“What’s going on?” Mr. Mercer demanded.
“Laurel’s trying to kill me!” Emma screamed.
“What?” Laurel backed away from the bed as though it were on fire.
Emma shuffled back until she was pressed against the headboard. Her chest heaved with sobs. “She was trying to suffocate me.”
Laurel let out an indignant squeak. “No, I wasn’t!” She gestured to the digital clock next to the bed. The red numbers flashed 12:01. “I came in here because I wanted to be the very first one to wish you a happy birthday.”
“Don’t deny it.” Emma held the sheets to her chest. “I saw you!”
“Sutton, honey, Laurel wouldn’t do something like that,” Mr. Mercer said gently.
“You probably just had a nightmare.” Mrs. Mercer rubbed her eyes. “Are you worried about your birthday party?”
“Why would I be worried about a birthday party?” Emma snapped. She whipped a finger in Laurel’s direction. “She. Tried. To. Kill. Me!”
But when she looked at the Mercers again, sleepy skepticism was obvious in both of their faces. “Honey, why don’t you go downstairs and have a glass of milk?” Mrs. Mercer suggested.
And then, yawning, they turned for the door. Drake and Laurel followed. But before Laurel turned in the hall, she wheeled around and met Emma’s gaze. Her eyes narrowed. The corners of her mouth arced down. Fire shot through Emma’s veins. The words Becky had said in the dream flashed into her mind once more. Things are about to get very dangerous.
The words swirled in my mind, too. Talk about a dream come true.
Chapter 27
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOW DIE
“There’s the birthday girl!” Madeline cried, tottering across the patio in bright blue stilettos, a silver party dress, and a foil crown. She plopped an almost identical crown on Emma’s head, which said 18 in pink numbers.
“Smile!” Charlotte darted up to them, dressed in a short striped dress and espadrilles. She smushed close to Emma and held a digital camera out from their bodies. Just as the flash went off, Laurel leapt into the picture, throwing her arm around Emma and grinning broadly.
“Cheese!” Laurel said overenthusiastically, her smile as white as the gauzy tunic she wore over black leggings. Emma tried her best to smile, but she had a feeling she just looked scared.
Sutton’s friends broke from the hug and launched into another round of “Happy Birthday.” Charlotte belted it out at the top of her lungs. Madeline sang it like Marilyn Monroe when she serenaded JFK. And Laurel sang sweetly, innocently. Emma took a slight step away from her.
It was 9 P.M., and Sutton’s birthday party was in full swing. A DJ spun records on the patio table near the grill. Throngs of kids swayed and twirled on the dance floor. Girls from the tennis team held plates of canapés. Mrs. Mercer had strung tiny pink Christmas lights all around the patio and filled punch bowls with virgin sangria. At least twenty-five cheapo digital cameras were strewn around the patio. Three laptops sat on a table near the door; each had USB cords to upload photos to Facebook and Twitter. The Mercer parents had mapped out a radio-controlled car obstacle course in the desert-dust part of the backyard. The air smelled like a mélange of everyone’s perfume and hair products, with a slight undertone of booze. A large card table near the door held a pile of wrapped birthday presents, more than Emma had ever seen in her life.
Not that Emma was able to enjoy any of it. She might have been dressed up in the pale-pink minidress that she’d found hanging in Sutton’s closet with the word birthday written on the hanger; she might’ve spent an hour in the salon getting her hair curled just so; and she might’ve been wearing high-heeled booties that probably cost more than her entire year’s clothing budget. But it didn’t mean she felt particularly festive. Every time a flash went off, she winced and wheeled around. Every time someone touched her to say hi, she stiffened. Every firework Mr. Mercer and some of the boys set off at the end of the yard made her flinch. They sounded like gunshots. It felt like any minute might be her last.
I hoped she was wrong.
After they finished Happy Birthday–ing, Madeline, Charlotte and Laurel surveyed the picture on the preview screen. “Madeline looks drunk,” Charlotte said.
“And I look drugged.” Laurel sidled up to Emma and showed her the camera. “You’re the only one who looks normal. If you put this on Facebook, you have to Photoshop all of us out of it.”
Emma slowly inched away from Laurel’s muscular frame; being this close to her made her tingly with nerves. All night, she’d watched Laurel. She’d been on the dance floor for most of the party, requesting fast, edgy songs that got everyone moving. An hour ago, she’d cornered Emma by the pool and presented her with a birthday gift, two tickets to a revival of Les Misérables the following week. “You can take anyone you want, but I’d love to go,” Laurel said bashfully. “Remember how we used to act out the scenes when we were little? You always insisted on being Cosette.”
I remember, I wanted to shout out. Not that I did exactly, but I wished I could. Something seemed so wrong about this. How had Laurel and I gone from playing Les Miz to hating each other? How could my sister have killed me?
But Emma was convinced Laurel had done it—the memory of Laurel trying to suffocate her this morning burned brightly in her brain. What she couldn’t figure out was why. Wouldn’t she want to keep Emma alive so that no one would know Sutton was missing? Maybe Emma wasn’t playing Sutton well enough. Maybe Emma was asking too many questions, poking around too many places.
Something across the patio caught Emma’s eye. A tall guy with shorn hair and dressed in a slim-cut black button-down and jeans pushed through the back gate. There was a box of Godiva chocolates under his arm and a tense scowl on his face. He looked around the crowd as if searching for someone. Emma’s heart did a flip. Ethan.
Emma handed the digital camera back to Madeline. “I’ll be right back.”