by Sara Shepard
Charlotte turned her gaze from the road and gave Emma a long, incredulous look. “I think Mads is wondering the same thing about you.”
Emma swallowed hard, not sure how to answer. Did Sutton know where Thayer had gone?
I had a feeling I didn’t. I wouldn’t have asked Thayer all of those questions about the secrets he was keeping if I had known.
Out the window, two junior-high-age kids skate-boarded off a homemade ramp in the driveway next to Madeline’s. Their mom looked on with her arms crossed over her chest and a disgruntled expression on her face. Finally, Charlotte shrugged. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Madeline was hiding something, though.”
“How come?” Emma asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“Because.” Charlotte put her car in park and rested her fingertips on the console between them. “Everyone in the Vega family has secrets.”
Before Emma could ask more, Charlotte got out of the car, adjusted her denim miniskirt, and started up the front walk to the stucco house. Emma got out, too, and followed her to the Vegas’ front door. When Emma raised her finger to press the doorbell, Charlotte said, “No need,” and she rummaged through her black hobo bag. “I have the key.” She tugged a keychain attached to a wonky-looking miniature doll from the bag and pinched a bronze key between her thumb and index finger.
“You have the Vegas’ key?” Emma asked, stopping short.
Charlotte gave Emma a weird look. “Uh, yeah. I’ve had it since eighth grade. I have yours, too—and you have mine, amnesia patient.” She frowned. “You haven’t misplaced my key, have you? My dad will flip. He’ll have to change all the locks.”
“No, I still have it,” Emma covered, even though she had no idea where Charlotte’s key might be. A fault opened in her mind. She thought about the person who’d tried to strangle her in Charlotte’s house a few weeks ago. At first, she’d thought it had been one of Sutton’s friends—the alarm hadn’t been tripped, so whoever had done it was either inside the house from the start or knew the code. Could Thayer have stolen Madeline’s key to Charlotte’s house? Could he know the alarm code somehow?
“But could you tell me your alarm code again?” Emma’s heart thudded, wondering how far she could push this line of questioning. “It’s something really easy, right? 1-2-3-4?” Maybe Thayer had just guessed at the code and gotten it right.
Charlotte snorted. “What planet are you living on? It’s 2-9-3-7. Just put it in your phone and quit asking me every two weeks. Madeline did and now she never has to ask.”
“Madeline has your alarm code in her phone?” Emma repeated. “That doesn’t seem safe.” Her heart pumped faster. This was huge. Not only could Thayer have stolen Madeline’s key to Charlotte’s house, he could have found Charlotte’s alarm code in Madeline’s phone, too. She thought about the strong hands around her neck in Charlotte’s kitchen. The whisper in her ear that she needed to stop digging. Those hands felt like a guy’s. And that voice might have been the same one that called out to Emma in Sutton’s bedroom Saturday morning.
I wondered if it was true. I thought about the hike we’d taken, the way Thayer easily maneuvered the rockiest trails and steepest inclines, always waiting impatiently for me to catch up. Sneaking into Charlotte’s house or climbing up the rafters at school to drop an overhead light dangerously close to Emma’s head would have been no challenge for him. I thought about myself alone in Sabino Canyon with Thayer the night I died. What if he’d thrown me over the cliff that I’d been coming to with my father ever since I was a little girl?
Charlotte opened the door to Madeline’s house, and they stepped through the foyer. The inside smelled like a mix of potpourri and Mexican cooking, and four pairs of shoes, ranging from Tory Burch flats to Boutique 9 heels, were lined up by the closet. A bunch of photographs sat on a small console table along the wall. One was Mr. and Mrs. Vega’s wedding photo, another was of a much younger Madeline in a tutu and pointe shoes. Emma frowned, sensing something was missing. The last time she had been here, she’d sworn she’d seen a photo of Thayer on that table, too. Had the Vegas taken it down? Were they trying to remove all evidence of Thayer? Were they embarrassed that he was their son?
Lili appeared at the top of the stairs. “Finally,” she trilled, adjusting the dozen strands of black leather that wrapped her left wrist. “We’re up here.”
