by Sara Shepard
She hit SEND. Emma had been dying to talk to Madeline alone ever since her strange encounter with Charlotte on the trail on Saturday, but Madeline had been at a ballet workshop in Phoenix all weekend. And Emma had just found out that Charlotte had a doctor’s appointment after tennis—“the gynecologist,” Charlotte had covertly whispered to Emma at lunch, giving her a loaded look—which meant Emma and Madeline could have some time alone.
She desperately needed to find out Charlotte’s state of mind. This weekend, she’d pored over Sutton’s journals, searching for clues about just how angry Charlotte was. But there was only the entry that said, C has been so bitchy lately. She just needs to get over it. And, of course, Sometimes I think all my friends hate me. Every last one. Was that enough? Perhaps Charlotte had been furious at Sutton for stealing Garrett away . . . angry enough to strangle her. Angry enough to kill her. It would’ve been easy for her to sneak downstairs in her own house, too, strangle Emma in the same way, and slip back upstairs unnoticed. Maybe there was a secret staircase in that crazy-big house.
Emma’s theory terrified me. How many times had I picked on Charlotte like I had at the hot springs? How many times did I put her down? Had stealing Garrett made her snap . . . or had it been something else?
“Sutton,” a voice called.
Emma turned to see a figure looming between the hedges. Whoever was there was backlit by the sun, and at first Emma couldn’t quite make out who it was. All kinds of things flashed through her mind in an instant. Her gut knotted with nerves.
Then Ethan stepped into the light. Emma’s muscles relaxed. “Hey,” Emma said gratefully. Ethan walked out to the track and fell into step with her. “I didn’t know you had gym right now.”
“I don’t,” Ethan said. “I’m supposed to be in calculus. But I’m so lost about functions it’s not even worth it to go.”
Their footsteps were nearly silent on the spongy all-weather track. The odor of bus exhaust wafted from the front of the school. A hummingbird darted to a tube-shaped feeder one of the groundskeepers had hung near the field house, its wings flapping lightning fast. “So did you do it?” Ethan asked after they’d made a lap. “Did you have a big no-more-pranks intervention with your friends?”
“Not exactly.” Emma attempted a laugh. “I’m still working on it.”
“Still think they’re evil?”
“Kinda.” More than you know, Emma wanted to say. Then her gaze fell to handwriting on Ethan’s arm: HOW FRAIL THE HUMAN HEART MUST BE—A MIRRORED POOL OF THOUGHT. She recognized it instantly. “You like Sylvia Plath?”
A bloom of red appeared on Ethan’s cheeks. “You caught me. I read depressing girls’ poetry.”
“It’s better than writing depressing girls’ poetry.” Emma laughed. “I have a whole notebook full of it.” A notebook that was stuffed into the pocket of a missing duffel bag. Emma felt a longing pang. She’d probably never see it again. “Have you read The Bell Jar?” she asked Ethan.
He nodded. “Loved it.”
“I read it three times this summer,” Emma said excitedly.
“Sutton Mercer read The Bell Jar?” Ethan shot her a quick surprised look. “And has a notebook full of depressing poetry? You’re a complex creature.”
Mr. Garrison blew the whistle, signaling for Emma’s class to return to the gym. Emma turned back to the hedge-lined path. “See ya.” She smiled at Ethan, heat rising in her cheeks. She whirled around and crunched back to the gym door, a smile on her face.
Beep.
It was the iPhone. Emma pulled it out and checked the text. I’D LOVE A SPA NITE, Madeline wrote back. LA PALOMA AT 7?
SOUNDS GREAT, Emma texted back. Maybe she’d finally start getting some answers.
“Miss Vega and Miss Mercer?” A freshly scrubbed, freckled woman in a lab coat stood at the door of the La Paloma waiting area. “Your room is ready.”
“Sweet.” Madeline minimized the gossip site she and Emma had been perusing on her iPhone. They’d been playing “punch-drunk”—the object was to punch one another first whenever they saw a picture of a drunk-looking celebrity. Double punches if the celebrity had a boob hanging out.
The aesthetician, whose name tag said SOFIA, opened a glass door and let the girls pass into a long, narrow hall. A male spa worker walked toward them, giving Madeline and Emma an appreciative once-over. Madeline met his gaze and giggled. As he passed, she quickly slapped his butt. The guy swiveled around, but Madeline sauntered on, her long hair swishing.
