Книга - Never Have I Ever: A Lying Game Novel

Never Have I Ever: A Lying Game Novel
Sara Shepard


From the author of the New York Times bestselling PRETTY LITTLE LIARS comes a killer series, THE LYING GAME.MY PERFECT LIFE WAS A LIE.NOW I’D DO ANYTHING TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH.Not long ago, I had everything a girl could wish for: amazing friends, an adorable boyfriend, a loving family. But none of them know that I’m gone – that I’m dead. To solve my murder, my long-lost twin sister, Emma, has taken my place. She sleeps in my room, wears my clothes, and calls my parents Mom and Dad. And my killer is watching her every move.I remember little from my life, just flashes and flickers, so all I can do is follow along as Emma tries to solve the mystery of my disappearance. But the deeper she digs, the more suspects she uncovers. It turns out my friends and I played a lot of games – games that ruined people’s lives. Anyone could want revenge . . . anyone could want me – and now Emma – dead.From Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars books, comes a riveting new series about secrets, lies, and killer consequences.









Never Have I Ever

A Lying Game Novel

By Sara Shepard










Epigraph


The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

—OSCAR WILDE




Contents


Cover (#ulink_e40b7c18-d326-5bac-a8f8-16324ea5a3fe)

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue: Life After Death

1. A Charmed Life

2. CSI, Tucson

3. Spinning Her Wheels

4. Paper Trail

5. Extreme Times Call for Extreme Measures

6. A Criminal History

7. The Ultimate Prank

8. Truth or Consequences

9. Daddy’s Little Girl

10. Fish Out of Water

11. Nothing Like a Threat at 2 A.M.

12. A Secret of a Different Kind

13. Never Underestimate the Power of Snooping

14. Double the Trouble

15. An Opening … And a Closing

16. An a for Effort

17. X Marks the Spot

18. Tremors and Treachery and Threats, Oh My!

19. The Writing on the Wall

20. Creepy Vampires to the Left, Stalkers to the Right

21. Service with a Snicker

22. Tweet, Untweet

23. The Awful Truth

24. The Viking’s Revenge

25. Almost, But Not Quite

26. One Down, One to Go

27. A Shove in the Dark

28. Walled In

29. The Darkest Place in the World

30. The Aftermath

31. Clever Little Bitches

32. The Moment We’ve been Waiting For

Epilogue: A Moment in Time

Acknowledgments

Other Books by Sara Shepard

Copyright

About the Publisher







PROLOGUE





LIFE AFTER DEATH

It’s the little things you miss when you die. The feel of sliding into bed when you’re exhausted, the clean scent in the Arizona air after a storm during monsoon season, the flutter in your stomach when you see your crush walking down the hall. My killer took all those things away from me just before my eighteenth birthday.

And because of fate—and a threat from my murderer—my long-lost twin sister, Emma Paxton, stepped into my life.

When I died two weeks ago, I popped into Emma’s world, a world that was about as different from mine as you could get. From that very first moment I saw what Emma saw, went where she went … and watched. I watched as Emma reached out to me on Facebook and as someone posing as me told her to visit. I watched as Emma traveled to Tucson, cautiously hopeful about our reunion. I watched as my friends tackled Emma, thinking she was me, and brought her to a party. I stood beside her when she got the note that said I was dead, warning her that if she didn’t continue to pretend to be me, that if she told anyone who she really was, she’d be dead, too.

I watch today as Emma pulls on my favorite thin white tee and swipes my shimmery NARS blush onto her high cheekbones. I can say nothing as she slides into the skinny jeans I used to live in on weekends and sorts through my cherrywood jewelry box for my favorite silver locket, the one that sends rainbow prisms around the room when it catches the light. And I sit silently by as Emma sends a text confirming brunch plans with my best friends, Charlotte and Madeline, even though I would’ve worded it differently. Still, Emma has the basics of me down cold—almost no one has noticed she isn’t me.

Emma puts my phone down, an uneasy look on her face. “Where are you, Sutton?” she asks aloud in a nervous whisper, as if she knows I’m close.

I wish I could send her a message from beyond the grave: I’m here. And this is how I died. Only when I died, my memory died, too. I have glimpses here and there of who I used to be, but only a few solid, fleshed-out moments have bobbed to the surface. My death is as much a mystery to me as it is to Emma. All I know in my heart, in my bones, is that someone killed me. And that same someone is watching Emma as closely as I am.

Does this scare me? Yes. But through Emma, I’ve been given a chance to uncover what happened in those final moments before I took my last breath. And the more I discover about who I was and the secrets I kept, the more I realize how much danger surrounds my long-lost twin.

My enemies are everywhere. And sometimes, those we least suspect turn out to be our biggest threats.







1




A CHARMED LIFE


“This way to the terrace.” A tanned, button-nosed hostess grabbed four leather-bound menus and marched through the dining room of La Paloma Country Club in Tucson, Arizona. Emma Paxton, Madeline Vega, Laurel Mercer, and Charlotte Chamberlain followed her, snaking around tables full of men in tan blazers and cowboy hats, women in tennis whites, and children munching on organic turkey sausage.

Emma dropped into a booth on the stucco veranda, staring at the tattoo on the back of the hostess’s neck as she glided away—a Chinese character that probably meant something lame, like faith or harmony. The terrace had a view of the Catalina Mountains, and every cactus and boulder was in sharp relief in the late-morning sun. A few feet away, golfers stood around a tee, contemplating their drives or checking their BlackBerrys. Before Emma had arrived in Tucson and assumed her twin sister’s life, the closest she’d gotten to setting foot in a country club was working as an attendant at a mini-golf course outside Las Vegas.

I, however, knew this place like the back of my hand. As I sat, invisible, next to my twin, tethered to her always like a balloon tied to a little kid’s wrist, I felt a tingle of memory. The last time I ate at this restaurant, my parents had brought me to celebrate getting straight Bs on my report card—a rarity for me. A whiff of peppers and eggs brought back my favorite meal—huevos rancheros, made with the best chorizo in all of Tucson. What I wouldn’t give for just one bite.

“Four tomato juices with lime wedges,” Madeline chirped to the waitress who’d appeared. When the waitress sauntered off, Madeline straightened her spine into her signature ballet-diva posture, whipped her obsidian black hair over her shoulder, and produced a silver flask from her fringed purse. Liquid sloshed as she shook the container back and forth. “We can make Bloody Marys,” she said with a wink.

Charlotte tucked a piece of red-gold hair behind her freckled ear and grinned.

“A Bloody Mary might knock me out.” Laurel pinched her thumb and forefinger on the bridge of her sun-kissed nose. “I’m still exhausted from last night.”

“The party was definitely a success.” Charlotte inspected her reflection in the back of a spoon. “What do you think, Sutton? Did we properly usher you into adulthood?”

“Like she’d know.” Madeline nudged Emma. “You weren’t even there half the time.”

Emma swallowed. She still wasn’t used to the taunting banter between Sutton’s friends, the kind that grew out of years of friendship. Just sixteen and a half days ago, she’d been living as a foster child in Las Vegas, suffering silently with Travis, her vile foster brother, and Clarice, her celeb-obsessed foster mom. But then she discovered an online strangulation video of a girl who looked exactly like her, down to the oval shape of her face, high cheekbones, and blue-green eyes that changed colors depending on the light. After contacting Sutton, the mystery doppelganger, and discovering that they were long-lost identical twins, Emma took a road trip to Tucson, giddy and excited to meet her.

Fast-forward to the very next day when Emma learned that Sutton had been murdered—and that Emma would be next unless she took Sutton’s place. Even though she felt anxious about living a lie, even though her skin prickled every time someone called her “Sutton,” Emma didn’t see any other option. But it didn’t mean she was going to sit silently by and let her sister’s body languish somewhere. She had to find out who killed Sutton—no matter what. Not only was it justice for her twin, but it was the only way for Emma to get her own life back and stand a chance of keeping her new family.

The waitress returned with four glasses of tomato juice, and as soon as her back was turned, Madeline unscrewed the cap of the stainless-steel flask and dumped clear liquid into each cup. Emma ran her tongue over her teeth, her journalism-obsessed mind producing a headline: Underage Girls Caught Boozing at Local Country Club. Sutton’s friends … well, they lived on the edge. In more ways than one.

“Well, Sutton?” Madeline slid a glass of spiked tomato juice toward Emma. “Are you going to explain why you bailed on your own birthday party?”

Charlotte leaned in. “Or if you told us, would you have to kill us?”

Emma flinched at the word kill. Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel were her number-one suspects in Sutton’s murder. Someone had tried to strangle Emma with Sutton’s locket during a sleepover at Charlotte’s house last week, and whoever had done it was either capable of hacking the house’s many alarms … or already inside. And last night, at Sutton’s birthday party, Emma had discovered that her friends were behind Sutton’s strangulation video. It was only a prank; Sutton’s friends were part of a secret club called the Lying Game that prided itself on scaring the crap out of its members and the other kids at school. But what if Sutton’s friends had meant to take things much, much further? They’d been interrupted by Ethan Landry, Emma’s only real friend in Tucson, but maybe they’d finished Sutton off later.

To calm her nerves, Emma took a long sip of spiked tomato juice and summoned her inner Sutton, a girl she’d learned was snarky and sassy and didn’t take shit from anyone. “Aww. Did you miss me? Or were you nervous that someone dragged me away and left me for dead in the desert?” She glanced at the three faces staring back at her, trying to detect anything that looked like an admission of guilt. Madeline picked at her chipped peach nail polish. Charlotte coolly sipped her Bloody Mary. Laurel gazed out at the golf course as if she’d just spotted someone she recognized.

