Wanted

by Sara Shepard

Page 12

 

  Aria glanced over at the girl in the passenger seat. Courtney had her head down and was fidgeting with a beaded bracelet on her right wrist. With her hair over her face and her bottom lip stuck out ever-so-slightly, she looked much more fragile and weaker than Ali ever had. Much more innocent, too.

  “A lot of parents are messed up,” Aria said softly.

  A few brown, dead leaves swirled past the car. Courtney pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowed. For a moment, Aria was afraid she’d said the wrong thing. She pulled into the DiLaurentises’ driveway, and Courtney quickly opened the car door. “Thanks again for the ride. ”

  Aria watched as Courtney ran across the yard and disappeared into the house. She remained at the curb for a few moments longer, her thoughts swarming. She certainly hadn’t expected that conversation.

  She was about to shift into drive when the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. It felt like someone was staring at her. Aria swiveled around and peered into a dark knot of trees across the street. Sure enough, someone was standing there, her eyes on Aria’s car. The figure disappeared into the woods fast, but not before Aria caught a quick glimpse of a head of pale blond hair, cut bluntly at the chin. She gasped.

  It was Melissa Hastings.

  12

  DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE

  Late Wednesday afternoon, Emily stood in front of her bedroom mirror, turning first to the right, then to the left. Should she have used a curling iron on her stick-straight, reddish-blond hair? Did her sister Carolyn’s pink lip gloss look stupid? She pulled off the striped T-shirt she was wearing, threw it on the floor, and slid on a pink wool-cashmere sweater instead. That looked wrong, too. She checked the digital clock on the nightstand again. Courtney would be here any minute.

  Maybe she was overthinking this. Maybe Courtney hadn’t even been flirting with her in gym class. She had been in unconventional schools her whole life—she might not be well-versed in the fine art of flirtation and other social cues.

  The doorbell rang, and Emily froze, staring at her wide-eyed expression in the mirror. In an instant, she was thundering down the stairs and scampering through the hall to the door. No one else was home—her mother had taken Carolyn to a doctor’s appointment after swimming, and her dad was still at work. She and Courtney would have the house to themselves.

  Courtney stood on the steps, her cheeks pink and her blue eyes sparkling. “Hey!”

  “Hi!” Emily unintentionally backed away just as Courtney came in for a hug. Then Emily stepped forward to hug, too, just when Courtney was self-consciously stepping aside.

  Emily giggled. “Come in,” she said. Courtney shuffled into the foyer and looked around, taking in the hutch of Hummel figurines in the hall, the dusty, upright piano in the living room, and the cluster of hanging plants that Mrs. Fields had brought indoors for the winter.

  “Should we go to your room?”

  “Sure. ”

  Courtney bounded up the stairs, turned right at the landing, and stopped at the door to the bedroom that Emily and Carolyn shared. Emily gawked. “H-how did you know where my room was?”

  Courtney gave her a crazy look. “Because it says so on your door. ” She pointed at the wooden sign that said EMILY AND CAROLYN in cartoonish letters. Emily let out a breath. Duh. It had been there since she was six.

  Emily moved some stuffed animals off her twin bed so they could both fit. “Wow,” Courtney breathed, gesturing at the Ali collage over the bureau. It was a series of photographs of Emily and Ali together from sixth and seventh grade. In one corner was a shot of the five of them in the living room of Ali’s Poconos house, doing each other’s hair. In another corner was a photo of Emily and Ali in matching striped bikinis on Spencer’s pool deck, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There were plenty of pictures of Ali alone, many of which Emily had snapped without Ali knowing—of Ali sleeping on Aria’s rollaway cot, her face relaxed and beautiful. Another of Ali sprinting up the hockey field in her Rosewood Day JV uniform, her stick raised high in the air. Propped up next to the collage was the patent leather change purse Maya had returned to her at the press conference. Emily had scoured all the dirt and grime off it as soon as she’d gotten home that afternoon.

  Emily blushed, wondering if the shrine was weird. “That stuff is so old. I haven’t gone through it in a long time. ” It’s not like I’m obsessed or anything, she wanted to add.

  “No, I like it,” Courtney insisted. She bounced on the bed. “It looks like you guys had a lot of fun. ”

  “Yeah,” Emily said.

  Courtney flung off her Frye boots. “What’s that?” She pointed at a jar on Emily’s nightstand.

  Emily cradled the jar between her palms. The contents rattled. “Dandelion seeds. ”

  “What for?”

  Color rushed to Emily’s cheeks. “We all tried to smoke them once, to see if we’d hallucinate. It’s stupid. ”

  Courtney crossed her arms over her chest, looking intrigued. “Did it work?”

  “No, but we wanted it to work. So we put on music and started to dance. Aria made these squiggly motions in front of her face, like she was seeing shapes. Hanna stared at her fingerprints, like they were really fascinating. I giggled at everything. Spencer was the only one who didn’t play along. She kept saying, ‘I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything. ’”

  Courtney leaned forward. “What did Ali do?”

