The Hand on the Wall (Book 3)
Maureen Johnson

(5/24/22-5/25/22)

JN:

        (Intro) After waiting for what seemed an eternity at his cabin, Flora was ready to give birth to Alice, who Albert and Iris, his wife, would raise as their own.
        (Now to Stevie ) For the first couple of days after she found the answer about Hayes, Stevie didn’t do much except organize her thoughts. She explained everything that she knew to Nate, including that the answer to Albert's final riddle was a detective (essentially, Albert had created it to help hint to others about the true kidnapper), and Nate reminded her to attend Janelle's machine showing that week so that Stevie could remember her present priorities and not get completely overwhelmed. She then went to talk to Charles and learned that there was no reward for finding Alice (although we know that there actually was a $10 million reward) and that Hunter would be coming to the school to live there for a while. Charles then gave Stevie a credit card to buy some clothes for Hunter, and Stevie went into Burlington to do just that. While there, she also met with Larry, learning that someone left the gas on so that when Fenton lit a cigarette, the house hurled into flames. With that news to ponder over, Stevie stumbled around until she found a picture of Ellie, which soon got her to talk to someone who knew Ellie. She learned from this that the writing on her wall was not a dream and someone had in fact done it. Stevie had a strong suspicion it was David, but for the time being he was MIA. 
        Returning to the academy just in time to see Janelle's contraption’s first testing, Stevie was fascinated by the Rube Goldberg machine she created but her mind kept going to the strange events that kept taking place at the academy. (Revelation: the tin that was talked about in the previous book belonged to Dottie) As Stevie thought about the accidents more and more, they seemed to be less like accidents. Suddenly, David called her for some unknown reason but nothing came from the call except for David's continued evasion of his location. (Another revelation: Alice's father was George.) Several days later, Hunter arrived and he went with Stevie to Janelle's official showing of her Rube Goldberg machine, but this time something went wrong and it broke apart, breaking someone’s arm in the process. Stevie added that to her list of too-much-of-a-coincidence accidents. The following morning, everyone was called into the Great House and told that the students would be sent home before the store and the school would shut down for the semester. 
        Solemnly, Stevie, Janelle, Hunter, Vi, and Nate walked back to Minerva when out of nowhere, David showed up. Without much time, he explained his plan. David had stolen several flash drives that revolved around Edward's presidential campaign and needed reading through them. Instead of going back home, they would stay at the school, which was also expecting a blizzard on top of the plethora of accidents. Surprisingly enough, they all agreed despite agreeing to something highly illegal. So as the rest of the school evacuated, the group fled to the gym. 
        (Now to George) After Alice was kidnapped by the men George hired, Flora eventually told George that she was George's daughter, which made him more determined to find Alice since he caused her disappearance, so he went searching by first finding the guys who botched the kidnapping in the first place. He found one of the guys, and with desperation creeping into his decisions, made him take George to the cabin where the man said Alice was being housed. The man explained that they kept Alice and Iris together in a cabin, but one day Iris made Alice run, and the other man, since there were two, shot Iris. They later found Alice and brought her to another cabin. This cabin was where the man led Hayes, except when he got there, he learned that Alice had died of measles. George unburied her, killed the man, and buried him in Alice's place, taking Alice with him (what a terrible tragedy for Alice).
        (Back to Stevie) After everyone left, the group returned to Minerva in a foot of snow that had already accumulated, finding Dr. Pix waiting for them (smart teacher). She forced them to call their parents, lie to them that they missed the coaches (both in the school and students’ best interests), and then settle in for the night. Stevie instead went to David's room, but the conversation turned cold quickly, with David blaming Ellie's death on Stevie's search for truth (searching for truth is always a worthwhile venture), so Stevie left and ended up spending the night playing board games with Hunter in the common room. When morning came, the work that had been done of Edward's hard drive yielded nothing incriminating. Having stayed up the entire night, Stevie went to catch some rest, and when she woke up, Janelle came in and helped her search her walls. While they didn’t find anything on the walls, they did find a book in a secret part of the closet that exhibited a lot of markings and some more photos of Francis and Eddie. They determined the book to be Francis’s diary, which contained more proof that she was Truly Devious. The power soon went out, which meant the group was transported to the Great House, since it contained a generator. 
        (Briefly to Leo) On the anniversary of Alice's disappearance, George opted out of a boating trip with Albert, and at this point, Leo knew why. That day, they also filled in the tunnel underneath the lake. George took this opportunity to bury Alice's body in the tunnel as well, and Leo saw him in the process of doing this. When Leo confronted George about the body, George simply said he found it and buried it, but didn’t want to tell Albert as he knew this would crush him. Leo kept his secret all those years. 
        (Back to Stevie) The following morning, Hunter, David, and Vi finally found something about Edward. They discovered that he blackmailed various people and organizations, the reason behind his mass donations. With this insight, they decided to destroy it rather than expose it as  they believed that to be the morally superior route. During this time, Stevie meticulously searched through Francis’s notebook until she came upon one strange poem that she eventually figured out to be a treasure map. Not wanting to sway from her newfound lead, she put on her coat and snuck out in the cold until she found herself at a statue. After pulling the big toe of said statue, the ground beneath her fell and she fell in too. Stevie had stumbled upon some cave, which upon further searching, was artificial and contained a mural in the back. Before Stevie could look around, David stumbled in after her. After looking around, they decided to head back, but the hatch above them closed (hopefully time to figure out who’s behind everything).        

