The Academy

Chapter Nineteen

                   

There were enough plastic classroom chairs for all of us. The six of us sat in a circle, mainly focused on Ivy.

         "Where did you guys find this key?" she asked in her high-pitched voice, holding it between the index finger and thumb of her right hand.

         "Kayleigh found it," Marisol blurted out before Carlisle could say anything. We all knew that she was the type of person who would probably take credit for it. "It was glued on a picture of Vivienne Aldridge in one of the yearbooks from 1963 in the library."

         Ivy giggled and covered her mouth with her hand, like she always did when she'd laugh. "That's Vivienne, alright. Making sure that somebody would have access to this room."

         "Ivy, you know we love you, but can you tell us what's going on?" Lindsay asked, crossing her legs politely.

         "There's no way you could've known Vivienne, though. She died before you were born," Aspen pointed out.

         "Do you guys want me to explain everything?" Ivy asked. When we all nodded, she leaned back in her seat, closed the book (which said "diary" in big, bold letters on the front of it), and inhaled loudly.

         "I don't have a roommate. You guys know this. There was an odd number of students at Beaumont Academy this year, so I was given my own room. So, one day—I'm not exactly sure when it was, maybe in the second week of school—but one day, I was completely unpacking, because it takes me forever to unpack, and there was this humongous picture frame in front of my bed. Inside of it was this horrendous brown and red painting of this abstract-looking table or desk. To this day, I still don't know what it really is. But I pulled it off the wall so I could replace it with this photo frame that had an picture that my entire family took last year. When I took it off, I noticed this bulge in the back of the frame. I cut it open and there was a key and a map.

         "The next day, after classes, I went to my room, took out the map and key, and it led me to a secret door in the closet of my dorm room. The key unlocked it, and it led to a secret tunnel. I kept finding more keys, which would lead to other locked areas of the tunnel, until I finally found most the keys, which were hidden in various places in the tunnels. Now, I'm only missing one and I can't find it anywhere. I think Vivienne, who hid the keys, forgot to hide that one. It took a couple of weeks to find the ones I have now, but I've got them all in a keyring that I keep in my purse. That keyring is the majority of my purse's weight. It's in an arm's reach at all times.

         "In one of the tunnels was a diary." Ivy lifted the book from her lap and displayed it for all of us to see. "The name on the inside of it was Vivienne Aldridge. Of course, it was a diary filled with juicy, interesting secrets, so I read the whole thing cover-to-cover in a night. It talked about everything, from her first time getting drunk with her friends, losing her virginity, and even secrets about the other students at Beaumont Academy when she attended.

         "You could tell that Vivienne was the 'it girl' at Beaumont Academy in 1963. She made things happen. She was cunning and knew almost everything about everyone, things that people would do anything to keep hidden. The tunnels connect to some of the air vents in a few dorm rooms, so you can hear almost every single word uttered in that room through the tunnel. She used the tunnels to her advantage. Honestly, she was probably the only one who knew about the tunnels, so she left the tunnel system for the person who would move the painting, find the map and key, and go exploring. That person was me.

         "I want to read the last entry to you, but I'm not going to tell you the names," she said, cracking open Vivienne Aldridge's diary. "I'll replace the name with a generic name. Give me ideas."

         "Max."

         "Jordan."

         "Carson."

"Carson," Ivy repeated. "I'm having a lot of regrets about blackmailing Carson. He's extremely angry at me, and I'm starting to worry about my safety. I know that seems absolutely insane, especially after Carson confessed his feelings toward me and apparently he's in love with me, but secrets can make people do some crazy things. I should've never told him that I'd tell, because now he will do anything to keep it a secret from the person who needs to know. It scares the hell out of me that this may be the last time I write in this diary. I almost expect him to kill me. That's crazy, right? He probably isn't capable of it, but I have a nagging feeling as I write that this will be the last time that my pen touches this paper, that the words in my head flow right into this book.

         "Someone might find this one day. I really hope not. When I die, I want to be seen as a good person. This book will cause anyone who reads it to make negative assumptions about me. For the record, I really do regret getting drunk on New Year's and losing my virginity to a random guy when I was sixteen. I regret slipping something in Gertrude's drink so she would finally get intimate with Jacobson. I regret everything that happened three months ago, which includes doing things with a scumbag who is way too old for me, and now wants to see me dead. Anyone who reads this, I want you to know that I have wanted to be a good person, but there isn't two sides. It can't be good or bad. It can't be black or white. Life is a fuzzy, uncertain shade of grey that somedays may look dark, while somedays may look light. I haven't made the best decisions, but I tried. And if I do die tonight, I hope I'll be in heaven. I mean, that's the ultimate place for good people. If I make it there, that means that this stuff in this book doesn't matter. What did matter was my heart.

         "I need to meet Carson in fifteen minutes. I might be dead in a matter of fifteen minutes. If I die, this will be my last entry. You'll know what happened if I never write in here again. If I die, it truly wasn't worth it. If I die, I died for nothing."

         Ivy sighed, closed the book, and wouldn't make eye contact with any of us.

         "What the hell?" Aspen said, stomping her feet. "So Carson actually did kill Vivienne?" When Ivy nodded, she said, "So you know exactly who killed Vivienne, but you haven't talked to the police?"
   

"Hell no!" Ivy exclaimed, her eyebrows furrowed. "I would never tell the police."

         "What secret did Vivienne know about Carson?" Lindsay asked, her eyes wide.

         "Carson was married," Ivy mumbled. "He had an affair on his wife. Vivienne, uh, knew and threatened to tell her if he didn't do something for her."
This was too much to process so late at night.

But something clicked in my head, and I said, "It was Vivienne. Carson had the affair on his wife with Vivienne."

         "Bingo," Ivy said, winking at me. "He was in love with her. He swore it, anyways. Like I said, she was the 'it girl'. Everyone wanted to be with her, including her teachers."

         "Carson was her teacher?" Carlisle shrieked, clutching the sides of her seat. "Vivienne slept with her teacher?"

         "Yeah. Terrible, right? No matter what she said in her last entry, I believe she wasn't a good person. After reading everything in this diary, I don't think she's in heaven."

         "You're the only one who knows about Vivienne," I said, the gears inside my head meshing together, making sense of everything I've heard. "You wrote the notes on the bulletin board. That means that the person who killed Vivienne, Carson, is still at Beaumont Academy." When Ivy raised her eyebrows, I added, "He's a teacher still." There were about three elderly male teachers that taught at Beaumont Academy when Vivienne was alive that still worked at the school.

            "Close,"Ivy replied with a grin. "He's not a teacher. He's the headmaster."