Confessions: The Private School Murders Read Free Page B

and we were fiercely loyal to each other. Two people couldn’t be tighter friends and confidants than we were. Still, I wished we had that twin telepathy thing you always hear about, but we didn’t. Probably because aside from the superficial physical traits and the aforementioned loyalty, we couldn’t have been less alike.
    Harry was quiet. He was mopey. He had this tendency to slouch. He was asthmatic, and he slept long and late every day when he could. Harry was also kind.
    Yes, much to my parents’ disappointment, Harry was born an emo, and even though he was a world-classpianist who could bring an audience at Lincoln Center to tears, Malcolm and Maud described him as sensitive, sentimental, and weak. He had never won a Gongo or gotten a chop, and not even a billion emotion-quashing pills had ever dimmed a single ray of his brilliance.
    According to me, he got major points for that.
    I was Harry’s flip side. I was up at dawn. I sometimes cooked elaborate breakfasts of apricot-and-chai oatmeal and fresh-squeezed orange juice before anyone else was even stretching their arms above their heads. I lived for a complex chemistry experiment and checked over my dad’s financial books for fun—at least I had, back when he let me. I was known for being high-strung, and occasionally my sharpness was interpreted as, well, rudeness. I never danced around anything when I could cut to the chase, and no one had ever called me kind.
    My parents gave me major points for
that
.
    I’d also studied forensic science as a hobby since I was about six years old and had solved every mystery I’d ever read or seen on TV since I was eight. Now I just hoped I still had that talent. That quitting the drugs hadn’t taken it from me.
    Harry held the gate open for me, and we slipped inside the courtyard, ignoring the camera flashes popping all around us. Instead of thinking about me or Harry or Matthew,I thought about Adele. Adele, who listened well and laughed easily. Adele, who played in the orchestra and wore pink constantly and hung photos of composers and film directors in her locker. She could have gone on to do anything, be anyone, have a great big life.
    Now she would never have another day. Another minute.
    Call me crazy, but I wanted—no, I
needed
—to do something about it. I just hoped that the new and maybe-improved drug-free me still could.

4
    I put my key in the lock
of apartment 9G, the duplex where Harry, Hugo, and I had once lived with our parents but now suffered daily with our horrible uncle Peter until the courts decided what was to become of us. But before I turned the knob, the door opened, and a tall, dark, and drop-dead-handsome man of maybe fifty said hello.
    My shoulders coiled. Stranger in my apartment equals not good. “Who are you?”
    “I’m Jacob Perlman,” he said calmly. “Call me Jacob. Peter has brought me in as your guardian.”
    Harry gave Jacob a dubious look. “I thought Uncle Peter was our guardian.”
    “He was. Now I am,” Jacob said, his brown eyes free of guile. “Would you like to come in?”
    “To our own home?” I snapped. “Sure. Thanks.”
    Jacob smiled slowly and stepped back to let us through. Harry, sensing that I’d flipped into set-to-pop mode, quickly disappeared down the hallway and into his room.
    “Peter installed a stranger in our house to look after us?” I said, looking up at Jacob and noting the small scar near his ear, the perfect hairline, the razor-sharp shave. “Is that even legal?”
    He smirked. “Tandoori, right?”
    He had an accent I couldn’t quite place, which was odd considering I’d been most places and spoke most languages. The wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes looked like squint lines more than laugh lines. He was lean and muscular, but not like he’d been working out in a gym. More like he’d had a physically demanding life.
    “Yeah, that’s me,” I replied. “Where’s Uncle Peter?”
    Jacob folded his hands in front of