Wicked Little Secrets: A Prep School Confidential Novel (2 page)

“Forgot to mention my sisters were coming,” he says to me with a devious glint in his eyes.

“Oh. Sisters.” I’m an only child, so despite having an imaginary sister named Samantha when I was six, the concept of siblings is alien to me.

My heartbeat picks up and we wriggle our way to the seats. It’s not that I’m nervous or anything. It’s just that usually I like to have advance warning about meeting a guy’s family.

“Anne, this is Claire,” Brent says. Claire smiles at me and my nerves dissolve. Her smile is perfect, unlike Brent’s, but they have the same pointy nose and chocolate brown eyes. Claire tells me she’s a senior at Brown and says she heard I was from New York. I nod, thankful she leaves it at that and there’s no mention of me shooting the former vice principal.

“Where’s Holly?” Brent says, nodding to the empty seat next to Claire. She gnaws her bottom lip.

“Don’t be pissed. She’s only home for a few days and wanted to see her friends.” Claire’s eyes move to the aisle, to a man talking into a cell phone and making his way toward us. Brent’s cheery expression clouds over.

“You let
him
come?”

From the way Claire hisses, “They’re his season tickets, Brent,” I conclude that
him
is their father.

Things I know about Brent’s father:

1. He owns the biggest newspaper in Boston.

2. Brent doesn’t see him much.

“Sorry in advance.” Brent squeezes my hand as his father makes his way toward us.

“Does he know who I am?” I blurt. “I mean, like, what I did? How I almost got you shot?”

“I don’t know. But Steve Westbrook has sued his paper three times in the past year, so you’re good.”

I look over at Brent, unsure if he’s serious. He gives me a lazy grin that makes my heart flip-flop.

Brent’s father ends his phone call when he gets back to the seats. He’s Brent’s height—which is short for a guy—with wavy gray hair. He and Brent do an odd little standoff type thing before he extends a hand to his son. It’s all really bizarre to me, seeing someone give their kid a handshake. My father always hugs me, even when he temporarily hates me.

Brent’s father turns to me and takes me in. “Pierce Conroy,” he says. “And you must be…”

“Anne Dowling,” I say, even though it’s obvious this is the first time he’s hearing my name. His handshake is dismissive, as if he can’t wait for this day to be over. I study his face. It seems very familiar to me. Probably because it’s so much like Brent’s: strong jaw, warm brown eyes.

We all shut up for the National Anthem. I sit between Claire and Brent, who gives clipped answers to his father’s questions about the crew season. Claire says she loves my dress. We wind up talking about our favorite places on Newbury Street, and I don’t even notice that Brent’s seat is empty until he comes back holding a cardboard tray. He picks a fully loaded hotdog from the top and passes the tray down to Claire and me.

Claire tears a soft pretzel in half and hands a piece to me. Brent inhales the hot dog in two bites and takes a pull from his extra-large soda. Mr. Conroy watches from the corner of his eye the whole time. It doesn’t take me long to figure out why: Brent is diabetic.

“Are you sure you should be—” Mr. Conroy starts, but Brent freezes him with a look and tears open a box of Cracker Jacks. Beside me, Claire sighs, as if this pissing contest is a frequent scene in the Conroy household.

Mr. Conroy’s cell rings and he excuses himself. When he’s gone, Claire mutters, “Real mature, Brent.”

“I am the
epitome
of mature.”

I snigger to myself. Just last night Brent donned a ski mask and mooned the security cam outside the boy’s dorm because Murali dared him to.

Brent tosses a Cracker Jack at Claire and puts a hand on my knee. He doesn’t move it for the rest of the game, except to stand up and shout whenever the Sox score a run. I feel like I should at least cheer my team on, but the Yankees wind up winning and I don’t want to get followed and shanked on the way back to the train.

Claire hugs Brent good-bye, then me. “You’re the first girl from school he’s ever even talked about,” she whispers in my ear. “Keep an eye on him, okay?”

“You enjoy the game, Dad?” Brent asks Mr. Conroy, whose mouth forms a line. He spent about six out of the nine innings on his phone. I can sort of see why Brent doesn’t like his dad. The only thing Mr. Conroy seemed to care about was Brent’s crew season. He barely acknowledged the “new girlfriend” thing.

