The Headmaster's List Read online

  “Maybe if I saw even just a picture of the scene, I could start to remember, knock a memory loose.”

  Detective Potentas looked at his hands and took another breath. “I’m going to make an assumption here. You’re a good student, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can see it, it’s in your eyes. You’re smart, you’re driven, that’s all good. This is probably the first time anything like this has happened to you, and I pray it’ll be the last.”

  Spencer sank into the chair, feeling small. She knew where this was going.

  “I’m going to say, for your own sanity, it might be better if you don’t try to remember that night.”

  “I’m not here to ogle some dead body, Detective. There’s nothing else you can share with me? Not even the written report?”

  The detective looked resigned, and Spencer could tell, legally, his hands were tied.

  “Sorry, Miss Sandoval. It’s just not in my power to hand something like that over to you. I’ve already got enough to deal with, especially from some podcast that’s been spamming my number for days on end…”

  Spencer tried not to let the sinking feeling of failure weigh her down, but her options were getting smaller and smaller.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Come back to me again after all this is over, once you’ve got some distance between yourself and the accident.”

  Spencer frowned. Another roadblock.

  Detective Potentas took out a piece of gum from his desk drawer and offered a stick to her, but she refused. A first for everything. “I can tell you’re a good kid,” he said, popping the gum into his mouth. “You’re not looking to start any trouble, but it’s in my professional opinion to tell you that it’s not worth it, getting hung up on this kind of thing. Crashes happen all the time, especially if the driver is under the influence.”

  “But we don’t know that for sure,” she said. “Ethan would never … he would never get behind the wheel if he was high. Maybe if he were alone, but not if he had other people in the car with him!”

  “People make mistakes all the time,” the detective sighed. “And once the toxicology reports come back, it’ll prove that.”

  She chewed her lip. “But why can’t I remember anything?”

  “With crashes like these, head injuries are common.”

  “Could there be another explanation to my memory loss, though?”

  Detective Potentas stared at her, analyzing. “Illicit drugs, maybe.”

  A yellow Solo cup, then the night being hazy after that. Spencer shivered. “I didn’t take anything … At least, I don’t remember.”

  “What can I tell you? We’re living in a time where kids are taking fentanyl-laced pills,” he said grimly. “They’re all over the city. Check to see if the hospital ran any lab tests on you when you were admitted.”

  Spencer shivered again.

  “Take care of yourself, Miss Sandoval.”

  FIFTEEN

  THE FOLLOWING DAY AT BRAIN Freeze, Olivia was finishing up an order just as Spencer arrived for her shift. “Guess who was asking about you,” Olivia said as Spencer walked in and Ripley flopped under a nearby tree, panting from the ride over.

  “Who?”

  “Peyton Salt.”

  Spencer frowned.

  “She asked about an interview. I tried to run interference, but she’s persistent. She gave me this card.” Pinched between Olivia’s index and middle fingers was a business card with the words GET SALTY on them.

  Spencer sighed and snatched it from Olivia’s fingers, crumpled it up, and then threw it in the trash under the counter.

  “Figured as much,” Olivia said. “Listen, I hate to do this to you, but I gotta split. Emergency on set. Someone decided to kick a hole in one of the castle walls during rehearsal last night, so I need to patch it before tomorrow. Think you can hold down the fort solo?”

  Spencer gave Olivia a thumbs-up and she left, humming as she skipped to her car.

  Unfortunately, soccer, baseball, and football games let out in overlapping intervals, which meant that the line at Brain Freeze was seemingly endless as Spencer worked hard to keep up with all the orders while also counting out correct change and making sure that everything was clean. Time flew in the blink of an eye. By the time the line had let up, Spencer rested her head on the cool countertop and took a breath. Her head wasn’t hurting, but the rest of her was. What had Tabby been doing by the dumpster yesterday? What did the detective say? Illicit drugs were all over Los Angeles, and Spencer knew how easy it was to order them from the internet. Most kids she knew just DM’d a plug on Snapchat.