Sofia opened yet another glass door and revealed a large porcelain tub. A soft yellow haze shone down from recessed lights in the ceiling. Rain forest noises played softly through the speakers. “I’ll let you get settled,” Sofia trilled, shutting the door.
Madeline instantly dropped her robe to the floor, adjusted the ties of her black string bikini, and climbed the mini plastic stairs to enter the tub. “Coming in?” she called to Emma over her shoulder.
Emma undid the belt of her robe and carefully stepped into the tub. The mud was thick and grainy. It was like sitting in a big bowl of oatmeal. Madeline rested her head, a blissed-out expression on her face. Sofia appeared again and placed cucumber slices over the girls’ eyes. “Enjoy,” she lilted, turning down the lights, turning up the rain forest music, and shutting the door.
The mud tub burbled. Emma tried to enjoy the moment. The cucumber slices smelled fresh next to her nose, but the jungle music blared through the speakers so loudly that it was hard to relax. The sound of heavy rain morphed into tribal drums, followed by a buzzing insect. Birds tweeted and cawed. An African flute tooted. When a monkey let out a loud screech, Emma started to giggle. She heard a snort from across the tub and pulled the cucumbers from her eyes. Madeline’s lips were pressed tightly together, as if she were trying very hard not to laugh, which only made Emma’s shoulders shake harder. Then two monkeys started hooting together. Emma burst out laughing, and Madeline did, too. Emma covered her mouth, smearing mud all over her face. A cucumber fell from one of Madeline’s eyes and plopped into the murky liquid.
“Dude,” Madeline said between giggles. “I think the monkeys are doing it.”
“It’s definitely monkey mating calls,” Emma agreed, flicking a glop of mud at Madeline.
They settled back into the mud, every once in a while letting out another giggle or snort. Then Madeline took a long sip from the glass of lemon water near her head and sighed. “So what’s been with you this past week? You’ve seemed kind of . . . sedate. Like someone upped your meds.”
At least someone noticed there was something different about me.
“I’m okay,” Emma answered. “Just tired. School always makes me want to hibernate.”
“Well, wake up, baby bear.” Madeline pointed at her mock-accusingly. “Your public will be very disappointed in you if you’re not a rock star for your birthday. And by your public, I mean me.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” Emma giggled.
Steam billowed into their faces, smelling vaguely sulfuric. Someone’s shadowy head passed by the frosted-glass doors. Then Emma took a deep breath. Here goes. “If anyone’s been acting like they’ve had a med change, it’s Charlotte. Don’t you think?”
Madeline shook a stray piece of hair from her eyes. “She’s been no weirder than usual.”
Emma’s hip started to itch, but she didn’t want to reach into the mud to scratch it. “Do you know where she was the night before Nisha’s party?”
Madeline shrugged. “Do you honestly expect me to remember something that happened over a week ago? My brain’s too fried from a week of school.” But Emma noticed that she wouldn’t make eye contact with her. She fiddled nervously with a bracelet around her wrist.
“Char and I had plans that night, and she ditched me,” Emma lied, thinking quickly. “Sometimes I think she’s really pissed at me. She keeps making these little remarks to me about Garrett. I think I caught her spying on us on Saturday.”
And perhaps plott
ing to kill me, too, she silently added. Just like she killed Sutton.
A muscle next to Madeline’s right eye twitched. Steam swirled around her face. “I don’t think she’s pissed at you. She’s probably just worried about Garrett.”
“Worried? Why?”
The mud sloshed as Madeline shifted positions. “Come on, Sutton. You’re not exactly gentle on guys. You kind of destroy every boy you touch.”
“No I don’t.” Emma’s voice cracked.
But Madeline’s words shook me. I wanted Madeline to be wrong, only . . . maybe she wasn’t. I didn’t know what to believe about myself anymore.
Madeline sniffed indignantly. “Look at all those guys last year. You practically forced Brandon Crawford to break up with Sienna at Homecoming, and then you didn’t return his calls. You acted like you were dying to go out with Owen Haas, and then you treated him like crap. Look at Thayer,” she added.
Thayer? Was Sutton why he left?
