Emma ran her hand over the back of her neck. It was suddenly sweaty. Her heart was pounding really fast, too. “I’m just a little freaked out,” she admitted.
“Why?”
They turned another corner and walked through the lobby, sidestepping a group of kids break-dancing by the ceramics display case. “Let’s just say I’m tempted to blow off school for the rest of the year and hide in a cave somewhere.”
“Is this about the Nisha prank?” Ethan asked. “Two girls ahead of me in the coffee line were talking about it,” he went on. One of his shoulders rose in a sheepish shrug. “It sounded . . . crazy.”
Emma sank down on a lobby bench. “Yeah. My friends kind of went . . . too far.”
Ethan sat down next to her, picking up a flyer that said FALL HARVEST DANCE! GET YOUR TICKETS NOW! and twisting it in his hands. One corner of his mouth pulled up into a sarcastic smile. “Isn’t that kind of how it works? Don’t you guys always go too far?”
A knot formed in Emma’s stomach. Charlotte’s words spun in her head like clothes in a dryer: Like you haven’t done worse? Was that how it worked?
She swallowed hard, staring blankly across the room at a large display case next to the auditorium. A gold-lettered poster said IN MEMORIAM. Black-and-white yearbook portraits of dead students marched up and down the page, along with their names and death dates. Sutton should be on that board, Emma thought. She wondered if whoever had killed her passed this lobby all the time.
Two guys played tag down the hall, their footsteps ringing out on the hard floor. Emma blinked hard. Before she could say anything more, the bell rang. Ethan gave Emma a parting smile. “If you’re sick of the pranks, you should tell your friends you want to stop. Just walk away from it, y’know? Everyone would thank you for it.” He tossed the coffee cup in the trash. “See you around.”
Emma watched him disappear down the hall. Her palms felt sweaty. She knew she needed to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t work. The dead faces on the IN MEMORIAM poster watched her with eerie, knowing smiles. And then what she needed to do zinged through her body like a dart. “I have to get out of here,” she whispered.
She’d never felt so sure of something in her life. Whatever Sutton was involved in, whatever the Lying Game was, it was scary and dangerous and way too intense. Just sitting here in the school hall made her feel like a target in a rifle range.
And maybe, I thought with a shudder, someone was already taking aim.
Laurel’s Jetta made a screeching noise as Emma wheeled it into the parking lot of the downtown Tucson Greyhound station. She hit the brake just before ramming into a cinderblock parking divider. Turning off the ignition, she looked cautiously around.
The air was oven-hot and the blacktop shimmered. Two old men outside the station gave Emma a squinty look. Across the street, three scruffy college kids shuffling into Hotel Congress turned and stared right at her, too. Even the sex kittens in the S&M window seemed to be watching. Emma slipped on Sutton’s big D&G sunglasses, but she still felt exposed.
It was later that afternoon, and Emma was supposed to be at tennis practice. She’d racked her brain all day for how she could get out of town—and where she’d go. Emma didn’t want to use Sutton’s ATM or credit cards to fund her escape—it would be too easy for the killer to track her.
And then she’d realized: the locker in Vegas. She’d stashed her two-thousand-dollar nest egg there, afraid to bring such a huge wad of cash to Tucson. The locker required a numerical combination, which Emma had set to Becky’s birthday, March tenth. If Emma could just get back to the money, she’d be okay for a while. She could take a cheap bus to the East Coast, where no one would find her. Maybe, if she got out of the way, people would realize Sutton was gone and start searching for her.
And maybe I’d finally figure out why—and how—I’d died. Or would I? If Emma left, would I go with her—to live her new, anonymous life in New York or New England? Constantly following her while she moved on? Or would I disappear forever once she left my life? What would happen to me then?
Emma had swiftly stolen Laurel’s keys from her tennis locker. Please forgive me, Laurel, she’d silently beseeched as she’d gingerly plucked the keys from the bag and slipped them into her pocket. Not a minute later, she was pulling out of the parking lot, stabbing Greyhound Bus Station into Laurel’s GPS.
Emma entered the bus station and stood in line behind a thin balding man with square-framed glasses and a frizzy-haired woman with a giant rolling suitcase. The shifty-eyed ticket attendant glanced up and stared straight at her, then went back to ringing up a sale. A sign over the woman’s head gave a bus schedule for Las Vegas. The bus left in fifteen minutes. Perfect.
The thin balding man leaned forward on his elbows at the ticket counter and made small talk about the weather. The overhead light made an anxious, high-pitched squeal. Every time the wind gusted, the door blew open and shut, making Emma jump. The hair on her arms stood on end. If only this line would move a little faster.
A Paramore song suddenly exploded from Emma’s bag. She pulled out Sutton’s ringing iPhone. LAUREL, said the Caller ID. Emma instantly hit SILENT.
