It was in this service that they first spoke about Olivia and finally showed her the respect she deserved.
It pissed me off how everyone here was such hypocrites. Especially Ms. Arden with her fake smile. As if she cared about the dead girl.
“Get a grip,” Leilah hissed, afraid of drawing the principal’s ire. ‘Even I can see your invisible daggers.’
‘They won’t be so invisible anymore if I have to listen to this shit any longer.’
She just rolled her eyes and didn’t respond to my comment.
“Be assured that we are doing everything in our power to find the person who committed such a monstrous crime. We will not stop until justice is done to Olivia,” Ms. Arden said sternly. I snorted. “Do you have any questions?” Before Leilah could stop me, my hand was up. Some heads turned in my direction, others whispered.
“Go on.” The blonde made a hand gesture in my direction.
“Since you are doing everything in your power, I’m sure you already have some clues. Who is the murderer, Ms. Arden?”
She cleared her throat, maintaining her facade of elegance. Only her eyes bore witness I had irritated her.
‘Thanks to the help of our dedicated police officers, we were able to reconstruct the evening and secure some traces at the scene. Of course, we can’t reveal any details because that would compromise the investigation.’
She looked me in the eyes. ‘But I am sure that there are a few in this academy who would be capable of murder.’
“So dumb and dumber suspect someone from school?” I probed.
Leilah tugged at my skirt for me to sit back down, but I paid her no attention.
“Only a fool would not suspect you.” With these words, she turned away. Church service was over.
‘That was uncool,’ I heard a certain black-haired girl mumble from my left.
‘It was fun,’ I countered. To my right, Noah chuckled.
At least someone had enjoyed the show.
I had just said goodbye to the trio and was on my way to the tutoring session when I heard two familiar voices. A turn away, the women were whispering, their words barely audible.
I didn’t see their faces, but knew for sure that it was Penelope Arden and the principal. I tiptoed to the corner and pressed myself against the wall. The hallway was barely lit, which veiled me from the women who had no idea I was overhearing their conversation.
“You can’t protect him forever. Your parents will know,” the principal said firmly.
“He lost control. It happened to all of us at one point,” Ms. Arden replied.
“It’s just that there’s more at stake for him than for any of us. You wanted to be by his side. You said he’d control himself when you’re with him. The girl’s death is on your head, Penelope.” One of them shifted.
“Are you going to tell my father?” she asked, voice full of fear. There was a long pause.
“Of course not.” The principal snorted. “But it’s only a matter of time before he finds out. Then, even your love won’t save him.”
My jaw dropped. Protect whom? Why should any of us have lost control before? And who did they mean by him?
Before I could hear any more, the women went off in different directions, leaving me with dozens of questions.
The two of them knew more than they were admitting, knew Olivia’s killer and were protecting him. But who did they care enough about not to go to the police? The cold realization came sooner than expected—Mr. Preston, former fiancé of Penelope and the principal’s nephew.
Was my professor a cold-blooded murderer? Had he had the dead girl on his conscience?
He had touched me with the same hands with which he maybe had killed Olivia. He had played with me, I had almost given myself to him—a psychopath.
But what reason should Mr. Preston have had? Had he lost control and if so, over what? I was sure that I would not find an answer to even one of these questions.
What I did realize, however, was that the longer I was around him, the more I was in danger. If my professor was killing students because he had lost control, then he was a ticking time bomb and I would be standing next to him when the countdown was over, would be swallowed by eternal darkness until there was nothing left of me.
With a queasy feeling and a thousand emotions running through my head, I climbed the last few stairs, turned, and was soon standing in front of Mr. Preston’s office door.
My heart was beating like crazy, and I was about to turn around and call in sick. No, that would be far too obvious, especially since I had been seen safe and sound in class today.
A gentle breeze stirred up some of my curls, as if urging me to finally enter. You can do it, I thought, just don’t act weird.
I knocked and entered the room, my professor lost in the papers on his desk. He didn’t even look up at me as I sat down in the comfortable leather chair and waited for a reaction from him.
“Do your homework.” I crossed my legs.
I had watched him many times, and yet it seemed as if a new, more dangerous man was sitting in front me. The coldness around him seemed more prominent at that moment, his aura even more sinister.
“Already did.” Maybe Mr. Preston would just let me go.
He looked up at me for the first time, his expression the spitting image of indifference. It was as if he didn’t know me at all. Considering last night, it almost seemed as if he was giving me the cold shoulder. But why? Because I had said that it was a mistake? Yes, it was, no matter how good it had felt, how perfectly his body had clung to mine.