I racked my brain to remember, to feel something. Nothing surfaced.
Madeline met Emma’s gaze without blinking. The room suddenly felt very small and close. Emma lowered her eyes and stared at the four slices of cucumbers floating on the surface of the mud.
Suddenly Madeline climbed out of the tub. Brown goop dripped from her stomach and legs.
“What are you doing?” Emma said, half rising.
“I totally forgot.” Madeline pressed a towel to her head. “I was supposed to be at my dad’s house right now. Can Laurel pick you up?” She turned her body away from Emma as she spoke. There were thick brown smudges on the towel from where she’d dried her arms.
“Wait, Mads—what’s going on?” Emma groped through the mud toward the stairs. It was just like the anxiety dream she sometimes had where she kept trying to run, only to realize the road was a backward-moving sidewalk.
Madeline had already stuffed her arms through the bathrobe sleeves. “I’ll talk to you in school tomorrow, okay?” she mumbled in a rush and slipped into the hall, leaving muddy footprints all over the tiled floor.
The door whooshed shut again. The only sounds in the room were the occasional burps from the mud tub; even the rainforest music had stopped. Emma climbed out of the tub and pressed a towel to her face. What the hell just happened? And what had Sutton done to Thayer?
Just as she was grabbing a second towel from the table, something on the floor caught her eye. It was an iPhone. She turned it over and inspected the back. There was a glittery sticker of a girl with devil horns doing a pirouette. SWAN LAKE MAFIA. Madeline’s iPhone.
Emma glanced at Madeline’s muddy footprints, then at the door, then back at the phone again. She rinsed her hands at the sink on the counter and took a deep breath. Should she do this?
“Yes!” I yelled at her as loudly as I could.
Emma slid the bar on the iPhone screen to unlock it. With shaking hands, she pressed on the little thought bubble icon to open Madeline’s texts. First on the list was one she’d written herself, inviting Madeline to the spa today. There were a bunch of texts about the prank on Nisha: Laurel writing to say she’d found the perfect actress to play the cop, Charlotte asking Madeline if she could pick up fake blood at the Halloween store in the mall. Emma scrolled backward through earlier messages. There were a few texts discussing travel plans to Nisha’s party the week before, though nothing about a fake kidnapping.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and Emma froze. Whoever it was whistled softly as he passed. Emma gripped the phone hard. Next she tapped the screen to view Madeline’s photos. A shot of an electric guitar popped up. Emma pulled the screen to the left. There was a photo of two ballet dancers on a stage, one of them Madeline. A shot of the jewelry display case at Anthropologie. A picture of Madeline and Sutton on chaise longues.
She flipped through more and more photos: A self-portrait of Madeline in a full-length mirror. A shot of Sutton, Madeline, and Charlotte by some kind of outdoor hot tub. Sutton and Madeline wore skimpy bikinis, but Charlotte wore a terry-cloth cover-up.
I leaned in closer, recognizing it immediately. My body flickered before me, as if it was shuddering. This was the photo I’d taken of everyone at the hot springs. My words clanged in my ears. Picture time! And when Laurel whined that she wasn’t in the photo, I’d smirked and said I planned it that way.
Emma kept eyeing the door, her fingers trembling. She flipped to the next photo. It was a shot of the same dark location, showing Sutton running after Laurel down a dark path.
Laurel! I’d called out. I’ll buy you a new necklace, okay? Just seconds later, that knife had pressed to my throat.
When the next photo appeared on the screen, Emma frowned. It was a close-up of Laurel sitting on a big red rock, the sun rising behind her. A round pendant on a silver chain hung around her neck. With shaking hands, Emma pulled the chain around her throat and examined the locket. It looked exactly the same as the one in the picture.
“Oh my God,” Emma and I whispered at the same time.
Emma wondered what Laurel was doing wearing Sutton’s locket—the locket someone had strangled her with. Could it be . . . ?
It could. After all, I’d thrown hers deep into the woods. The only thing that didn’t make sense now was, well, why? Why would my own sister want to kill me? I obviously hadn’t been the best sister in life—but how bad could I have been?
The doorknob jiggled. Emma dropped the iPhone. It landed in a heap of towels just as Madeline flung open the door. She’d changed into her skinny jeans, slumpy striped tunic, and wide belt. “I was just looking for . . . oh.” Her gaze dropped to her iPhone on the floor.
