Twisted Blackmailer , livre ebook

Andrews UK - L. Garrison T.

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124 pages

English

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Nothing's ever easy when Sherlock Holmes is involved. Joanna Watson needs sports and academic scholarships if she is going to make it all the way to med school. That means keeping out of trouble, and her school record squeaky clean. But upon befriending the mysterious New Girl, Joanna has her perfect record ruined, skips school for the first time in her life, and finds a blackmailer aiming a gun in her direction. All she knows is that she's going to get grounded... if they get out of this alive.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	26 octobre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781787050259
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Watson & Holmes
The Twisted Blackmailer
by
T. L. Garrison

First Published in 2016 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2016 T L Garrison
The right of TL Garrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MX Publishing or Andrews UK Limited.

For Jim, who’s there for me,
Nana and Grandpap, who said I could do it if I worked hard,
Warren Scheideman and all our Saturday talks,
and other people who helped along the way.

Chapter 1
My world crumbled hyperbolically before me on a misty November morning, the week before Thanksgiving.
The word around the halls had been two words, really. Mostly consisting of “new girl.” Will Murray had seen her in the office registering for classes (without a guardian present), and Michael Stamford had been in her first class, where she’d pitched a fit about astronomy being of no relevance to her being, then stormed out, back to the office.
This did not bode well. I had the last locker in the Junior hall, since my last name began with a W. That wasn’t true. I didn’t have the last locker. I had the last column. Locker 221A, which meant New Girl would have the locker below mine.
Not only was I unused to sharing, but students changing schools mid-semester, nay, mid-week was a tipoff that the rest of my school year was going to either be awkward or hellish. Students didn’t do that unless they’d been tossed out of another school. Ever.
I’d received texts from Will and Michael just as Mrs. Hall dimmed the lights and began repeating word for word choice bits of the narrator’s monologue from the video on cell reproduction that we were watching.
The texts detailed the further adventures of New Girl Drama, which were a delightful change from Mrs. Hall’s monotone reiterations that always made me wish she’d make up her mind as to whether she was giving a lecture or letting the video do the work for her.
Before I could copy down the bit about blood and platelets and plasma into my notes, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I slid it out as quietly as possible. I didn’t look around to see if I’d been noticed; Mrs. Hall would have ripped the phone out of my hand by now.
Marybeth Hunter, soccer buddy and occasional person to copy homework from, had sent a message that read more like a warning than the morning’s fast-flying gossip. Three words: Coming your way. That wasn’t foreboding. Not at all.
And then it happened.
The door swung open, light shot in from the hallway into the darkened classroom, and then there was a tall, thin figure in dramatic outline, the hall lights outlining her like some holy body.
Easily six feet, thin and angular, I thought at first the silhouette must have been a teacher. But she moved into the room smoothly with a sheet of paper in her hand. I could see her better now, and she was no less imposing than when she had been a shadow, just a few seconds before.
Caught in the light from the video, she was much more defined - the stern, unimpressed cut of her thin lips, the strong Roman nose and the disaffected arch of her brow. New Girl was like a statue in a museum: pale, chiselled and perfect.
As Mrs. Hall read over the schedule, New Girl adjusted the strap of what looked like an old but expensive leather satchel on her shoulder. My heart leapt from anticipation to misery to a tangled and knotted in my stomach. Other than ‘trouble,’ I had no initial instinct regarding her.
I was curious, of course. Writers were supposed to be. But I was left with a dread of not only having a locker column-mate, but also a new lab partner. I’d been sitting at this table by myself blissfully since late August, and I was not emotionally prepared to share, much less share with New Girl, who had been obviously expelled from another school, and who walked around as if nothing really mattered. Maybe if I’d had time to prepare.
Knowing it was coming, I pulled my backpack off the table and put it under my stool, like a polite and decent human being. I still had the phone in my hand, so I held it under the table, sending a group message to Marybeth, Michael and Will.
It has begun.
I slid the phone into my back pocket as the stern figure of New Girl passed around the perimeter of the room, sizing everyone up with cold eyes, past the rows of tables, past my favorite jocks, and the Veronicas. Apparently one of the requirements for being on the cheer squad was being named Veronica. Hence I stuck to soccer and intramural rugby. Well, and I had no actual gymnastic ability. I was built like a pit bull, so I kept to my strengths.
They were all staring, of course. I had no idea why Mrs. Hall didn’t just pause the video and introduce New Girl properly, but nothing the woman did made sense. Apparently, plasma reproduction was such hot stuff that not a single second of the DVD could be spared, not even for a new classmate.
New Girl looked even more stern up close, as she sat on the stool next to me, ignoring me completely. Expensive Oxfords, long black trousers and a crisp white shirt under a black sweater vest, finished off with a severe and tight bun low on the back of her head. I’d seen detention teachers that were more festive than this girl.
She pulled a leather portfolio out of her bag, set the bag beside her, and then opened the portfolio to a blank sheet of paper, thick wooden pen gripped tightly in a fist, kind of like a shank, showing she had no intention of taking notes.
It was entirely outside the bounds of social allowances, but I kept stealing looks. Everything about her wardrobe was on the bespoke side, and she didn’t have a single hair out of place. She was a little too put together for someone who had been tossed out of another school. Maybe she really had just moved here.
At least this was interesting. Nothing of note had happened at this school since September when Warren Siegel had been suspended for having pot in his locker... in a hollowed-out apple. That had been the talk of the town for weeks. I bet we could get a whole month out of a new girl who looked like she’d stepped off of a television set.
New Girl might have sensed me staring, but she never looked over or acknowledged that she was being gawked at like a zoo animal. She just sat there, watching the rest of the video. Attentive though she was, there was a palpable disdain coming off of her, and I wondered if we were going to have another scene like in astronomy. In some ways, I was kind of hoping for it. Molecular Biology was a dirge of a class and a verbal lash-out by the new kid would be the most amazing thing that could happen on the week before a holiday. Or ever, really. Stuff just didn’t happen here.
But the video played on without incident.
When the lights finally came up, Mrs. Hall spoke a minute or two on antibody production in white blood cells, because god forbid anything get in the way of human biology. Eventually her reiteration of video contents played out, and she gestured to my table.
“We have a new student.” She searched the paper on her counter for a moment. “Sherlock Holmes?”
New Girl nodded once.
“Sherlock?” Mrs. Hall asked again, incredulous that someone could be called that. But the world view in this school was especially small; there were three people in the class named Veronica, after all.
“Old family name. It means fair of hair.”
The expected snickering from the rest of the class never came.
Mrs. Hall stared at her blankly for a second, then seemed to catch up. “I’ll have a book for you tomorrow. And a syllabus. We’re working on a group project this term. Jo, I am going to pull you from Tyrone’s group and you can work with Sherlock.”
Which was fine with me, in theory. Tyrone was smart, but his father was the favorite linebacker of the city’s football team, so he thought that made him the instant lead of every group project and the center of all attention. It would have been easier to deal with him if he didn’t actually have the intelligence to back it up. Apparently modesty was a lost virtue. He grated on me...a lot.
Of course, now this meant working with this completely unknown factor, Sherlock Holmes. Obviously wealthy and with the attitude that she thought she was better than all of this, so the project could go either way. This didn’t suit me at all. I had grades to maintain for scholarship purposes.
“Sherlock?” Mrs. Hall seemed to have trouble with the name. Was it really any different from all the designer names running around this school? My own name was boring, but at least spellable. “Ms. Watson can catch you up on the blood typing presentation before next Monday.”
Oh god. In addition to actually having to interact with New Girl, I was going to have to tutor her on a month’s worth of class inf