Buzz Kill (11 page)

“Viv, for crying out loud, leave Mr. Woolsey alone,” I urged as soon as I was close enough to intervene. “You're scaring him!”

Mr. Woolsey probably should've been offended, but—as I'd predicted—he was mainly relieved. “What can I do for you, Millicent?” he asked, eyes still darting nervously in Viv's direction. “Hmm?” He dug into the pocket of his suit jacket. “Do you need a pass to return to class?”

“No, thanks.”

I actually had plenty of passes, some presigned “Bertram B. Woolsey” in a distinctive florid script, having “borrowed” a pad full of them when I'd been in his office for a halfhearted lecture about missing French
trois
the previous year.

“Millie, what do you want?” Viv snapped while Mr. Woolsey continued to pat himself down. “I'm trying to work here.”

“That's what I wanted to talk about, Viv,” I said. “I want you to back off this story, because I
did
find the body, and I'm fully capable of covering the murder—starting with an article about this service. That's why I'm here.”

I really wanted the chance to summarize the eulogy my father had delivered, because while he hadn't gone first, he'd eventually said some pretty nice stuff about Mr. Killdare and had even gotten a little misty—if only over a victory they'd shared in 2010.

But Viv crossed her arms, challenging me. “Where's your notebook? Huh?”

Of course, I should've brought a pad and pen, but I pointed to my head. “I have more up here, saved away, than you can ever dream of having in your precious notebook.”

“All you've got up there is a tangled rats' nest,” Viv sniped.

Ignoring her, I appealed to Mr. Woolsey on the grounds that I'd just rescued him, and he was, if only technically, in charge of the school. “Please, Mr. Woolsey. I am
finally
trying to do something academic here—trying to ‘achieve my potential,' as defined by the American education establishment—the way you're always telling me to do,” I reminded him. “Please . . . Tell Viv that I'm on the murder story now. That, at the very least, I'm covering the service.”

Bertram Woolsey looked like he might pee his suit pants to be put on the spot like that, but then a light seemed to dawn in his eyes, and to my utter shock, he turned to Viv and said, “I believe Millicent is correct, Vivienne. Let her cover the service.” He addressed both of us. “And then, honestly, I think the
Gazette
will have said enough.”

“I'll decide when we've said enough,” Viv snapped. She narrowed her eyes at me. “And this had better be one heck of an article, Ostermeyer. I want every detail you've got ‘in your head' on paper. And believe me—I'll know if you mess up, because
I
actually took notes.”

Then she stalked away, headed down the path toward school, and I turned to thank Mr. Woolsey for his support. But he was gone, too, walking toward my father, who was talking to a couple I didn't recognize, so I just stood there for a moment, reveling in my small victory. Only gradually did it dawn on me that Mr. Woolsey had no doubt backed me up because he was sure I'd
fail.
Maybe even blow off the whole thing.

He really wants this murder swept under the rug. And who better to screw it up than Millie Ostermeyer, who might read Plato, but who skips classes and eschews all organized activities?

“You are wrong this time, Bertram B. Woolsey,” I grumbled. “So wrong . . .”

“Are you
talking to yourself?
”

At the sound of a familiar—but totally unexpected—voice, I turned slowly, refusing to be embarrassed. But I couldn't hide my surprise when the person who'd come up behind me suggested, “Do you want to walk back to school together?”

I didn't answer Chase right away. Instead, I blinked at him about five times, considering that offer. Then I blurted out something that had been bugging me for most of the memorial service, thinking I was most likely to get an honest answer if I caught him off-guard.

“So,” I inquired, point-blank. “What the heck did you do to get locked up in a boarding school for
criminals?
”

“I knew you'd figured it out, as soon as Mrs. Blackmoor stepped up to speak,” Chase said, opening his umbrella and holding it over both of us. The rain had started again, and I'd left my umbrella back at the service. It was inappropriately cheerful, covered with yellow smiley faces and the admonition “Rain, Rain, Go Away” in a curly font, so I'd stashed it behind a headstone and promptly forgotten it. “I saw you looking between the two of us, the wheels turning in your head,” Chase added. “I knew you got it.”

