54
MURDERED
Early the following week, I was sat across from Noelle in the library, pretending to read The Grapes of Wrath. I had read it back in eighth grade during my English teacher's spring reading challenge (which I had won by a landslide), so I technically didn't need to be reading it again. I really should have been studying for my French exam or doing my biology lab, but since I was unable to concentrate on anything for more than five seconds at a time, I figured I'd go with something I had already read. Under the table, my leg jumped up and down as if it were trying to free itself from my torso.
If I didn't flunk out of this place before Christmas, it would be a miracle.
The library was deathly silent aside from the occasional sound of a book spine cracking or a pencil scratching against paper. Back home, our library was full of giggles and whispers and table-hockey games. It was a place for kids to waste their study hall periods gossiping and being generally stupid. At Easton the
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library was a place to work. When I'd first arrived, this phenomenon had inflated me with a kind of intellectual pride. I was at an actual institution of serious learning. I was a scholar. Today, the silence threatened to kill me. It made it far too easy for my brain to wander to other things.
"I'm going to grab a bottle of water," Noelle said, pulling out her Gucci wallet. "You want anything?"
They didn't have fountains here at Easton. Just Evian vending machines.
"No, thanks," I said.
It still threw me a bit that she was going to get her own stuff now instead of ordering me to go. That she was actually asking what she could do for me. I should have taken advantage of it--and would have--if stuff like that had even been a remote priority anymore. It didn't seem like it ever would be again.
Noelle turned and sauntered off toward the bathroom alcove, where the machines hummed away. As soon as she was gone, I heard feet pounding on the carpeted floor and looked up. Everyone, in fact, looked up. Lorna Gross came bumbling into view and raced right over to a tableful of sophomores off to my left. Her frizzy hair was triangular, and a few strands stuck to the sheen of sweat on her face. She whispered something breathlessly, spitting all over her friends' books.
Suddenly, everyone was looking at me. Constance, Missy, Diana Waters. Kiki Rosen popped the earbuds out of her ears and turned off her iPod. I felt as if a huge tidal wave were hovering
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behind me and everyone was just watching it, waiting for it to plunge down on me and sweep me away.
"What?" I said loudly.
Constance looked at the others, then braced her hand on the back of her chair as she reluctantly got up. She walked over and sat down next to me, leaning in so that no one might overhear. I gripped my book in both hands until the pads of my fingertips hurt.
"Reed, they arrested someone," Constance said calmly, soothingly. "Some guy from town named Rick DeLea or something?"
My throat constricted. My heart constricted. My lower stomach tightened into a knot. Suddenly, Constance felt very far away. Everything and everyone seemed to shrink into the background, and all there was in the world was this:
Thomas had been murdered. Thomas had been murdered.
So Noelle had been right. So that townie dealer scum that she and Josh had known about, but whom I had never heard of, had killed him.
So ... so ... so .. .
"They're saying he was Thomas's middleman or something?" Constance said, her brow coming together and rearranging her freckles.
I nodded mutely. There was no way I could speak.
Missy Thurber got up and strode over to us, Lorna at her side. "Well, well. Guess you won't be milking the tragic heroine thing much longer."
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"Shut up, Missy," Constance said, then lo
oked shocked at herself.
"What? I'm just saying. Thomas Pearson wasn't the innocent victim of some twisted anti-prep-school crime. He was just murdered in the middle of a drug deal gone awry. Like some common criminal." Missy leaned into the table and looked me in the eye. "I think that knocks you down a few pegs."
I hardly heard a thing she said. All I could hear, all I could see, was one word: murdered. The word I had been avoiding for days. Murdered.