Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) by Kara Taylor Page B

principum. ” The voice is a dull rumble from the table next to me. It’s Giant Clark Kent—the kid who bumped into me the morning after the police found Isabella’s body.
    “Optime.” Upton gives him a clipped smile and writes his answers on the board. He hangs his head, twirling the pen in his hands. Then, as if he can sense me watching, he looks up at me with a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
    I offer him a small smile, but he looks away quickly.
    I’m starting to wonder if having a social problem is a prerequisite for being in this class.
    *   *   *
    “Hey, Molly, do you have a sec?” I ask when Upton lets us go.
    She doesn’t look up as she slides her laptop into its case. “Um. I guess.”
    “Cool.” I follow her out into the hall. We hang back and let everyone go past us. “I wanted to know if you knew why Isabella dropped that class.”
    Molly pales. “I don’t.”
    “I’m not stupid, Molly. She must have told you something.”
    Molly yanks me inside an empty classroom, away from the stragglers in the hall. “So what if she did? I’m not stupid, either. I know what you’re trying to do, and trust me. It’s not going to work.”
    I stand there, massaging my elbow, not because she hurt me when she grabbed it but because I’m so shocked she did. “If you’re too scared to go to the police, then—”
    “You don’t get it,” Molly snaps, her voice low. “I’m not supposed to talk about what happened, or I’ll lose my scholarship. Isabella should never have gotten me involved.”
    “You’d let your friend’s killer walk free so you can keep your scholarship to this school?” I shake my head in disgust and step toward the door. “Let me know if it’s worth it.”
    Molly grabs my arm again. This time, she’s rolled up the sleeve of her sweater. Bile rises in my throat: There are discolored lines running across her wrist. Scars.
    “It started with the girls at my old school calling me a dyke,” she says. “I went home and did this after they broke in to my locker and hid my stuff around the school. Now go ahead and tell me going back to public school isn’t so bad.”
    I don’t know what to say to her.
    “Upton lied to me about the work being too hard for Isabella. She was trying to get away from someone in our class, wasn’t she?”
    Molly hesitates, which is all the answer I need.
    The classroom door squeaks open, startling us both. Upton pokes her head in. “Did you need something, ladies? There’s no class in this room this period.”
    “We were just talking,” I say brightly. “Sorry, Professor.”
    Her eyes don’t leave us as we duck past her and back into the hall. I turn back once there’s a considerable distance between her and Molly and me.
    Upton is still watching us, and her face says that she heard everything.

 
    CHAPTER
    TWELVE
     
    The police have finally moved the crime-scene tape separating the forest from the edge of campus. I hate the idea of going to look, like some morbidly curious gawker, but after class, I find myself taking the back way to the dorms.
    The sound of dead leaves crackling under my boots is the only noise on the path that leads from the athletic fields to the forest. The quiet here drives me crazy; it’s not the type of quiet that you hear in New York City once you get used to all the noise. It’s just silence, broken up every hour by the clanging of the bell tower in the middle of campus.
    I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.
    I pause at the edge of the forest, anxiety settling in my chest. Why did I come here? To give myself nightmares? Because the endless expanse of trees with bare limbs twisting into the sky like gnarled arms is creepy enough without picturing Isabella’s body lying cold in a pile of leaves.
    The sound of my phone chirping startles me. I have an e-mail from [email protected].
    anne,
    I need to talk to you about Isabella. I don’t know if you’ll read this in time. I didn’t know how else to