Then Sutton’s iPhone chimed. Emma pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. She had a text from Ethan. HOW ARE YOU AFTER LAST NIGHT? LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.

Emma shut her eyes and pictured Ethan’s face, his raven hair and lake-blue eyes, and the way he’d looked at her, a way no boy had ever looked at her before. Her body flooded with desire and relief.

“Who’s that from?” Charlotte leaned over the table, nearly impaling her boobs on the cactus arrangement. Emma covered the screen with her hand.

“You’re blushing!” Laurel pointed a finger at Emma. “Is it a new boyfriend? Is that why you ran out on Garrett last night?”

“It’s just Mom.” Emma quickly deleted the text. Sutton’s friends wouldn’t understand why she’d left her birthday bash with Ethan, a mysterious boy who was more interested in stargazing than popularity. But Ethan was the sanest person Emma had met in Tucson so far—and the only person who knew who she really was and why she was here.

“So what exactly happened with Garrett?” Charlotte pursed her glossy, blackberry-tinted lips. From what Emma had gleaned in the past two weeks, Charlotte was the bossiest of their four-girl clique—and also the most insecure about her looks. She wore way too much makeup and talked too loudly, as though no one would listen to what she had to say otherwise.

Emma jabbed the ice at the bottom of her Bloody Mary with her straw. Garrett. Right. Garrett Austin was Sutton’s boyfriend—or, more accurately, ex-boyfriend. Last night, his birthday gift to Sutton had been his naked, willing body and a pack of Trojans.

It had been painful to see the shattered look on my boyfriend’s face when Emma rejected him. I could only guess at what our time together had been like, but I knew our relationship hadn’t been a joke. Although now he probably thought that’s what it had been to me.

Laurel’s crystal-clear blue eyes narrowed as she took a sip of her drink. “Why did you run out on him? Does he look freaky naked? Does he have a third nipple?”

Emma shook her head. “None of that. It’s my deal, not his.”

Madeline pulled the wrapper off her straw and blew it in Emma’s direction. “Well, you’d better find a rebound. Homecoming’s in two weeks, and you need to snag a date before all the decent guys are spoken for.”

Charlotte snorted. “As if that’s ever stopped her?”

Emma flinched. Sutton had stolen Garrett from Charlotte last year.

It didn’t make me the nicest friend, I admit. And from the doodles of Garrett’s name on Charlotte’s notebook and the pictures of him hidden under her bed, she was clearly still pining for him—which gave her a pretty solid reason to want me dead.

A shadow fell over the round table. A man with slicked-back hair and hazel eyes stood above Emma and the others. His blue polo was starched to a crisp and his khakis were perfectly pressed.

“Daddy!” Madeline exclaimed in a shaky voice, her controlled, cool-girl disposition instantly melting away. “I-I didn’t know you were going to be here today!”

Mr. Vega gazed at their half-drunk glasses on the table. His nostrils twitched, as if he could smell the alcohol. The smile remained on his face, but it had a false edge that made Emma uneasy. He reminded her of Cliff, the foster father who sold used cars in a dusty lot near the Utah border and could swing from volatile dad to smarmy, ass-kissing salesman in four seconds flat.

Mr. Vega was silent a moment longer. Then he leaned forward and squeezed the top of Madeline’s bare arm. She flinched slightly.

“Order anything you want, girls,” he said in a low voice. “It’s on me.” He turned with military precision and started toward the brick-arched doorway to the golf course.

“Thanks, Daddy!” Madeline called after him, her voice trembling just slightly.

“That’s sweet,” Charlotte murmured hesitantly after he left, glancing sideways at Madeline.

“Yeah.” Laurel traced her pointer finger around the scalloped edge of her plate, not making eye contact with Madeline.

Everyone looked like they wanted to say more, but no one did … or dared. Madeline’s family was rife with secrets. Her brother, Thayer, had run away before Emma arrived in Tucson. Emma kept seeing his missing-person poster everywhere.

For just a moment, she felt a pang of nostalgia for her old life, her safe life—a feeling she’d never thought she’d have about her foster-care days. She’d come to Tucson thinking she’d find everything she’d always wished for: a sister, a family to make her whole. Instead, she’d found a family that was broken without even realizing it, a dead twin whose life seemed more complicated by the minute, and potential murderers lurking around every corner.

A flush rose on Emma’s skin, the unspoken tension suddenly too much for her. With a loud scrape, she pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ll be back,” she said, fumbling through the French doors toward the bathroom.

She entered an empty lounge filled with mirrors, plush, cognac-colored leather couches, and a wooden basket containing Nexxus hair spray, Tampax, and little bottles of Purell. Perfume lingered in the air, and classical music played through the stereo speakers.

Emma collapsed in a chair at one of the vanities and inspected her reflection in the mirror. Her oval face, framed by wavy sienna hair, and eyes that looked periwinkle in some lights, ocean-blue in others, stared back at her. They were the very same features as the girl whose image smiled happily from the family portraits in the Mercers’ foyer, the same girl whose clothes felt scratchy against Emma’s skin, as if her body sensed Emma didn’t belong in them.

And around Emma’s neck was Sutton’s silver locket—the same locket the killer used to strangle Emma in Charlotte’s kitchen, the one Emma was sure Sutton had been wearing when she was murdered. Every time she touched the smooth silver surface or saw it glinting in the mirror, it reminded her that all of this, no matter how uncomfortable, was necessary to find her sister’s killer.

The door swished open, and the sounds of the dining room rushed in. Emma whipped around as a blonde, college-age girl in a pink polo with the country club’s logo on the boob crossed the Navajo-carpeted floor. “Uh, are you Sutton Mercer?”

Emma nodded.

The girl reached into the pocket of her khakis. “Someone left this for you.” She proffered a Tiffany-blue ring-sized box. A small tag on the top read FOR SUTTON.

Emma stared, a little afraid to touch it. “Who’s it from?”

The girl shrugged. “A messenger dropped it off at the front desk just now. Your friends said you were in here.”

Emma took it hesitantly, and the girl turned and walked out the door. The lid lifted easily, revealing a velvet jewelry box. All kinds of possibilities flashed through Emma’s mind. A small, hopeful part of her wondered if it was from Ethan. Or, more awkwardly, maybe it was from Garrett, trying to win her back.

The box opened with a creak. Inside was a gleaming silver charm in the shape of a locomotive engine.

Emma ran her fingers over it. A shard of paper poked up from the velvet pouch inside the lid. She pulled out a tiny rolled-up scroll to find a note written in block letters.

THE OTHERS MIGHT NOT WANT TO REMEMBER THE TRAIN PRANK, BUT I’LL BE SEIZED BY THE MEMORY ALWAYS. THANKS!

Emma jammed the note back into the box and shut it. Train prank. Last night, in Laurel’s bedroom, she’d frantically skimmed through at least fifty Lying Game pranks. None of them had to do with a train.

The train charm etched itself in my mind and suddenly, a faint glimmer came to me. A train’s whistle shrieking in the distance. A scream, and then whirling lights. Was it … were we …?

But as quickly as it arrived, the memory sped away.







2




CSI, TUCSON


Ethan Landry opened the chain-link gate to the public tennis court and let himself in. Emma watched him stroll toward her, his shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets. Even though it was after ten, there was enough moonlight overhead to see his perfectly distressed jeans, scuffed Converse, and messy dark hair that curled sweetly over the collar of a navy flannel shirt. An untied shoelace dragged across the court behind him.

“Mind if I leave the lights off?” Ethan gestured to the coin-operated meter that turned on giant floodlights for night play.

Emma nodded, feeling her insides leap. Being in the dark with Ethan didn’t sound so shabby.

“So what’s this train prank?” he asked, referring to the text Emma had sent hours earlier when she asked him to join her at the courts. It had become a meeting place for them, somewhere that felt uniquely theirs.

Emma handed the silver charm to Ethan. “Someone left it for Sutton at the country club. There was a note attached.” A chill ran down her spine as she relayed what the note had said.

A motorcycle rumbled in the distance. Ethan turned the charm over in his hands. “I don’t know anything about a train, Emma.”

Emma’s heart tugged when Ethan called her by her real name. It was such a relief. But it also felt dangerous. The killer had told her to tell no one. And she’d broken the rule.

“But it sounds like whoever gave it to you was part of the prank,” Ethan went on, “or a victim of it.”

Emma nodded.

They were silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of a lone basketball bouncing on the far court. Then Emma reached in her pocket. “I have something to show you.” She passed her iPhone to him, her stomach flipping over as their fingers accidentally brushed. Ethan was cute—really cute.

I had to admit Ethan was cute, too—in that disheveled, brooding, mystery-boy way. It was fun to watch my sister’s crush develop. It made me feel closer to her, like it was something we would’ve obsessed over together if I were still alive.

Emma cleared her throat as Ethan scrolled through the page she’d loaded. “It’s a list of everyone in Sutton’s life,” she explained, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth. “I’ve gone through everything—Sutton’s Facebook, her phone, her emails. And now I’m almost positive I’ve got the date of her death narrowed down to August thirty-first.”

Ethan turned toward her. “How can you be sure?”

Emma took a quick breath. “Check this out.” She tapped the Facebook icon. “I wrote to Sutton at ten-thirty the night of the thirty-first.” She moved the screen over so Ethan could read her note: This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. You’re not by any chance adopted, are you? “And then Sutton responded at twelve-fifty-six, here.” Emma scrolled down the message page and showed what Sutton had written back: OMG. I can’t believe this. Yes, I was totally adopted …

An unreadable expression flickered across Ethan’s face. “Then how can you think she died on the thirty-first if she was writing you messages on Facebook?”