“Yeah.” Emma tried to smile, even though her insides were screaming. “I just noticed that, too. I was going to come after you.”
Madeline scooped up the phone and stuck it in her pocket. “Thanks.” She stared at Emma. Emma held her breath.
But then Madeline whipped around and opened the door. “See you in school tomorrow.” She waltzed through the door again, her long hair swinging. Emma leaned against the side of the tub and rolled Sutton’s round locket between her fingers.
I felt more dazed than ever before. Whatever was going on here was just like a mud bath. The deeper my sister plunged, the darker and dirtier it got.
Chapter 23
SOMEONE WAS A VERY, VERY BAD GIRL . . .
“So you see, Medea had to kill her children,” Mrs. Frost explained to the class on Wednesday. She paced around the room like she was some big-time defense lawyer pleading for an innocent victim’s life. “It was the only way Medea could get back at her husband, Jason, for his betrayal.”
Everyone in the class scribbled notes. Suddenly Emma felt a buzz inside her bag. She inched her fingers into the purse until she felt the iPhone’s smooth sides. Anything would be a welcome distraction from Mrs. Frost’s obsessive retelling of Medea. Something about the forcefulness of the English teacher’s literary interpretations made Emma wonder if Mrs. Frost had had a less than faithful husband.
“Miss Mercer?” a voice snapped. Emma looked up and saw Mrs. Frost standing right over her desk. She waved her tattered copy at Emma. “Drop the phone right now, or I take it for the rest of the year.”
Emma raised both empty palms in the air. “I surrender.” Everyone giggled.
Fortunately the bell rang right then, and English was the last class of the day. Emma fled into the hall, checking the iPhone screen for who had called. Even after all this time, even knowing what she knew, she still carried around a tiny seedling of hope that the incoming message might be from Sutton.
But it was just an email from Sutton’s mom. FINAL BIRTHDAY PARTY MENU was the subject. Emma scanned the list of crudités, appetizers, and desserts. LOOKS FINE, she began to write back, but then she noticed carrot cake cupcakes on the list. Carrot cake had always grossed her out—the raisins in the cake mix made her think of gerbil poop. MAKE THEM RED VELVET INSTEAD, she tapped on the screen.
The halls swarm
ed with students emptying out their lockers and kids in sports uniforms rushing to games. A knot of girls Emma didn’t recognize stood in the corner near the trophy case, whispering. Emma glanced quickly around the hall, her heart jumping whenever she saw blond hair that looked like Laurel’s or a willowy frame like Madeline’s. She’d avoided Sutton’s friends and her sister all day, claiming she had a photography project to work on at lunch—“Photoshopping unibrows on yearbook portraits again, Sutton?” Charlotte had joked—and ignoring their snarky texts and IMs. The idea of facing them right now made her skin itch. Why would Laurel have been wearing Sutton’s locket? And how come Madeline had taken that picture? Was it like some kind of trophy?
Emma ducked into the girls’ bathroom to splash some water on her face. Just as she reached for a paper towel, a hand touched her shoulder. Emma yelped and turned around.
“God.” Nisha stood next to her at the sink, shielding her face with her hand. “Jumpy much?”
Emma turned back and shakily twisted on the tap. “Oh. What’s up?”
Nisha raised a piece of hair behind her ear. “Did you forget already?”
“Forget what?”
Nisha placed her hands on her hips. She stared at Emma with disdain. “Decorating the lockers? The thing all captains do at the start of every year?”
Emma blinked. How was she supposed to know that?
“Uch.” Nisha made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat. “You know, some of us can’t do all of the work by ourselves. Some of us have college applications to fill out.”
Emma shot up. Whoa. “I want to go to college,” she said indignantly. “I want to go to USC.”
Nisha paused for a moment, as if waiting for the punch line. Then she burst out laughing. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.”
She shoved open the bathroom door and started down the hall toward the sports locker room. Emma followed. Nisha walked briskly. Her ponytail swished back and forth, and her hands were clenched into tight fists. They darted down the stairs and whizzed past Jason and Kendra, the pimply couple who were always making out in the little alcove under the risers. As they passed, Emma noticed that Jason’s hand had disappeared up Kendra’s shirt.
