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At least someone noticed there was something different about me.
“I’m okay,” Emma answered. “Just tired. School always makes me want to hibernate.”
“Well, wake up, baby bear.” Madeline pointed at her mock-accusingly. “Your public will be very disappointed in you if you’re not a rock star for your birthday. And by your public, I mean me.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” Emma giggled.
Steam billowed into their faces, smelling vaguely sulfuric. Someone’s shadowy head passed by the frosted-glass doors. Then Emma took a deep breath. Here goes. “If anyone’s been acting like they’ve had a med change, it’s Charlotte. Don’t you think?”
Madeline shook a stray piece of hair from her eyes. “She’s been no weirder than usual.”
Emma’s hip started to itch, but she didn’t want to reach into the mud to scratch it. “Do you know where she was the night before Nisha’s party?”
Madeline shrugged. “Do you honestly expect me to remember something that happened over a week ago? My brain’s too fried from a week of school.” But Emma noticed that she wouldn’t make eye contact with her. She fiddled nervously with a bracelet around her wrist.
“Char and I had plans that night, and she ditched me,” Emma lied, thinking quickly. “Sometimes I think she’s really pissed at me. She keeps making these little remarks to me about Garrett. I think I caught her spying on us on Saturday.”
And perhaps plotting to kill me, too, she silently added. Just like she killed Sutton.
A muscle next to Madeline’s right eye twitched. Steam swirled around her face. “I don’t think she’s pissed at you. She’s probably just worried about Garrett.”
“Worried? Why?”
The mud sloshed as Madeline shifted positions. “Come on, Sutton. You’re not exactly gentle on guys. You kind of destroy every boy you touch.”
“No I don’t.” Emma’s voice cracked.
But Madeline’s words shook me. I wanted Madeline to be wrong, only . . . maybe she wasn’t. I didn’t know what to believe about myself anymore.
Madeline sniffed indignantly. “Look at all those guys last year. You practically forced Brandon Crawford to break up with Sienna at Homecoming, and then you didn’t return his calls. You acted like you were dying to go out with Owen Haas, and then you treated him like crap. Look at Thayer,” she added.
Thayer? Was Sutton why he left?
I racked my brain to remember, to feel something. Nothing surfaced.
Madeline met Emma’s gaze without blinking. The room suddenly felt very small and close. Emma lowered her eyes and stared at the four slices of cucumbers floating on the surface of the mud.
Suddenly Madeline climbed out of the tub. Brown goop dripped from her stomach and legs.
“What are you doing?” Emma said, half rising.
“I totally forgot.” Madeline pressed a towel to her head. “I was supposed to be at my dad’s house right now. Can Laurel pick you up?” She turned her body away from Emma as she spoke. There were thick brown smudges on the towel from where she’d dried her arms.
“Wait, Mads—what’s going on?” Emma groped through the mud toward the stairs. It was just like the anxiety dream she sometimes had where she kept trying to run, only to realize the road was a backward-moving sidewalk.
Madeline had already stuffed her arms through the bathrobe sleeves. “I’ll talk to you in school tomorrow, okay?” she mumbled in a rush and slipped into the hall, leaving muddy footprints all over the tiled floor.
The door whooshed shut again. The only sounds in the room were the occasional burps from the mud tub; even the rainforest music had stopped. Emma climbed out of the tub and pressed a towel to her face. What the hell just happened? And what had Sutton done to Thayer?
Just as she was grabbing a second towel from the table, something on the floor caught her eye. It was an iPhone. She turned it over and inspected the back. There was a glittery sticker of a girl with devil horns doing a pirouette. SWAN LAKE MAFIA. Madeline’s iPhone.
Emma glanced at Madeline’s muddy footprints, then at the door, then back at the phone again. She rinsed her hands at the sink on the counter and took a deep breath. Should she do this?
“Yes!” I yelled at her as loudly as I could.
Emma slid the bar on the iPhone screen to unlock it. With shaking hands, she pressed on the little thought bubble icon to open Madeline’s texts. First on the list was one she’d written herself, inviting Madeline to the spa today. There were a bunch of texts about the prank on Nisha: Laurel writing to say she’d found the perfect actress to play the cop, Charlotte asking Madeline if she could pick up fake blood at the Halloween store in the mall. Emma scrolled backward through earlier messages. There were a few texts discussing travel plans to Nisha’s party the week before, though nothing about a fake kidnapping.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and Emma froze. Whoever it was whistled softly as he passed. Emma gripped the phone hard. Next she tapped the screen to view Madeline’s photos. A shot of an electric guitar popped up. Emma pulled the screen to the left. There was a photo of two ballet dancers on a stage, one of them Madeline. A shot of the jewelry display case at Anthropologie. A picture of Madeline and Sutton on chaise longues.
She flipped through more and more photos: A self-portrait of Madeline in a full-length mirror. A shot of Sutton, Madeline, and Charlotte by some kind of outdoor hot tub. Sutton and Madeline wore skimpy bikinis, but Charlotte wore a terry-cloth cover-up.
