Never Have I Ever

by Sara Shepard

Page 9

 

  I smiled. Now there was a career path. But it impressed me how resourceful she was. It was like Ethan said the other night: Nothing seemed to overwhelm her.

  “Thayer had a Honda bike, right?” Mr. Mercer said. “You didn’t ride on it with him, did you?”

  Emma shrugged, her skin prickling at Thayer’s name. Emma had found out last week that Laurel and Thayer had been best friends, and that Laurel had a not-so-secret crush on him. But she’d also discovered that, at the very least, Thayer had liked Sutton.

  I tried desperately to remember what Thayer meant to me. I kept seeing flashes of the two of us standing in the school courtyard, Thayer grabbing my hands and saying something in an apologetic voice, me wrenching my hands away and spitting something back at him, my words flinty and abrasive. But then the memory dissolved.

  Mr. Mercer sank down on an overturned milk crate.

  “Sutton . . . why did you steal today?”

  Emma ran her fingers over the shifter. Because I’m trying to solve your daughter’s murder. But al she said was “I’m real y sorry. ”

  “Was it because of . . . everything at home?” Mr. Mercer asked gruffly.

  Emma blinked, turning to face Mr. Mercer.

  “Meaning . . . ?” Suddenly, a new list began to form in her mind: Things That Are Awkward About a New Family You Don’t Know but Are Supposed To. Heart-to-heart conversations with a dad she’d only met two weeks ago would be first on the list.

  Mr. Mercer’s face folded into an exasperated, pleasedon’t-make-me-explain expression. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I know you’ve gone through a lot of . . . changes. ”

  More than you know, Emma thought wryly.

  Mr. Mercer gave Emma a meaningful look. “I want to know what you’re feeling. I want you to know you can talk to me. About anything. ”

  The AC unit shuddered off and an earsplitting silence settled over the garage. Emma tried to keep her composure. She had no idea how to answer his question, and for a moment, she considered tel ing him the bald truth. But then she remembered Sutton’s kil er’s threat: If you tell anyone, if you say anything, you’re next.

  “Okay . . . thanks,” Emma said awkwardly.

  Mr. Mercer fiddled with the wrench. “And are you sure you didn’t steal because, wel , you wanted to get caught?”

  I studied my dad’s clear blue eyes and a sudden flash came to me of voices and accusations flying through the air. I saw myself sprinting down a desert trail, heard my father’s angry voice cal ing out for me, and felt tears running down my face.

  When Emma didn’t respond, Mr. Mercer broke his stare, shook his head, and threw a bal ed-up yel ow rag on the grease-stained floor. “Never mind,” he mumbled, now seeming annoyed. “Just throw the trash bag in the bin when you’re done, okay?”

  He closed the door with a muffled thud. Behind it was a cork bul etin board that contained a calendar several years out of date, a business card for a local HVAC service, and a snapshot of Laurel and Sutton standing in the middle of the backyard, smiling into the camera. Emma stared at the photo long and hard. She wished the photo could talk back, wished Sutton could tel her something, anything, about who’d she’d been, what kinds of secrets she’d kept, and what had real y happened to her.

  A snicker sounded behind her. Then a warm tickle, like someone’s breath on the back of her neck. Emma swung around, her heart in her throat, but found herself staring into the empty garage. Then, out the narrow square windows, she caught sight of an SUV slowly passing by the Mercers’

  house. She ran to the windows and looked out, recognizing the white Lincoln SUV immediately. And this time she also recognized the two faces behind the windshield. It was the Twitter Twins.

  Chapter 10

  Fish Out of Water

  Plink. Plink.

  Emma shot up in Sutton’s bed. The moon cast a silver slant of light across the carpet. The screen saver on Sutton’s computer was playing a slideshow of photographs of happy Lying Game sleepovers. Sutton’s flat-screen TV

  was tuned to an episode of The Daily Show. The Bell Jar, which Emma was rereading after she and Ethan had discussed it last week, sat overturned on the nightstand. The door to the hal was closed tight. Everything was exactly where Emma had left it when she’d gone to bed. Plink.

  The sound was coming from the window. Emma threw back the covers. Just last week, she’d had a dream that had begun exactly like this. When she’d looked out the window in the dream, Becky stood in the driveway. Warning her. Tel ing her to be careful. And then she’d vanished. Emma hesitantly padded to the window and peered out. The streetlight made a soft golden circle on the prickly pear cactus beside the sidewalk. Laurel’s Jetta was parked directly below. Sure enough, someone stood in the driveway beneath the basketbal court. She half expected it to be Becky, but then the figure stepped into the light, arm aimed to pitch another rock at the window.

  It was Ethan.

  She inhaled sharply and moved away from the window. She pul ed on a heather-gray bra under Sutton’s seethrough camisole and kicked her bare legs into a pair of striped pajama pants. Then she reappeared at the glass, waved, and hefted open the window. Mrs. Mercer hadn’t locked it yet, and it gave easily. The night air was stiflingly hot without the faintest trace of wind.

  “Have you heard of using your phone instead of a rock?”

  she cal ed softly.

  Ethan squinted up at her. “Can you come out?”