Claire flicks Brent’s ear and tells him to bring me home for dinner sometime.

“Where is home for you, anyway?” I ask around a yawn as we catch a train back to school.

“Bedford.” We plop into two empty seats, and he plants a kiss on the top of my head. I grab his chin and pull his face to mine, making him kiss me on the lips, because even though there are people around, I don’t care. I’ve waited long enough to be able to kiss Brent when I want to.

“Bedford,” I repeat. “I have no idea where that is.”

“I’ll show you sometime.”

“Good.” And I mean it. I want to know everything there is to know about Brent Conroy. I know his favorite song is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and his favorite class is British literature, but I want to know the important stuff, too. That’s why I can’t help but say, “What’s the deal with you and your dad?”

Brent stiffens. “It’s stupid family stuff.”

“You can tell me, you know,” I say.

He hesitates. “My dad lived away from us for two-thirds of my life.”

“Your parents were separated?” I wonder if anyone at school knows this.

“Not technically. But they may as well have been. We have a condo in Boston, near my dad’s office. He stayed there more than he stayed at home with us.”

I contemplate this. My mom has totally accused my dad of being a workaholic before, but when I was little he’d still come into my room no matter how late he got home to tuck me in and talk to me with my Baby Lamb Chop puppet.

“Anyway, every time he’s home for long stretches of time, he acts like we’re not practically strangers or anything,” Brent goes on. “He tries to tell me what to do, when my mom and grandparents are the ones who raised me. And he’s never afraid to tell me what a disappointment I am, as if I give a crap what he thinks.”

I think of how Brent baited Mr. Conroy into saying something about eating all that crap at the baseball game. I picture the shell-shocked look on Mr. Conroy’s face. A funny feeling comes over me. Brent has changed the subject, and I nod at what he’s saying even though I can’t really hear him over the ringing in my ears.

Because I know where I’ve seen Mr. Conroy before. He’s the boy standing next to Matthew Weaver in the 1981 crew team photo.

CHAPTER

TWO

The photograph is a 5
×
7, and the quality isn’t great, but the shortest boy in the picture is definitely Pierce Conroy. Behind him is a broad-shouldered blond: Steven Westbrook. Next to him is Matthew Weaver, who left Aldridge Dormitory in the middle of the night and never came back.

I swallow and turn the photo over. I know what is written on the back, but for some reason my brain hopes the words have magically disappeared.

THEY KILLED HIM.

I remind myself to breathe. I run through all of the things I convinced myself of when I first found the picture.

Matthew Weaver has been
missing
for over thirty years, which means there’s a tiny chance he’s still alive.

And if he
is
dead, it doesn’t mean he was murdered.

Whoever wrote on the back of the picture could have been playing a sick joke. Trying to mess with whatever unsuspecting Wheatley student checked the history book out of the library. During my first week of classes, Brent had told me people like to embellish the Matthew Weaver stories to scare the freshmen.

There is one thing I’m certain of, though: I can never, ever tell Brent about the photograph.

Poking into Isabella’s murder was different. I knew someone at the school was involved, and I didn’t care who I pissed off to get answers.

I think of Brent’s hand on my knee at the baseball game. Now, I have too much to lose by chasing ghosts.

*   *   *

I never got a new roommate. The administration decided that would probably be as traumatic as my old one dying. Also, no one starts at the Wheatley School midyear. Except for me, but that’s only because my father is sort of friends with Jacqueline Tierney, AKA Dean Snaggletooth.

I crawl into bed with a cup of chai and a book I haven’t been able to read because I’ve been so swamped with homework. My mom and I used to do this together on Sunday nights, before I was banished to Boston. Thinking about all of the times I tuned her out because I had a hangover from Saturday night makes me feel guilty and homesick.

I never thought I’d be homesick. I wasn’t the kid who cried and called her parents during her first sleepover: I was the kid who climbed into bed with her friends’ parents the next morning, complimented them on their selection of processed-sugar-free snacks, and asked if I could watch the
Today
show.

