16. Alexander Roberts

16

T he next morning, I was up early, a feat in itself, with the intention to sneak into the records room before class to look at the more recent yearbooks since I had a new name to search for.

"Violet!" Jolene exclaimed with her usual exuberance. Only I hadn't expected her to be working so early, so her excitement startled me. The cartoonish, green-skinned witch on her sweater, on the other hand, may have frightened me just a bit more.

"Jolene," I stuttered, hands clasped over my chest. "Hi."

"I don't think I've ever seen you up so early." She giggled.

"Ha, ha," I replied sardonically. It was only seven in the morning.

"Did you need help with something?"

"Actually, yes." I couldn't help but grin conspiratorially. "I got a new lead last night. Can you pull up all the students with the last name Roberts who attended the school between 2000 and 2015?" I decided to be overly generous with the time frame, just in case Chance had also lied about his age.

Jolene's eyes widened at the request. "I have so many questions, I don't know what to ask first." She paused to take a deep breath. "Do you mean Roberts as in relatives of Montgomery's most prolific alumni, Thomas Roberts?"

"Yeah, those Roberts," I confirmed. "I'll explain more later." I grabbed the keys from Jolene's desk to open up the records room, holding my breath as the odiferous miasma emanating from the room enveloped me.

I plucked six yearbooks from the shelf: the four that would have ranged from his freshman through senior year, if he was indeed thirty-one, and two more to add a year on either end, in case he'd been enrolled at an earlier or later age, and began combing through the student portraits each year.

There were plenty of Roberts, that was for sure, but none of them looked anything like Chance—or his parents, for that matter. I recalled reading that Thomas Roberts came from a large family when I had tried to do more online research the night before.

Checking through the class photos was taking longer than I planned, so I had to abandon the task to make it upstairs for my first period—Greek Mythology—my most popular class, with a promise to Jolene that I would return later to pick up where we had left off.

My abrupt arrival and disheveled appearance amused my students, but I was able to easily pick up the lecture I'd started the day before on the many lovers of Zeus and his penchant for turning into animals to seduce women who were not his wife. It was a rather salacious topic, in my opinion, but it kept a room of hormonal teenagers interested, so it was worth it.

The morning dragged, but eventually the lunch bell sounded, and I rushed out the door, down to the kitchen to grab food for myself and Jolene. I nearly avoided literally running into Chance, but he caught me around my waist just before I could face-plant into the food containers.

"Geez, Violet," he chuckled, "where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"I—ugh…" I stammered, trying to think of an explanation, but failed. "I gotta go." I ducked past him and scampered down the side hallway that spilled out into the front entrance and the stairway down to the basement offices.

"Nice seeing you!" Chance called out after me.

"Whoa—whoa—slow down." Jolene grabbed my arm after I threw the boxes at her. "I have your list." She held up a piece of yellow lined steno paper, filled with her eighth-grade bubble script, complete with little bubbles over the letters "I" and "J."

"This is great!" I exclaimed, snatching the list from her and scanning it. She had written out names, years of attendance, and birthdays. "I'm going to cross-reference these." I grinned.

"Helping Jolene with her work?" The headmaster appeared behind me, startling both Jolene and me.

My lips parted, at a loss for an adequate answer.

"Actually, Violet is still trying to figure out who wrote the research paper that might have been plagiarized." Jolene stepped in. "Since she brings me food from the kitchen every day so I can work through lunch, I didn't think you'd mind if I gave her a roster of her students from last year."

Bravo, Jolene!

"Carry on," he replied, with no hint of remorse, making his way up the main stairs, likely heading for the faculty lounge to eat lunch with the rest of the teachers.

A loud, relieved exhale escaped me, when he was out of sight.

"Nice cover, Jolene." I gave her a high five.

She blushed at the appreciative gesture. "He wouldn't get anything done if I wasn't here." She smirked, folding her arms over her chest. The action made the orange sequin eyes of the witch appear as though she was winking.

Of the twenty or so names that Jolene recorded, only four didn't have mug shots, and two of those were girls. As such, I focused on finding any evidence of the two male Roberts that were left, Alexander and Edward.

I quickly ruled out Edward when I saw photos of him with the basketball team; he was tall and gangly, with large ears and spiky hair. There was nothing about him that looked remotely like Chance.

Alexander was considerably harder to locate. He only attended Montgomery Prep for part of 2010, his Junior year, before transferring. Coincidentally, his arrival lined up with the completion of the swimming pavilion Thomas Roberts had donated. I recalled thinking that Chance's upper body reminded me of a swimmer's physique. And the time frame put the elusive Alexander Roberts perfectly within the range that would match up with Chance's age.