The MISSED CALL message flashed on the screen, but then Laurel called right back. Emma muffled Paramore once again. Why wasn’t Laurel on the tennis court? Emma thought she had at least an hour before Laurel would notice her car missing. After another MISSED CALL message flashed, a new text appeared. Emma opened it. 911, Laurel wrote. DID YOU TAKE MY CAR? ARE YOU OKAY? IF YOU DON’T CALL BACK IN FIVE MINUTES I’M SENDING OUT A SEARCH PARTY.
The frizzy-haired woman in front of Emma peered at her curiously. The ticket attendant leered as she licked a finger to count out dollar bills. Emma tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. All at once, her escape plan felt foolish. Laurel was probably freaking out about the missing car at tennis right now.
And even if Emma did get on the bus for Vegas, the police would find Laurel’s car in the parking lot in no time. With no Emma inside, everyone would assume the girl they thought was Sutton had just run away. And then Shifty Eyes the ticket attendant would identify Emma as the girl who’d bought a ticket to Vegas . . . and the cops would be looking for Emma there, not for Sutton’s body here.
Laurel called again just as Emma stepped out of the ticket line. Emma pressed the green answer button and said hello. “There you are, flake.” Laurel sounded annoyed. Her voice was hollow, like the phone was on speaker. “Did you steal my car?”
“Just get your own car out of the impound lot already!” Charlotte’s voice called from the background. “We’ll all pool our money!”
“I’m sorry,” Emma blurted. “I just . . . needed to do something. Something important.” She walked to the window and gazed across the street at the girls in the shop window. What could be so important down here? Sex toys? Seeing an emo show at Hotel Congress?
“I’m taking Laurel home from tennis, so no worries,” Charlotte said. “But finish up your little errand before our sleepover, okay? It won’t be complete without the executive committee.”
“Don’t forget Lili and Gabby,” Laurel piped up.
“Yeah, but they don’t count,” Charlotte countered.
The loudspeaker in the station crackled, making Emma jump. “Now departing in Stall Three, Greyhound 459 to Las Vegas,” the ticket taker’s bored, nasal voice boomed. “Las Vegas, now boarding.”
Emma scrambled to muffle the iPhone, but it was too late. There was a pause on the other end. “Did they just say Greyhound?” Laurel sounded confused.
“Are you going to Vegas?” Charlotte asked.
Emma pushed the creaky door out of the station and walked as fast as she could to Laurel’s car, afraid the blaring announcement might sound again. “I-I was just passing by the bus station. The window’s down. But I’m on my way back home now, okay?”
The already hot upholstery in Laurel’s car burned Emma’s shoulders and the backs of her legs as she climbed in and hung up the phone. Her fingers shook as she pushed the key into the ignition. A motor growled, and she looked up. A bus chugged under the porte cochere, a big sign that said LAS VEGAS on the windshield. People threw their luggage in the lower compartment and climbed aboard.
Then a small clicking sound made her stiffen and turn. The backs of her ears burned. It felt like someone was staring at her. She looked around. The old men on the bench had vanished. On the street, traffic had come to a standstill. A neon green Prius that said DISCOUNT CAB honked. A red hatchback with a big dent in the fender idled behind it, and a black pickup revved its engine impatiently behind that. In front of them all, a silver Mercedes crept slowly past the bus station. Emma stared hard at its gleaming hood ornament. Through the tinted windows, Emma could just make out that the driver was looking at something in the bus station parking lot. Her.
I squinted hard to see who it was, but I couldn’t make out a face.
The green cab honked once more, and the Mercedes driver faced forward again and rolled through the light. Emma watched the car until it vanished over the hill. Only after it had disappeared from view could she exhale. But her jittery paranoia was for good reason.
After all, whoever killed me was watching her every move.
Chapter 17
NEVER HAVE I EVER
Later that evening, Laurel drove one-handed while twisting her long blond hair into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She steered the car up a steep, undulating road toward Charlotte’s house, a hidden estate tucked away on a high road halfway up the mountain, nestled into the desert rock.
Emma took it all in as Laurel pressed the intercom button outside the gates of Charlotte’s house and waited. A voice buzzed through the speaker a few seconds later. “It’s Laurel and Sutton!” Laurel called into the microphone. A latch clicked, and the gate slowly swung open.
A slate-paved path unfurled before them. A lush green lawn surrounded them on either side, complete with saguaro cacti, flowering trumpet bushes, and creosote plants. In the middle of the circular driveway was a stone fountain filled with naked stone cherubs. Beyond that stood the house itself, a massive adobe mansion of floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights. A brass bell hung from a tower over the massive front door. Several horses grazed behind a split-rail fence to the left, and a shiny silver Porsche waited outside a five-car garage.
Laurel glanced at Emma as she shifted into PARK at the end of the long circular drive. “Thanks, for, like, not being weird about me coming tonight.”
Emma brushed her hair out of her face. “It’s cool.”
Laurel leaned on the steering wheel. Dark lashes framed her eyes. “You’ve been a little . . . different this week. Are you on a new diet or something?”
“I’m not different,” Emma said quickly.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing.” Laurel pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Except for your crazy-ass car theft. And how you took off in the parking lot the first morning of school.” She shot Emma a crooked smile. “And, okay, one or two other things, too.”