Emma and Charlotte stomped up to Madeline’s bedroom. Music was playing loudly, and the flat-screen TV blared an episode of The Rachel Zoe Project. Madeline, Gabby, and Laurel looked up from their magazines as Emma, Charlotte, and Lili settled in. Old issues of Vogue and W were stacked in mini towers on the wooden floor. Coffee-colored shades were drawn to expose the Catalina Mountains in the distance. Framed posters of ballerinas in various poses dotted the pale peach walls, along with a snapshot of Madeline and Thayer on a ski trip.
Emma couldn’t tear her gaze away. His deep-set eyes stared out from the photograph, seemingly glaring at her and only her.
Laurel found an issue of Cosmopolitan beneath Madeline’s bed and opened it to an article titled “How to Make Your Man Roar Like a Tiger.” “Who writes these things?” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“Wait!” Charlotte leaned over to take a look. “I’m dying to know how to get my man to roar like a tiger!” She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in a mock-sexy pout.
Laurel shook a bottle of dark green Essie nail polish and stuffed hot pink foam dividers between her toes. “I wonder what makes Ethan Landry roar,” she said mischievously.
Emma’s stomach dropped an inch.
Lili sat up straighter and shot a look at Gabby. Gabby gave a small nod, her eyes widening. “So Gabs and I spent last night brainstorming ideas for our first official prank,” Lili announced. She glanced at Emma deferentially. Of course, Emma thought. She thinks I’m Sutton. She’s about to pitch prank ideas and is waiting for my approval.
It was interesting watching how powerful I was from afar. I remembered how many suggestions I’d shot down, how many get-togethers I canceled when I simply wasn’t feeling up to it, and how many evenings were spent doing exactly what I’d planned. After all, my ideas were the best ones. And everyone knew it.
Emma gritted her teeth, then decided to use Sutton’s power to her advantage. She let out a barking laugh and cocked her head to the side. “Nice try,” she said icily. “But I don’t think the Lying Game is taking suggestions from newbies just yet.”
“Yeah, watch and learn, girls.” Charlotte closed Cosmo and sat up straighter. “So. Does anyone know what Ethan’s into?”
A smile rolled across Laurel’s face. “Sutton knows what he’s into, right, Sis?”
Emma’s throat tightened.
The girls looked at her. “And why would you know what Ethan Landry’s into?” Madeline asked incredulously.
“I don’t know,” Emma snapped, shooting a nasty look at Laurel.
“Sure you do,” Laurel said cheerfully. She plucked a stuffed dog off of Madeline’s bed and cradled it in her arms. “Don’t be so modest, Sis. You know all the dirt.” She turned to the girls. “Sutton just told me this past weekend that Ethan secretly does poetry slams at Club Congress downtown.”
“I never told you that!” Emma cried, heat rising to her chest, racking her brain to remember when she and Ethan had discussed the poetry slam. And then … it hit her. At the park, on Saturday. So Laurel had been spying. But what else had she heard?
“Of course he does poetry.” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Every good emo boy does.” She whipped out her phone and loaded up Google. After a moment, she let out a squeal. “Here he is! Ethan Landry, listed as contestant number four on the slam list. We can make an awesome prank out of this!”
Madeline scooted closer. “We could hire people to sit in the audience to boo him or throw tomatoes at him.”
“Or what if we planted a fake editor in the audience?” Lili breathed. “He could say he’s super into Ethan’s work and wants to publish him—b
ut only if Ethan flies out to New York to meet with the publisher. But when Ethan gets there, they’ll say they’ve never heard of him!”
Gabby nodded, her eyes wide. “He would feel like such a loser.”
“Or …” Laurel said leadingly, waggling his eyebrows, “We can sneak into his house, steal a couple of his poems and post them online under a fake name. Then when he goes to read them, we can hire someone to pretend to be the real author and accuse Ethan of plagiarism. And when he shows that he uploaded the poems two weeks prior to the reading, Ethan will be so humiliated.”
“That’s genius!” Charlotte cried. “We’ll tape the whole thing and put it on YouTube!”
Madeline high-fived Laurel. “Totally brilliant.”
