Never Have I Ever

by Sara Shepard

Page 30

 

  Emma nodded, then shook her head. “I . . . ” But she couldn’t get the rest of the words out.

  “She might be in shock,” Laurel said.

  “Jesus,” Charlotte whispered, as if this was al they needed.

  “We should split up to look for Gabby,” Laurel suggested. She gestured to her right. “I’l go that way. ”

  “I’l go left,” Charlotte said.

  “I’m going back to the car,” Madeline said. “Or as far as I need to go to get cel service to cal nine-one-one. Sutton, don’t move, al right? Just sit stil . We’l come back for you. ”

  Everyone headed off in opposite directions. Emma watched until their dim shapes disappeared in the distance. The air whipped quietly around her. Pebbles rained down the side of the mountain. Slowly, the crushing feeling on her chest began to abate. She gulped in air and rubbed her hands together. She couldn’t just sit here. She had to look for Gabby. “Hel o?” she cal ed out. Her voice echoed slightly.

  Suddenly, Emma heard a thin, smal sound to her right. She stood up straighter, alert. “Gabby?”

  Next came a choppy inhalation of breath. And then, there it was again: a tiny moan.

  “Gabby!” Emma’s body fil ed with hope. She spun around, trying to locate the direction of the noise. Another moan. Emma walked toward a wal of rocks on the side of the ravine. “Gabby?” she cal ed. “Is that you?”

  “Help,” a hoarse, weak voice cried.

  It was Gabby. Emma scanned the empty ground, shining Sutton’s phone on the rocks until she found a narrow opening a few feet up that she otherwise would’ve mistaken for an animal burrow. She peered inside the dim, black space and listened hard. Her heart simultaneously lifted and broke when she heard another faint, desperate cry from deep inside. “Help!”

  Emma had found Gabby, al right. She was trapped.

  Chapter 29

  The Darkest Place in the World

  Emma peered into the tiny opening. “Gabby!”

  The rocks must have shifted when she fel , wal ing her inside. She stepped back and blinked into the darkness.

  “Laurel? Charlotte?” No one answered.

  Another weak cough emerged from inside the cave. Emma tried 911, but her phone refused to dial out. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees since Emma had descended into the gulch, but sweat ran down her face and back. She assessed the opening again. There was a space in the rocks just wide enough for a body to slip through. She could do it. She had to. She was the one who’d shoved Gabby off the cliff. Even though Gabby had kil ed Sutton, Emma wasn’t a kil er, too. She had to make this right.

  “I’m coming, Gabby,” she cal ed.

  She dropped her backpack to the ground and rol ed up her sleeves. Taking a deep breath, she hoisted herself up to the smal hole and wriggled through. The inside of the space smel ed musky, like an animal. The rocks felt slick and cold on her skin. Her shoulders bent inward, her arms out in front, feeling the way. Her hip bones ground against the sides of the tiny tunnel as she moved forward a few feet.

  “Gabby?” she cal ed. Her voice sounded so loud inside the cave. “Gabby?” she tried again. But Gabby didn’t answer. Had she passed out? Had she had another seizure? Was she dead?

  Tiny pebbles fel on her head with even the slightest provocation as she squirmed forward. Dust clogged her lungs. At one point, she glanced over her shoulder and could barely see the tiny crack she’d slithered through. I crawled along with her, the smal , confined space feeling like a coffin with the lid closed.

  “Gabby?” Emma cried again. Her knees banged on a rock. Her shoulders squeezed through two tightly compacted boulders, and she emerged into a wider pocket inside the cave where she could almost stand. “Gabs?” Stil no response. Where had she gone? Had Emma’s ears played tricks on her?

  Suddenly, a loud boom fil ed the air. Dust whipped across her face and up her nose. A loud whooshing sound roared in her ears. Pebbles pelted Emma’s back and head and ran down her shirt. It’s an avalanche, she thought, covering her head and flattening herself to the bottom of the tunnel.

  The noises continued for a few moments more. When they petered out, Emma careful y raised her head and looked around. Dirt swirled everywhere. She squinted in the direction she’d come. The hole she’d climbed through was gone. She was wal ed in.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  Panic rose in Emma’s chest. “Help!” she screamed, but her voice didn’t seem to carry, bouncing off the close, thick wal s. “Help!” she cried again, but it was no use. No one cal ed out from the other side. Why weren’t Sutton’s friends back by now? Why didn’t they hear her?

  She looked into the wider opening again, pricking up her ears for another one of Gabby’s moans. “Gabby?” she whispered, looking right and left. Her heart pounded so loudly in her head she feared its vibrations might cause another landslide. Her eyes began to play tricks on her, forming shapes she knew weren’t there. A chair. A seated figure. A tennis racket propped up against the rocks. Her head spun; she had to be losing oxygen in the sealed space.

  And then a cold, strong hand grasped Emma’s wrist. Emma screamed out. She tried to wrench free, but the hand wouldn’t let go. The flicker of a dim flashlight il uminated the lower half of a girl’s face. “G-Gabby?”

  Emma stammered.

  The figure in front of her smiled. But those weren’t Gabby’s lips. Emma drew in a breath. Was that . . . ?

  “Hi, Sutton,” said the girl, fol owed by a maniacal giggle.