“I was the only person Sutton wrote or talked to that night.” Emma scrolled through Sutton’s call log from the thirty-first. The last answered call was from Lilianna Fiorello, one of Sutton’s friends, at 4:32 P.M. Then at 8:39, MISSED CALL, LAUREL. Three more missed calls at 10:32, 10:45, and 10:59 from Madeline. Emma flipped ahead to the next day’s log. The missed calls began again the following morning: 9:01, Madeline; 9:20, Garrett; 10:36, Laurel.

“Maybe she was busy and didn’t pick up her phone,” Ethan suggested. He took back the phone and clicked to Sutton’s Facebook page, scrolling through her Wall posts.

Emma grasped Sutton’s locket. “I’ve looked through Sutton’s entire call log back to December. Practically every call she gets, she answers. And if she doesn’t answer it, she calls whoever it was back later.”

“Then what about this post she wrote on the thirty-first?” Ethan asked, pointing to the screen. “Couldn’t this mean she was avoiding everyone?” The last post Sutton had ever written was a few hours before Emma’s note: Ever think about running away? Sometimes I do.

Emma shook her head vehemently. “Nothing fazed my sister. Not even being strangled.” Just saying the words my sister connected her to Sutton in a deep, powerful way. At first, Emma had wondered if Sutton really had run away—maybe sticking her long-lost twin sister in her place had been part of an elaborate prank. But once someone nearly strangled Emma in Charlotte’s house, she became convinced Sutton’s death was for real.

“Ethan, think about it,” she went on. “Sutton writes this random post about wanting to run away … and then someone kills her? It’s too much of a coincidence. What if Sutton didn’t write this—what if the killer did? That way, if someone noticed Sutton was missing, they’d read her Facebook and assume she ran away, not died. It was a way for the killer to cover her ass.”

Ethan rolled a forgotten tennis ball on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yellow fabric. “It still doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later telling you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves.

A feathery chill darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the killer wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the killer realized I existed, she wanted me here so I could slip into Sutton’s life. No body, no crime.”

Ethan’s eyes darted across the court, like he still didn’t believe Emma, but I was almost positive my sister was right. I woke up in Emma’s life the night of August 31, just hours before Emma discovered the snuff film of me. I doubted I’d straddled both Alive Sutton and Ghost Sutton worlds at the same time.

Emma gazed at the dark silhouettes of trees in the distance. “So what was Sutton doing that night? Where was she, who was she with?”

“Have you found any hints in her room?” Ethan asked. “Any emails, notes in her calendar …?”

Emma shook her head. “I’ve scoured her journal. But it’s so cryptic and random, like she assumed it was going to fall into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died.”

“What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried. “Crumpled-up notes in her trash can?”

“Nope.” Emma’s eyes dropped to the space between her feet. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.

Ethan sighed. “Okay. How about her friends? Do you know where they were that night?”

“I asked Madeline,” Emma said. “She told me she didn’t remember.”

“That’s convenient.” Ethan scuffed the tip of his sneaker over the court. “I could see Madeline doing it, though. The beautiful, unhinged ballerina. Like Black Swan for real.”

Emma gave a short laugh. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She’d hung out several times with Madeline over the past week. They’d even had a heart-to-heart about Thayer and a few laughs in a spa hot tub. In those moments, Madeline had reminded Emma of her tough-but-caring friend Alexandra Stokes, who lived in Henderson, Nevada.

Emma looked at Ethan. “Maybe Madeline was telling the truth. I mean, do you remember what you were doing on the thirty-first?”

“Actually, I do. It was the first day of the meteor shower.”

“The Perseids.” Emma nodded. The first time she’d met Ethan, he’d been stargazing.

A shy smile crept onto Ethan’s face like he was remembering the moment, too. “Yep, I was probably on my front porch. The shower goes on for, like, a week.”

“And you were camping out there because stars are more interesting than people, huh?” Emma teased.

Pink colored Ethan’s cheeks and he looked away. “Some people.”

“Should I ask Madeline again?” Emma pressed. “Do you think she’s hiding something?”

Ethan shook his head slowly. “You never know with those girls. Not that I was privy to their inner-circle secrets, but something has always seemed off about Madeline and Charlotte. Before you came to town, when Sutton was still alive, it constantly seemed like they were vying for her attention and her position at the same time.” He stared off into the distance. “Like they loved her and hated her.”

Gripping Sutton’s phone, Emma touched the Twitter icon and called up each of Sutton’s friends’ pages, finding nothing remarkable on the thirty-first. But when she flipped to the tweets on September 1, something on Madeline’s page caught her eye. She’d written a shout-out to @Chamberlainbabe, Charlotte’s Twitter handle. Thanks for being there for me last night, Char. True friends stick together, no matter what.

“True friends,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Aw.”

“More like Huh?” Something wasn’t right. “Madeline and Charlotte aren’t touchy-feely. At all.” To Emma, they seemed more like uneasy comrades in the same popular-girl army. Then Ethan pointed to last night. “Madeline’s talking about the thirty-first.”

I shivered. Maybe they’d been with me that night. Maybe they’d finished off their pseudo–best friend together. And maybe, if Emma wasn’t careful, she’d be next.

Emma ran her hands down her face, then glanced at Ethan again. Guilt welled up in her chest. Whoever killed her sister was monitoring Emma’s every move. How long before the murderer realized Ethan knew the truth about her and tried to silence him, too?

“You don’t have to help me, you know,” she whispered. “It’s not safe.”

Ethan turned to face her, his eyes intense. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“Are you sure?”

When he nodded, Emma was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. “Well, thank you. I was drowning by myself.”

Ethan looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who drowns in anything.”

Emma wanted to reach out and touch the spot where moonlight splashed his cheek. He shifted an inch closer until their knees bumped and his face angled toward hers, like he was about to kiss her. Emma felt the heat of his body as he moved closer, very aware of his full bottom lip.

Her mind swirled, remembering the night before, when he’d told her he’d begun to fall for the girl who’d taken over Sutton’s life. That he’d begun to fall for her. A different kind of girl would know how to seal the deal. Emma kept a list in her journal called Ways to Flirt, but she’d never actually put any of the techniques into action.

Snap.

Emma shot up, cocking her head to the right. Across the court, just behind a tree, came the faint blue glow of a cell phone, like someone was standing there, watching them.

“Do you see that?”

“What?” Ethan whispered.

Emma craned her neck. But there was only darkness, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that someone had seen—and heard—everything.







3




SPINNING HER WHEELS


On Monday morning, Emma sat at a potter’s wheel in the ceramics room at Hollier High. She was surrounded by lumps of cement-gray clay, wood tools for carving and cutting, and lopsided bowls on wooden slats waiting for kiln firing. The air smelled earthy and wet, and there was the constant whir of wheels spinning and clunky feet clopping the treadles.

Madeline perched on the stool to Emma’s right, glowering at her potter’s wheel as though it were a torture device. “What’s the point of making pottery? Isn’t that what Pottery Barn is for?”

Charlotte snorted. “Pottery Barn doesn’t sell pottery! Do you think Crate and Barrel sells crates and barrels, too?”

“And Pier 1 sells piers?” Laurel giggled a row ahead of them.

“Less talking, more creating, girls,” said Mrs. Gilliam, their ceramics instructor, snaking around the wheels, her bell anklet jingling as she walked. Mrs. Gilliam was one of those people who looked as though she couldn’t be anything but an art teacher. She wore billowing jersey pants, jacquard vests, and statement necklaces over batik tunics that smelled like musty patchouli. Her words were emphatic, reminding Emma of an old social worker she’d known named Mrs. Thuerk, who always spoke as though she was delivering a Shakespearean monologue. How now, Emma … art thou being treated well in this Nevada home for children of fosterly care?

“Great work, Nisha,” Mrs. Gilliam cooed as she passed the glazing table, where several students were painting their pottery in earth tones. Nisha Banerjee, who was Sutton’s cocaptain on the tennis team, turned around and smirked triumphantly at Emma. Her eyes flashed with pure hate, which sent a ripple of fear through Emma’s chest. It was clear Nisha and Sutton had some seriously bad blood between them—Nisha had been giving Emma the evil eye ever since she stepped into Sutton’s life.

Looking away, Emma positioned a gray clay blob in the center of the wheel, cupped her hands around it, and slowly let the wheel turn until she had a bowl-like shape. Laurel let out a low whistle. “How do you know how to do that?”

“Uh, beginner’s luck.” Emma shrugged like it was no big deal, but her hands trembled slightly. A headline popped in her head: Master Pottery Skills Expose Emma Paxton Posing as Sutton Mercer. Scandal! Emma had taken pottery back in Henderson. She’d spent hours using the wheel after school; it was a welcome alternative to going home to Ursula and Steve, the hippie foster parents she’d lived with at the time, who didn’t believe in bathing. The No-Suds rule applied to them, their clothing, and their eight mangy dogs.

Emma sliced her hand through the bowl and let out a fake sigh of disappointment when it collapsed. “So much for that.”

As soon as Mrs. Gilliam disappeared into the kiln, Emma eyed Madeline and lifted her foot from the treadle. Madeline and the others still made the most sense to be Sutton’s killers. But she had no proof.

Wiping her hands on a towel, she pulled out Sutton’s iPhone and scrolled through the calendar feature. “Uh, guys?” she said. “Does anyone know when I had my last highlights appointment? I forgot to put it in my calendar and I want to make a note for when I need to go in next. Was it … August thirty-first?”

