Free Fly Away by Nora Rock Page A

work through the choreography changes today. Are you ready?”
    I looked around the room for reactions. Lucy and Priya were smiling at me, but there were a lot of skeptical faces. Shona had her head down, pretending to fiddle with her shoelace. What exactly did she have against me? I was sick of her attitude. It didn’t do anything for the team.
    â€œOkay. Places,” I said, with as much authority as I could muster. “We’re doing ‘Groovy.’ From the top.”
    When practice was over, I followed Shona to her end of the locker room. “Can I have your phone number?” I asked her.
    â€œYou already have it,” she reminded me. “Didn’t Arielle send you the contact file when she made you assistant captain?”
    â€œOh,” I said. “Right.”
    â€œWhy would you need to call me anyway?” she asked.
    â€œTell you later,” I answered.
    I’d just remembered something. Shona knew her way around Toronto.

chapter eighteen
    As soon as I got home, I got back on the computer. Whatever an “exclusive mentorship” was, it would be hard to argue that Arielle was not worthy of one. I was no judge of art, but I knew Arielle’s paintings had earned praise from people who were. She was smart, beautiful and talented, with her life precisely on track. It seemed, now, that those things hadn’t mattered much to her. She’d wanted to be an artist more than anything else. And she’d apparently decided that she had to run away to do it. I guess her parents were stricter than I ever realized. I leaned back in my desk chair. I hadn’t even figured out where Trey Benedict lived or where his mentorship program was or how it worked. But I knew that Arielle’s parents would be grateful for even the little scraps of information that I did have. So why hadn’t I called them yet? I probably would have to call the police too. I fished Detective Fuller’s business card out of my purse.
    Then I put it away again. Wherever Arielle was, she wanted to be there. She’d planned her disappearance with a great deal of care. She’d shipped her paintings. She hadn’t told a soul. Not even me. She didn’t want to be found. And here I was, trying to help her parents—and the police—find her.
    Maybe I owed it to her to find her on my own. She was my best friend. I could find out if she was okay, and then make a decision about who to tell.
    There was no address for Trey Benedict on the web. Not surprising. He probably had fans. He might not want them showing up at his door.
    There was an address for the BeneFactor Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Box 2290, Red Maple Road. There was no phone number though, and when I looked up the address on Google Maps, there was a stationery store at that location. So it was a mailing address located in a stationery store, not a real office. That didn’t mean anything. Lots of businesses have addresses like that. But it was no help.
    If I was going to track down Benedict, I’d have to do it the same way Arielle had. I went to the young artists’ bulletin board that I had bookmarked, and hit the button marked Register. I typed in “Flygirl” for a user name, and “Starlings” for my password. Easy as that, I was in.

chapter nineteen
    Trey Benedict didn’t come online until nearly eleven thirty that night. I knew better than to pounce on him right away. I’d introduced myself to the group when I first joined, and I posted a general question every half hour or so, to make sure my user name popped up on the list now and then. I wanted to look like a legitimate member.
    I read all Trey Benedict’s posts. Most of the time he was giving advice. He seemed to enjoy the mentor’s role. But in a couple of posts, he answered questions about his own work. He was working on some kind of “installation.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I learned that