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“You tell her,” Shay snapped, and a second later Jules heard her mother’s voice, say, “Look, Julia, there’s no reason to argue with me. I told Shaylee that there’s no turning back and she has to go when the pilot can fly her in. He wants to go earlier because of the storm, so that’s that.”
“No, Mom, wait. You can’t just send her to—”
“I damned well can. She’s underage. I’m her guardian. We’ve had this conversation. It’s over!”
“But—”
“It’s either this or juvenile detention again. This is her last chance, Julia! The judge ordered her to make a choice and she, smart as she is, took the school. It was also her choice to hang out with that criminal and be part of his crime. Her boyfriend’s not so lucky; doesn’t have a rich father to get him a lawyer. Wolf will be going to prison for a long time, so count your sister lucky. The plane’s landing within the hour. I’ve got to go,” Edie said, then, as if second guessing herself, added, “If you want to say goodbye, show up at the private dock on Lake Washington. You have the address.”
The phone clicked off and Jules stood in the middle of her messy bedroom. She couldn’t believe her mother was actually shipping Shaylee off to some damned isolated school for troubled teens, one that was in the middle of no-damned-where, practically inaccessible except for sea plane. Didn’t Edie know that beneath its pristine reputation Blue Rock had its own share of secrets? For the love of God, didn’t she know about Lauren Conway?
Maybe not.
Ever since yesterday, when their small family had met for lunch and Shay’s fate had been decided, Jules had been doing her research about Blue Rock Academy, but Edie probably hadn’t. Stubbornly, and in truth, because Shay was a pain in the ass, Edie had decided to turn a blind eye to any black marks against isolated school, preferring it to seeing her daughter sent to the adolescent’s equivalent of jail.
Jules jammed her hat over head, then glanced at her computer, a laptop lying open on the desk. It was still connected to the Internet and the stories she’d dug up about the academy. There had been a couple of reports of a teacher being fired and the rumors were than she’d been involved with a student, though Jules was still searching for more information about what had really happened. But the story that worried her most was about a student, a coed by the name of Lauren Conway, who had disappeared from Blue Rock Academy six month’s earlier. Was the beautiful eighteen-year-old alive? In hiding? Or dead?
As far as Jules could tell, no one really knew.
Only Lauren…
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LAUREN CONWAY
by Lisa Jackson
Chapter One
Blue Rock Academy
October
Someone was searching through her bag.
Even over the rush of hot water from the shower, Lauren Conway heard some unknown person just outside the shower curtain and that someone was pawing through her belongings in the school-issued plastic bath tote she’d hung on a hook near the door.
Great. Just effin’ great!
Was there any privacy in this place?
The answer, of course, was “no!” Make that a big fat “no!”
But then, nothing at Blue Rock Academy was as it seemed and for a split second the shower scene in Psycho, where Marion Crane was brutally attacked, flashed through Lauren’s brain. In her mind’s eye she caught the image of dark blood spattering on the shower walls and swirling down the drain.
Don’t go there! For the love of God, don’t give into the terror! It was a movie. Nothing more.
Lauren drew in a breath, turned off the water, shoved aside the opaque plastic sheet and heard the curtain clips scrape over the metal rod as she stepped into changing room.
“Hey!” she started to yell, but the tiled room with its built-in benches and foggy mirrors was empty.
No one else was in the area.
The wide handicapped-access door was shut firmly, not the least bit ajar. The empty wash room was quiet, only the sound of water slowly dripping from the showerhead to the tiled floor disturbing the silence.
But someone had been here. She knew it. Felt it.
For the past few weeks, since the term began in September, she had witnessed the depravity of Blue Rock Academy, been privy to the cancerous and ever-growing degeneracy that oozed beneath the facade of propriety and benevolence and kindness.
She snagged her towel from its hook and noticed that her plastic bag was swaying just a tiny bit, more than could be accounted for by the air being forced into the changing room through the heat vents. Lauren swore under her breath. Someone had been spying.
