Kelsey’s eyes were red from tears. She was gripping a big ball of Kleenex tightly in her fist. Luke and Oscar were attempting to calm her down, but it was difficult with Pippa continuously expressing her irritation.
The day had been a flurry of phone calls between stressed-out parents and nervous students. Besides classes being canceled, much of the campus was off-limits during the day. Even the snack shop where they could buy snack food like bagels and fries was closed. So was the school store. Instead of the mandatory chapel session before sit-down dinner, students had met in their dorm common rooms with the counselors and dorm faculty parents. They were supposed to listen to a lecture on safety, then discuss “how they felt about things.” The boys in Wilcox met briefly and awkwardly as a group with a counselor and then watched a few episodes of Blue Mountain State to kill time before dinner.
Some parents had arrived and yanked their children out of school, but the administration had gone into overdrive to prevent that from happening by promising amped-up security. Luke had been able to calm his parents down on the phone. Surprisingly, it hadn’t taken much. After his past incident, his parents had made him go to a psychologist for a year, and Dr. Carey’s biggest advice for his whole family was that they had to move on, and not live in crippling fear. Luke just had to invoke Dr. Carey’s name, and his parents backed off.
Besides, Luke had never seen so many police and security guards in one place. The school was teeming with them. And everyone on campus was looking over their shoulders, watching their backs, and checking each other out. If I were the killer, I’d be pretty nervous right now, thought Luke.
Both Oscar and Luke turned their room upside down to search for Oscar’s ID card that day, but they couldn’t find it. They retraced their steps from the tree they climbed down to the basement where they reentered. Unfortunately, their search stopped abruptly at the edge of the woods. The cops wouldn’t even let them get within ten yards, so Oscar was forced to retrieve a new ID card at the dean’s office. Fortunately, Mr. P. was tied up with the murder mess, so Oscar only had to deal with his assistant. He told her that the card had fallen out of his cell phone case that morning.
At night, after study hall, the students were let out of their rooms for thirty minutes for what was affectionately known as Animal Hour, which was when everyone met up to look for their crush or get snacks, not necessarily in that order. Tonight they weren’t allowed to be outdoors because of the murder, but that was fine because everyone usually ended up inside Main Hall anyway. Despite the fact that the fluorescent lighting was garish, the headmaster’s office was centrally located right on it, and there was absolutely no privacy, this is where the students mostly hung out. If a boy talked to a girl in Main Hall after dinner, by study hall every single student knew about it. Same for any Animal Hour meetups.
There were usually only one or two teachers at most lingering around Main Hall, but that night there were several watching everyone nervously. Fortunately, they were mostly preoccupied with whispering their theories to one another, so Luke, Oscar, Kelsey, and Pippa were able to surreptitiously slip away one by one and regroup in one of the soundproof music rooms in the basement. It had been their first opportunity all day to meet. Luke was glad for the excuse to see Pippa, even if she had blown him off after chapel earlier.
“Look, calm down, Kelsey. You have nothing to be upset about,” said Oscar.
Luke was sitting in one of the small chairs, leaning forward so his hands were resting on the music stand. Kelsey was on top of the piano, while Oscar sat at the piano bench and every now and then played some of the keys in what was a misremembered version of “Yankee Doodle,” much to the others’ irritation.
“I just feel like we need to come clean, like, go to the headmaster and tell him that we were out there and just, like, pray he doesn’t do anything,” she said, sniffling.
“Yeah, right, Kelsey. What he’s going to do is expel us. Or at least me. I’m on thin ice here. Thanks to Dean Heckler, one more infraction and I’m out,” said Oscar. He banged on the piano, and then stopped and shook his head. “Gee, Dean, karma’s a bitch.”
“But maybe they’ll forgive us because of the circumstances…” sighed Kelsey, hopeful.
“We’ll just become suspects,” said Pippa tartly. She was standing in the back of the room, leaning against the poster of Beethoven. “It’s never a good idea to go to the police, ever. They turn everything on you. Trust me, I know. My mother is a barrister—a lawyer, as you Americans call it. The second we admit anything, they’ll have us all go against each other, and next thing you know, one of us is on the line for this murder.”
“Whoa. I don’t know about that,” Luke said.
“One of us? No way! We can all vouch for each other!” Kelsey exclaimed.
“Actually, we can’t,” said Oscar. “You went out to the bathroom and separated from Pippa.”
“I didn’t separate from her, she ditched me!” Kelsey said, dissolving into tears. “Why would you say it like that? You think I could have done it?”
“None of us thinks you did it, Kelsey,” said Luke, exasperated. He knew Oscar well enough to see that his roommate was probably losing interest in Kelsey already, which could be disastrous. A scorned woman is an outspoken woman, and Luke had seen it happen before with other girls Oscar had tired of and heartlessly discarded. “We just need to stick together right now because we don’t know what other people might think. There’s no need to go to the headmaster because right now, we don’t really have any information to offer them. We know she was out there, but so do the police, obviously. What else can we add?”
