doing it right.
There was a time when Brent and Anthony were assets. Like when Brent helped me distract Sebastian to get crucial information about Isabella from his computer. Or the time Anthony helped me dig up a box of evidence from Matt Weaver’s neighbor’s yard.
Now, they’re both liabilities. Distractions I can’t afford. One teacher at Wheatley is dead, and another is next if I don’t find a way to unravel the truth first.
If she’s not already dead to begin with.
The next morning, we meet up with our groups in the quad after breakfast. Today, we’ve doubled in size. Three freshmen boys huddle together, avoiding eye contact with Peter Wu and Arthur Colgate, the other seniors in my group. Arthur goes by Artie, even though people call him Peepers behind his back.
The freshmen boys are all bronzed, as if they’re fresh off a Nantucket sailboat. I look inside my packet—their names are Bingham, Banks, and Oliver. They all probably own purebred golden retrievers and monogrammed sheets their mothers ordered from Williams-Sonoma.
Barbara, an excitable woman who’s in charge of student services and orientation, clears her throat until there’s quiet and tells us she has an exciting activity planned for us today. Jill is standing as far away from the guys as possible, her eyes glued to her phone. She looks up and gives me a wave. According to the packet, we’re missing someone named Farrah Nassir.
“Um, is this Group Ten?”
I turn to see the girl from yesterday—the one whose mother bodychecked me. She reddens and smiles sheepishly.
“Hey, yeah,” I say. “You’re Farrah, right? I’m Anne.”
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Kind of hard to find it here from the dorm.”
I look around at the other freshmen girls. Most of them seem to be paired off, tugging at the ends of their hair together, whispering to each other. No doubt Farrah’s roommate left her to fend for herself.
When Barbara makes her way to our group, she takes attendance and hands me a manila envelope. Apparently I’m pack leader. She also gives me a digital camera and tells everyone to hand over their phones.
“Uh, why?” one of the boys asks through his nose. I want to elbow him in it.
“Well, because you could use them to cheat during the scavenger hunt,” Barbara says brightly.
I groan inwardly. Jill looks similarly miffed about having to traipse around campus in ninety-degree weather doing an activity better suited for a ten-year-old’s birthday party.
We hand over our phones—and in Peter’s case, his mini tablet—and take a look at the list of stuff we need to find. The scavenger hunt is a poorly disguised “get to know your peers!” exercise: The first item is “the youngest group member’s memento from home.” Bonus points if it has the name of the person’s hometown on it.
We’re in luck: Farrah, who is from Baltimore, has an Orioles hat. But after two hours, we’re only on item five on our list. It would be so much faster if we could divide and conquer, but Barbara already thought of that by giving us only one camera. We sit on the bench outside the refectory to regroup after reading the fifth item: a photo of the teacher at Wheatley who was nominated for a Nobel Prize.
“Anyone know the answer?” I survey the group. I’m met with blank stares.
“How are we supposed to figure that out without our phones?” Banks tosses a pebble at a squirrel, scaring him away.
“Before we had iPhones, there were these things called computers,” I say.
Jill snorts.
“Yeah, well, we get disqualified if we use our laptops,” Banks says.
“The library,” Artie says. “The computer lab might be open.”
“If not, we could go through old yearbooks.” Peter shrugs. “It’s gotta be mentioned in the teacher’s bio, right?”
We plod off to the library, a scattered pack, with Banks and company at the back, muttering about how lame this is. The library computer lab is locked and dark, so we ascend
There was a time when Brent and Anthony were assets. Like when Brent helped me distract Sebastian to get crucial information about Isabella from his computer. Or the time Anthony helped me dig up a box of evidence from Matt Weaver’s neighbor’s yard.
Now, they’re both liabilities. Distractions I can’t afford. One teacher at Wheatley is dead, and another is next if I don’t find a way to unravel the truth first.
If she’s not already dead to begin with.
The next morning, we meet up with our groups in the quad after breakfast. Today, we’ve doubled in size. Three freshmen boys huddle together, avoiding eye contact with Peter Wu and Arthur Colgate, the other seniors in my group. Arthur goes by Artie, even though people call him Peepers behind his back.
The freshmen boys are all bronzed, as if they’re fresh off a Nantucket sailboat. I look inside my packet—their names are Bingham, Banks, and Oliver. They all probably own purebred golden retrievers and monogrammed sheets their mothers ordered from Williams-Sonoma.
Barbara, an excitable woman who’s in charge of student services and orientation, clears her throat until there’s quiet and tells us she has an exciting activity planned for us today. Jill is standing as far away from the guys as possible, her eyes glued to her phone. She looks up and gives me a wave. According to the packet, we’re missing someone named Farrah Nassir.
“Um, is this Group Ten?”
I turn to see the girl from yesterday—the one whose mother bodychecked me. She reddens and smiles sheepishly.
“Hey, yeah,” I say. “You’re Farrah, right? I’m Anne.”
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Kind of hard to find it here from the dorm.”
I look around at the other freshmen girls. Most of them seem to be paired off, tugging at the ends of their hair together, whispering to each other. No doubt Farrah’s roommate left her to fend for herself.
When Barbara makes her way to our group, she takes attendance and hands me a manila envelope. Apparently I’m pack leader. She also gives me a digital camera and tells everyone to hand over their phones.
“Uh, why?” one of the boys asks through his nose. I want to elbow him in it.
“Well, because you could use them to cheat during the scavenger hunt,” Barbara says brightly.
I groan inwardly. Jill looks similarly miffed about having to traipse around campus in ninety-degree weather doing an activity better suited for a ten-year-old’s birthday party.
We hand over our phones—and in Peter’s case, his mini tablet—and take a look at the list of stuff we need to find. The scavenger hunt is a poorly disguised “get to know your peers!” exercise: The first item is “the youngest group member’s memento from home.” Bonus points if it has the name of the person’s hometown on it.
We’re in luck: Farrah, who is from Baltimore, has an Orioles hat. But after two hours, we’re only on item five on our list. It would be so much faster if we could divide and conquer, but Barbara already thought of that by giving us only one camera. We sit on the bench outside the refectory to regroup after reading the fifth item: a photo of the teacher at Wheatley who was nominated for a Nobel Prize.
“Anyone know the answer?” I survey the group. I’m met with blank stares.
“How are we supposed to figure that out without our phones?” Banks tosses a pebble at a squirrel, scaring him away.
“Before we had iPhones, there were these things called computers,” I say.
Jill snorts.
“Yeah, well, we get disqualified if we use our laptops,” Banks says.
“The library,” Artie says. “The computer lab might be open.”
“If not, we could go through old yearbooks.” Peter shrugs. “It’s gotta be mentioned in the teacher’s bio, right?”
We plod off to the library, a scattered pack, with Banks and company at the back, muttering about how lame this is. The library computer lab is locked and dark, so we ascend
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