Page 43 of The Secret Girl (Adamson All-Boys Academy 1)
“Crotchless panties, very racy.” Micah twirls them around on his finger as I march over with my jaw clenched tight and try to grab them. He lifts them out of my reach and continues to spin them.
“This is a huge violation of my privacy,” I snap, and Micah shrugs.
“They were literally lying on the ground at the edge of the bed. I didn't exactly go looking for them.”
There's a knock on the door, and I spin around to find Spencer standing there, frowning at us. His eyes go right from me to the underwear, and a dark scowl takes over his face.
“You got a girlfriend, Chuck?” he asks, a dark note in his voice that makes me shiver. Micah tosses the underwear over to him, and Spencer catches them, finding the hole in the crotch right away. His cheeks redden slightly, and he clenches his jaw, looking up at me with those turquoise eyes in an accusatory sort of way.
“We shared one kiss,” I snap back at him, and the twins exchange a look. “And yeah, I do have a …. girlfriend back in California.” Mentally, I just swap Monica and Cody for the time being. It's mostly true, right? I mean Monica is my girlfriend, a platonic girlfriend, but still. “Her name is Monica Peters. And yes, these are her panties.”
I march over to Spencer, snatch the underwear back, and shove them in my pocket while Tobias surreptitiously closes the door on my dresses without Spencer noticing. Thank God.
“Good to know,” Spencer snarls, snatching up one of the other boxes and turning to leave. The twins take up the last two boxes, and we make a little train back to the dorm.
After we've dropped my stuff off, Spencer disappears, and I head downstairs for a glass of water. On the way past the community corkboard, I notice a new letter, written in purple ink.Dear Eve,
You don't belong here.
Last time was a warning.
Next time, I'm not giving you a head start.
Love, AdamI stop dead in my tracks, my heart thumping wildly, and reach up to grab the letter, tearing it off the thumbtack and staring at the words with wide eyes. There is no way in hell this letter is for anyone but me. I mean, come on: Eve, Adam. In Christian mythology, those are the names for the first woman and first man.
“Whatcha got there?” the twins ask, appearing on either side of me and snatching the letter from my hand. They read it together, exchange a look, and then glance up at me in unison. “What is this?”
“I just found it on the community board,” I whisper, glancing over at the hole-addled cork. There's an anonymous note from someone on floor two begging his neighbor to please do something about his snoring pinned next to a piece of paper with missed encounter: I saw you changing after track and we shared a brief brush of lips. call me, written on it.
The twins exchange another look.
“There are security cameras in here,” they both say, pointing up at the ceiling. My eyes go wide, and I turn my attention back to them.
“Do you know how we could access it?” I ask, feeling a small burst of hope in my chest. If we can look at the cameras and find out who the guy in the hoodie was, we'll have our perp, and then I won't have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my time here.
The twins look at each other, doing some weird sort of silent twin communication thing that I don't even remotely understand, before turning back to me.
“We know the president of the AV club,” they say, shrugging their shoulders in time with one another. “We'll get you in.” I grin and throw my arms around their necks. They both seem surprised as hell, green eyes wide as I drop back to my feet.
“Let's do this,” I say, feeling a huge spark of excitement. Whoever this creeper is, he clearly knows my secret, and if it's not one of the twins trying to prank me again, then I'm in big trouble.
“That, and the last girl that went to Adamson ended up dead.”
For the rest of the night, that thought echoes relentlessly in the back of my mind.
What if Jenica really was murdered? And what if she was murdered for something as stupid as her gender?
As much as I'd like to solve the mystery of her death, I'm not about to do it by laying my own life on the line.The president of the AV club is this nerdy dude that the twins grab by the arms and chuck unceremoniously into the hallway after forcing him to pull up the footage from the common area. I guess when they said they 'knew him', what they meant was that they aren't afraid to throw their weight around a little to get what they want.
