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Authors: Marni Bates
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words. Too bad Ben wasn’t similarly shocked into silence.
“Since
when
?!”
“Since Sebastian St. James showed up at the police precinct and offered it to me. I guess the dead guy is his grandpa and—”
“Well, isn’t that cozy. His grandpa dies and suddenly Sebastian St. Jerk’s first thought is to offer
you
a scholarship? Come on, Emmy. Please tell me you’re not going to take him up on this.”
“You guys don’t have to support this,” I repeated.
“So we’re either the assholes who don’t support your decision or we’re the assholes who let you stroll into danger alone,” Ben snarled. “That’s fan-freaking-tastic. I feel better already!”
I continued throwing shirts into the suitcase, unable to come up with a response that wouldn’t annoy both of us further.
“Why don’t we, uh, try to set up some ground rules?” Audrey suggested, looking nervously from Ben to me. “Emmy has to keep us updated with regular calls. No leaving the country without advanced notice. That sort of thing.”
I nodded slowly. “I can handle that.”
“How about handing over the Slate to the police so that they can do their
job
? That seems like a great ground rule to me.”
“If I can’t find a solid lead on my dad within the next—” I paused to consider a good time frame. Ben was right when he said that knowing my dad’s real first name wouldn’t necessarily make him any easier to track down, “four months then I’ll turn in the Slate.”
Ben didn’t look appeased, but he seemed to know it was the best promise he’d be able to weasel out of me.
“You have to agree to one more thing,” Ben said, and I braced myself for an impossible demand. “Steer clear of that Sebastian guy. He sounds twisted.”
I laughed in disbelief at the intensity in his face. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I plan to give him a very wide berth.”
As wide as possible, unless I had to dig into his past to figure out my own.
Chapter 9
My lack of sentimentality made it a whole lot easier to pack.
I tossed in the clothes that I wore nearly every day (a few pairs of jeans, a handful of shirts with writing puns on them, some sweatshirts, and sneakers) and then, because I figured Emptor Academy was the kind of place where I might have to dress up in an attempt to blend in, I added a few dresses for good measure.
There were a few framed photos on my dresser that I protected by wrapping them in a spare sweatshirt. The first picture was from elementary school, me happily dangling from the monkey bars above Audrey, both of us sporting enormous gap-toothed grins. The next was a classic birthday party picture where I concentrated on blowing out the candles of my homemade cake. My favorite showed me as a bald red-faced newborn in my mom’s arms. She looked so young in that photo, partly because she was wearing a pink loose-knit sweater and partly because she’d been captured with tendrils of her hair dancing in an invisible breeze.
She’d been alone, and scared to death, and she’d done her best by me.
Out of habit, I added a small photo album I’d hijacked years ago to the pile and tugged at the suitcase until I was able to yank the zipper closed. My hand rested on top of the hard plastic shell for a moment as I debated unpacking the photo album. Leaving the apartment with the only photographic evidence of my dad’s existence felt
wrong
. My mom didn’t have any good snapshots of his face because he’d insisted on taking all the photos. Still, I had spent hours flipping through the album from their time together in a pathetic attempt to understand him a little better. I’d spent over a decade trying to analyze those pictures before I realized I was simply driving myself insane and stopped.
Still, the album was undeniable proof that once upon a time my parents had done stupid touristy things together. There were a whole series of shots of my mom rocking a classic Marilyn Monroe pose with her hands on her hips and
“Since
when
?!”
“Since Sebastian St. James showed up at the police precinct and offered it to me. I guess the dead guy is his grandpa and—”
“Well, isn’t that cozy. His grandpa dies and suddenly Sebastian St. Jerk’s first thought is to offer
you
a scholarship? Come on, Emmy. Please tell me you’re not going to take him up on this.”
“You guys don’t have to support this,” I repeated.
“So we’re either the assholes who don’t support your decision or we’re the assholes who let you stroll into danger alone,” Ben snarled. “That’s fan-freaking-tastic. I feel better already!”
I continued throwing shirts into the suitcase, unable to come up with a response that wouldn’t annoy both of us further.
“Why don’t we, uh, try to set up some ground rules?” Audrey suggested, looking nervously from Ben to me. “Emmy has to keep us updated with regular calls. No leaving the country without advanced notice. That sort of thing.”
I nodded slowly. “I can handle that.”
“How about handing over the Slate to the police so that they can do their
job
? That seems like a great ground rule to me.”
“If I can’t find a solid lead on my dad within the next—” I paused to consider a good time frame. Ben was right when he said that knowing my dad’s real first name wouldn’t necessarily make him any easier to track down, “four months then I’ll turn in the Slate.”
Ben didn’t look appeased, but he seemed to know it was the best promise he’d be able to weasel out of me.
“You have to agree to one more thing,” Ben said, and I braced myself for an impossible demand. “Steer clear of that Sebastian guy. He sounds twisted.”
I laughed in disbelief at the intensity in his face. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I plan to give him a very wide berth.”
As wide as possible, unless I had to dig into his past to figure out my own.
Chapter 9
My lack of sentimentality made it a whole lot easier to pack.
I tossed in the clothes that I wore nearly every day (a few pairs of jeans, a handful of shirts with writing puns on them, some sweatshirts, and sneakers) and then, because I figured Emptor Academy was the kind of place where I might have to dress up in an attempt to blend in, I added a few dresses for good measure.
There were a few framed photos on my dresser that I protected by wrapping them in a spare sweatshirt. The first picture was from elementary school, me happily dangling from the monkey bars above Audrey, both of us sporting enormous gap-toothed grins. The next was a classic birthday party picture where I concentrated on blowing out the candles of my homemade cake. My favorite showed me as a bald red-faced newborn in my mom’s arms. She looked so young in that photo, partly because she was wearing a pink loose-knit sweater and partly because she’d been captured with tendrils of her hair dancing in an invisible breeze.
She’d been alone, and scared to death, and she’d done her best by me.
Out of habit, I added a small photo album I’d hijacked years ago to the pile and tugged at the suitcase until I was able to yank the zipper closed. My hand rested on top of the hard plastic shell for a moment as I debated unpacking the photo album. Leaving the apartment with the only photographic evidence of my dad’s existence felt
wrong
. My mom didn’t have any good snapshots of his face because he’d insisted on taking all the photos. Still, I had spent hours flipping through the album from their time together in a pathetic attempt to understand him a little better. I’d spent over a decade trying to analyze those pictures before I realized I was simply driving myself insane and stopped.
Still, the album was undeniable proof that once upon a time my parents had done stupid touristy things together. There were a whole series of shots of my mom rocking a classic Marilyn Monroe pose with her hands on her hips and
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