“So, how are you holding up?” he whispered as he leaned over and rested his chin on my shoulder.

Julian and I had always been so close. Sometimes, there wasn’t even a space between where his body ended and mine began. He was there for me the entirety of my childhood, and anytime someone tried to bring up my father in front of me, Julian would tell them what an asshole my dad was and threaten to knock their teeth out. Granted, that was probably a bit dramatic on his part, but his heart was always in the right place.

As we got older, I started to notice how handsome he was becoming. He had the kind of classically stunning good looks that made most of the girls at school fawn all over him. It always seemed awkward for me to think of him in that way, though. I mean, we were best friends long before I had boobs, or he had his growth spurt. All I saw whenever I ran my hand through his messy brown hair were the bright, green eyes of the one guy who had never left me. I didn’t know his parents very well, which was odd considering our moms were friends. But it didn’t seem to matter to either of us.

“I’m fine,” I answered as I leaned my head into his.

He sighed. “You are such a liar. I can always tell when you’re lying, you know.”

“I know.”

He was right; I wasn’t fine. But then again, I hadn’t been fine for months.

“You have to give up on this quest you’re on, Lisette.”

I blinked. “What quest?”

“Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Your need to find your mom’s killer. There may not even be a killer.”

“Don’t say that.” I lifted my head up and shoved my shoulder over to push him off. “You know that there is. You know that suicide note was a fake. It was on Lineage Academy letterhead, and it barely resembled mom’s handwriting.”

“Yeah, I know.” Julian looked about as sad as I felt. “But it’s going to run you into the ground, and there may not even be an answer there for you to find. Even if there is, it might not be one that you want to hear.”

“I have to try,” I said.

2

The rest of class was uneventful as we both sat quietly and pretended to listen to the lecture. My mind was never quiet, though. It was always trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Lineage Academy was riddled with corruption, I was sure of it. After my father left us, my mom had a brief period of drowning her sorrows in a bottle of wine. But I never blamed her for it; she always did the best she could to stay strong for the both of us.

Most of the nights, I was too young to remember clearly, but one of them had always stuck with me. I think I had been about thirteen at the time—so nearly a decade ago—when she had gone off on some rampage about how my absentee father had abused his powerful alumni status at Goldshire.

The rumors mostly centered on a scandal about inappropriate handling of school funds that had cast a shadow over our family ever since his disappearance. She wasn’t mad at him for leaving, though. She was mad at him for being with us at all. It wasn’t my mother’s rant that had stuck with me that night, though. It was the countless drafts of letters that she was writing to him in her drunken stupor to “give him a piece of her mind,” as she had said. I remembered watching her start one letter after another, crumpling them up and tossing them across the room when she thought of something else that she wanted to write to him instead.

After mom had fallen asleep on the couch, I had gone around and collected all the crumbled up papers to put in the trash so that she didn’t have to see them scattered all over the floor in the morning. Each and every one of those papers was a piece of Lineage letterhead, which I remembered thinking was odd even then. I had asked her about it the following day after she had nursed her headache a bit, and she had told me that it was just a stack of stationery she had found in my father’s old desk.

Funny how certain pieces of memories stayed with you while others didn't. I never forgot how strange it was that my father, a powerful alumnus from Goldshire, had drawers full of Lineage stationery in his desk. By that evening, when I went back to look, the desk had been completely cleared out.

Definitely not a coincidence.

Pay attention, or you’ll miss it.

An hour or so later, my lecture finally ended. Julian agreed to leave me to my own devices, but only once I promised not to skip out on my other two classes for the day. I was kind of surprised that he took me at my word, though. To be honest, he knew me better than that.

I walked all the way to the edge of the campus and then crossed the stone street that led onto the far edges of Lineage Academy’s property. Charleston was an old city, full of cobblestone paths and trees that hung low with draping Spanish moss. There was a musty feeling of old money that lingered within most of the culture there, including the culture between our two schools.

Most colleges had rival sports teams and friendly competitive events. But Lineage and Goldshire were different. The rivalry between them was more akin to that of opposing gangs than good-faith sportsmanship. It was so bad, in fact, that if a student from the rival school was caught on the other college’s campus, it would be grounds for immediate expulsion. Which is why what I was about to do was so stupid and reckless.

Obscured behind a massive white oak, I set down my book bag at the base and pulled off my Goldshire jacket, replacing it with a Lineage one. How the fuck did I get my hands on such a precious commodity? Easy. Wearing a Lineage or Goldshire jacket allowed you certain privileges in Charleston. Privileges that usually only the elite partook in. But there were plenty of times where someone may have left their jacket in the library or the coffee shop, and snagging one of them could earn you upwards of five-hundred-dollars on the streets. If you really wanted one, you just needed to know where to look.

My mom had spent years dedicating her life to disadvantaged youth. She always saw the good in them, the potential of who they could be if someone gave them the right chances. And even though there were opportunities, that didn’t change the fact that most of them had little to survive on day to day. So, theft and trading were pretty common at the halfway house she volunteered at.

And that’s where I found my connection.

I tucked my bag up into the low-hanging branches, slipped my sunglasses over my eyes, and pulled my hair down around my face. Then I started toward the school.

I made it almost halfway there when I heard a voice behind me. I kept walking, ignoring whoever it was in the hopes that they would give up if I acted like I didn’t hear them. But as they came closer to me, I recognized the voice.

“I thought we agreed that you weren’t skipping any more classes today?”

I turned around and saw Julian wearing a black hoodie and sunglasses that covered most of his recognizable features.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed at him, trying to act as normal as possible.

He hissed back. “Damn it, what are you doing here? Do you know what they’ll do if someone finds you over here?”

“Damn it, Julian, I’m an adult. You can’t just keep following me around like a stalker.”

“Technically, don’t most stalkers follow adults?” he replied sarcastically.

“Go away,” I growled as I turned around and kept walking.

“Lisette. Seriously, stop.” Julian reached forward to grab my hand, and I swatted him with my other arm to let go of me. I hoped that no one was watching because what was just a small squabble between friends could draw enough attention to get us noticed.

Too late.

One of the Lineage instructors sporting a faculty I.D. cut across the lawn toward us at record speed. Julian and I tried to separate and act like we were walking to our respective classes and didn’t hear the guy shouting at us, but it was too late. A second faculty member cut Julian off from leaving the campus, and the instructor who spotted us yelled at me until I stopped walking.

“What are you two doing?” the professor asked me as he stepped in front of me.

I saw from the corner of my eye that Julian was being brought back over to stand next to me.

“Just going to class,” I answered.

The professor looked down his nose at me. “It looked like you were having an argument, and it was getting physical.”

“Not at all,” I laughed. “We’re friends, we were just playing around.”

“Yeah,” Julian said to back me up. “We’re going to be late for class, though, so can we go now?”

“What class are you going to?” the other guy asked.

Even with sunglasses on, I could sense the blank look on Julian’s face. Our hesitation lasted a second too long, and before we knew it, we were being escorted to the Dean’s office. As we sat outside the office waiting, Julian looked for ways that we could sneak out of there without being caught. I, on the other hand, had my eyes on something else.

And the second the secretary stepped away on a phone call, I stood up.