“What day was that?” Charlotte asked. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. She mashed her hands way too hard into the clay, turning the bowl she was making into a soupy pancake.

Emma tapped on the phone again. “Uh … the day before Nisha’s party.” The day before Mads kidnapped me at Sabino Canyon, thinking I was Sutton. Or maybe knowing I wasn’t Sutton. “Two days before school started.”

Charlotte glanced at Madeline. “Wasn’t that the day we—”

“No,” Madeline snapped, shooting Charlotte an icy glare. Then she turned to Emma. “Neither of us know where you were that day, Sutton. Someone else will have to cure your amnesia.”

Fluorescent light gleamed over Madeline’s porcelain skin. Her eyes narrowed at Emma, as though challenging her to drop the subject. Charlotte glanced from Emma to Madeline, looking suddenly alert. Even Laurel’s back was stiff in front of them.

Emma waited, knowing she’d hit on something and hoping someone would tell her what it was. But when the tense silence persisted, she gave up. Take two, she thought, reaching into her pocket and wrapping her fingers around the silver train charm. “Whatever. So I was thinking it’s time for a new Lying Game prank.”

“Cool,” Charlotte murmured, her eyes focused back on the spinning lump of clay in front of her. “Any ideas?”

Across the room, a girl washed her hands at the sink, and a loud crash sounded from the kiln. “The prank where we stole my mom’s car was awesome.” She remembered seeing a video of the girls doing just that on Laurel’s computer. “Maybe we should do something like that again.”

Madeline nodded, thinking. “Maybe.”

“Except … with a twist,” Emma went on, saying the words she’d rehearsed the night before in Sutton’s bedroom. “Like, we could leave someone’s car in the middle of a car wash. Or drive it into a swimming pool. Or abandon it on the train tracks.”

At the word tracks, Charlotte, Laurel, and Madeline tensed. A hot, sharp pain streaked through Emma’s gut. Bull’s-eye.

“Very funny.” Charlotte slapped her clay down with a thwap.

“No repeats allowed, remember?” Laurel hissed over her shoulder.

Madeline swiped the back of her hand across her forehead and glared at Emma. “And are you hoping the cops come again, too?”

The cops. I tried my hardest to force a memory to the surface. But that flash I’d gotten about train tracks had faded into dust.

Emma looked at Sutton’s friends, her mouth feeling cottony dry. But before she could assemble her next question, feedback screeched through the PA system.

“Attention!” spoke the tinny voice of Amanda Donovan, a senior who read the daily announcements. “It’s time to announce the winners of the Homecoming Halloween Dance Court, voted in by Hollier’s talented boys’ football, soccer, cross-country, and volleyball teams! It’s in two weeks, ghosts and goblins, so get your tickets today before they sell out! My date and I already have!”

Madeline’s lips pursed in disgust. “Who could Amanda possibly be going with? Uncle Wes?”

Charlotte and Laurel snickered. Amanda’s uncle was Wes Donovan, a sportscaster who had his own Sirius radio show. Amanda name-dropped him so often during morning announcements that Madeline swore they were secret lovers.

“Please join me in warm congratulations to Norah Alvarez, Madison Cates, Jennifer Morrison, Zoe Mitchell, Alicia Young, Tinsley Zimmerman …”

Every time a name was called, Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel pantomimed a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

“… and Gabriella and Lilianna Fiorello, our first Homecoming Court twins ever!” Amanda concluded. “A warm congratulations, ladies!”

Madeline blinked several times as if waking up from a dream. “The Twitter Twins? On the court?”

Charlotte sniffed. “Who would vote for them?”

Emma looked back and forth between them, trying to keep up. Gabby and Lili Fiorello, the Twitter Twins, were fraternal twins in their grade. They both had big blue eyes and honey-blonde hair, but each girl also had other features all her own, like the mole by Lili’s chin or Gabby’s Angelina Jolie lips. Emma still was unclear whether Gabby and Lili were in or out of the clique; they’d attended Charlotte’s sleepover two weekends ago, when the anonymous attacker nearly strangled Emma to death, but they weren’t members of the Lying Game. With their dopey expressions, twin-brain mentality, and iPhone addictions, they struck Emma as all fluff and no substance, the girl equivalent of low-calorie Cool Whip.

I wasn’t sure about that, though. If there was one thing I was learning, it was that looks could be deceiving ….

As if on cue, four sharp ringtones filled the room. Charlotte, Madeline, Laurel, and Emma all fumbled for their phones. On Emma’s screen were two new texts, one from Gabby, one from Lili. WE KNOW WE’RE GORGEOUS!

Gabby’s said. CAN’T WAIT TO WEAR OUR CROWNS! Lili wrote.

“Divas,” Madeline said next to her. Emma glanced at her screen. Madeline had received the same texts.

Charlotte snorted, staring at her phone, too. “They should go as twin Carries. Then we’d get to dump pig’s blood on their heads.”

Emma’s phone chimed once more. Lili had sent her an additional missive. WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL? TAKE THAT, QUEEN BEE-OTCH!

“Well, now they’re officially not coming camping with us after the dance,” Charlotte declared.

“We’re doing that again?” Laurel said, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s tradition,” Charlotte said sharply. She looked at Emma. “Right, Sutton?”

Camping? Emma raised an eyebrow. These girls didn’t seem the outdoorsy types. But she nodded along. “Right.”

“Maybe we could try those awesome hot springs on Mount Lemmon,” Madeline said, twisting her dark hair into a bun. “Gabby and Lili say they’re filled with natural salts that make your skin feel amazing.”

“Enough talk about Gabby and Lili,” Charlotte groaned, adjusting the the cornflower-blue headband in her hair. “I can’t believe we have to plan a party for them. They’re going to be impossible.”

Emma frowned. “Why would we have to plan a party?”

For a moment, everyone just stared at her. Charlotte clucked her tongue. “Remember a little organization called Homecoming Committee? The only activity you’ve been doing since freshman year?”

Emma felt her pulse quicken. She forced a fake heh-heh laugh. “I was being ironic. Ever heard of it?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Well, unfortunately, the court party can’t be ironic. We have to beat last year’s.”

Emma shut her eyes. Sutton … on a dance committee? Seriously? When Emma attended school at Henderson High, she and her best friend Alex used to make fun of the dorky dance committee girls. They were all Martha Stewarts–in-training, obsessed with cupcake baking, streamer hanging, and picking the most perfect slow-dance mixes.

But from what I remembered, it was an honor to be on the Homecoming Committee at Hollier. The school also had a strict policy that those planning Homecoming couldn’t be members of the court, which was why Amanda hadn’t called my name just now. If my spotty memory served me correctly, though, last prom I’d paraded into the ballroom with a court sash across my torso.

I wondered: Would Emma still be here to take my place at this year’s prom? Could my murder really go unsolved for that long? Could Emma still be living a lie in the spring? The thought of all of it filled me with dread. It also filled me with the now-familiar ache of sadness: There would be no more proms for me. No more cheesy wrist corsages or stretch limos or after parties. I even missed the bad prom music, the goofy DJs who thought they were the next Girl Talk. When I was alive, I’d let it all pass by so fast, barely registering any of the moments, unaware of how good I had it.

The bell rang, and the girls rose from their wheels. Emma stood at the sink and let cool water wash over her clay-gunked hands. As she dried them on a paper towel, Sutton’s cell phone chimed in her bag once more. Groaning, Emma pulled it out. Had Gabby and Lili sent another text?

But it was an email message from Emma’s own account, which she’d loaded onto Sutton’s phone. FROM ALEX, it said. THINKING OF YOU! CALL WHEN YOU CAN. CAN’T WAIT TO TALK! XX.

Emma clutched the sides of the iPhone, contemplating how to reply. It had been days since she’d written to Alex, the only person besides Ethan who knew about her trek to Arizona. But unlike with Ethan, Emma had fudged the truth: Alex still thought Sutton was alive and had taken Emma in. Sometimes, when Emma woke up in the morning, she tried to pretend like that was what really happened, and that the previous events and threats had all been a dream. She’d even started a section of her journal called Stuff Sutton and I Would Do Together if She Were Here. She would teach Sutton how to make French cream puffs, something she’d learned at an after-school catering job. Sutton would show her how to curl her eyelashes, which Emma had never been able to properly master. And maybe, at school, they’d switch places for the day, going to each other’s classes and answering to each other’s names. Not because they had to. Because they wanted to.

Suddenly, Emma had the distinct feeling someone was watching her. She whirled around to find the ceramics room was now mostly empty. But out in the hall, two pairs of eyes stared at her. It was Gabby and Lili, the Twitter Twins. When they noticed that Emma had spotted them, they smirked, leaned their heads close, and whispered. Emma flinched.

A hand touched Emma’s arm, and she jumped once more. Laurel stood behind her, leaning against the big gray trash barrel of wet clay next to the sink.

“Oh, hey.” Emma’s heart pounded in her ears.

“Just waiting for you.” Laurel brushed a lock of highlighted blonde hair over her shoulder and stared at the iPhone in Emma’s hands. “Writing to anyone interesting?”

Emma dropped Sutton’s phone into her bag. “Uh, not really.” The spot where the Twitter Twins had stood was now empty.

Laurel caught her arm. “Why did you bring up the train prank?” she asked, her voice hushed and hard. “No one finds it funny.”

Sweat prickled on the back of Emma’s neck. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Laurel’s words echoed the note she’d gotten: The others might not want to remember the train prank, but I’ll be seized by the memory always. Something had happened that night. Something horrible.