There wasn't anything listed in the index for him, and nothing in the athletics section, other than photos of the grand opening of the swimming pavilion. But my persistence paid off.

Buried in a collage, I found a photo of a cute, but scrawny boy with braces, sitting in the library, and the caption beneath listed the boy as one Alexander Roberts. It was lucky that the photo was printed in color; otherwise, I might not have recognized those angsty blue-grey eyes.

Alexander Roberts was Chance Harper.

"I found him!" I cried, scrambling to my feet and bounding out of the records room to show Jolene.

"You did!?" She clapped excitedly from her desk.

I spotted the time on a cat-shaped clock resting next to her computer. It was quarter to one. "I have to go! I'll be late for class!"

"Wait, who is he?" Jolene asked.

"Alexander Roberts." I grinned. "Can I take this with me?" I lifted the 2010 yearbook in front of me.

"As long as you bring it back."

I nodded, tucking the book under my arm. "I don't suppose you'd do me a favor and see if you can find anything about him online?" I pleaded.

"Sure," she agreed in earnest.

"And don't let anyone know what you're up to, in case they're in on it," I warned her under my breath.

"Our secret." She beamed, happy to be included.

"I've got some tutoring after school. Will you still be here around dinner?" I asked, walking backward toward the stairs.

"Yes, the headmaster has me transcribing old board meetings, which is taking forever."

"I'll bring you food from the kitchen, and thank you!" I gave Jolene a small wave before ascending the stairs, feeling a sense of euphoria in my vindication.

Over dinner I'd brought down from the dining hall, Jolene recited every piece of information she could find on the ghost that was Alexander Roberts. Except he wasn't a ghost, he was an exceedingly handsome pain in my ass.

He was Thomas and Cindy's oldest child and only son. He had one younger sister, Amanda, who was my age. His father seemed to revel in the spotlight, but his mother and sister were phantoms similar to him, although I was able to locate a few images of his parents together at charity functions.

There was so much information on Thomas Roberts that it was next to impossible to find anything on Chance, or Alexander…whoever he was.

"The Roberts moved to London for two years around 2010 after Thomas opened up a new UK branch of his business," Jolene said after slurping her soup. "That must have been why he transferred."

"Makes sense then, how he ended up going to college at Oxford, and why we can't find much information on him stateside." I sighed. We didn't know much more than we had at lunch.

I needed more.

I fully realized my vendetta had gotten out of hand, but I think I had convinced myself that if I discovered his secret and confronted him, he'd finally be honest with me about everything. And if nothing else, at least I would have the satisfaction of knowing that I hadn't let another person pull the wool over my eyes and make a fool of me.

"Come upstairs with me." I tugged Jolene up by the wooly sleeve of her witch sweater.

"What? Why?" she whined, but followed me anyway.

I led us up the side hallway to the back door of the dining hall and opened it a crack. I'd noticed before that Chance liked to eat his dinner with a few of the other faculty members who preferred the noisy dining hall to the confines of the stuffy faculty lounge, where the more elitist of the teachers sequestered themselves during meals.

I spotted Chance in the far corner, intently listening to a story that Dr. Stephen Albert, one of the math teachers, was regaling him with.

"I need twenty minutes," I told Jolene. "Keep an eye on Chance and keep him occupied if he tries to leave before then. Text me if you lose him."

"What are you going to do!?" she asked in a hushed whisper, eyes wide with concern.

"I'm going to break into his room," I told her matter-of-factly.

Jolene's mouth gaped. "Violet…" she practically gasped.

"Twenty minutes!" I called out to her, already jogging down the hall to the front entrance.

Once back at the faculty dorms, I pulled down the ladder in my bathroom and rushed through the trapdoor to the lounge. I fumbled around in the dark to get to the far window and thanked the universe I was wearing slacks and flats that day, while I crawled down the precarious fire escape.

The metal rattled and creaked with even the slightest movement, and I couldn't believe Chance was comfortable using such a dangerous method of entry without batting an eye. As I'd hoped, Chance had left his window unlocked.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, only that I'd know it when I saw it. I needed to find something—anything, that would give me more information about who he actually was, and maybe point me in a direction to help me discover why he was hiding his identity. I'd exhausted all other avenues at that point.

His room was just as dark as the lounge, save for a dim red light emanating from behind the closed bathroom door.

Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn to the door.

Thankfully Chance kept his room tidy, and it seemed to be a mirror to my own, so I had no trouble making my way toward the bathroom, even in the dark. Turning the knob slowly, perhaps already sensing something sinister lay behind the closed door, I was not disappointed.

I stifled a gasp as the door swung open.

He had converted his bathroom into a darkroom to develop the photos he took on his old camera.

There were photos strung up everywhere…and all of them were of me.