“Well, we know that she was talking to some bloke who was really mad at her, and we know the first Mrs. Heckler was out there with her dog. I’m sure they’d love to know that,” said Pippa, before adding, “But hell if I’m going to tell them anything.”
Luke was surprised, but gratified, that Pippa was so intent on not saying anything. He wondered why she was so determined not to go to the police, but at the same time, he didn’t want to press it.
“What about the creepy-voice guy?” whispered Kelsey, almost to herself. “That was so weird and scary.”
They were all silent for a minute, then Oscar slapped his hands down hard on the piano, making a jarring discordant clang and causing them all to jump. “We don’t know anything about that, so as of now, our lips are sealed. Keep carrying on like nothing happened. Don’t act suspicious. Play it cool,” advised Oscar.
“Fine by me,” Pippa said.
Kelsey didn’t say anything. She was probably waiting for Oscar to reassure her. Luke glared at his roommate and tipped his head toward Kelsey, signaling him that now was not the time to withhold attention.
“Deal, Kels?” asked Oscar, getting the message. He stood up from the piano bench and gently tucked a strand of Kelsey’s long hair behind her ear. She visibly relaxed. Ordinarily Luke would be rolling his eyes at this classic and clichéd Oscar move, but tonight he was just glad Oscar had both the ability to calm Kelsey down and the willingness to do it.
“All right, that’s settled, can I go now?” said Pippa, moving off the wall toward the door.
“Sure,” Luke said, but he was confused. They had talked about hanging out tonight, hadn’t they? Telenovelas and all that? Murder was a real romance-killer.
Pippa bolted out the door without waiting for anyone else.
“Bye, nice hanging out with you, let’s do it again soon,” Kelsey said sarcastically to the closed door.
Luke couldn’t help it; he laughed. Kelsey smiled, appreciating the break in tension.
“Okay, I’m going to go up now,” Kelsey said. “Wait a few minutes before you leave so people don’t see us coming up the stairs together.”
“Sure.”
Oscar began playing “Heart and Soul” on the piano, and Luke fiddled with the music stand. After a few minutes, they stood and began walking up the stairs.
Outside, the air had cooled considerably since the morning, and cold hovered over the campus. Luke felt a shift in the campus mood since the night before. There was a creepy stillness; it was definitely the scene of a crime.
“Why do you think Pippa’s going along with us?” asked Luke as he zipped up his Barbour jacket. That was actually secondary to what he was really wondering, which was whether she liked him at all. If he had to admit, he wanted Oscar to say she was going along with it because she liked Luke. But Oscar didn’t take the bait.
“Protecting her ass, probably,” said Oscar. “Oh, excuse me. Her arse.”
Luke ignored the dig. “But she hates it here. I doubt she cares about getting busted.”
“I think she just plays it that way. Wants to be a tough guy. I think she’s all facade.”
“There is something a little…unsettling…about her,” admitted Luke.
“No doubt about it. Glad you’re finally seeing the light,” said Oscar, as they turned the corner down the path that looped around the pond. Other groups of students were on their way back to their dorms too, with several security guards and teachers moving them along.
“Do you remember anything else that guy said to Mrs. Heckler?” asked Luke suddenly.
Oscar looked up at the sky. “He said something like, ‘You’ll regret this.’”
“Like a threat?” asked Luke.
“Kind of. She definitely seemed sketched out by the guy. Like she couldn’t wait to get away. Plus that creepy voice…”
Luke stopped. He had a sickening thought. “Hey, remember that sound I heard? That yelp?”
“No,” Oscar shook his head. “I wasn’t there for that.”
“Oh, right. Well, there was this weird little yelping noise. Like the sound my dog makes when someone steps on her foot by accident.”
Oscar waved to a girl he’d hooked up with two weeks earlier. “Maybe it was the first Mrs. Heckler’s dog,” he suggested distractedly. “Hey, honey!” he called to a first-year he was scoping. She blushed and turned back to her friends, giggling.
“I was thinking maybe it was when she was being killed,” said Luke quietly.
Oscar snapped back to attention. He stopped and contemplated that idea. “Whoa. That’s nasty.”
“Yeah.”
“And that sound you and I heard afterward was the killer dragging her body,” said Oscar.
Luke shook his head. “Ugh. I don’t want to think about that.”
“I know; it’s insane.”
They were almost to the dorm.
“Do you think it could have been the Southborough Strangler?” asked Luke.
Oscar used his new ID card to unlock the door. “No. I don’t think there’s a Southborough Strangler. I think the killer is here, on this very campus, walking among us.”
Luke tensed as they entered Wilcox, looking over his shoulder before the door slammed shut. Again, he had the unshakable feeling that someone was watching him.