  Emma listened for sounds in the hal way—a toilet flushing, Drake’s jingling tags, anything. The Mercers would kil her for sneaking out the very day she’d been caught stealing. But there was only silence. She lifted the window higher and shimmied out.

  A thick tree branch extended toward the roof; Emma grabbed it easily and swung to the ground. No wonder Sutton used this as an escape route. She dropped to the gravel and headed toward Ethan, a smile on her face. But Ethan wasn’t smiling back. “What on earth got into you? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Shhh. ” Emma glanced around. The neighborhood was eerily stil , al lights off, cars silent in driveways. “It was the only way I could get into the police station. ”

  “Why did you want to do that?”

  Emma sat down on the big boulder in front of the Mercers’ house. “I had to see Sutton’s police file. ”

  As Emma told Ethan about the police report and the incident at the train tracks, his eyes bulged wider and wider. “Sutton put everyone’s lives at risk,” Emma finished.

  “And something happened to Gabby that night. She went to the hospital. ”

  “Whoa. ” Ethan sank down on the boulder next to her.

  “And no one told on Sutton?”

  “According to the report, no. ” Their legs were just barely touching; Emma could feel the tough fabric of his jeans through her thin pajama pants.

  Ethan turned his phone over in his hands. “Why do you think they kept quiet?”

  “I don’t know. The train prank was serious. They al could have died,” she said, watching a shadow pass across the window of a neighboring house. “Maybe they wanted to give Sutton a taste of her own medicine?”

  “Through a prank . . . or something else?”

  A chil coursed through Emma’s veins. “You said yourself that Sutton’s friends looked like they wanted to kil her the night of the snuff film, right?”

  Ethan gazed down the street, his top teeth sinking into his bottom lip. “That’s what it looked like to me,” he final y said. “Even though they said it was a prank, Sutton seemed real y scared. ”

  “Sounds like payback,” Emma said.

  Ethan had a better memory of that night than I did. When I’d seen Ethan standing over me, I’d felt woozy and vulnerable. If only I could remember the hours and days after the strangling incident . . . had I real y resumed normal activities with my friends as if it hadn’t mattered? Had I been able to shake off my fear that easily?

  “But I’m not
sure we should write off the Twitter Twins either,” Emma said. “Gabby went to the hospital, after al —

  maybe she was real y hurt. They were at Charlotte’s sleepover, too. And I’ve seen them driving up and down this street, watching me. Plus they’ve been giving me real y weird looks in school. ” She shut her eyes, thinking about Garrett. “Then again, a lot of people have been giving me weird looks. ”

  Ethan nodded. “You can’t write off any of them until they have a clear alibi. ”

  Emma arched her neck up to the sky and let out a groan. Everything felt so . . . difficult. “Sutton’s parents would kil me if they knew I was out here,” she said, eyeing the dark windows in the house. “I’m already grounded for life. ”

  Ethan shifted in the gravel. “So this is your only night of freedom?”

  “You could say that. Tomorrow there wil probably be a big bolt on my window. ”

  Ethan smiled. “We’d better do something more fun than talk about Sutton’s murderer, then. ”

  Slowly, Emma raised her eyes to his. “Like what?”

  “There’s a pool in your neighbor’s yard. ” Ethan gestured over the block wal that separated the Mercers’ house from the neighbors’. “Wanna go for a swim?”

  “They’l see us!” Emma cried. The Mercers’ next-door neighbors, the Paulsons, had waved to Emma a few times from their driveway. They wore matching J. Crew outfits, drove matching champagne-colored Lexuses, and plastered their last name over everything—a big PAULSON

  on the mailbox, PAULSON, ESTABLISHED 1968 on a stone plaque in the front garden, even their vanity plates read PAULSON1 and PAULSON2. They seemed friendly enough, but Emma doubted they took kindly to pool crashers. Ethan pointed to their driveway. Several blue plasticwrapped newspapers lay near the mailbox. The lights in the house were dark, and there wasn’t a car in the driveway. “I think they’re out of town. ”

  Emma paused. She knew she should march back inside and get into bed, but a devilish little voice in her head pointed out Ethan’s deep-set eyes and hopeful smile, egging her on.

  Maybe the devil was me. Emma deserved to have a little fun.

  “I’m in,” Emma said with a grin.

  Within seconds, they’d scaled the Paulsons’ wal and reached the oval-shaped pool in the middle of the patio. Inner tubes and rafts were stacked neatly on the deck. A black Weber gas gril stood under the pergola, and a beehive-shaped fire pit loomed farther out in the yard. Two towels, both with purple monogrammed Ps in the center, hung over the chaises. Emma glanced cautiously once more at the Paulsons’ dark house. No lights snapped on. It took Ethan less than five seconds to strip off his T-shirt and jeans, kick off his New Balance running sneakers, and dive into the pool. When he surfaced, he grinned at Emma.

  “The water’s awesome! Come in!”

  Emma kicked out a pajama leg. “Uh, I’m not exactly dressed for swimming. ”

  Ethan waggled his brows. “Take ’em off. I don’t mind. ”

  Emma mock-glared at him, but shed her pajama