Gabby gestured dramatically, like she was giving a Shakespearean monologue, and trilled, “Roses are red, violets are blue, Ethan Landry, prank’s on you!”
Laurel turned and eyed Emma. “What do you think, Sutton?”
Emma’s entire body flushed with heat like she was about to be sick. She turned away from the girls, pretending to examine one of the Degas prints on Madeline’s wall so they wouldn’t see the look on her face. Every fiber of her being wanted to derail this prank, but she couldn’t figure out a way to stop it. Sutton probably would have. Sutton would’ve made a biting comment that would have put everyone in their places. It made her feel like Old Emma again—tongue-tied, acquiescent, and wimpy.
“I, um, have to go to the bathroom,” she blurted, jumping to her feet and running into the hall. If she stayed in Madeline’s room a moment longer, she might burst into tears.
She made her way down the beige-carpeted hallway, trailing her hand along the adobe walls. Where the hell was Madeline’s bathroom, anyway? She peered into the first available door, but it was just a linen closet. Behind the second door was an office with a computer and an industrial-sized printer. She passed the third door, which hung slightly ajar, and peeked inside. It was a room done up in light blue carpeting, darker blue walls, and a black bedspread. Soccer posters were taped to the walls, and shiny trophies stood on a shelf by the window.
Thayer’s room.
Her stomach lurched. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner? If Sutton and Thayer had a secret relationship, maybe there would be some sort of evidence of it in here.
She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, then nudged the door open and tiptoed inside. Books were stacked neatly on the desk. There wasn’t a trace of dust or clutter anywhere. A swivel chair with leather padding was tucked beneath his dark wooden desk. No one had bothered flipping the months on the Arizona Diamondbacks calendar tacked to the wall—a photo of a uniformed player swinging a bat and about to make contact with a blurry white ball hung above block letters marking JUNE. It was clear that this room had already been thoroughly searched, probably by the cops—by Quinlan—when Thayer went missing. Emma ran her fingertips along the stereo. She picked up an iPod and put it back down.
Seeing the iPod and stereo made my mind expand. I saw myself in Thayer’s room, listening to an Arcade Fire song on that iPod. Thayer lay next to me on the carpet, grazing his fingertips across my knee. Strands of carpet tickled the backs of my bare legs. I reached forward to toy with the edge of his light green T-shirt, lifting it just a sliver to touch the hard stomach muscles beneath. Thayer cupped my chin with his palms and leaned forward until his mouth was a breath away. His lips covered mine and I felt my entire body spark. And then a door creaked open. We froze for a split second before breaking apart, sneaking down the back staircase, and slipping into the den. Just as Mr. Vega crossed the foyer and stared at us with wide, suspicious eyes, the memory faded away.
Emma circled the room, running her hands under the pillows on Thayer’s bed, peeking into the bureau and desk drawers, and poking her head into the nearly empty closet. It was as bare and impersonal as a hotel room. Nothing was out of the ordinary. There were no left-behind tubes of lipstick that might have been Sutton’s. No pictures of her on his bulletin board. If Thayer had a relationship with Sutton, he’d kept it a secret.
But then, suddenly, she saw it. There, stacked alongside the crime novels on the bookshelf, was a tattered, pale yellow book. Little House on the Prairie, said the spine. Emma reached for it. If it was random that Sutton had a book from the Little House series, it was downright bizarre that soccer-star-jock-boy Thayer had one.
The book felt light in Emma’s hands. When she turned it over, she realized the pages had been removed and the book was hollow. Shaking, she plunged her hand into the opening and felt her fingers close on a bunch of papers. As she pulled them out, she got a whiff of a flowery fragrance she instantly recognized. It was the same musky smell Emma had spritzed on herself from an expensive-looking bottle with a gold-trimmed label marked ANNICK on Sutton’s dresser.
With trembling fingers, she unfolded the papers. Sutton’s distinctly rounded handwriting stared back at her. Dear Thayer, it began. I think about you all the time… I can’t wait until we can meet up again… I am so in love with you …
She turned to the next page, but it said more or less the same thing. So did the six letters after it. Every one was addressed to Thayer and signed with an oversized S. Sutton had written a date at the top of each page; the letters started in March and continued through June, just before Thayer disappeared.
