15. Prom Queen

15

T he atmosphere at the school was somber.

Both Jolene and Chance were quiet and pensive, leaving me feeling anxious and out of sorts.

Chance seemed to have been in his room when Claire had fallen, so I was almost certain he hadn't physically caused her death, but he clearly knew so much more than he was saying, and based on how withdrawn he had become in the few days since she'd passed, I felt that he was blaming himself for her fate.

I had a sinking feeling that Jolene suspected I was keeping something from her; maybe she'd seen me comforting Chance and her feelings were hurt that I hadn't discussed it with her. As a result, I sensed her pulling away from me.

She wasn't quite as cheery as her usual self, didn't share gossip as readily, and her smile didn't feel as bright as it used to. I hated to think I had a part in dimming her light.

In an effort to redirect Jolene's discontentment and distract her from what she had witnessed, I pulled her in to help me figure out what Chance Harper was hiding and just prayed it wasn't something completely nefarious.

Watching Chance pore over the yearbooks in the lounge had given me the idea to go through the more recent years, which were, unfortunately for me, located in the creepiest room in the basement: the records room.

Nestled behind Jolene's desk, the door locked from the outside, and I had on more than one occasion rescued her from the door having closed on her, trapping her inside. And once inside, the buzzing from the overhead lighting was even more intense in such a small space. Sounds echoed off the stone walls, making it constantly feel like someone was right behind you. And then there was the smell…

Normally I loved the smell of books, the older the better, but the books and papers in the records room smelled as though they were rotting from within, despite there being no evidence of mold or anything else that was causing the odor.

The one benefit of working in the records room was that it offered a hidden space where I could work without the headmaster or any of the other nosy admin staff bothering me or giving Jolene snotty glares because she had allowed me into an area typically reserved for staff of their level only. God help me if they knew she had shared with me the secret location of her master key set.

Nestled away in the records room, after classes had been dismissed for the day, I was thankful Jolene had propped the door open with a stone block that had long ago detached from part of the main building and been relocated to the basement offices for such an appointment.

On the first day, I studied the six years Chance could have attended Montgomery, given his age. The second day, after taking another look at the student records on Jolene's computer and having no luck finding a student with a name even close to his, I broadened my search, thinking perhaps he was lying about his age, but I soon gave up on that theory as well.

"Can rich people pay to have their name changed without having to make a public announcement?" I asked Jolene on the third day of Project Expose Chance Harper .

She'd grown increasingly annoyed with me as the days passed, worried someone on staff would see me rifling around the records room and report her to the headmaster. She had decided that Chance hadn't gone to Montgomery, and while she had initially teased me about him at the beginning of the school year, it seemed the idea of something going on between us wasn't sitting well with her. She had soured on him, and I wasn't sure why.

"Is that still a thing? Having to put that in the paper or something?" She munched on a snack at her desk, the black and silver metallic pom-poms on her sweater, forming a colony of bats of all different shapes and sizes, glittering as she moved.

"In Maine it is," I confirmed. "I already tried looking at the public records and couldn't find anything. And the only thing I can find about him on Google is about his college degree being from Oxford, but the page with the information is the Montgomery faculty page."

"What about his family?" Jolene suggested.

"Yeah, I could stand to turn over a few stones there," I grumbled. The work was tedious, but I really felt like I was so close to breaking the whole thing wide open.

Another quick round on Google didn't turn up anything about Chance or his family that I could find. Maybe he had paid a service to scrub search engines of his information?

Then I had a thought. I recalled a lecture I'd given recently in class about how the Greek family unit worked, and it got me thinking about how everything is passed down and how the Greeks, just like so many families today, expected their children to follow in their footsteps.

I was willing to bet anyone that Chance Harper was a legacy at Montgomery—the vast majority of students admitted had family members who attended before them, and being a legacy gave applicants a leg up in admissions. So did cash, consequently.

I jumped up, tearing into the records room, digging through the stacks of old yearbooks to find the one from 1987.

"What's going on?" She poked her head through the door, watching me with curiosity.

"I can't find 1987," I huffed, eyes scanning the pile again. They were in numerical order, but occasionally there would be duplicates of some years, while others would be missing entirely.

"I'm not sure. Sometimes the headmaster sends yearbooks to alumni if they call to request them." She worried her lip. "Why?"

"Remember there was one other Harper? I thought maybe they'd be related." I slumped against the wall, having reached yet another dead end.

"I've heard there's more yearbooks in storage on campus somewhere. I can ask the headmaster," Jolene offered.

"I'm such an idiot!" I laughed.

