department, had waved at their colleagues. I’d colored on the floor of my mother’s office on days when my babysitter was sick, and played hide- and-seek in the hallways at night while my parents worked late.
Of course there was one easy way to solve this mystery. When I was clear of the administrative wing, I stepped into an alcove in the main building, a semicircle of stone with a short bench in the middle, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. It would be late in Germany, but this was an issue that needed resolving.
“HOW IS RESEARCH?” I texted. I sent the message and waited; the reply took only seconds.
“THE ARCHIVES R RAD!” was my father’s time-warped answer. I hadn’t even had time to begin a response when a second message popped onto my screen, this one from my mother.
“1ST PAGE IN GERMN JRNL OF PHILO!”
In dorky professor-speak, that meant my parents had secured the first article (a big deal) in some new German philosophy journal.
Italso meant there would be a bound journal with my parents’ names on it, the kind I’d seen in our house countless times before. You couldn’t fake that kind of thing. Foley had to be wrong.
“Take that,” I murmured with a slightly evil grin, then checked the time on my phone. European history class would be over in five minutes. I didn’t think Peters would much care whether I came back for the final five minutes of class, so I walked back through the classroom building to the locker hall to switch out books for study hall later.
A note—a square of careful folds—was stuck to my locker door.
I dropped my books to the floor, pulled the note away, and opened it.
It read, in artsy letters: I saw you and Scout, and I wasn’t the only one. Watch your back.
A knot of fear rose in my throat. I turned around and pressed my back against my locker, trying to slow my heart. Someone had seen me and Scout—someone, maybe, who’d followed us from the library through the main building to the door behind which the monster lay sleeping.
The bells rang, signaling the end of class.
I crumpled the note in my hand.
One crisis at a time, I thought. One crisis at a time.
I waited until Scout had returned to the suite after classes, during our chunk of free time before dinner, to tell her about the note. We headed to my room to avoid the brat pack, who’d already taken over the common room. Why they’d opted to hang out in our suite mystified me, given their animosity toward Scout, but as Scout had said, they seemed to have a thing for drama. I guessed they were looking for opportunities.
When my bedroom door was shut and the lock was flipped, I pulled the note from the pocket of my hoodie and passed it over.
Scout paled, then held it up. “Where did this come from?”
“My locker. I found it after I left Foley’s office. And that’s actually part two of the story.”
Scout sat down on the floor, then rolled over onto her stomach, booted feet crossed in the air. I sat down on my bed, crossing my legs beneath me, and filled her in on my time in Foley’s office and the things she’d said about my parents. The genetic stuff aside, Scout was surprised that Foley seemed interested in me at all. Foley wasn’t known for being interested in her students; she was more focused on numbers—Ivy League acceptance rates and SAT scores. Individual students, to Foley, were just bits of data within the larger—and much more important—statistics.
“Maybe she feels sorry for me?” I asked. “Being abandoned by my parents for a European vacation?”
Okay, I can admit that sounded pretty pitiful, but Scout didn’t buy it, anyway. “No way,” she said. “This is a boarding school. No one’s parents are around. Now, she said what? That your parents are doing research in genetics?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what she said. But my parents teach philosophy. I mean—they do research, sure. They write articles—that’s why they’re traveling right now. But not on genetics.
Not on biology. They were into Heidegger and existentialism and stuff.”
“Huh,” Scout said with a frown, chin propped on her hand. “That’s really strange. And you went to their offices, and stuff? I mean, they weren’t just dumbing down their job to help you understand what they did?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been there. Seen their diplomas. Seen their books. I’ve watched them grade papers.” Scout pursed her lips, eyebrows drawn down as she concentrated. “That’s really weird. On the other hand, maybe Foley was just confused. It’s not that hard to imagine that she’d mistake one student for another.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” I said, “but she seemed pretty sure.”
“Hmm.” Scout rolled over onto her back and laced her hands behind her head. “While we’re contemplating your parents’ possibly secret identities, what are we going to do about this note thing?”
“What do you mean ‘we’? The note thing is your deal, not mine. Someone must have seen you.”
“It was on your locker, Parker. They probably saw you following me. Probably heard you clomping through the hall in those flip-flops like a Clydesdale.”
“First of all, I took off the flip- flops so they wouldn’t make noise. And second, I do notclomp .”
I threw my pillow at her to emphasize the point. “I am a very slender, spritely young woman.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t clomp.”
“I am not above hitting a girl.”
Scout barked out a laugh. “I’d like to see you try it.”
“Dare me, Pinhead. Dare me.”
That time, I got a glare. She pointed at her nose ring. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to get this thing? How much I endured to achieve this look?”
“That’s a ‘look’?”
“I am the epitome of high fashion.”
“Yeah,Vogue will surely be calling you tomorrow for the fall spread.”
Scout snorted out a laugh. “What did someone tell me once? That they’re not above hitting a girl? Well, neither am I, newbie.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get back on track—the note.”
“Right, the note.” Scout crossed her legs, one booted foot swinging as she thought. “Well,
clompy or not, someone saw us. Could have been one of our lovely suitemates; could have been someone else at St. Sophia’s. The path to the basement door isn’t exactly inconspicuous. I have to go through the Great Hall to get to the main building. That part’s not so unusual—going into the main building, I mean. Girls sometimes study in the chapel, and there’s a service in there on Wednesday nights.” She sat up halfway and looked over at me. “Did you notice anyone noticing us?”
I shook my head. “I thought I was caught when you stopped in the Great Hall. I sat down at a table for a second, but I was up and out of there pretty fast afterward.”
“Hmm,” Scout said. “You’re sure you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Did I tell anyone I was running around St. Sophia’s in the middle of the night, following my suitemate to figure out why she’s sneaking around? No, I didn’t tell anyone that, and I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”
She grinned up at me. “Can you imagine what would have happened if one of the”—she bobbed her head toward the closed door—“you-know-what pack found us down there?” She shook her head. “They would have gone completely postal.”
“I nearly went completely postal,” I pointed out.
“That is true. Although you did have your flip- flop weaponry.”
“Hey, would you want to meet me in a dark alley with a flip-flop?”
“Depends on how long you’d been awake. You’re an ogre in the morning.”