Emma took a deep breath, rolled back her shoulders, and slung her arm around Laurel’s waist. “Don’t be so sensitive. Now let’s go. It smells like ass in here.” She hoped she sounded breezier than she felt.

Laurel glared at Emma for a moment, but then followed her into the crowded hall. Emma let out a sigh of relief when Laurel headed in the opposite direction. She felt like she’d dodged a huge bullet.

Or maybe, I thought, opened up a huge can of worms.







4




PAPER TRAIL


After tennis practice, Laurel steered her black VW Jetta onto the Mercers’ street, a development in the Catalina foothills with sand-colored stucco houses and front yards full of flowering desert succulents. The only sound in the car was Laurel’s jaw working the piece of gum she’d shoved into her mouth.

“So … thanks for the ride home,” Emma offered, breaking the awkward silence.

Laurel shot Emma a frosty glare. “Are you ever going to get your car out of the impound lot, or am I going to have to chauffeur you forever? You can’t keep lying about it being at Madeline’s, you know. Mom and Dad aren’t that stupid.”

Emma slumped down in the seat. Sutton’s car had been impounded since before Emma arrived in Tucson. It looked like she’d have to retrieve it if Laurel wouldn’t drive her around anymore.

Then Laurel fell into silence again. She’d been frosty with Emma ever since ceramics, turning away when Emma asked to partner with her for tennis volleying and shrugging off Emma’s suggestion that they hit Jamba Juice on the drive home. Emma wished she knew the magic words to get Laurel to open up, but navigating the world of sibling relationships was something with which she had no real experience. She’d had foster siblings, sure, but those relationships rarely ended well.

Not that mine and Laurel’s had either. We hadn’t been close for years. I saw flashes of us when we were much younger, holding hands on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair and spying on our parents’ dinner party when we were little, but something had happened between now and then.

After passing by three large homes—two of which had gardeners out front, watering the mesquite trees—Laurel pulled into the Mercers’ driveway. “Shit,” she said under her breath.

Emma followed Laurel’s gaze. Sitting on the wrought-iron bench on the Mercers’ front porch was Garrett. He was still in his soccer cleats and practice shirt. Two muddy pads covered his knees, and he cradled a bike helmet in his arms.

Emma exited the car and slammed the door. “H-hey,” she said tentatively, her gaze on Garrett’s face. The corners of his pink mouth curved into a scowl. His soft brown eyes blazed. His blond hair was sweaty from practice. He sat at the very edge of the porch seat like a cat ready to pounce.

Laurel followed her up the driveway, waved at Garrett, and headed inside.

Slowly, Emma walked up the porch steps, standing a safe distance away from Garrett. “How are you?” she asked in a small voice.

Garrett made an ugly noise at the back of his throat. “How do you think I am?”

The automatic sprinklers hissed on in the front yard, misting the plants. In the distance, a weed whacker growled to life. Emma sighed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Are you?” Garrett palmed his helmet with his large hands. “So sorry you didn’t return my calls? So sorry you won’t even look at me right now?”

Emma took in his strong chest, toned legs, and just a hint of stubble on his chin. She understood what Sutton had seen in him, and her heart panged that he didn’t know the truth.

“I’m sorry.” The words lodged in Emma’s throat. “It’s been a weird summer,” she said. That was an understatement.

“Weird as in you met someone else?” Garrett balled his fist, making the muscles in his forearms pop.

“No!” Emma took a startled step back, almost bumping into the wind chimes Mrs. Mercer had hung from the eaves.

Garrett wiped his hands on his shirt. “Jesus. Last month you were into this. Into me. Why do you hate me all of a sudden? Is this what everyone warned me about? Is this classic Sutton Mercer?”

Classic Sutton. The words echoed painfully in my ears, a refrain I’d heard so many times over the past few weeks. From my new vantage, I’d begun to realize how badly I used to treat people.

“I don’t hate you,” Emma protested. “I just …”

“You know what? I don’t care.” Garrett slapped the sides of his legs and stood. “We’re done. I don’t want your excuses. I’m not falling for your games anymore. This is just like what you did to Thayer. I should have known.”

Emma recoiled at the harshness of Garrett’s voice—and at the mention of Madeline’s brother.

Thayer. Just hearing his name made his clear green eyes, high cheekbones, and mussed dark hair flicker across my mind. And then, I saw something else: an image of the two of us standing in the school courtyard. Tears streamed down my face as Thayer talked to me in urgent tones, as if he were trying to get me to understand something, but the memory flaked apart at my fingertips.

Emma struggled to regain her voice. “I’m not sure what you think I—”

“I’d like my Grand Theft Auto game back,” Garrett interrupted, turning to face the Mercers’ impeccable lawn. A black lab lifted his leg on an ash tree. “It’s in your PS3.”

“I’ll look for it,” Emma mumbled.

“And I guess I don’t need this either.” Garrett pulled a long, thin ticket from his gear bag. HALLOWEEN HOMECOMING DANCE, it proclaimed in melting letters. He thrust it at her almost violently, then stepped closer to her until they were almost touching. His body shivered with what seemed like coiled, pent-up energy. Emma held her breath, acutely aware that she had no idea what he might do next.

“Have a nice life, Sutton,” Garrett whispered, his voice icy. His cleats made loud clacking sounds as he stalked across the driveway, mounted his bike, and cruised away.

“Goodbye,” I whispered to his receding back.

That went well. Technically, this had been Emma’s first breakup ever—all her previous relationships had either ended in mutual friendship or fizzled away. No wonder people said it sucked.

Shaken, Emma turned to head inside. As she walked across the porch for the front door, a white SUV on the street caught her eye. She squinted at the flash of blond hair through the windshield. But before she could make out a face, the car sped up, rocketing away in a plume of gray exhaust.

Emma found Laurel in the kitchen, slicing an apple into thin pieces. “Do we know anyone who drives a white SUV?” she asked.

Laurel stared at her. “Besides the Twitter Twins?”

Emma frowned. The twins lived all the way across town.

“So?” Laurel asked. “What happened with Garrett?” There was a smug look on her face. Now she wants to talk, Emma thought bitterly.

Emma walked up to the island and popped a juicy apple slice into her mouth. “It’s over.”

Laurel’s expression softened just a bit. “Are you okay?”

Emma wiped her hands across her tennis shorts. “I’ll be fine.” She looked at Laurel. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

Laurel crunched an apple slice and glanced out the French doors into the backyard. “I don’t know. Garrett always struck me as sort of an enigma,” she finally said. “I always wondered if there was something more lurking beneath the surface.”

Emma flinched, thinking of how Garrett had loomed over her on the porch. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Laurel waved her hand dismissively, as if she suddenly remembered she wasn’t speaking to Emma today. She slid a stack of mail across the kitchen table. “These are for you.”

Then she wheeled around and sauntered down the hall way. As Emma absentmindedly sorted through the catalogs, mulling over Garrett’s visit and Laurel’s haunting words, an envelope with a bank logo in the upper corner caught her eye. AMEX BLUE, said the label. It was addressed to Sutton Mercer.

Emma’s breath caught in her throat as she tore it open. This was Sutton’s credit card statement, the one from the month leading up to her murder. With shaking fingers, she unfolded the paper and scanned the column of charges in August. BCBG … Sephora … Walgreens … AJ’s gourmet market. Then, her gaze landed on a charge on August 31. Eighty-eight dollars. Clique.

Nerves snapped inside of her. Clique. The word suddenly seemed ominous, like the sound of a safety latch releasing from a gun.

Emma yanked Sutton’s phone from her bag. Ethan answered on the second ring. “Clear your schedule for tonight,” Emma whispered. “I think I’ve got something.”







5




EXTREME TIMES CALL FOR EXTREME MEASURES


Hours later, Emma and Ethan sat in Ethan’s beat-up, dark red Honda in the back parking lot of a series of shops near the University of Arizona. The smell of brick-oven pizza filled the air, and tipsy college students walked past, singing Taylor Swift songs off-key. There was a head shop called Wonderland, a punk-rock beauty salon called Pink Pony, and a place called Wildcat Central, which sold University of Arizona sweatpants and shot glasses. On the very end was a boutique called Clique.

Ethan pulled down the brim of his red Arizona Diamondbacks ball cap. “Ready?”

Emma nodded, suppressing her nerves. She had to be ready.

As Ethan unlatched his seat belt, Emma felt a surge of gratitude rush through her. “Ethan?” She touched the soft spot behind his elbow, tiny pricks of heat shooting down her fingertips. “I just wanted to say thank you. Again.”

“Oh.” Ethan looked slightly embarrassed. “You don’t have to keep thanking me. I’m not Mother Teresa.” He pushed the car door open with his foot. “C’mon. It’s showtime.”

The mannequins in the Clique storefront wore avant-garde Halloween masks. Luxurious cashmere coats, silk dresses, and diaphanous scarves draped their bodies. Their hollow black eyes stared at Emma. Bells dinged when she and Ethan pushed through the front door.

I looked around the place, trying to get a tingle of recognition. A large table stuffed with skinny jeans, skinny chinos, skinny cargo pants, and even skinnier skinny leggings took up most of the real estate in the front of the store. Boots, flats, heels, and espadrilles were lined up on the windowsill like soldiers readying for battle. But nothing stood out; it just looked like the normal sort of boutique I used to frequent.

Emma walked to a rack and checked the price tag on a plain white cotton tee. Eighty dollars? Her entire junior year wardrobe cost less than that!

“Can I help you?”

Emma whirled around to see a tall brunette with a Megan Fox scowl and Heidi Montag boobs. When the girl saw Ethan, her face brightened. “Ethan? Hey!”