We had crossed a line, yielded to a fire that eventually would have burned us, consumed us.
“Show me,” he demanded, and I followed his order.
Annoyed, he pulled the paper out of my hand and read the essay. I had spent my free time between class and the tutoring session trying to finish quickly so that I would have nothing to do in the evening.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when he tore my homework in two and threw the pages into the garbage.
“Do it again.” At first, I was shocked, but all too quickly, anger replaced my bewilderment.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” I asked, my blood about to boil.
“Sometimes, not today. Now do what I told you.” I stared at him with clenched fists, holding his arrogant stare and wishing I could have clawed his eyes out.
“Is that how you talk to women in bed? Are you such a smug asshole there, too?” I retorted, cursing myself at the same moment for my stupid words.
I had not only insulted my professor, no, I had also insulted a potential murderer. My brain just hadn’t quite grasped who was standing in front of me, what danger lurked in this room.
My instinct for self-preservation had always been miserable. I attracted threats almost magically, and yet I bit my cheek and was on the verge of apologizing to this waste of sperm.
“Exactly. And yet they keep coming back, begging for more.” A devilish smirk crossed his face, the only emotion he had shown today. “If I tell them to sit, they sit. If I tell them to undress, they undress. And if I tell them to fuck me until I forget my name, they do. Gladly.”
“And then you pay them and go your separate ways,” I said with a raised eyebrow and saw him trying to suppress a laugh.
‘I will not repeat myself. Essay. Now.’
Fuck you.
Tensely, I handed Mr. Preston my new, polished essay, and I had to admit grudgingly that it sounded a lot better than the first one.
“Not so miserable anymore,” was the only thing he said. “You certainly know what’s going to happen next.” My throat tightened as I thought of his torture.
“Why are you doing this?” I blurted.
He sat back and crossed his arms. “What do you mean?” I leaned forward, piercing him with my gaze.
“Don’t act dumber than you are. It doesn’t suit you.” Amused, he shook his head.
“I want to pull you out of your hole of self-pity, show you that you can still play. Or could, if you’d finally put some effort into it.” His words had taken me by surprise.
“And if there’s nothing there I should put in the effort for?” My professor shook his head.
“Everyone has desires, goals,” he said dryly.
“My desires and goals died in that ditch. But I’ll survive, I’ll always do.”
“But your soul won’t.” For a while we just looked at each other, his blue eyes, a sea of secrets, fixed on me. Could this man, a man who talked about the withering of an artist’s soul, really be a murderer?
Without responding to his comment, I straightened up and went to the piano. “Play as if I’m not here,” he whispered, his voice a little more compassionate. “Play for greatness, Avery.”
But my goal was not greatness, my goal was to create a melody without my fingers twitching uncontrollably and butchering it.
As expected, I played like a beginner, but instead of losing it, I took a deep breath and started over, again and again.
Three-four songs later, my fingers had slowly relaxed, completely blocking out Mr. Preston. He just sat there silently; it was almost as if he wasn’t even breathing. That would be a welcome twist, I thought.
I lost myself in the ivory keys, diving into the heart of the instrument. It didn’t feel like the high I’d experienced on stage. No, this moment was more intimate, more intense.
I still couldn’t play, and it sounded nothing like it used to, but part of my fear had faded as the notes died away—for now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my professor light a cigarette and take a deep drag. Oh, how I would have reached for the pack, but he probably would have cut my fingers off for it.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said dangerously low when he saw me staring at the smoke.
I raised my hands defensively and suppressed a grin. Just as he was about to say something else, someone knocked on the door and entered.
Noah smiled when he saw me sitting at the piano, surely knowing I hadn’t played in a long time.
“Are you done or am I interrupting?” he asked, his gaze fixed on me as Mr. Preston’s lay on him. If looks could kill, Noah would have died a thousand deaths by now.
“No, you’re not interrupting. Come on, let’s go. I’m done for the day.” Glad to have someone in the room I didn’t suspect of murder, I stood up and smoothed out my skirt. He took my satchel, as he had last time, and held the door open for me.
I glanced over my shoulder, looking into my professor’s piercing eyes before Noah closed it and followed me out into the hallway.
“Does Mr. Preston seem strange to you sometimes, too?” I asked my escort blatantly as we walked past a group of students.
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.