  She heard someone step up to the kiosk and lifted her head to see a familiar face.

  “Jackson, hi,” Spencer said, finding herself smiling, not just because he wasn’t Peyton.

  “Tough day?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Oh, I can imagine.” His cheeks and nose were pink from being in the sun, and he was wearing a warm-up jersey with COACH embroidered on his chest. “Coaching kids is like herding cats.”

  “What can I make for you?” Pain was already flaring up her back and down her arm, throbbing annoyingly, and Spencer had completely missed taking her usually scheduled painkiller break.

  “Oh! Nothing. You looked like you need a morale boost. I just wanted to say hi. So, hi.”

  Spencer smiled. “Want to take a break with me?”

  “Sure! I’ve got a second.”

  She planted a sign down on the counter that said STAY COOL! BE BACK SOON! “Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you under the tree.”

  * * *

  With two tall ice cream cups in hand, Spencer joined Jackson at the table under the pin-striped umbrella near the shady tree. Ripley’s tail wagged wildly from her spot nearby. She clearly liked Jackson, but he was good about not petting her. Spencer took a seat across from him, sliding the ice cream over.

  “Reese’s, my favorite!” he said. “How did you know?”

  “I remembered. That night at the fair a couple years back, you and Ethan had a pretend fight about what was better: peanut M&Ms or Reese’s—”

  “Right! The incident with the clown is the first thing that comes to my mind about that fair. Can’t believe you remembered my evidence-based and accurate argument in favor of Reese’s and that I won by a mile.” Jackson’s smile sloped upward and he dug the spoon in eagerly.

  Spencer dug into her own ice cream, mixed with cookie dough.

  “How do you like working at Brain Freeze?” he asked.

  “It’s not so bad. What about you, Coach?” She angled her gaze toward his jersey.

  “It’s fun. Kids that age cluster the ball like they’re chasing a butterfly.”

  Spencer laughed, and Jackson’s dimple reappeared when he smiled.

  “How much do I owe you? For the ice cream?” he asked.

  “On me.”

  “Really?”

  “No problem. Don’t mention it to my uncle, though, he owns the place. He’d kill me if he found out I was giving out ice cream. He may look like a surfer dude, but he’s a real hard-ass.”

  “Secret is safe with me.” He put his hand over his heart.

  Now that she had some food in her belly, Spencer fished her painkillers out of her pocket and popped one. She washed it down with another spoonful of ice cream.

  “How did it go at the police station?” Jackson asked, watching her.

  “Not well, they think Ethan is definitely guilty.”

  “Did you talk to Ethan?”

  “Yeah … he says he’s guilty too, he doesn’t even want to fight it. But I just … I just don’t believe he’d deliberately do something like that, do you?”

  Jackson shook his head. “No, of course not. If I did, I wouldn’t be friends with him.”

  Spencer raised a scoopful of ice cream. Cheers to that, she thought.

  He asked, “Have you been getting harassed by that podcaster following his case?”

  “You mean Peyton Salt?” She thought about the crumpled-up card in the trash can.

  “Yeah, her. She came to my house earlier and wouldn’t leave. She kept throwing her phone in my face, saying she just wanted to ask some questions, how I felt about the charges against Ethan, but I didn’t want to talk to her. I almost called the cops on her; she looked like she was going to camp out in the garden, but she left after a while.”

  “Yeah, she was just here. I’ve been dodging her, though. I don’t think it’s any of her business.”

  “Fair. Plus, once it’s out there, it’s hard to control what people think of the story. I’m worried I’d just make it worse, especially with his plea hearing coming up.”

  Spencer hummed in agreement. “I wonder how she’s getting her sources. She seems like she’s got a finger on the pulse, access to info we don’t have.”

  “Like police reports?”

  Spencer raised her eyebrows by way of an answer. “She might have a connection to the police somehow. In one of her earlier episodes, she said she had the police report in front of her.”