Now my dorm is starting to feel like home, kind of. I picked up copies of my favorite books—
The Secret Garden
and
A Little Princess—
from a vintage bookstore on Newbury Street to fill the empty standard-issue shelf by my desk.

But it’s not enough to cover up the fact that all of Isabella’s stuff is gone now. Even worse, Isabella’s not the person I think of every time I look at the wall where her
Star Trek
poster used to be.

I don’t want to waste any more brain space on Anthony, her brother, ever again. I’ve had guys act like dicks to me before: Tyler, the NYU junior I hooked up with who pretended not to recognize me when I ran into him at a party. Martin Payne, who cursed at me for calling the cops and ran away when St. Augustine’s auditorium caught on fire.

But Anthony Fernandez is by far the worst.

I met Anthony at Isabella’s wake and knew him for all of five minutes before I saw him punch his cousin in the face. Probably I should have figured I couldn’t trust Anthony then. But I couldn’t have found out as much as I did about Isabella without his help.

Then he was arrested for her murder.

After Dr. Harrow confessed, Anthony was cleared of all the charges—but it didn’t change the fact he was caught on camera stealing over a thousand dollars from Isabella’s bank account a few days before her death. I was pretty upset about it, because even though I’ve hooked up with some questionable specimens, I draw the line at potential felon.

Anthony didn’t in the least think I deserved an explanation as to why he stole the money. That’s probably what pisses me off more than anything: that I would have listened. I would have tried to understand, because I cared about Anthony. And not like in the way people say, “Oh, I care about the environment.” More like the thought of Anthony going to jail and having unspeakable things done to him, made it feel like someone had shot a hole through my chest.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now: Anthony’s parents didn’t press charges for stealing the money, and he hasn’t contacted me since.

It’s after midnight, and I’m too wound up over everything to sleep. I fumble in the dark for my laptop. Obviously I’m not helping my insomnia by Googling Matt Weaver for the thousandth time since I found the photo, but I can’t stop thinking about Brent’s dad.

What I already know, thanks to Wikipedia: Matt Weaver had a full scholarship to Wheatley. He joined the crew team at the end of his freshman year. On March 13 of his junior year, he left his dorm in the middle of the night. He never came back.

A number of people were questioned in connection with Matt’s disappearance, including his friends on the Wheatley crew team. The police backed off after a scathing news story surfaced about how the Weavers had pressured them into going after the boys despite the fact there was no evidence of foul play. The only witness mentioned by name was Paula McGuiness, a woman who said she saw a boy who fit Matt’s description head into the woods—alone—the night he went missing.

Matt’s disappearance is still considered an open case, but there hasn’t been a real development in over twenty years. The most recent news mention of the case is from 2000, when police divers uncovered male remains in the Charles River. They were never identified, but the dental records didn’t match Matt’s.

I scroll down to the section labeled
Theories About Disappearance
, flagged by a huge banner that basically says everything I’m about to read probably isn’t true.

Rumored Connection to Satanism

Renewed interest in the case was sparked in the early 1990s, after
Dateline
aired an episode speculating that Matthew Weaver disappeared in the midst of a satanic ritual. Several childhood friends who were interviewed claimed Weaver had been obsessed with paganism. A private investigator cited the presence of blood found on a trail in the Wheatley woods—once believed to be Weaver’s, but which had turned out to be animal blood—as evidence some sort of sacrifice had taken place the night Weaver disappeared. Police and investigators have since dispelled these claims as part of a larger “satanic panic” that had gripped the nation during the time.

Okay, so I kind of wish I weren’t alone right now. I’m not a wimp by any means—I’ve taken the E train by myself, at night—but certain things spook me. When everyone was obsessed with trying to summon Bloody Mary in the fifth grade, I chickened out and had a thing about bathroom mirrors for
years.

I keep circling back to the same phrase:
some sort of sacrifice.

But why would the crew team members sacrifice one of their own?

*   *   *

I must fall asleep at some point, because when I wake up, sunlight is leaking through the gaps in my blinds and Remy Adams is pounding on my door.

I know it’s Remy because she’s the only person here besides me who doesn’t sleep until noon on Sundays. Also, the knocking gives her away: Remy only has one volume setting.