“Oh hey, Samantha.” Ethan ran his fingers along a garment on the table, then blushed and backed away when he realized it was a pair of lacy pink panties. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Only part-time.” The shopgirl glanced at Emma again. Her expression soured. “Are you two … friends?”

Ethan glanced at Emma, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Sutton, this is Samantha. She goes to St. Xavier. Samantha, this is Sutton Mercer.”

Samantha snatched the cotton tee from Emma and placed it back on the rack. “Sutton and I are already acquainted.”

Emma squared her shoulders, wary of Samantha’s tone. “Um, right,” she said. “Actually, I was wondering if you kept transaction records?” She held up her sister’s Amex bill. “I’m kind of in trouble for overspending on my credit card, and I want to return some stuff I bought on August thirty-first.” She let out an embarrassed giggle. “The problem is, I can’t remember what I bought where.”

Samantha pressed her hand to her chest, feigning surprise. “You don’t remember what you purchased?”

“Uh, no.” Emma wanted to roll her eyes. If she knew the answer, why would she be asking? But she needed Samantha’s help, so she’d have to bite her tongue and save her retort for her Comebacks I Should Have Said folder, a collection of nasty responses she’d thought of but hadn’t dared to say.

“Do you remember what you stole?” Samantha challenged.

“Excuse me?”

“The last time you were in,” Samantha said slowly, like she was speaking to a kindergartener, “you and your friends stole a pair of hammered gold earrings. Or have you conveniently forgotten that, too?”

Looks like I spent my last day on Earth as a shoplifter.

Emma clung to Samantha’s words. “My friends? Which ones?”

“Seriously, what are you on?” Samantha’s eyes were on fire. “Trust me, if I knew who they were or had solid proof of what you guys did, I’d press charges in a heartbeat.” With that, she whipped around, strode to the back of the store on her spike-heel booties, and began feverishly reorganizing a display of argyle sweaters.

For a moment, the only sounds in the store were the pounding beats of a Chemical Brothers dance mix. Then Emma ran her fingers over an itchy wool sweater dress and glanced at Ethan. “Which friends could Sutton have been with? Why wouldn’t they have just told me?”

Ethan picked up a ballet flat, turning it over in his hands before setting it next to its twin. “Maybe the shoplifting had them freaked out.”

“Freaked out about shoplifting? Are you serious?” Emma moved closer to Ethan and lowered her voice to a whisper. “These are the same girls who strangled Sutton for fun. And when the police escorted me to Hollier in a cop car on the first day of school, they were thrilled.”

Emma’s mind drifted back to her brief encounter at the police station. The cops had written her off so fast when she tried to explain who she was, not believing for a second she could’ve been anyone other than Sutton. Then again, Sutton had a long track record—the cop on duty, Detective Quinlan, had brought out an enormous manila file packed with Sutton’s past misdeeds. It probably contained countless Lying Game pranks.

Emma straightened up, a thought striking her hard. What if the file contained something about the train prank? Madeline had said something about the cops showing up. At the back of the store, Samantha glanced at Emma out of the corner of her eye.

Ethan touched Emma’s shoulder. “I don’t like that look on your face,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“You’ll see.” Emma casually picked up a teal Tori Burch clutch from the table. When she was sure Samantha was watching, she shoved it up her shirt. The leather was soft on her bare skin.

“What the hell?” Ethan made a frantic slashing motion across his throat. “Are you nuts?”

Emma ignored him.

Her pulse quickened. This felt so foreign, so wrong. Becky used to steal from convenience stores all the time—swiping a candy bar here, slipping a pack of gum into Emma’s pocket there, once even walking out with several two-liter bottles of Coke stuffed up her shirt like two freaky boobs. Emma had lived in fear that the cops would haul both of them off to jail—or, worse, take her mother away from her. But in the end, it hadn’t been the police who’d taken Becky away. Becky abandoned her daughter of her own volition.

“Stop right there!”

Emma froze, her hand on the doorknob. Samantha spun her around. Her eyebrows made a perfect V. “Nice try. Give it back.”

Sighing, she removed her hand from her midriff and shook out her shirt. The clutch clunked to the ground, the gold chain clanging on the tiled floor. A half-dressed girl poked her head out of the fitting room and gasped.

Samantha scooped up the clutch with a smug grin and pulled a BlackBerry from the pocket of her skintight jeans. She placed the call on speaker.

“Wait.” Ethan scuttled around a wine-colored velvet sofa. “This was a misunderstanding. I can explain.”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice squawked on the other line.

Samantha’s eyes narrowed on Emma. “I’d like to report a robbery in progress.”

Emma shoved her shaking hands in her pockets and tried to keep the saucy, entitled, I’m-Sutton-Mercer-and-I’m-thrilled-to-be-hauled-off-to-jail smirk glued to her lips.

In a way, it wasn’t hard—going to the police station was exactly what she’d wanted.







6




A CRIMINAL HISTORY


Emma sat on a plastic yellow chair in a cinder-block room inside the police station. The room was no bigger than a chicken coop, smelled like rotting vegetables, and, inexplicably, had two pictures of serene-looking Japanese geishas hanging on the far wall. It would be a great setting for a news story … if she were the writer, not the subject.

The door creaked open, and Detective Quinlan stepped inside, the same cop who had refused to believe Emma when she said she was Emma Paxton and her long-lost twin, Sutton, was missing. There, hooked under his arm, was a file bearing the name SUTTON MERCER. Emma bit back a grin.

Quinlan plunked himself down across from her and laced his fingers atop the folder. Boots thundered down the hall, shaking the whole shoddily built complex. “Shoplifting, Sutton? Honestly?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Emma squeaked, shrinking down in her seat.

Long ago, Emma had sat in a police station with Becky in the middle of the night after the cops had brought her in for reckless driving. At one point, a cop lifted the big black telephone and handed it to Becky, but Becky pushed it away, imploring, “Please don’t call them. Please,” she said. At dawn, after Becky was released with a warning, Emma asked whom the policewoman had tried to call. But Becky just lit a cigarette and pretended she had no idea what Emma was talking about.

“You didn’t mean to get caught?” Quinlan held up Sutton’s file. “Have you forgotten you already got busted for shoplifting?” He pulled a sheet of paper from the folder. “A pair of boots from Banana Republic, January sixth. So you’re a repeat offender. That’s serious, Sutton.”

Emma scuffed her feet over the linoleum, her sweaty bare legs sticking to the plastic seat.

The handcuffs on Quinlan’s belt jingled as he sat back in the chair. “What are you trying to do, go to juvie? Or are you going to pretend you’re someone else this time, too, Sutton’s secret twin? What did you say your real name was? Emily … something?”

But Emma wasn’t listening. With a jerk, she grabbed her throat. She gasped, buckled over at the waist and began to cough. She hacked until it hurt her lungs.

Quinlan frowned. “Are you okay?”

Emma shook her head, dredging up another series of hacks. “Water,” she croaked between breaths. “Please.”

Quinlan rose from the table and pushed out into the hall. “Don’t move,” he growled.

Emma let out a few more coughs after he shut the door and then sprang into action, sliding the manila folder over to her seat. Her fingers trembled as she opened it and shuffled through the pages. On the top was the most recent write-up, when Emma had visited the station on the first day of school. Returned Miss Mercer to school in squad car, someone had typed. Four more forms had been filled out saying exactly the same thing.

“Come on,” Emma muttered under her breath, flipping through more pages. There were reports for disturbing the peace and a claim for Sutton’s impounded car, a 1960s Volvo, for unpaid parking tickets. Next on the stack was a statement Sutton had made about Thayer Vega’s disappearance. Emma’s eyes scanned the transcript. We hung out sometimes, Sutton said to the interviewer. I guess he had a little crush on me. No, of course I haven’t seen him since he vanished. Further down the page were the interviewer’s notes: Miss Mercer was very fidgety. Evaded several questions, mostly about Mr. Vega’s …

Emma flipped the page and rooted through the files until two words caught her eye. Train tracks. Emma yanked the paper out of the stack. It was a police report, dated July 12. Under LOCATION OF INCIDENT, it said Train tracks, corner of Orange Grove and Route 10. Under the description of the incident it said S. Mercer … vehicle endangerment … oncoming train. Sutton had been interviewed along with Charlotte, Laurel, and Madeline. Gabriella and Lilianna Fiorello were listed as witnesses, too.

Gabby and Lili? Emma frowned. Why had they been there?

I saw a flash and felt a strange tingling sensation. A far-off train whistle roared in my head. I heard screams, desperate pleas, and sirens.

Just like that, the memory of that night whooshed back to me.







7




THE ULTIMATE PRANK


I’m behind the wheel of my British racing-green 1965 Volvo 122. My hands squeeze the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and my foot shifts easily on and off the clutch. Madeline sits next to me, twisting the dial on the souped-up radio. Charlotte, Laurel, and the Twitter Twins squish in the back, giggling whenever the car careens around a corner and flattens all of them to one side. Gabby waves around a tube of red lipstick like a magic wand.

“Don’t you dare get lipstick on Floyd’s leather seats,” I warn.

Charlotte giggles. “I can’t believe you call your car Floyd.”

I ignore her. Saying I adore my car is putting it mildly. My dad bought it on eBay a couple of years ago, and I helped him restore it to its former glory—hammering out the dents in the body panels, replacing the rusty grille with a bright new chrome one, reupholstering the front and back seats with soft leather, and installing a new engine that purrs like a contented puma. I don’t care that it doesn’t have modern amenities like an iPod adapter or parallel-parking assist—this car is unique, classy, and ahead of its time—just like I am.

