Bronwyn Bell
Marlowe Astor
“What the hell!” Corden asks as Deena backs away. “What is this?”
I shake my head. “I have no clue,” I spread the files out. “Do you know any of these people?” I ask, fishing for any information I can get.
“Well Piper Vander is Asher’s sister,” Then he grabs one of the older ones. “This girl,” He opens her file and scans the pages. “She was in my brother’s year when he came here,” I watch as he bites the side of his bottom lip.
“What?” I ask at his expression. It looks like he is desperately trying to put the pieces together.
“Guys!” Deena interrupts. “We need to go,” She turns her attention to the door. “It’s nearly 2:45am. The others will be coming back to the dorms. The grounds keepers will break up the party before 3,”
I nod but Corden still stares at the folder in his hands, then he opens the file on the desk and starts to take photos of each page on his phone.
I don’t question him when we are running out of time, but I plan too later.
When he is finished, I grab all the folders as Corden starts to pack his tools away into his backpack. Before I close the drawer, I fold Marlowe’s file into my own and then shove it down the back of my jeans, pulling my hoodie over it to hide it from site.
“Come on,” Corden rushes me. “The cameras are still down, but we need to be quick before they notice”.
He holds his hand out to me, and I grab it as we run from the room. My heart is trying to explode from my chest as I try to figure out what that was. I thought tonight would give some answers, but all it has done is create even more questions.
Marlowe is missing.
Bronwyn is missing.
There are 18 other girls’ names. Are they all missing. Why are those specific files locked away in a drawer, within the school.
Well, I know one person whose name was there but isn’t missing.
Piper Vander.
I need to somehow get her alone without her brother or one of his lap dogs seeing. Something happened to her last year. Something that had left her as a shell of a human compared to how she used to be, or so that’s what I have been told.
She knows something.
And I intend to find out.
THIRTEEN
RUELLA
604,800 seconds. 10,080 minutes. 168 hours.
7 whole days of absolutely fucking nothing.
Since the night of the rager in the forest, all I have accomplished is falling behind on my assignments and pissing off my lecturers.
It’s not from lack of trying, the exact opposite in fact. My whole life is trying to figure out what is going on. Yet every time I try and get close to someone who had a class or study group with Marlowe, I hit a brick wall. As soon as I try and broach the subject of last year, they make an excuse and shuffle off. Then there is Piper Vander. It is physically impossible to try and get her all alone, even when she goes to the bathroom, one of the boys guards the door and doesn’t allow anyone else in with her. Trust me, I have tried. Twice.
On top of that, Corden and Deena have been too busy to meet, my nightmares keep waking me up and I have been forgetting to take my meds. All in all, I am utterly exhausted as I lie in my bed at 4pm on a Sunday, going over my next steps while trawling through Marlowe’s social media accounts, desperately looking for something.
My mind has other ideas. It keeps being pulled into images of a certain man with two different coloured eyes. For the first couple of days, I will admit, I sheepishly avoided him from being embarrassed atmy little outburst in the forest. Yet, his gaze followed me everywhere I went. I could feel them on me, tracking each step, desperate to figure me out.
Then he disappeared.
The loss of his attention and distraction reminded me that I need to be doing the exact opposite of avoiding him. He knows something, just like his sister. I need to get close to him and find out what he knows. I promised myself that when he got back from the lacrosse game he was away playing, I would try and rectify the situation.
