hair pushed forward over her forehead and her blue eyes wide.

“Outside,” I said. “I don’t need grief counseling.” I clenched my fists inside my pockets. “By the way, have the cops interviewed you about Adele?”

C.P.’s brow knit. “No.”

I looked down the line of students. “Have the cops interviewed any of you?” I called out to my classmates. They all stared at me, then at one another, blankly.

I sighed and turned to C.P. “Send them each out to me when they finish in the office, okay?”

She narrowed her eyes. “This was what you meant yesterday when you said
we
, isn’t it?”

“Someone’s gotta find out what happened to her. And clearly it’s not gonna be the NYPD.”

I waited on a teak bench in the courtyard between the church and the apartment building next door. It was one of those oddly warm winter days, and the sun felt good on my face. Harry was the first to come out, but he didn’t even look in my direction. He just ducked his head and took off for the street, probably planning to go home or to the rehearsal rooms at Lincoln Center to take out his emotions on an unsuspecting piano.

Cliff Anderson was the next to emerge. He was a tall, square-shouldered son of a Wall Street tycoon with an ego bigger than Manhattan. He eyed me warily as he approached.

“C.P. said I’m supposed to talk to you…?”

“Have a seat.”

He did, sitting as far away from me on the bench as possible without hitting the ground.