We sweep past Starbucks, the strip mall of art galleries all the retirees love, and the clay courts where I took my first tennis lesson when I was four. The moon is the exact same amber as the eyes of the coyote that nosed under our backyard fence last year. We’re on our way to a frat party at U of A, which promises to be a rager. Just because I’m with Garrett doesn’t mean I can’t ogle the hot college-boy merchandise now and then.

Madeline stops on a station playing Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” Gabby squeals and starts to sing along. “Uch, I’m so sick of this song,” I moan, reaching over and twisting the volume knob down again. I usually don’t mind singing, but something irks me tonight. Or, more accurately, two someones.

Lili pouts. “But last week you said Katy was awesome, Sutton!”

I shrug. “Katy’s so five minutes ago.”

“She writes the best songs!” Gabby whines, twirling her honey-blonde highlights and pursing her extra-plump lips into a pout.

I take my eyes off the road for a moment and glare at them. “It’s not as if Katy writes the songs herself, guys. Some fat, middle-aged producer guy does.”

Lili looks horrified. “Really?”

If only I could pull over and let them out. I’m so sick of Twitter Dee and Twitter Dum’s faux-ditziness. I shared a trig class with them last year, and they’re not as stupid as they look. Guys find the dumb act cute, but I’m not buying it.

The light changes to green, and Floyd makes a satisfying roar as he guns off the line, kicking up dust and flying past the desert broom. “Well, I think it’s a good song,” Mads breaks the silence, slowly turning up the volume again.

I shoot her a look. “What would your dad say if he knew slutty Katy was your role model, Mads?”

“He wouldn’t care,” Madeline says, trying to sound tough. She picks at the SWAN LAKE MAFIA ballerina sticker on the back of her cell phone. I don’t know what the sticker means—none of us do. I think Mads likes it that way.

“He wouldn’t?” I repeat. “Let’s call Daddy and ask. Actually, let’s call him and tell him you’re hoping to score with a college guy tonight, too.”

“Sutton, don’t!” Madeline growls, catching my hands before I can reach for my phone. Mads is notorious for lying to her dad; she probably told him she was at a study group.

“Relax,” I say, slipping my phone back into the center console again. Madeline slumps down in the seat, making her I’m-not-speaking-to-you face. Charlotte catches my eye in the mirror and gives me a look that says Cut it out. Teasing Madeline about her dad is a low blow, but that’s what she gets for inviting the Twitter Twins tonight. It was supposed to be just us, the real Lying Game members, but somehow Gabby and Lili found out about our plans, and Madeline was too nicey-nice to tell them they couldn’t come. I’ve felt their imploring stares the whole drive, their hopes and dreams written in thought bubbles over their heads: When are you going to let us into the Lying Game? When can we be one of you? It’s bad enough my little sister weaseled her way into our club. There’s no room for anyone else, especially not them.

And more than that, I have a plan for tonight—a plan that doesn’t involve Gabby or Lili. But who says Sutton Mercer can’t be flexible?

The northern part of Tucson goes dead after ten o’clock, and there are barely any other cars on Orange Grove. Before we can merge onto the highway, we must cross the train tracks. The X-shaped RAILROAD CROSSING sign glows in the dark. Once the light turns green I edge Floyd over the bumpy rails. Just as I’m about to accelerate toward the highway entrance, the car dies.

“Uh …” I mumble. “California Gurls” falls silent. Cool air-conditioned vapors stop flowing from the vents, and the lights on the dash darken. I twist the key in the ignition, but nothing happens. “Okay, bitches. Who filled Floyd’s gas tank with sand?”

Charlotte fakes a yawn. “This prank is so two years ago.”

“It wasn’t us,” Gabby chirps, probably thrilled that I’ve quasi-included her in a conversation that involves the Lying Game. “We have way better prank ideas, if you’d ever let us share them with you.”

“Not interested,” I say, dismissing her with a wave.

“Um, does anyone care that we’re stopped on train tracks?” Madeline peers out the window, her fingertips clutching the door. Suddenly, the red lights on the RAILROAD CROSSING sign begin to flash. The warning bell clangs, and the striped gate lowers across the road behind us, preventing all other cars at the light—not that there are any—from passing over the tracks. A hazy beam of the Amtrak train blinks in the distance.

I try the ignition again, but Floyd just coughs. “What’s the deal, Sutton?” Charlotte sounds annoyed.

“Everything’s under control,” I mutter. The Volvo-symbol keychain swings back and forth as I twist the key again and again.

“Yeah, right.” The leather squeaks under Charlotte’s butt. “I told you guys we shouldn’t have gotten into this death trap.”

The train blows its whistle. “Maybe you’re starting it wrong.” Madeline reaches over and tries the ignition herself, but the car only makes the same wheezing sound. The lights don’t even flicker on the dash.

The train is getting closer. “Maybe it’ll see us and hit the brakes?” I say, my voice shaking as adrenaline courses through my veins.

“The train can’t stop!” Charlotte unbuckles her seat belt. “That’s why those warning gates go down!” She pulls at the door handle in the back, but it doesn’t budge. “Jesus! Unlock it, Sutton!”

I press the UNLOCK button—my dad and I had installed an electronic power feature on all four doors and windows—but there isn’t the familiar heavy click sound of the barrel releasing. “Uh …” I jab the button again and again.

“What about the manual unlock?” Lili tries to lift the button on her door. But something jams that button, too.

The train whistles once more, a low harmonica chord. Laurel tries to unroll the windows, but nothing happens. “Jesus, Sutton!” Laurel screams. “What are we going to do?”

“Is this a prank?” Charlotte shouts, yanking hard on the door handle, which doesn’t give. “Are you messing with us?”

“Of course not!” I pull at my door handle, too.

“Seriously?” Madeline yells.

“Seriously! Cross my heart, hope to die!” It’s our fail-safe code, the thing we’re supposed to yell out to show something is dead serious.

Madeline reaches over and stabs the center of the steering wheel. The horn bleats feebly, like a dying goat. Laurel dials a number on her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” I scream at her.

“What’s your emergency?” a voice squawks on speakerphone.

“We’re stuck on the train tracks of Orange Grove and I-ten!” Laurel screams. “We’re trapped in the car! The train’s about to run us down!”

The next few seconds are mayhem. Charlotte leans forward and pounds on the windshield. Gabby and Lili blubber uselessly. Laurel gives our details to the 911 operator. The train rockets toward us. I jiggle the keys in the ignition back and forth. The train barrels closer … closer … until I swear I can see the conductor’s panicked face.

Everyone screams. Our death is mere seconds away.

And that’s when I calmly reach to the dashboard and release the choke.

Gunning the engine, I roll us off the train tracks and spin out in a small, dusty area in the underpass. A moment later, I unlock the doors, and everyone falls to the dusty gravel, watching as the train thunders by just feet from their bodies.

“Gotcha, suckas!” I yell. My body is on fire. “Was that not the best prank ever?”

My friends stare at me, momentarily stunned. Tears streak their faces. Then their eyes blaze with anger. Madeline rises unsteadily to her feet. “What the fuck, Sutton? You used the fail-safe! You broke the rules!”

“Rules are meant to be broken, bitches. Wanna hear how I did it?” I can’t wait to explain. I’ve been planning this prank for weeks. It’s my pièce de résistance.

“I don’t care how you did it!” Charlotte screams. Her face is a knot of fury. Her hands twist at her sides. “No one thinks it’s funny!”

I look at my sister. But she just licks her lips and darts her eyes back and forth, like the prank has turned her into a mute.

Madeline is shaking with rage. “You know what, Sutton? I’m sick of this club. I’m sick of you.”

“Me, too,” Charlotte echoes. Lili looks back and forth, eating this up.

I tilt my chin. “Is that a threat? Do you want to quit?”

Madeline straightens up to her full five-foot-ten height. “Maybe.”

“Fine, then! Quit!” I say to Madeline and Charlotte. “There are plenty of girls who can replace you! Right?” I whirl around to glare at Lili and Gabby, but only Lili stares back. “Where’s Gabby?” I ask.

Charlotte, Madeline, Laurel, Lili, and I squint in the darkness.

But Gabby is gone.







8




TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES


Emma scanned the rest of the police report.

Stalled mid-1960s Volvo 122 escaped collision with the Sunset Limited Amtrak train from San Antonio, Texas. Miss Mercer claims her car malfunctioned and failed to either accelerate over the tracks or unlock to allow passengers to safely exit. In speaking with passengers M. Vega, C. Chamberlain, and L. Mercer, all three backed up Miss Mercer’s claims that the car’s faulty electrical system was to blame. No charges filed at present. Hospitalization of one victim, G. Fiorello. Ambulance arrived at 10:01 P.M. and took her to the Oro Valley Hospital.

Emma’s spine turned to ice. Gabriella? Hospital?

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Emma quickly shoved the papers back into the folder and pushed it away from her seat seconds before Quinlan swung the door open. He slammed a paper cup of water on the desk, little drops cascading over the side and splashing the table.

“Here you go. I hope you’re pleased.”

Emma hid a satisfied smile—she was pleased … but also puzzled. Her mind raced with what she’d found. Surely Sutton had stalled the car on purpose but the report listed the incident as an accident. How in the world did Sutton get the others to lie about something that had landed Gabby in the hospital? She wasn’t sure she’d met anyone as all-powerful as Sutton in her life—a girl who could silence her friends even in tragedy.

