Con Academy by Joe Schreiber Read Free Book Online Page A

happy to see me.
    After English Lit—where she wouldn’t meet my eye, and I managed to avoid Brandt—I find her waiting outside the arts center, Connaughton’s brand-new five-million-dollar performance hall, which has been finished so recently that seedling grass outside the main entrance still looks like green hair plugs. The curved glass and steel construction resembles a renegade escape pod that’s crash-landed from Planet iTunes, some ultramodern reality where everything is chrome and sleek and ergonomically designed for maximum coolness.
    â€œSo.” Standing there for a second, Andrea looks me up and down. “I see you learned how to tie a tie.”
    â€œYeah.” I reach up and straighten it, feeling unexpectedly self-conscious. “Does the uniform fit okay?”
    She doesn’t bother answering, just gestures for me to head inside the arts center. The space is bright and airy and crackling with a kind of no-limits excitement that comes from being young and rich with your whole life ahead of you. From above, vast and unobstructed shafts of sunlight cascade down into the three-story lobby, where students are hanging out, chatting and texting like the casually beautiful citizens of the world that they are. Artistic black-and-white student photos line the walls. I smell fresh coffee and glance up to see the familiar green and white sign. “Wait, you’ve got a Starbucks in here?”
    â€œTry not to look so shocked,” she mumbles. “You’ve been here twenty-four hours.”
    I follow her through the lobby toward the coffee shop. According to Connaughton’s website, the arts center is the home for four art galleries, a three-hundred-seat theater, an acting lab, art and architecture studios, a darkroom, a music computer lab, and an orchestra room, not to mention a state-of-the-art recording studio. There are rumors that Foster the People mixed part of their latest album here.
    Andrea points me to an empty table in a corner of the café, and we sit down. Somewhere off to my left, a man in a dark suit passes by, and I have a panicky moment when I think it’s Dad in the crowd. It would be just like him to follow me here. But I realize it’s just an instructor.
    Andrea leans in. Her eyes are locked on mine. “What’s wrong, Will?”
    â€œNothing. I’m fine.”
    â€œFor your sake, I really hope you’re a better liar than that.”
    I shake it off, but something about her eyes, the way she’s looking at me, makes it difficult to focus. “I thought I recognized somebody, that’s all.”
    â€œLike you’re being followed? Cops?”
    â€œNo, nothing like that.”
    She doesn’t look convinced, and I don’t blame her. The truth is, I don’t even want to think about what it means that Dad has already found me here, or what he could do to mess up my play with Brandt Rush—not that I have one yet.
    Dad
is
a problem. Even if he weren’t a gambling addict and constantly in debt to a half-dozen of New Jersey’s less patient bookies for the worst run of luck in the history of horseracing, I got the vibe from him that his drinking is getting out of control again. He’s an ever-expanding black hole of misfortune with a chronic habit of sucking in whatever’s nearby, and at the moment that includes me.
    â€œListen,” Andrea says, seeming to read my mind. “I’ve already got three good reasons why conning Brandt Rush is a terrible idea. If you’ve got somebody gunning for you here, that’s just one more argument for calling off this travesty now before you do some damage neither of us can walk away from.”
    â€œI told you, I’m fine.”
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    â€œPositive.”
    â€œOh, Will.” She rolls her eyes. “You
are
a terrible liar.”
    I give her my best innocent look. “You said something about three