He sounded grim, even for a guy who'd just been at a funeral. But he smelled FANTASTIC jammed in next to me under that umbrella.

Enough, Millie! He's a juvenile delinquent!

“So what did you do to end up in prison school?” I asked, returning to the big question. After all, we both knew most of the story. It had started clicking together when the woman in the maroon suit, Mrs. Claire Blackmoor, had introduced herself as the “president”—meaning “warden”—of Mason Treadwell Military Academy, the place my dad used to threaten to send me. The school where that kid had gotten
stabbed
a few years before
.

And as Mrs. Blackmoor had talked about what a great influence Coach Killdare had been on the guys at Treadwell, I'd seen her glance again at Chase, and all the pieces had fallen into place.

Chase
had
attended a boarding school, as the rumors at Honeywell claimed. And it had been “exclusive”—in the sense that it was open only to
kids adjudicated by the courts.

The only thing I didn't know for certain was whether Chase had watched Coach Killdare's dog as the price for keeping that secret under wraps, or if Mr. Killdare had been a sort of mentor, helping to rehabilitate him.

I glanced up at Chase, bumping into him, and thought, delinquency or no delinquency, Laura would've given her right eye to be in my place. Or maybe her left, because I was walking on Chase's left, and she would've wanted to see him in that suit and tie, and take in his eyes, more blue-gray right then, like they were mirroring the cloudy sky . . .

“So, Chase,” I prompted, realizing that I was getting off-track again. “What did you do? How'd you end up at Treadwell?”

“Millie . . .” He put his free hand on my arm, stopping us in the middle of the cemetery. There was nobody else around—nobody aboveground—and as we turned to face each other, I realized that, discounting the times I hung out with Ryan and one terrible school dance that I'd attended with a forgettable boy named Nolan Durkin, I'd never been squeezed that close to a guy my age. And I hardly knew Chase.
Nobody
knew him.

Weird.

“Yeah?” I asked when he let go of my arm. “What's wrong?”

“I'm sorry if I came off heavy-handed when I asked you not to nose around in my life,” he said. “And—again—I was kind of a jerk to you when you tried to talk in French class. But I like my privacy—like to just be left alone—and I'm going to ask you again . . . Please don't tell anybody what you know about me.”

Chase Albright was hot. He was mature and well-spoken, not to mention charismatic and enigmatic, which was a fairly lethally attractive and hard-to-resist combination. I had a feeling that he got pretty much everything he wanted from girls, whether that meant promises to keep his secrets or . . . other stuff. But I still wasn't sure that I owed him anything, and I refused to commit. If he was prone to, say, taking guns into schools and going on shooting sprees, I was going to warn my friends. “Just tell me what you did,” I suggested. “Then we'll talk discretion.”

Chase didn't seem happy with that. I could see that his jaw was tense, but he nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.” We started walking again, but he didn't spill his guts right away, saying instead, “You're a tough girl, aren't you? Terrible at French, but tough.”

Although I was pretty sure I heard grudging admiration in his voice, I wasn't certain if that was a compliment. When I looked up at him, though, I realized that he was as close to smiling as I'd ever seen him. “Thanks . . . I guess,” I said. “Now start talking already.”

That faint smile vanished, and he suddenly looked miserable—and lost in some past that he obviously didn't like to revisit. Then he sighed and said quietly, “Okay . . . Here goes.”

How was it that everything Chase confessed to me confirmed my earliest suspicions about him—that he was a rich, privileged, arrogant snob—and worse things than I'd imagined, too . . . And yet, as he told his story, I mainly felt
compassion?
Not for the kid Chase was describing in the past tense, but for the tortured guy who was walking next to me then, being very careful to keep the umbrella over my head, even if it meant he got wet.

“God, I partied every night,” he muttered, dragging one hand through his damp hair. It wasn't a boast like some kids made about getting drunk or high. He sounded appalled. “Me and my friends . . . We had enough money and connections to get anything we wanted. We didn't even bother with our parents' liquor cabinets. We did harder stuff.”

He didn't seem to want to elaborate, and I didn't press him. I was pretty naive about that sort of thing, but I wasn't cloistered. I saw TV shows about rich teenagers and the powders they snorted and the liquids they injected. I supposed poor and middle-class kids did that stuff, too, but there weren't as many shows about them.

