Good Grades & Mystery Games: Chapter 11

I’ve spent the last two hours listening to Anderson drone on about shit he probably has no idea about, followed by a twenty minute conversation with my dad on the phone. Today is going great.

My dad can never get straight to the point. He has to tell me everything that has gone wrong with his day, give me a ten page essay on the current state of the business that I didn’t ask for before telling me why he’s really calling me. Today’s conversation has a little kick to it, though.

Every once in a while, my dad will talk about my mom, Junie Sylvester. She’s not like a Voldemort situation where we can’t say her name. If anything, talking about her brings the mood down.

As much as my dad has a hard exterior, I know he’s a soft puppy on the inside. I was there with him when he cried over her. My dad misses her, and I miss her too. I usually save all my talk about my mom for a late night in the comfort of my bed when I’m missing her, but today my dad wants to poke some old wounds with his infected finger.

Unlike most cases with spouses in our family that latch onto a Branson for a sense of security and wealth, my mom decided to run the other way. Literally. It turns out that constant press about your relationship with a Branson CEO and anything else you do, isn’t for everyone. I don’t blame her. I know she loves me, and I know she still does, wherever she is.

Still, I wish she stayed and gave me a better goodbye than a stupid letter that I’ve had since I was twelve. If I really wanted to find her, I could. Similarly, if she wanted to find me, she could. I’ve never been good at making the first move and I feel like getting the ‘closure’ my therapist aspires for will only open more wounds that I don’t need to deal with right now. As much as I miss her, I’ve moved on and matured. If in a few years from now, I’m desperate for her contact, I’ll find her. Right now, I’m good.

That’s why I’m shocked that my dad has been talking about her for the last fifteen minutes, talking about everything from her giving birth to me, their successful marriage until the moment it suddenly imploded. My dad made sure that all press would leave her alone as that was the one thing she requested when she left. In a weird way, his ego was bruised that she didn’t even try to steal from him or ask for any money. She’s probably started a new life, making her own money out of the spotlight.

I finally interrupt his rant on how my mom was too good for him.

“Okay, Sammy,” I say, using her nickname for him to reign him back in. “What do you really want?”

He clears his throat. “Do I have to want something to talk to my only son?”

“When you’re talking about mom, yes.”

I push my back closer to the wall, sighing against it. Scarlett probably thinks I’m trying to ditch our study session, but I’ve been trying to put an end to this conversation for the last half an hour. It’s a pretty busy day in the library with the freshmen panicking about their first assessments of the semester and I want to get as much work done as possible.

“I just wanted to see how things are going. You know, with the Voss girl,” he says in a hushed tone.

“She has a name,” I bite, hating the way he talks about her like that. I’d be like this with anyone. I know what it’s like to only be known by a last name and when that name starts to mean something bigger than you could ever imagine, you realise that you’re nothing without it. I don’t want that to be the case for her. Or for anyone, really.

He ignores me. “I haven’t heard anything from you since you said that the jewellery store stakeout was a bust.”

“Yeah, because nothing has happened,” I say truthfully. We haven’t had time to discuss what happened that night and that was my plan for today, until my dad called me, a disruption as always.

“Well, you need to make something happen. And quick. We can’t have the press finding out about this before we get a hold on it,” my dad explains like I don’t know this already. You try coaxing information out of a girl who only opens up to you when she’s hungry and tired and spends the rest of that time giving you the stink eye. “Are we clear, son?”

“Crystal,” I murmur. He’s silent on the other end for a few beats. “Look, dad, I’ve got to go. These A’s aren’t going to get themselves.”

“Good boy,” he coos, and I roll my eyes, ending the call on him.

When I quietly slip through the library doors, Scarlett is exactly where I left her. She’s sitting at one end of a brown bench, tucked into the far corner of the bookshelves in the collaborative study area.

Because she’s Scarlett Voss, she manages to pull off a black dress and an oversized blazer, her wavy hair tied back into a messy low ponytail, with small gold hoops in her ears. When she got up to use the bathroom, I got a look at the loose ribbon in her hair. This time it’s a deep red one to add some colour.

Her style is so unique to her that I’m convinced that people are afraid to dress like her. It’s not like it’s so out of this world, it’s just not what you usually get from girls here at NU. It makes me wonder why she doesn’t have many friends when she has such a good sense of style, she’s smart, she’s pretty and is casually a millionaire at age twenty.