  “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I was curious, read a few transcripts, and I don’t recommend it.”

  “Believe me, I won’t listen.”

  She regretted looking into Peyton’s podcast in the first place. After reading a transcript about what other people had to say about her, she’d had to dose up on her painkillers as a migraine threatened to make her head explode.

  She swirled the vanilla ice cream around her mouth for a while, savoring the cold, as her thoughts went back to Tabby. “Something else that the detective said, though, bothers me. I asked him about my memory loss and he said it could have been because of drugs. Like, serious drugs.”

  Jackson stared at her, wide eyed. “For real? You think you were dru—”

  “It’s not a fun thought, but … I remember only having one drink, and the rest of the night is a mess.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Yeah. It just got me thinking maybe Ethan was on something, too … but he didn’t know it. I mean, he basically stopped partying since the accident at his house last year.”

  “Yeah, and he quit smoking pot since it would hurt his chances with Michigan.”

  Spencer nodded. She had been so proud of him when he went cold turkey.

  “He used to get his weed from Brent Lang. Do you know if he was at the party?” Jackson asked.

  “I think so. We should talk to him, for sure.”

  Brent was a self-proclaimed guru, touting the importance of meditation and healing through yoga and breath work. He had a group of devoted followers, mostly girls, who all embodied the New Age lifestyle, having started a yoga club during lunch period. In Spencer’s opinion, he gave off “future cult leader” vibes. No matter the weather, he always wore a beanie, even at school where the dress code prohibited hats, and he wore crystals on leather ropes around his neck, claiming they cleared energy and opened his chakras. His mom was a pharmacist, but he’d constantly bash quote-unquote Big Pharma and how it was making people sick and that “natural remedies were the way, man.” Would he really be capable of selling anything more hardcore?

  Spencer and Jackson fell into a contemplative silence as they continued to eat their ice cream, though with less gusto now that the topic of Ethan possibly being high when he crashed loomed overhead like a storm cloud. Spencer could access her own medical records, so nothing was stopping her from finding out if she really did get her drink spiked. But somehow she didn’t want to know; it was too terrifying to think someone would do that to her.

  She asked, “Do you want to come over tomorrow? We can figure out our game plan then? Maybe sort through all the stuff we know?”

  “Sure! I’d say ‘sounds fun’ but…”

  Spencer allowed herself to smile. She appreciated his levity, even if it was short-lived. Having him around made her feel better.

  But persistent questions hung heavy over her mind. Could she really have been drugged that night? She hadn’t been paying attention to her drink, didn’t even remember who handed her the cup in the first place.

  SIXTEEN

  AFTER SCHOOL, JACKSON ARRIVED AT her house, right on time, at five in the afternoon, after his soccer practice let out. Unfortunately, it had been Hope who had gotten to the door first.

  “Spencer! A boy is here for you!” she hollered, her voice seemingly echoing through the whole house. Annoyingly, she sang it, too.

  Spencer managed to get there only seconds later, bumping Hope out of the way with her hip. (“Hey!” she cried.) She definitely didn’t need Hope blabbing to her parents that she had a boy over, let alone Ethan Amoroso’s best friend, a double whammy of trouble in the making. He hadn’t even gone home to change, evident because, when he arrived at her front door with his gym bag thrown over his shoulder, his hair was pushed back away from his forehead with sweat, thanks to the heat of the day.

  “Sorry about my sister,” Spencer said, flushed.

  Jackson looked like he was trying not to laugh; his face was all screwed up but his eyes were bright. “It’s all right. Hey, I’m Jackson,” he said to Hope, who was thoroughly pouting.

  “Hey yourself.” To Spencer, Hope said, “Mom and Dad are going to freak if they find out you had a boy over when they weren’t here.”

  “It’s not like that,” Spencer said, hoping that the heat wasn’t showing in her cheeks. “This is a…” What was this exactly? She couldn’t go around saying they were investigating when the police wouldn’t.

  “It’s a project for school,” Jackson said quickly.