  Emily jiggled her knees, suddenly shy. “Ali…well, Ali made up this dance. ”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “It was a long time ago. ”

  Courtney poked Emily’s leg. “You do remember it, don’t you?”

  Of course she did. Emily remembered pretty much everything Ali did.

  Wriggling with glee, Courtney clasped Emily’s hands. “Show it to me!”

  “No!”

  “Please?” Courtney begged. She was still holding Emily’s hands, which made Emily’s heart beat faster and faster. “I’m dying to know what Ali was really like. I hardly saw her. And now that she’s gone…” She broke her gaze, staring absently at the poster of Dara Torres that hung over Carolyn’s bed. “I wish I’d known her for real. ”

  Courtney looked at Emily with clear blue eyes so much like Ali’s that the back of Emily’s throat burned. Emily pressed her hands to her knees and stood. She shifted from left to right, then shimmied her shoulders up and down. After about three seconds of dancing, she blurted out, “That’s all I can remember,” and went to sit down fast. But her left foot stumbled over her fish-shaped slippers next to the bed. As she groped for balance, her hip rammed into the bed frame. “Oof,” she said, hurtling face-first toward Courtney’s lap.

  Courtney grabbed Emily’s waist. “Whoa,” she giggled. She didn’t let go right away. Pulsing heat sizzled through Emily’s veins.

  “Sorry,” Emily mumbled, shooting up to stand.

  “No worries,” Courtney said quickly, straightening her plaid shirt.

  Emily sat back down on the bed and looked anywhere else in the room besides Courtney’s face. “Oh! It’s four fifty-six,” she blurted stupidly, pointing to the digital clock by the bed. “Four-five-six. Make a wish. ”

  “I thought that was only for eleven eleven,” Courtney teased.

  “I make up my own rules. ”

  “It seems that way. ” Courtney’s eyes gleamed.

  Emily felt suddenly breathless.

  “Tell you what,” Courtney chuckled. “I’ll make a wish if you do. ”

  Emily shut her eyes and lay back on the bed, her body throbbing from the fall and her head reeling from the smell of Courtney’s skin. There was something she really wanted to wish for, but she knew it was impossible. She tried to think of random wishes instead. For her mom to finally let her paint her side of the bedroom a color other than pink. For her English teacher to give her a good grade on the F. Scott Fitzgerald paper she’d handed in that morning.
For spring to come unnaturally early that year.

  Emily heard a sigh and opened her eyes. Courtney’s face was inches from hers. “Oh,” Emily breathed. Courtney moved even closer. The room vibrated with possibility.

  “I…” Emily started, but then Courtney leaned forward and touched her lips to Emily’s. A billion explosions went off in Emily’s head. Courtney’s lips were soft yet firm. Emily’s mouth fit hers perfectly. They kissed deeper, pressing harder. Emily was pretty sure her heart was beating even faster than it did in a fifty-meter freestyle sprint. When Courtney broke away, her eyes were shining.

  “Well, I got my wish,” Courtney said giddily. “I always hoped I’d get to do that again. ”

  Emily’s mouth tingled. It took her three long beats before she realized what Courtney said. “Wait…Again?”

  Courtney’s smile turned shaky. She bit her bottom lip and grabbed Emily’s hand. “Okay. Don’t freak out. But Em…it’s me. Ali. ”

  Emily dropped Courtney’s hand and moved a few inches away. “I’m sorry. What?”

  Courtney’s eyes were glassy, as if she was about to cry. Light from the corner window spilled across her face, making her look both angelic and ghostly. “I know it’s crazy, but it’s true. I’m Ali,” she whispered, lowering her head. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you. ”

  “To tell me that you’re…Ali?” The words felt leaden on Emily’s tongue.

  Courtney nodded. “My twin’s name was Courtney. But she didn’t have health problems. She was certifiably insane. In second grade, she started imitating me, pretending to be me. ”

  Emily scuttled backward until her spine hit the wall. The words weren’t exactly making sense.

  “She hurt me a couple of times,” Courtney went on, her voice strained. “And then she tried to kill me. ”

  “How?” Emily whispered.

  “It was the summer before third grade. I was in the pool in our old house in Connecticut. Courtney came out and started dunking me. At first, I thought it was a game, but she wouldn’t let me up. While she held me underwater, she said, ‘You don’t deserve to be you. I do. ’”

  “Oh my God. ” Emily curled into a ball, gripping her knees to her chest tightly. Out the window, a flock of birds took off from the roof. Their wings flapped fast, as if they were fleeing something terrifying.

  “My parents were horrified. They sent my sister away and moved the family to Rosewood,” the girl across from Emily whispered. “They told me never to talk about her, which is why I kept her secret. But then in sixth grade, Courtney switched from the Radley to the Preserve. She put up this huge fight about it—she didn’t want to start over at a new hospital—but once she was there, she finally began to improve. My parents decided to have her live at home for the summer after seventh grade on a trial basis. She came back a few days before the school year ended. ”