“You took your time,” she mutters without looking up at me as she writes in her notebook.

I take my seat across from her, placing my phone face down on the table. “My dad can talk for the whole of America,” I respond, pulling my papers back to me. “Have you got anything new yet?”

We are yet to make a breakthrough for this project. Which is concerning considering we’re both from families that have their own clothing line that are famous internationally, but Anderson is being a dick and said we can’t use our own businesses for inspiration and have to start from scratch. So, we’ve been circling around the same basic ideas for the last few days.

“Not yet,” she says, finally looking up at me. “I can’t really focus.”

“Did Anderson drain you out, too?” I ask, sighing. She nods. “Ah, so you admit it?”

Her right eyebrow quirks. “Admit what?”

“That you’re normal like the rest of us,” I say, humour lacing my tone.

“What makes you think I’m not normal?” She pins her arms across her chest, leaning back in her chair. She tilts her head at me, nodding at me to continue.

“You always act like you’re better than everyone in the class, Angel. You’re the first one there and the last one out. You hand in your work early, but not as early as me, and when you do, you’re always bragging about how easy it is.”

She laughs quietly, the sound making all the hairs at the back of my neck stand up. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to compliment me or not, Branson,” she says, grinning.

“I’m not.”

“Right. You’re just casually telling me how amazing I am,” she replies. I swear she’s one cocky motherfucker. “It wasn’t just Anderson’s lecture. I’m still trying to catch up on sleep after what we saw.”

“And what exactly was it that we saw? Because I only saw two people talking before you hit the alarm and blew our cover. You should be grateful we left there in one piece. Who knows what weapons they had on them,” I say, shuddering at the thought of them harming us in any way. Honestly, it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life.

She laughs again, sounding a lot like it did that night, wheezy and chesty. “You’re so fucking dramatic. They weren’t going to hurt us,” she concedes through her laugh. I shake my head at her, not sure why she finds the possibility of death so amusing.

“Did you at least tell your uncle what we saw?” I ask, needing her to give me some sort of information. Anything that can tie this up.

“I can’t exactly follow it up with my uncle because he doesn’t know that we went,” she mumbles. The words are hard to make out as she strains her eyes on the sheet in front of her, avoiding my eyes.

“Are you being serious? We went there without anyone knowing where we were. What if something happened to us, Scarlett? Does that thought not terrify you a little bit?” I quiz, completely baffled as to how she would let us go out there in the night, alone, with no one knowing our whereabouts. When she told me about the lead, it seemed like her uncle had urged her to go out and see what was going on, not this.

“Can you chill?” she asks, and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh. I swear, this woman. Then, she adds easily, “If it’s any consolation, there’s a tracker on my phone and on the car. If we were to get mauled, someone would have found us.”

“No, that’s not any consolation, you animal.”

Now it’s her turn to shake her head, desperately trying not to laugh at me. “Listen, there would be nothing to report anyway. I tried looking through some employee photos and I couldn’t find him. It’s a dead end.”

The words sound like a punch to the stomach. I can’t let this end before it’s even started. The store, the diamonds, Mateo’s signing of the documents and her uncle’s lack of knowledge of this; there has to be something we’re missing.

“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place,” I suggest with a shrug.

“Do you know something I don’t, Branson? Because where else is there to look? All the records of the diamond exchange are official. Like I said, I don’t know who the guy is, and I can’t exactly go up and ask him,” she explains with a huff.

“Then let me help you.”

The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

Scarlett’s eyes widen for a second, clearly taken aback by my suggestion. What am I doing? I was going to need to ask her at some point. It’s already enough to be working with her on this project, the last thing she wants to do is spend more time with me than necessary.

“Why?” she asks finally.

“What?”

“We barely like each other. Why do you want to help me?”

I tut, shaking my head. “No, Angel. You don’t like me,” I correct for her, reminding her that it’s not me that wants this. She raises an eyebrow. “Listen, I think we could be a pretty good team if we weren’t fighting all the time. I’ve got nothing better to do and it doesn’t seem like you have many options to help you either. I’m not going to let you risk your life for nothing. Not to mention, I’d be the first suspect in the investigation since we’re doing this project together. I don’t want my reputation to be tarnished because you’d be dumb enough to get killed.”

She scoffs. “If anything, you’d be the one dying first. I have Final Girl energy,” she says defensively.