  “Right! A school project. So you don’t need to go tattling to Mom or Dad about it.”

  Hope folded her arms over her chest. “What do I get for not telling?”

  She was intent on being a pain in the ass today, but before Spencer could tell her off for it, Jackson asked, “Do you like video games?”

  Hope’s sneer softened, and she looked Jackson up and down, as if she was surprised a jock who looked like him was interested in that kind of thing. “Yeah. Depends though. Why?”

  From his gym bag, he pulled out a Nintendo Switch. “See, I’ve got the new Zelda game and … well, let’s say you can play it as much as you want, so long as you don’t get Spencer in trouble.”

  Hope looked at Spencer and rolled her eyes, as if weighing her options and deciding which would be more fun: playing a video game or seeing Spencer get grounded for a few weeks. “Deal. You keep bringing Zelda, I keep my lips sealed.”

  Jackson smiled, the warmth of it reaching up to his eyes, and Hope scurried away to claim her usual spot on the couch, already firing up the system.

  Spencer stepped back and let Jackson fully walk into the house. “Sorry about her. She can be such a brat.”

  “It’s fine, really. With three younger brothers, I know the drill.”

  Spencer led the way down the hall, toward her warmly lit bedroom. “You can put your bag there,” she said and pointed to the spot on the floor in front of her dresser, while she pulled an extra chair she had stolen from the dining room up to her desk. Jackson dropped his bag and looked around her room. Ripley’s tail wagged on the bed upon seeing him.

  “You’re tidy,” he said. “Hope you didn’t clean on my accord.”

  “I like organizing. It keeps my mind at ease. I like it when things are neat.”

  “Clearly,” he said, spotting her binders and color-coordinated folders on the shelf above her desk. One of the folders had a custom label she had designed: INVESTIGATION. “You’re like a professional.”

  Putting a label on it helped remove the personal connection and made it feel like an assignment.

  They both took a seat at her desk—Jackson insisting he take the dining room chair and Spencer take her swivel desk chair—and Spencer showed him what she had compiled so far. “I’ve sorted what documents I could gather into these three sections: The Party, The Accident, and Legal Stuff. And then I typed up what I could to get us started.” She flipped through, showing newspaper clippings of the accident, and she even drew her own map of the party and a line drawn toward the intersection at Canyon Drive.

  Jackson’s eyes flitted over the pages as she flipped through quickly. He looked at her, his smile filled with amusement. “You are such an overachiever.”

  “I know. Is that a problem?”

  “Not even. What do we want to do first?”

  “I figured we could go through the socials of everyone who might have been at the party. There’s no cell reception up in the hills, so most people uploaded videos of the party when they got home and posted it to Facebook and Instagram.”

  Her heart pounded painfully in her chest. She hadn’t gathered the courage yet to check her medical records to see if they’d given her a drug test when she was in the hospital. Part of her wanted to know what happened that night, but another part of her was afraid of what she might find out.

  Plus, she didn’t want to watch Ethan making out with Hailey all over again, as miniature in the grand scheme of things as it was.

  Jackson seemed to sense this hesitancy, and he said, “How about I look through the videos and you start making a timeline of the party. Then we can start a short list of people we’d want to interview in person, maybe anyone who can confirm what happened, like Brent Lang and Harrison, and Tabby, too.”

  Spencer was grateful for his thoughtfulness and took out one of her gel pens from the bunch she kept in a cup on her desk and got to writing. Meanwhile, Jackson opened his laptop.

  “Have you started to remember anything else about the party?” he asked.

  “Some. The beginning of the night, I arrived at the party around ten. I hadn’t planned on going in the first place and told Ethan so. He’d wanted me to come, but I’d just gotten off a shift at Brain Freeze, and I was tired, but I changed my mind. He didn’t think I’d be there. I took a Lyft to the front of the neighborhood and walked. By the time I got there, the party was going hard. The firepit was lit, and people were skateboarding in empty swimming pools.”