It sobered her immediately. She held the painting outstretched as if it had just hissed at her. Holy shit, a voice screamed loudly in her mind. She was holding a Van Gogh. Was she insane?
“Nice!” Olaf said from the doorway. He beckoned Aria to him, but her legs felt useless. Letting out a wail, she shoved the painting at him and stumbled away.
“Aria?” Olaf had called after her. “Where are you going?” It was then that all the alarms went off.
The bell signaling the end of the period rang, and Aria jumped. Noel was staring at her curiously, but everyone else in class had gone back to their own business. Mr. Tremont opened the door, and the class filed out. Aria followed, still in a daze. People surrounded her as soon as she walked onto the grass.
“Congratulations, Aria!” said Reeve Donahue, one of the girls on the prom committee.
“Nice one!” Mai Anderson chirped, patting Aria’s arm.
Riley Wolfe sniffed. “You know it’s just because she’s going out with Noel,” she whispered loudly to Naomi Zeigler.
Aria blinked blearily at Noel, Riley’s words ringing true. “Did you have something to do with this?”
Noel twisted his mouth, looking guilty. “I thought you’d be happy about it. I knew you hadn’t applied . . . so I put in an application for you, using some of your art projects.”
Aria swallowed hard. She knew she should be touched, but all she felt was panic. “I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now, that’s all,” she mumbled after too long a beat.
“Like what?” Noel asked.
“Like . . .” She looked around and lowered her voice. “I was questioned about that girl’s death in Jamaica.”
Noel shrugged. “Yeah, I was questioned, too. What’s the big deal?”
Aria peeked at him, her pulse picking up speed. “You talked to Agent Fuji? What did you say?”
They reached the main building. Kids thundered past them in the halls. Someone banged a locker door shut. Noel worked his locker combination, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t know. I told her that I saw Tabitha around but didn’t talk to her. And I certainly didn’t see someone beating her skull in on the beach.”
“That’s all you said?”
Noel pulled a book off the shelf. A muscle next to his eye twitched. “Yes. Why? What’s going on?”
She licked her lips. If she continued with this line of questioning, she was going to seem really, really guilty. “I’m just freaked out,” she managed to say. “After all the Ali stuff . . . it’s just hard to talk to more cops.”
Noel slammed his locker shut and touched her arm. “But it’s over. The FBI lady won’t bother you again—she said she was done with me, too. It sucks that we were there when someone died, but it’s not like we killed her.”
Nerves slashed through Aria’s chest. “Uh-huh,” she said weakly.
All of a sudden, she had to get out of here. She kissed him hurriedly. “I’m excited about the decor chairperson thing, really. Thank you so much. But now I have to go.”
It took her only ten minutes to get to her mother’s house, and she tried to keep her mind blank the whole drive home. She barreled up the driveway and jammed her key into the lock. But before she even turned it, the door opened. Usually they locked the dead bolt, too.
“Hello?” Aria called into the hall. No answer. She peeked into the kitchen, the backyard, and then the bedrooms. Her mother, Ella, wasn’t here.
She looked in her bedroom last, and her blood went cold. There, on the bed, lay a piece of paper that hadn’t been there this morning. She snatched it and looked at the words marching across the top of the page. They were in Icelandic. The bottom half of the page had been translated into English: Wanted Reykjavik Man Missing. Murder Suspected.
When Aria saw the face in the photo, she gasped. Olaf.
She swallowed hard and looked at the article. Olaf Gundersson, 21, went missing from his house on the outskirts of Reykjavik on the night of January 4.
That seemed like ages ago. Aria thought back. She had no idea what she was doing January fourth. Lounging around—they’d still been on winter break. Bored without Noel—his family had gone to Switzerland to ski.
She read on. Foul play is suspected, as Mr. Gundersson’s apartment was ransacked and there was blood on the floor. After extensive police questioning, locals said that Mr. Gundersson, who was “a bit of a hermit,” had been in a loud and violent fight the evening before, though they couldn’t identify the other person in the argument.
Mr. Gundersson had been accused of breaking into the Brennan Manor last summer and stealing the Starry Night study painting by Vincent van Gogh, though Mr. Gundersson had claimed in earlier questioning that he did no such thing. A police search of Mr. Gundersson’s home did not turn up the painting, and one theory is that Mr. Gundersson took it with him after the attack. There is a citywide search for both his body and the priceless artwork, though nothing has been recovered yet.
Aria’s head swirled.
Then she noticed the red scrawl at the very bottom of the page. Look in your closet. Someone had drawn a big, bold arrow, as if Aria might not know where her closet was.
Shaking, she turned and stared at her closed closet door. Someone had been in here. They could still be here. Should she call the police? And say . . . what?
She inched over to the closet door and pulled at the knob. Her shirts and dresses swung on hangers. Her shoes rested in shoe trees. But there, on the dusty wood floor, was a rolled-up canvas. Aria’s fingers fumbled with it as she lifted it up and pulled off the rubber band. A familiar painting, now out of its heavy frame, unfurled. There were those iconic swirls and cometlike stars. And there, at the bottom, was a signature that took her breath away: VAN GOGH.