  “Glad you could drop in. ”

  The dank air chil ed the back of Emma’s neck. Her free hand dug into dirt and rocks to steady herself. “Lili?” her voice quivered. “W-what are you doing here?” Hadn’t they left her at the Super Stop station? Hadn’t she refused to come?

  “Come on, Sutton. ” Lili cackled. “You know the answer to that, don’t you?”

  The words sliced through Emma’s chest. Al at once, she understood what was going on: Gabby and Lili’s fight, Gabby’s fal , Lili’s moans inside this cave, even the wal s crumbling down around Emma—al of it had been orchestrated by Gabby and Lili as a way to get Emma in here alone. They weren’t mad at each other. Gabby wasn’t hurt. The Twitter Twins knew Emma would crawl into this cave to rescue the girl she’d thought she’d pushed—

  because she wasn’t Sutton, because she would feel terrible about what she’d done. And now, they had her right where they wanted her. They had warned Emma, hadn’t they?

  Countless times, countless ways. Keep being Sutton. Say nothing. Stop sleuthing. I mean it. Or you’re next. She’d fal en right into their trap.

  “Please. ” The word spil ed from Emma’s lips. Her body bucked and her head spun; she thought she might throw up.

  “Can’t we talk about this?”

  “What’s there to talk about?” Lili asked in a low voice.

  “Please let me go,” Emma begged, trying to pul away. Lili gripped her tightly. “I screwed up, Lili. I’m sorry. But I won’t do it again. I promise. ”

  Lili made a tsk noise with her tongue. “I warned you, Sutton. But you didn’t listen. ” She shifted on the rocks, edging closer to Emma. With a swift, violent motion, Lili grabbed Emma by Sutton’s necklace, just as she’d done that night in Charlotte’s kitchen. Emma kicked with al her might, banging her knee on the rocks over her head, feeling blood run over her shin. She tried to scream, but Lili had clapped a hand over her mouth, and it only came out as a muffled gurgle. Lili pul ed at the necklace, stretching the chain tight against Emma’s throat. Emma began to cough, flailing her arms and legs, thrashing with al her might. Lili pul ed harder, the chain cutting into Emma’s skin.

  “Please!” Emma croaked, barely having enough air to cry out. Her lungs screamed, and she desperately tried to inhale. Lili giggled.

  Suddenly, there was a prick of pain at the side of Emma’s neck, and the necklace broke free. The heavy locket released from the chain and dro
pped down the front of Emma’s shirt, landing in the waistband of her jeans. Lili’s eyes blazed. Her teeth were bared in a crocodile smile. A vein stood out on her forehead, and she leered at Emma with hatred and vengeance. It was the face of a kil er. Sutton’s kil er . . . and hers, too.

  I wanted Emma to run. I wanted her to fight. But instead, I steeled myself for the worst. Suddenly, the strange snapping sensation I always got when I was about to relive a memory whipped through me like a freight train. I saw bright, whirling lights. Widened eyes. A girl on a gurney. The word EMERGENCY glowing in red on top of a porte cochere. My nose tickled with the scent of antiseptic and sickness. My ears tingled with the sounds of moans—

  maybe my own.

  And just like that, I fel headfirst into another memory. . . .

  Chapter 30

  The Aftermath

  The emergency-room waiting area is crowded with people: sick babies screaming, a greasy guy in a hard hat with the mother of all splinters in his fleshy, dirty thumb, a bunch of old people who look like they’re already halfway in the grave. The five of us sit upright in our chairs, not leafing through old magazines, not watching the lame-ass local news on TV, just staring at the double doors that divide us from the emergency room and Gabby.

  By the time we arrived at the hospital, Gabby had already been taken into the treatment area. The only thing the nurses told us when we burst through the doors was that we had to wait, and they pointed us to the seating area where Lili was already pacing.

  Mr. and Mrs. Fiorello arrive, leaving me terrified Lili’s going to tell them what really happened. She doesn’t. Instead, she clutches them, sobbing into their chests. They sit a few chairs away from us, fidgeting, staring at paperback books without turning the pages. Mrs. Fiorello has curlers in her hair, and Mr. Fiorello is wearing shoes that look suspiciously like bedroom slippers. Then again, it is almost one in the morning.

  About a half hour into the wait, Lili jumps up and approaches one of the triage women behind the thick panes of glass. Mrs. Fiorello follows her; Mr. Fiorello leans his head back on the chair and closes his eyes. When the woman tells Lili she can’t see her sister for the fifth time, Lili screams, “What if Gabby’s dead? What if she needs my blood?”

  Laurel bursts into tears. Madeline bites off the last of her manicure. Charlotte keeps making these gagging, puffed-cheeks faces like she’s about to throw up.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quietly to them, knowing that they’re all privately thinking that I’m a huge bitch. “I didn’t know this would . . . ”

  “Just shut up about it, okay?” Charlotte hisses, digging her nails into her thighs. “Don’t make me regret not saying anything to the cops. ”

  A balding, middle-aged male doctor in blue scrubs and a surgical cap emerges through the ER doors, spies Lili and her mom, and walks to them. Mr. Fiorello and the four of us jump up and rush to their side. My stomach churns. The doctor’s face is drawn, as though he’s about to deliver bad news. He clicks and unclicks a pen and twists his mouth. “You’re Gabriella Fiorello’s family?” he asks. Lili’s parents nod. Mr. Fiorello wraps his arms around Mrs. Fiorello and Lili’s shoulders, pulling them tight.