Preppy Little Liars

Chapter 2

I entered the newsroom and was shocked to see Stephen sitting toward the back of the class. I took the empty seat beside him.

"How'd you beat me?"

He was browsing through the photographs on his digital camera. "I found the horse pretty quick, took my shots before he managed to kick me clear across the stable, and I hauled ass here. Where'd you go?"

I slumped back in my chair, remembering the slow torture I'd just endured having to talk to Annie Cho and the rest of the Heartless Harpy Brigade. I told Stephen about it and he chuckled.

"Annie was in my drama class last year," he said, setting down his camera. "When she didn't get cast in Our Town, she cried onstage for thirty minutes straight and the teacher had to get the dean to escort her to the nurse's office. Apparently, she was checked into some facility for exhaustion-"

His sarcastic air quotes made me laugh.

"Then, when she came back to school a few weeks later, her eyes were all glassy like she was on something." Stephen smirked. "Whatever it was obviously wore off."

Wordlessly, I watched other members of the newspaper staff trickle into the room. Mr. Murphy's briefcase was on the front desk, but he wasn't in the class.

What was it with everybody pulling a Houdini all of a sudden?

Mr. Murphy's disappearing act made me remember the strange moment I had with Kitty before the meet and I told Stephen about it. He picked his camera back up and started flicking through more pictures. He was very nonchalant too, which was odd. Stephen was a guy, but he loved gossip more than anyone else I knew.

"So you saw Kitty by the parking lot? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know. But don't you think it's weird she took off the minute I spotted her? And come to think of it, she wasn't wearing her riding gear either."

Stephen eyed me carefully. "No."

"What?"

"Just no. I know that look you're getting in your eye right now, Meg, that look that says you're about to go digging around in other people's business, and just no. Stop. Margaret's accident was an accident. What, you think Kitty had something to do with it?"

"Maybe," I said, indignant. He knew about my gut thing so I was annoyed that he'd question my intuition. Especially when that intuition was usually right.

Well, sometimes.

Stephen smiled. "There's no story here, Meg. At least not the one you're gearing up to tell. Margaret got hurt in a freak accident and she's in the hospital. It's a straight news story with a human interest angle at best, not some hard hitting investigative journalism piece."

He handed me his camera. "And look-here are some sweet pics of Margaret's horse to accompany your fluff piece that Mr. Murphy will inevitably swoon over, and will probably get you on the shortlist for yet another Golden Quill."

I smiled at the thought. A Golden Quill. I'd already won two of those writing awards since freshman year and was really hoping to win another as a junior. Preferably after being named editor in chief of the Gazette.

But I was getting ahead of myself. Mr. Murphy hadn't even told us what he planned to do about filling the post yet and there were many other students on the paper who'd be gunning for that job. Like Mr. Murphy always told us-focus on the here and now. The rest will fall into place. That's what I chanted to myself as I absentmindedly flipped through Stephen's photographs, trying to quell the fluttering in my stomach at the prospect of Mr. Murphy coming into the room and appointing one of us (read: me) as editor.

One of the pictures of Thunderbolt caught my eye and I stopped. It was a photo of the horse standing alone in the stable with his saddle loose.

"Stephen, you took these after the exhibition today, right?"

He looked over at me and frowned. "Duh. You saw me go looking for the horse."

"Where's the zoom button on this thing?"

Stephen knew I wasn't tech savvy when it came to cameras so he leaned over and pushed the correct button.

The photograph enlarged. I eyed the horse's saddle, my pulse beating in my ears, and gasped. That gut feeling I had that something about Margaret's accident didn't seem accidental was right on the money.

Thunderbolt's saddle hung off his back, cut at the bottom of the left strap.

I handed the camera back to Stephen and watched his mouth fall open as he eyed the photograph himself. He looked up at me with a dazed expression.

I suppressed a triumphant smirk. "You were saying?"