“Is that what you got in trouble for?” I asked, looking up at Chase. We were out of the cemetery by then, walking down a quiet street toward school. “For doing—or dealing—drugs?”

Chase seemed to remember that I was there, and he glanced down at me. “No. Not directly.” He also seemed to realize it had stopped raining, and he stepped apart from me to put down the umbrella. It had felt strange to be squeezed so close to him, but suddenly it felt weird to be separated, as if he'd broken down the walls of a confessional. For a second, I thought he wasn't going to finish the story, but he met my eyes and said, “One Friday night, I was hanging out at my house, doing a little pre-party . . . preparation.” His jaw got
really
tense and his blue eyes looked almost black. “I left for my friend's house—the real party—around ten, but I was already way too messed up to drive—illegally, too. On a learner's permit.” He hesitated, seemingly unwilling to give me details and choosing his next words carefully. “There were . . . injuries. Charges against me. And pressure, by influential people, to make me
really
pay.”

He wasn't telling me everything, and I could tell from the way he avoided my eyes that whatever he was holding back was
big.
Like somebody had wound up in a wheelchair or a coma. But he'd revealed a lot and certainly didn't owe me more. I wasn't even his friend.   

What he just told me . 
.
 . It's terrible. Heinous.

So why did I find myself putting
my
hand on
his
arm and saying, “I'm really sorry, Chase.”

He stared down the street, his mouth a white line. “Don't be sorry for me. I don't deserve sympathy. I was a reckless idiot.”

“But you obviously served your time—”

“I'll never do enough time,” he interrupted, still not looking at me. “A few months in a real detention center and some time in a boarding school . . . That's not enough.”

For the first time since I'd seen him at school, I had some serious insight into who Chase Albright was. That big question mark had been at least partly erased. And while I'd been right about some things, I'd been incredibly wrong about others.

He doesn't keep apart from other kids because he thinks he's better than us.

He thinks he's
worse.
Maybe that he doesn't deserve friends.

And even though his story was even more disturbing than I'd ever suspected, I still couldn't help
liking
him.

“Chase . . . Where were your parents while you were getting so out of control?” I asked, in part to draw his thoughts away from where I knew they were stuck. On a dark road that smelled of spilled gasoline and burned rubber, and where people might be crying in pain—or too quiet. “How come nobody was watching you? My dad would ground me for life the first time he caught me stumbling or smelled anything weird on my breath.”

Chase seemed to relax, just slightly. “My parents split up when I was fourteen. I was already hard to control, and my mother gave up custody. She stayed in California, while my dad moved us to Pennsylvania.” He finally looked directly at me again. “Dad hoped to get me away from the people I partied with, back in LA.”

I could imagine him hanging out with celebrities, but it wasn't the right time to ask if he could name-drop, so I stayed quiet.

“But I found new friends in Philadelphia,” he continued. “And as a heart surgeon, my father was too busy to really look after me. For the most part, I was just on my own, living in a huge house with too much time and money at my disposal.” He raised one hand, adding, “It's not my dad's fault, though. In fact, he took a lower-paying, less prestigious position here to be close to me when I got sent to Treadwell and then came here.”

We'd almost reached the high school, but neither one of us seemed in any hurry to go inside. I was pretty sure that, much as Chase wanted to protect his secrets, he was glad to be unburdening himself to at least one person.

“So where does Mr. Killdare fit in?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I'd figured that out, too.

“I got kind of . . . catatonic at Treadwell,” Chase admitted. “I didn't want to talk to anyone or do anything.” The corners of his mouth turned up with the faintest hint of a grim smile. “One day, Coach Killdare came by my room, saw me lying on my bed, barged in, and grabbed me by the shoulder, yelling, ‘What the hell's wrong with you? You sick or something?' He actually hauled me to my feet, looked me up and down, and said, ‘Get your ass out to practice!
Now!
'” Chase continued to grin, just slightly. “I didn't even know what I was going to practice, but I went where he told me to go. And from then on, I wasn't just a guy who'd made terrible mistakes. I was at least a football player, too. And a pretty good one.”