‘I don’t know. His whole behavior is so contradictory. He obviously doesn’t care about anything and yet there are moments…’ I shook my head, wanting to stop myself from saying things that could get me or him in trouble.
You shouldn’t judge hastily and to be honest, I couldn’t imagine that he could seriously hurt anyone, but that little seed of doubt was now planted in my brain, the weeds already sown.
“He can be a real asshole, but if you knew his dad, you would understand why he is so fucked up. The apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten tree.”
“You know his father?” I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Preston. Who knows what kind of messed up shit he had to go through with a father like that.
Noah debated how much to tell me, and I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt at his secrecy.
‘Some of us know his family. And his family knows some of us. Our…circles are very tradition-oriented, almost fanatical. Especially families with influence and power are brutal in their methods of education and in their ways of thinking. You can imagine what that does to you.’
‘It suffocates.’ I stroked my face, let the words run through my head until terrible images played out in my mind’s eye.
How I would have loved to set his father’s house on fire too until it was nothing but ashes on scorched earth.
‘Yes, sometimes you forget what humanity is. Especially in our families.’ I had the feeling that we were no longer talking about Mr. Preston, but that Noah was sharing his upbringing. It must have been tough, and I felt sorry for him.
He playfully bumped his shoulder against mine and gestured for me to hurry.
‘I’m sure you won’t forget who you really are.’ I gave him a smile, an honest, unspoiled one that few could see.
He did not return it.
‘And I’m sure this place is nothing for you.’
I had barely taken off my shoes and threw my satchel on the bed when my tablet rang. Who would call me? It wasn’t particularly late, the sun had barely set, but still. My gaze caught on the familiar phone number, and it felt like all life had been drained out of me. Dad.
I hadn’t heard his voice in such a long time, had missed him so much that it almost hurt.
I quickly pressed accept but couldn’t get a word out.
“Hi Avery, it’s dad,” he said, voice shaking. I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat.
“He- hey,” I stammered, “how are you?” He cleared his throat, as if he felt my struggle, too.
“I just left from your grandmother’s, you know how she is. She told me to say hello to you and…” He fell silent and I read between the lines that his mother was the driving force of our conversation. “Avery, I know our life wasn’t always easy, that I could never replace your mother. I was never able to fill that void in your life and sometimes I think I failed.”
My eyes filled with tears as I listened to my father’s tormented words. “But know this, I will always love you, will always be by your side, no matter how many pseudo-academies stand between us. And I know for sure that your mother would have spoken the same words. She was always much softer than me. Some might have seen it as weakness, but I saw how strong it had made her. You are so much like her and yet you come after me, stubborn, hot-headed,” he said laughing and yet I heard his voice crack, could practically see the tears on his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry I let you down.” That was all I could get out. It was the truth. I had hurt the person who had given everything for me, had crushed his feelings.
“I just need to know one thing: did you have a good reason?”
I wiped away the tears and cleared my throat, not wanting to show him what it was like inside me, not wanting to make him worry.
“Many, many very good reasons. You would have done the same in my place, maybe even worse.” Silence followed, neither of us saying anything, and I was beginning to fear he hadn’t heard me, but then he spoke up again.
“Then I trust your judgment and when we meet again, I want to know the whole story, no talking around it.” I nodded, knowing full well that he wouldn’t see it.
“I miss you,” I whispered.
“I miss you too, kiddo. The house is so quiet without you,” he joked. Of course, there was no one left to torture him with the worst hits of the last few decades. “Are they being nice to you?” The seriousness in his tone came back, the concern unmistakable.
“Yes,” I replied, genuinely happy, “I’ve even become…friends with three of them.” It was hard to admit this thing, but I couldn’t escape the fact that Leilah, Caleb, and Noah had grown on me—more than I liked.
“I’m happy for you. They’re lucky to have you in their lives,” he replied, and I could feel his grin through the tablet. After what had happened back then, I’d never uttered the word friends again.
“And Dad?” I didn’t know how he would take this next bit of news.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I’ve been playing again,” I whispered.
It got dead quiet on the other end; you could almost hear a pin drop. I wasn’t even sure he’d understood my words until I heard his sobs. My father, a tough guy I had never seen cry, sobbed when he heard I had touched a piano again.
“I’m proud of you.” I hadn’t known how much I wanted to hear those words, needed to hear them. They felt like water in the desert, like a warm meal for a starving person.
“So am I.” For many, that might have been a small step, but for me, it was a step out of the darkness.