It was how I'd gotten the idea to look at the yearbooks in the first place. I could only hope there were yearbooks up in the lounge that were as recent as 1987. I couldn't remember the last year, but I knew that within the range, no years were missing.

"I gotta go." I scrambled to grab my bag and coat. "I'll see you tomorrow; thanks, Jolene!" I shouted, already halfway up the stairs.

I booked it across the courtyard to the carriage house, thundering up the three flights of stairs and dumping my things on the floor, just inside the door, in a heap before launching myself up the trap door to the lounge.

The most recent yearbook in the lounge was 1988, and sitting neatly on the shelf right before it was the one from 1987.

Plucking it from the bookcase, I immediately settled at the study table and flipped to the graduate mugshots. And there I found her: Cindy Harper.

Cindy was beautiful, despite the big eighties hair and bright blue eyeshadow. The makeup perfectly emphasized her striking eyes—the same blue-grey eyes that belonged to my nemesis, Chance Harper.

I flipped to the index to see where else she appeared in the book, only to find out that she had been voted Prom Queen that year, with her high school beau, Thomas Roberts, voted as Prom King. The two had also been voted "Best Couple" in the superlatives.

Thomas also looked vaguely familiar, which might have been because Chance clearly shared some of his features as well. But after staring at their posed prom picture for longer than I cared to admit, it hit me.

Chance's father was the Thomas Roberts, multi-gajillionaire business mogul, and in recent years, a congressman. He'd gained his fame in the late nineties, being one of the few who had seen the dot-com bubble burst coming and making sure he'd profit off the crash. And then he had repeated the same foresight and success just before the 2008 housing crash and subsequent recession.

"Unbelievable…" I muttered to myself.

"What is?" Chance asked from behind me.

I slammed the book closed and covered it with a research paper I'd left on the table over the weekend.

"Nothing," I squeaked.

Chance's eyebrows raised, immediately recognizing I was up to something.

As usual, he was looking rather dashing in a navy blue sweater and grey slacks, along with a pair of shiny black wingtips. Taking the brief moment to assess him caused a flash of desire to mingle with the fear of being discovered, while I worked to expose him and his true identity.

The anger and resentment that no matter what he did, no matter how mad he made me, no matter what secrets he was keeping from me, I still wanted him, continued to bubble beneath the surface, threatening to explode at any moment.

And who knew how that explosion would manifest? I was just as likely to shove him out the window as I was to climb on top of him.

"I brought you dinner." He produced two takeout containers from the dining hall and set them on the table.

Chef Lenny and I were going to have a talk about consorting with the enemy. And also, why the hell had he gone and done something so thoughtful? He made me feel like a monster…a lonely, desperate monster.

"You didn't have to do that." I tried not to smell the food, but my stomach betrayed me, grumbling in protest. I might have forgotten to eat lunch while going down Google rabbit holes trying to find references to Chance's family.

"I saw you run outside like a bat out of hell when classes finished, so I figured you hadn't eaten." He pulled out the chair next to me.

Jolene's bat sweater flashed in my mind, and a giggle erupted from my lips.

Chance cocked his head, amused by my demeanor. "What has gotten into you?"

I slowly slid the books farther away from him, trying to be discreet, but failing miserably as his gaze tracked the movement for a beat before landing back on me.

"You must be on to some big breakthrough," he said while taking the lid off his food.

"What?" I quacked.

Chance's brow furrowed. "You're writing a research paper to publish, aren't you?" He nodded toward the large report covering the yearbook.

"Something like that," I laughed, sounding a little too relieved at the suggestion.

"You don't have to keep it a secret. I won't tell anyone," he said between bites of his food.

My heart began to race. I needed to get away from him. If he saw the yearbook, I knew he'd put two and two together. If he felt threatened, what would he be capable of? I was 99% sure he hadn't hurt Claire, but there was still that 1%. We were alone in the lounge. Nobody was around to help me if he did something.

Chance surprised me when he started packing up his half-eaten food. It seemed he had realized my prickly behavior meant I wasn't in the mood for company. I flinched when he got up from his seat, and I could have sworn I heard him sigh in disappointment.

"I didn't mean to disrupt your work." He picked up the container, pausing for a moment to add, "Let me know if you want another set of eyes when you start editing." He smiled sadly.

"Thank you for dinner," I replied softly.

He looked me up and down, studying me for a moment, perhaps considering asking me why I was suddenly so jumpy, but thankfully he eventually decided against it and padded to the far end of the lounge, taking his leave.

I'd never been more relieved when I heard the window snick as it closed.

My heart told me Chance was innocent, but my head couldn't just ignore all the facts against him. At the very least, he was a Roberts, and he was lying about it.

What it meant…I didn't know. But I was determined to find out.