“You think so?” I ask cooly. She nods, holding up her chin proudly. “I’d peg you more as the first girl, but sure.”

“What have I ever done that makes you think I’m not Final Girl worthy?”

“For starters, you wear red bottoms for no other reason than they look good,” I say, but her face doesn’t crack. “You’d be out before the opening credits roll.”

“Is that how little you think of me? That I’m just a pretty face, too dumb and easy to kill.”

“You having a pretty face has nothing to do with what I think about you,” I say, shaking my head at how this conversation has completely flipped.

She smirks. “So, you admit it? You think I have a pretty face.”

“Scarlett,” I press, ignoring her obvious comment. “Are you going to let me help you or do you want to keep running your mouth some more?”

She closes her eyes, taking a deep breath in and then back out. “Don’t make me regret this, Branson.”

“You’re agreeing?” I ask, sounding like a kid on Christmas.

I need to learn how to control my excitement, but it’s hard when it comes with her. She’s starting to give me these little pieces of herself, and I want to cherish them all. Her head nods ever so slightly and I take it as a victory. I hold out my hand to her, ready to formally agree on this.

I’m used to shaking hands with people. It was pretty much my job for a whole year when my dad got sick of it. Still, I’m surprised my whole body lights up when Scarlett slips her hand into mine.

We never touch. Ever. When we do, it’s completely an accident and we pretend it didn’t happen. But right now, as I extended my hand, she put her hand in mine, no questions asked.

With her rough yet put-together exterior, I don’t know what I was expecting when her skin came into contact with mine. Not only is her hand fucking tiny in comparison to mine that engulfs hers, but her hands are also just so…soft. They’re all feminine and smooth, like a fancy silk sheet.

The way she shakes my hand is nothing like the way I expected it to feel. Her grip is firm yet gentle, like she’s also had practice with this. She almost pulls me in a little, trying to see how far she can push me, as if this is another one of our games. When she finally lets go, I feel like I can breathe again and I get back down to looking at my work.

For the next hour, we spend it researching possible business ideas that haven’t already been done. We’ve been added to a spreadsheet that has all the other students’ ideas, so we know not to do the same as someone else. This project is a lot harder than Anderson made it out to be. I need to get a good grade on this project because I’m barely hanging on to an average grade of a ‘C’ after missing a few classes last year.

I’ve never really thought about what I would do if I had my own business. In my head, it’s always had something to do with fashion since I’ve always had an eye for the designs and new ways to make basic clothes unique. Thinking outside that box has been a fucking struggle.

“Some kind of music site?” Scarlett suggests.

“Like there aren’t already a million of those,” I relay, crossing it off the list that we’ve been passing back and forth. “A laptop the size of a phone?”

“So, an iPad?” Shit. Why am I actually so terrible at this? “How about…A food chain that only sells quiche, but they’re sponsored by a huge dairy farm company. We can do the whole climate and animal safety thing.”

I shake my head. “Too complicated.”

“Complicated is good, Branson. How else do you think we’re going to get a good grade?” Scarlett questions, sighing frustratedly.

“With an idea that we can actually get our head around would be a good start,” I say back. The project could be hypothetical, but I know if we think of a good one, we could turn it into a reality, easily bumping us up into the top grade boundaries.

She taps her pencil against her laptop rhythmically, gradually gaining a faster pace. It feels out of beat for a second or two before she matches the pace again.

God, she’s going to drive me insane.

“I’ve got something,” I say. The words leave my mouth before the idea is fully formed in my head. This is how most of my ideas start. They are out there before I can even register it and then they end up becoming a complete mess. She nods for me to continue, finally dropping her pen. “How about an app of some sort where you get to record, film, or type a message to someone, but it doesn’t get sent until you say it does? But you can’t edit it or change it once you’ve set who you want to set it to and the date. Once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” she murmurs. “So, it’s kind of like a confession page? No turning back sort of thing.”

“Exactly,” I say. “It doesn’t always have to be people confessing their deepest darkest secrets, but it can even be a fun thing where someone can tell their family that they love them in a less serious way.”

She nods, closing her laptop, resting her head in her hands. “I hate that idea a little less than the others. Keep talking.”

It’s crazy how she can switch from wanting to argue with me to actually listening to me. She manages to create this serious, businesswoman persona when she talks about the project. Even when she’s trying to be nice, she’s still in control, demanding.

So, when Scarlett tells me to keep talking, I do.