She snorts. “No, we’re just friends,” I feel my shoulders slump with from the release of tension I didn’t know I had.
I watch as she debates something to herself, then enjoy the flare of determination before she asks her question. “We were talking about a girl I met the first couple days here,”
“Okay,” I ask, not knowing where this is going.
“Her room is on the floor beneath mine, but I haven’t seen her since,” My spine locks.
“Her friend asked if I had seen her,” She sits forward placing her arms on the table. “But the funny thing is, I haven’t seen her in the weeks I have been here,”
“Is there a point to this?” I try and deflect.
“Do you know Bronwyn Bell?” she asks with a straight face.
Her questioning raises alarms in my mind. Bronwyn is missing, I don’t give a fuck that Mr. Carmichael said he received an email from her mum. She is missing. Just like the others.
Ruella said it herself. Her room is in the same halls, right underneath her room and she went missing the days after she started back at the academy. That is easy access.
Could the person we are looking for be Ruella Griffith? Does she know we are onto her, so she is fishing for information. Is she part of what happened to Piper.
I can’t help myself. The anger takes over as I see red. I grab her by the collar of her shirt and pull her over the table towards me. Her eyes widen in surprise, before grabbing my wrist.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” I snap in her face.
“I have no idea what you are talking about. That’s what me and Max were discussing, he mentioned Bronwyn and some other strange happenings at the Academy. What is your problem?” Her gaze narrows on me.
“And what did Max have to say about this?”
“That people drop out of Marrowton all the time, they can’t live with the pressure and the workload,” She rolls her eyes and my stomach stupidly flutters. “Basically, all anyone says on the matter,”
“That’s because it is the truth!” I lie. I used to believe it. The lies the faculty tell the students to cover the truth. But now. Now I know better. The look on Ruella’s face makes me question my initial reaction to her questions about the missing girls. I get it, it’s hard to get your head around at first. An elite academy like this having so many girls dropping out, but the truth is worse than the obvious lies. A truth that would shake the very foundation of her world.
I shove her back and stand.
“Keep your nose out of other people’s business,” I demand, then pick up my bag and walk away. The rest of the room staring between us as I send Bishop a text to call me right now. I want all the info he has on Ruella.
I am just inside Lancaster House’s door when the call comes through. I pick it up after double checking that I am alone.
“Bishop,”
“Ash, I still don’t have everything. It’s proving more difficult than I thought,”
“It’s okay, give me what you have right now and keep searching,”
“Faculty wise, everything checks out. All T’s crossed and I’s dotted. Mr. Carmichael has a sealed incident from his years at the academy and I am working on getting the unredacted copies. Mrs. Davies has a prescription drug problem,”
What unhappy wife stuck in our world isn’t on something to numb the pain.
“Mr. Holmes has a previous criminal record that was also sealed when his grandfather paid everyone off, I have the documents and it turns out to have been sexual assault of a minor when he was 20. Since then, he has cleaned up completely, not even a parking ticket,”
“Fuckers working in a school with underage girls,” I growl into the phone.
“I know,” Bishop responds. “Turns out he is one of the boards sons,”
I rub my forehead and sigh at the monsters I have to deal with. When you are a child, you are taught that the people behind bars are the bad guys. When you live in my world, you realise that the real evil in this world are the ones with the money to do whatever they want. That just so happens to be the people I am surrounded by, family members, friends, teachers, hell the whole Academy is corrupt from the board members to the bloody groundsmen.
“And what about Ruella Griffith?”
“Nothing much to report on that one I’m afraid. Everything checks out,”