        Stevie and David tried to gather things to undo the hatch, but they couldn’t reach it. So, they decided to use sticks of dynamite, which Francis had stashed in the secret cave. Before they lit the sticks, however, Stevie confided in David that she solved the case and David confided in her that there was a $10 million reward to whoever found Alice's body, which he knew after emailing the school under an alias. They blew up the sticks and were greeted by Germaine, the girl with the camera who was known for her insider reports of the academy. Germaine helped them up from the hole and back to the Great House, where Stevie began to have a panic attack. This one served her well, however, as she suddenly realized the connection between all of the so-called accidents: Alice. 
        Stevie gathered everyone into Albert's room and began her explanation. She first started with the validity of Alice's reward, which was around $70 million now, and went on to accuse Charles of finding her body when they excavated the tunnel. She then explained how Charles couldn’t obtain the money as a staff member, so he planned to have Fenton collect the money and then split it with her. Along the way, however, Hayes became a problem so Charles dealt with him. Ellie had also become a problem so he took care of her as well. Then, when Fenton was beginning to not be as obedient as planned, Charles took her out and then brought Hunter to the campus to convince him to take the money and split it while everyone was away from the school. All of the details Stevie could link to Charles, including the writing on the wall to scare her and Fenton telling Stevie about the tunnel so that she would find Ellie's body. While  Stevie's theory seemed reasonable, she had no proof and Charles knew it. That was until Larry stepped into the room. Larry initiated a search of Charles's office, and while it was purely conjectured that Alice's body would be within the building after Charles found it, sure enough, Alice's body was found within the walls of Charles's office. 
        That night, a helicopter came to grab him, but Charles fell to his death after trying to escape (once again but this time for certain, the dead will bury the dead). Later on, two men came to pick up David, and David kissed Stevie before he left. Over the next while, Edward dropped his presidential campaign as a bunch of donors dropped their support as he could no longer blackmail them. Unrelated, Alice's body could not be confirmed as Alice's because her DNA didn’t match Albert or Iris’s, which would make sense. After all, Alice wasn’t their child. The following Spring when Stevie returned to school, she learned that the DNA didn’t match as well. She quickly did some digging and found the truth about George and Flora, but didn’t feel like going through all of the effort of collecting the money (even though it was $70 million). On that day, she spoke with David, who was in Iowa doing campaign work against his father. With that, Stevie rolled into class with Vi, Nate, and Janelle, and she continued her life from there. (And that’s the end of the story! Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and have a great day! If you speak the truth, everything that happens after is the best-case scenario.)