AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If only I’d put it there on purpose. If only I’d left Emma tons of clues about who’d done this to me—put a big bull’s-eye on the killer’s head, maybe. I admired her for carefully examining each scrap of paper in my wallet as though it held a vital clue, though. She’d compiled a list of kids in my classes, too, writing things like Sienna, two desks up, history: smiled, seemed friendly, referenced “the egg-baby incident” and Geoff, catty-corner, trig: kept shooting me weird looks, made a joke(?) that I looked “different” today. Would I have known to sleuth like this, had our roles been reversed? Would I have dove in to avenge a sister I didn’t even know? There was something else I noticed about Emma, too: how she walked down the halls with her lips clamped together, like she was holding her breath. How she popped into the girls’ room to stare at herself in the mirror, as if to work up the courage all over again. We were both keeping secrets. We were both so alone.
Emma opened the locker. It was empty, save for a moldy-looking notebook at the bottom and a couple of pictures of Sutton, Madeline, and Charlotte taped up on the inside door. Just as Emma was about to gather the books she’d received today and somehow wedge them into Sutton’s leather purse—what kind of moron didn’t carry a real backpack to school?—she felt a hand on her arm.
“Are you thinking about ditching tennis?”
Emma turned. Charlotte stood in front of a WHY DRUGS AREN’T COOL poster. She’d pulled her red hair into a high ponytail, and she’d changed into a white T-shirt, black Champion shorts, and a pair of gray Nike sneakers. A tennis bag similar to the one Sutton’s mom had packed for Emma this morning swung from her shoulder.
Tennis. Right. “I was thinking about it,” Emma mumbled.
“No, you’re not.” Charlotte looped her arm through Emma’s elbow and pulled her down the hall. “C’mon. Laurel put your gear in the team locker room after you attempted your jailbreak this morning. Maggie will kill us if we’re late.”
Emma gazed at Charlotte as they walked, surprised she was on the tennis team, too. Physique-wise, Charlotte looked more like a wrestler. Then Emma bit her lip guiltily. Was that mean?
Not any meaner than I was, according to the one memory that had resurfaced. And I had a feeling, somehow, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Emma and Charlotte strode down the yearbook hallway, which was decorated with snapshots of students from previous years. Emma spotted a photo of Sutton laughing with her friends in what looked like the front courtyard at school. Next to that photo was a candid of Laurel and a familiar dark-haired guy on the gym bleachers, engaged in a thumb war. Emma did a double take. It was the same guy she’d seen on Sutton’s photo bulletin board the night before . . . and on the Missing poster in the police station this morning: Thayer, Madeline’s brother. Emma wondered what had happened to him. Where and why he’d run away. If, like Sutton, he hadn’t run away at all. “So how was your day?” Charlotte’s ponytail bounced against her back.
“Um, all right.” Emma darted around two girls walking in the other direction, both carrying My Fair Lady scripts. “All my teachers acted like they wanted to have my head, though.”
Charlotte sniffed. “Like that’s a surprise?”
Emma ran her fingers along the scratchy strap on Sutton’s tennis bag. Yes, she wished she could admit. It wasn’t every day a teacher called her a Devil Child, or made her sit in the very front row so she could “keep an eye on her,” or glared at her and said, “All the desks in this room are bolted down, Sutton. Just so you know.” Uh, okay.
But Charlotte had already moved on to whine about her gym teacher and something she called the Stink Vent. “And Mrs. Grady in history totally has it in for me,” she moaned. “She called me to her desk after the bell rang and went, ‘You’re a smart girl, Charlotte. Don’t hang around with that crowd I always see you with. Make something of your life!” She rolled her eyes.
They turned down the biology wing. A human skeleton stood outside one of the classrooms, which made Emma shudder. Sutton could look like that, she thought.
Then Charlotte nudged Emma’s side. “So enough about me. How are you?” She squinted at Emma’s chest. “Where’s your necklace?”
Emma felt her bare neck. “I don’t know.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “That’s a surprise.” She hiked her tennis bag higher on her shoulder. “So how are things with you and Garrett?”
“Uh, he’s fine,” Emma answered slowly. She thought of the happy picture of Sutton and Garrett on Facebook. It was all she had to go by.
Charlotte shot her a lukewarm, closemouthed smile. “I heard he’s getting you something pretty special for your birthday.”
“Oh really?”
“Mm-hmm. Lucky.” Charlotte’s voice was strained. Emma sneaked a wary peek at her, but Charlotte was busy fiddling with a strap on her tennis bag.
A moment later, they entered the echoing locker room, which was abuzz with the sounds of slamming locker doors and cheerleaders warming up with a couple of Be aggressives and hand claps. Emma quickly changed into the shorts and tank top Sutton’s mom had packed, then followed Charlotte through a rabbit warren of hallways to join the rest of the tennis team. All the girls lay on the floor with their butts in the air doing piriformis stretches. Emma noticed Laurel in the second row; when Laurel saw them, she quickly looked away. A girl at the very front of the room glowered at Emma. Nisha.