I looked at the letters, too, trying to make a connection, but nothing came. I had to have written them. A secret tryst with Thayer must have been intoxicating for me. I was a girl who lived on the edge, after all.
Emma stuffed the letters into the front pocket of her hoodie, then slipped back out into the hallway, pulling the door nearly shut after her, the same way she’d found it.
“Sutton?”
Emma flew around with a gasp. Mr. Vega stood right behind her, seemingly nearly twice her size. His dark hair was slicked back with gel, exposing a pointed widow’s peak and making him look like he should be playing cards in a dark, smoke-filled hall. The tanned skin on his forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows met in the center.
He glanced at Emma’s hand on Thayer’s doorknob. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Um, just going to the bathroom, sir,” Emma squeaked.
Mr. Vega stared at her. Sutton’s letters felt bulky in her pocket. She folded her arms in front of her chest, trying to hide the bulge.
Finally, Mr. Vega pointed to another door. “The guest bathroom is on the other side of the hall.”
“Oh, right!” Emma smacked her forehead. “Just got a little turned around. It’s been a long week.”
Mr. Vega pursed his lips. “Yes. It’s been a trying time for all of us.” He shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable. “Actually, since you’re here, I wanted to apologize for my son’s behavior. I am deeply embarrassed that he broke into your home. Trust me when I say that I’ll make sure he learns his lesson.”
Emma nodded grimly, thinking about the bruises on Madeline’s arm. She could only imagine how Mr. Vega planned to hit that message home to his son. “Well, I should probably get back to the girls,” she mumbled.
She started to inch around Mr. Vega, but he grabbed her arm. Emma inhaled sharply, her heart leaping to her throat. But Mr. Vega let go immediately.
“Please ask Madeline to come talk to me for a minute, will you?” he said in a low voice.
Emma let out a breath. “Oh. Sure.”
She moved toward Madeline’s room, but he caught her once more. “And Sutton?”
Emma turned around, raising her eyebrows.
“You never used to call me ‘sir.’” His lips were pressed in a flat line and he openly studied Emma. “No need to start now.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”
Mr. Vega held Emma’s gaze for a moment longer, inspecting her thoroughly and carefully. Emma fought hard to keep her expression neutral. Finally, he turned and smoothly made his way down the stairs. She wilted against the wall and shut her eyes, feeling the lump of papers in her pocket. S
o close.
Maybe too close, I thought.
13
LOVE, S.
An hour later, Emma sat stiffly next to Laurel in the VW. Laurel might have abandoned her at school, but there was no way for her to get out of driving her home from Madeline’s. She hadn’t said a word to Emma the whole time, and was wrinkling her nose at Emma as though she smelled like raw sewage.
Spying a strip mall that contained a grocery store, a Big Lots, and a bunch of other random shops on the corner, Emma grabbed the wheel and veered the car into the right lane. Laurel slammed on the brakes. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting you to pull over,” Emma said, gesturing to the parking lot. “We need to talk.”
To Emma’s surprise, Laurel signaled, turned into the lot, and shut off the engine. But then she got out of the car and stomped toward the strip mall without waiting for Emma to follow. By the time Emma caught up with her, Laurel had pushed into a shop called the Boot Barn. The place smelled like leather and air freshener. Cowboy hats lined the walls, and there were shelves and shelves of cowboy boots as far as the eye could see. A country singer crooned something about his Ford pickup truck in a twangy voice over the loudspeaker, and the only other customer in the store was a grizzly-looking guy with a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth. The shopkeeper, an overweight woman wearing a vest with galloping palominos embroidered on the front, gazed at them menacingly from behind the counter. She looked like the type who knew her way around a shotgun.
Laurel walked over to a black western button-down that had silver stud accents around the shoulders. Emma snickered. “I don’t think that’s quite your style.”
Laurel placed the shirt back on the rack and feigned interest in a display of ornate belt buckles. Most of them were in the shape of cattle horns.
“Seriously, this ignoring me thing is getting a little old,” Emma said, following behind her.
