The Amanda Project Book 2: Revealed

The Amanda Project: Revealed

Chapter One

Vice Principal Thornhill’s office didn’t look like a crime scene. Of course sitting in the outer office Monday morning and waiting to be questioned by the police, all I could see was his door. Maybe inside everything was blood and broken glass and chalk outlines where his body had fallen after he’d been attacked sometime between six P.M. Friday (when his secretary, Mrs.Leong, the last person to speak to him, had said goodnight) and seven A.M. Saturday (when Mr. Richards had come in to

ask him a question about football uniforms and found him lying on the floor of his office, unconscious and bleeding from a blow to the head). The image of Thornhill lying there hemorrhaging made my stomach turn over and I looked for something to distract me from whatever was behind his office door.

My eyes wandered over to the poster I’d designed as a favor to my art teacher for the upcoming production of As You Like It, but as soon as they landed on it, I let them slide past—I never like looking at my artwork when I’m finished. No matter how cool you are with something you create, the second it’s done, all the flaws start rearing their ugly heads.

Seeing the poster reminded me of the day Amanda had dropped her little bomb that she was about to tell the director, Ms. Garner, she was very sorry but she just didn’t have time to play Rosalind.

“I don’t get it—why’d you try out if you didn’t want to take the part?” I had my hands on my knees and was sucking air. Super macho, I know. It was early morning, just the slightest dusting of color in the sky, and I’d been for a run in the crisp winter solitude. As I was passing the turnoff to Crab Apple Hill, I came upon Amanda— in the months that we’d been friends I’d gotten used to her showing up where I least expected her to, and now I was only moderately surprised to run into her (sometimes literally) in the strangest places (i.e. in the woods at the crack of dawn in the middle of winter).

She was leaning up against a tree wearing a pale green dress with an honest-to-god daisy chain in her hair. I had just enough time to wonder where she’d gotten daisies in February before she reached up and placed an identical ring of daisies on my head. “Here. We can pretend they’re laurels.” She bit her lower lip and considered me for a long minute.

“Though maybe daisies are acceptable given that you’re an artist and not a poet.”

“Or given that I’m neither,” I corrected her. Amanda always insisted I was an artist—a great artist. Sometimes I accused her of getting me entered into that national art contest I’d won just so she could win our ongoing argument about whether I had any talent.

“‘If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.’”

It was impossible not to smile in the face of her confidence in me, but in our friendship we had a tradition of teasing each other, so I kept up my end of the banter

“Don’t you try and impress me with your quotes, Amanda Valentino.”

“Don’t you try and convince me with your insecurities, Hal Bennett.”

“Touché.”

“Au contraire. Coulée” I shook my head—we’d pretty much reached the limits of my

French before touché. She smiled at me, her enormous grey-green eyes crinkling at the corner.

“You look like something out of Greek mythology in that.” I gestured to show I meant more than the dress, that I was including the daisy chain and the sandled feet, even the tree she was leaning against.

“I love the Greek gods. Don’t you?”

“Umm . . .” It wasn’t that I didn’t love the Greek gods, I’d just never really thought about it. Zeus. Poseidon. They were cool for sure. But could you love them?