But I didn’t know the answer of how I got them to shut up either. Sure, I’d been powerful—but not that powerful. Madeline and Charlotte had been so furious in my memory, after all. Their white-hot rage scared me even now.

Emma took a sip of water. It was lukewarm and tasted like metal. The details of the prank still swirled in her head. How could Sutton put them all at risk like that in the first place? Stalling a car on the train tracks—was she insane?

I bristled at Emma’s thoughts. There were tons of risky things in life: riding your bike on the shoulder of the highway, diving into a canyon pool without knowing how deep the water was, touching a germy doorknob in a public bathroom. I must have known my car was going to come back to life as soon as I pulled the choke. I would never put my friends in that kind of danger … would I?

“So.” Quinlan pointed his fingers into a steeple. “Have you come up with a good explanation of why you decided to steal today, Miss Mercer?”

Emma took a deep breath, then suddenly felt drained. “Look, it was a really, really stupid mistake. I’ll pay for the purse, I promise. And I’ll change. No more pranks. No more shoplifting. I swear. I just want to go home.”

Quinlan let out a low whistle. “Well, sure, Sutton! Go on home! You’re totally absolved! No consequences at all! Hell, I won’t even tell your parents!” He didn’t even try to hide his sarcasm.

As if on cue, a knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” Quinlan barked.

The door opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Mercer entered. Mr. Mercer was in surgical scrubs and New Balance sneakers. Mrs. Mercer wore a black business suit and grape-tinted lipstick and carried a snakeskin briefcase. It was clear both of them had been yanked from work, probably from meetings or procedures. Neither looked happy.

One of the worst things about being dead was watching my parents’ reaction to me from a distance. Surely this wasn’t the first time they’d had to deal with a call from the police station. From my new vantage point, it looked like it broke their hearts. How many times had I hurt them like this? How many times hadn’t I cared?

Emma shrank down in her chair. She barely knew the Mercers yet, only that they were in their fifties, worked high-powered jobs, and stuck to the organic aisles in the grocery store. But if the scattered family photos in the foyer were any indication—the snapshots of them with Minnie Mouse at Disneyland, in scuba gear on the Florida Keys, and grinning next to the pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris—it was clear Mr. and Mrs. Mercer tried to be good parents to their daughters and gave them everything they wanted. Certainly they hadn’t expected their adopted older child to become a criminal.

“Sit down.” Quinlan gestured to two seats across the table.

Neither of the Mercers took him up on the offer. Mrs. Mercer’s white knuckles clutched her briefcase. “Jesus, Sutton,” Mrs. Mercer hissed, turning her tired eyes to Emma. “What on earth is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry,” Emma mumbled into her chest, pinching Sutton’s silver locket between her thumb and forefinger.

Mrs. Mercer shook her head, making her pearl tear-drop earrings wobble back and forth. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time you got caught?”

“It was stupid.” Emma hung her head. She’d gotten what she wanted, but when she looked up, she saw worry etched across the Mercers’ faces. Most of her foster parents wouldn’t have cared if she’d stolen unless it meant they had to fork over money for bail. In fact, most of them would’ve let her rot in jail for the night. She felt a knot of envy for the involved parenting Sutton got—something her sister didn’t seem to have appreciated while alive.

Mr. Mercer turned to Quinlan, speaking for the first time. “I am so sorry to trouble you like this.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Quinlan balled his fingers at his sternum. “Perhaps if you kept a better eye on Sutton—”

“We’re keeping a very careful eye on our daughter, thank you very much.” Mrs. Mercer’s voice was shrill. Her defensiveness reminded Emma of visits with social workers when, without fail, no matter whether or not it was true, foster parents defended what a good job they were doing with the kids in their care. Mrs. Mercer reached into her Gucci handbag for her wallet. “Is there a fine involved?”

Quinlan made an awkward sound in his throat like he’d swallowed a bug. “I don’t think a fine will cut it this time, Mrs. Mercer. If the boutique wants to press charges, it will go on Sutton’s permanent record. And there might be other consequences.”

Mrs. Mercer looked like she was about to faint. “What kind of consequences?”

“We’ll just have to wait and see what the boutique wants to do,” Quinlan answered. “They could issue a fine, or they could pursue a harsher punishment, especially because Sutton has shoplifted before. She might get community service. Or jail time.”

“Jail?” Emma’s head whipped up.

Quinlan shrugged. “You’re eighteen now, Sutton. It’s a whole new world.”

Emma shut her eyes. She’d forgotten that she’d just passed that milestone birthday. “B-but what about school?” she muttered, a bit stupidly. “What about tennis?” What she really wanted to ask was What about the investigation? What about finding Sutton’s killer?

The door squeaked as Quinlan pulled it open. “You should have thought about that before you stuffed that purse under your shirt.”

Quinlan held the door for Emma and the Mercers, and they exited into the parking lot. No one spoke. Emma was afraid to even breathe. Mrs. Mercer guided Emma by the elbow toward her waiting Mercedes with a PROUD HOLLIER TENNIS MOM sticker on the bumper.

“You’d better pray that boutique drops the charges,” Mrs. Mercer growled through her teeth as she slid into the driver’s seat. “I hope you’ve learned something valuable from all this.”

“I did,” Emma answered quietly, her mind spinning with everything she’d read in the file. She’d found a new motive, new leads, and a dangerous situation that would make even the most loyal friends furious.







9




DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL


The ride home from the police station was filled with a stony, implacable silence. The radio remained off. Mrs. Mercer didn’t even complain about the aggressive driver who merged in front of her. She stared straight ahead like a wax figure in Madame Tussauds, not looking at the girl she thought was her daughter slumped in the seat next to her. Emma kept her eyes on her lap, picking at the skin around her thumbs until a tiny red drop of blood slipped across her skin.

Mrs. Mercer pulled the Mercedes into the driveway behind her husband’s Acura, and everyone trudged into the house like prisoners on a chain gang. Laurel leapt up from the leather couch in the living room as soon as the door swung open. “What’s going on?”

“We need a minute with Sutton. Alone.” Mrs. Mercer flung her handbag onto the coat and umbrella stand that stood guard at the front door. Drake, the family’s Great Dane, bounded up to greet Mrs. Mercer, but she swished him away. Drake was more lovable doofus than guard dog, but he never failed to put Emma on edge. She’d been afraid of dogs her whole life after a foster parent’s chow chow used her arm as a chew toy when she was nine.

“What happened?” Laurel’s eyes were wide. No one answered. Laurel tried to meet Emma’s gaze, but Emma just studied the massive spider plant in the corner.

“Sit down, Sutton.” Mr. Mercer pointed to the couch. A glass of sparkling water sat on a wood coaster on the mesquite coffee table, and an upended copy of Teen Vogue lay on the floor. “Laurel, please. Give us some privacy.”

Laurel sighed, then tromped down the hall. Emma heard the soft sucking sound of the refrigerator door opening in the kitchen. She perched on the suede wing chair and stared helplessly around the room at the southwest chic design—lots of desert-y tans and reds, a zigzag Navajo blanket thrown over the leather couch, a white fluffy shag rug that was amazingly clean, despite Drake’s big and often-muddy paws, and a wood-beamed ceiling with several slowly rotating fans. A Steinway baby grand piano stood by the window. Emma wondered if Sutton and Laurel had taken lessons on something so exquisite. She felt another twinge of envy that her identical twin had been cared for so lovingly, given everything she wanted. If fate had dealt her a different hand, if Becky had abandoned Emma as a baby instead of Sutton, maybe Emma would’ve had this life instead. She definitely would’ve appreciated it more.

I felt the same flare of annoyance I always got whenever Emma passed judgment on me. How could any of us truly appreciate our lives if we had nothing else to compare them to? It was only after we lost something, after a mother abandoned us, after we died, that we realized what we were missing. Although that raised an interesting question: If Emma had lived my life, would she have died my death, too? Would she have been the one who’d been murdered instead of me? But as I bitterly mulled this over, a sinking feeling told me that my death had somehow been my fault—something I had done, the result of a choice Emma might not have made. It had nothing to do with fate.

Mrs. Mercer paced back and forth, her high heels clicking on the stone floor. Her face was drawn and her gray streak looked more prominent than ever. “First of all, you’re going to work off this punishment, Sutton. Chores. Errands. Whatever I ask you to do, you’re going to do it.”

“Okay,” Emma said softly.

“And second of all,” Mrs. Mercer went on, “don’t think you’re leaving the house for two weeks. Unless it’s for school, tennis, or community service, if that’s what they decide to give you. Let’s hope that’s what they give you.” She paused by the piano and placed a hand to her forehead, as though the thought made her woozy. “What do you think colleges are going to say about this? Did you even think about the consequences, or did you just grab whatever it was from that store and run?”

Laurel, who’d clearly been lurking, appeared in the doorway, an unopened bag of Smartfood popcorn in her hands. “But Homecoming is next week! You have to let Sutton go. She’s on the planning committee! And then there’s the camping trip after.”

Mrs. Mercer shook her head, then turned back to Emma. “Don’t try to sneak out either. I’m having someone put outside locks on your windows. I know you’ve been sneaking out that way. Yours, too, Laurel.”

“I haven’t been sneaking out!” Laurel protested.

“I noticed footprints all around the flower beds this morning,” Mrs. Mercer snapped.

Emma pressed her lips together. The footprints outside Laurel’s room were hers. She’d fled through Laurel’s window during her birthday party, right after she’d found the unedited version of the snuff film that showed Laurel, Madeline, and Charlotte pranking Sutton. But Sutton wouldn’t have admitted to trampling the flowers, and now, neither would she. Maybe she was becoming more like her twin than she realized.





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