Read Online Fly Away by Nora Rock - Free Book Online Page B

message to the detective.
    The third address was [email protected]. There were only a couple of messages from that one. The most recent was the art portfolio. It was sent to me alone, no other recipients.
    I wondered if she’d ever sent that portfolio out, and if so, to whom. I looked through the pictures again. As always, the images sent a chill up my spine. They were pictures that kept secrets.
    I sat in my chair for a long time, looking at the carnival picture. There was a title under the picture. My Girl .
    I went online and and googled My Girl by Arielle Kuypers . Arielle had been on the computer a lot recently. I remembered her telling me about the artist who’d admired her work, but I couldn’t remember his name. I wasn’t expecting to find anything, and I didn’t on the first try. But when I tried again, this time using My Girl with gesso91 , I got a hit to a bulletin board. The board was hosted by a site for young artists. There was a conversation thread about Arielle’s painting. Three different people had commented. One was the site moderator. The other two were “Redmeg,” a seventeen-year-old girl who, according to her profile, specialized in “fantasy illustration.” The other was someone who called himself “TheBeneFactor.”
    â€œThe BeneFactor.” I said it aloud, trying to remember if this was the artist Ari had talked about. I clicked on his profile. A pop-up advised me that TheBeneFactor did not accept unsolicited portfolios. A search on the word benefactor turned up too many hits. I was stumped.
    I spent another hour on my computer, trying, without success, to figure out the identity of Arielle’s friend.
    I felt alone in a way I never had before. I knew I ought to be worried about Arielle— and about Liam too—but what I really felt was hurt. Besides my parents, Ari and Liam were the two people I trusted and counted on most in the whole world. Now both of them were gone, and provincials were just four weeks away. I was not only trying to adjust to being a flyer, but I was suddenly the team captain too.
    When Arielle made me assistant captain, I thought she’d done it to put an end to Shona’s little mutiny. Now I wondered if she’d planned this all along. If she was already preparing to bail out on the team and leave me to pick up the pieces. It was a cruel trick, especially considering I could barely manage my own problems. Now I had twelve other girls to worry about.

chapter seventeen
    The next day at school, I made my way down to the art room at lunchtime. I needed to talk to Ms. Currie, the art teacher, to see if she knew anything about someone called The BeneFactor. But how was I going to talk to Ms. Currie without raising her suspicions about Arielle? Ari, of course, was one of Ms. Currie’s favorite students. If she thought I knew something about Ari’s whereabouts, she’d want me to report it to the police. Even though that seemed like the logical thing to do, Ari had kept me in the dark about her plans because she knew I would blab under pressure.
    I needn’t have worried. The art room was locked. There are expensive supplies in there. It made sense that Ms. Currie would lock it up when she wasn’t there. I let go of the doorknob and turned around to leave. Then I saw the bulletin board display on the wall across from the art room:
    A Career in Fine Art—Not Just a Fantasy .
    The display was part of a schoolwide career-day project. Many classes and labs had these boards up to highlight the practical applications of the subjects we were learning. I’d contributed a profile of a physiotherapist I’d interviewed to the Health display. I leaned in closer to scan the bulletin board, which housed a collage of art pieces and the careers they reflected. A piece of gift wrap, for example, framed a photo of a person working at a stationery design company. A page of print included a long list of web