AllFreeNovel
Share Us
From far within my head, I hear sharp whispers. Someone calls my name. Then there’s a muffled scream, and then more footsteps. Something heavy hits the ground with a muted thud. Seconds later, my skin vaguely registers the sensation of someone pulling the blindfold from my head and the gag from my mouth.
“Sutton?” a soft voice calls. A guy’s voice. Wind whips across my face. I feel my hair tickle my forehead. “Sutton?” the same voice calls again.
Consciousness begins to dribble back to me. The tips of my fingers tingle. My lungs expand. A spot appears in front of my eyes, and then another. One of my eyelids flutters. I stare groggily around, feeling just like I had when I’d woken up from the anesthesia after I’d gotten my tonsils out. Where am I?
My vision clears and I see an empty tripod in front of me. A video camera lays tipped over on the grass, the red LED power button now flashing. I’m in a clearing of some sort, though I don’t see any cars or lights. The air smells a little like a cigarette. Then I notice someone crouching right next to me. I jump and stiffen.
“Are you okay?” whoever it is cries. He touches the rope on my hands. “Jesus,” he says under his breath.
I take him in, still so disoriented. He has close-cropped hair, startling blue eyes, and is wearing a black T-shirt, green cargo shorts, and black Converse sneakers. The blindfold that had just been covering my face is in his left hand. For a moment I wonder if he is the one who did this to me, but the look on his face is such a mix of disgust and concern that I immediately dismiss the idea. “I can’t really see that well,” I say in a hoarse, scratchy voice. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Ethan,” he says. “Ethan Landry.”
I blink hard. Ethan Landry. My brain feels like it’s slogging through mud. I can’t quite think who he is for a minute. I remember a brooding boy roaming the halls. A hopeful face watching me from across a parking lot. “W-What happened?” I ask faintly.
“I don’t know.” Ethan reaches down to untie my hands. “I saw someone strangling you. I ran into the clearing and they took off.”
“They threw me in a trunk,” I murmur. “Someone dragged me here.”
“Did you see who?”
I shake my head. Then I gaze at Ethan, trying to figure out what I know about him. Why I don’t like him. Maybe it’s just one of those things—we haven’t liked him for so long we forgot what started it. But it suddenly feels like he’s my only friend in the world.
Crack. Twigs snap behind me, and I turn. Three figures emerge from the trees and scamper toward me. “Gotcha!” Charlotte cries, stepping into the light. Madeline follows. And then Laurel appears, a ski mask in her hand. She looks like she might cry.
Ethan gapes at them. “This was a joke?”
“Uh, duh.” Madeline scoops up the video camera from the ground. “Sutton knew it all along.”
Ethan stands in front of me protectively. “You almost killed her.”
The girls pause and exchange a glance. Laurel licks her lips. Madeline slips the camera into her bag. Finally, Charlotte sniffs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “What were you doing following us anyway? Stalker.”
Ethan looks at me for a moment. I turn away, feeling both vulnerable and humiliated. He waves his hand dismissively and backs away toward the brush. But as Madeline bends down to cut through the knots around my hands, I catch his eye again. Thank you, I covertly mouth, my heart banging steadily but firmly in my chest. Ethan nods, resigned. You’re welcome, he mouths back.
And then, just like that, everything fades out once more. My memory has hit yet another dead end.
Chapter 32
THE BITTER TRUTH
In the car, Ethan was still gazing intently at Emma. “What’s going on?” he asked again.
“I’m Sutton,” Emma answered, trembling. “I swear.”
“You’re not.” A sad smile appeared on Ethan’s face. “Just tell me the truth.”
Emma stared at his glowing teeth in the darkness. She glanced around at the dark desert before them. A terrible thought crackled through her head like a lightning bolt: He sounded so sure. But how could he be positive, unless . . . “Did . . . did you kill her? Is that how you know?”
Ethan jolted back. He triple blinked, his face turning gray. “Kill her? Sutton’s . . . dead?”
Emma bit hard on her lip. Ethan looked shattered. “She was murdered,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “I think someone strangled her. Someone she knows. I saw it on a video.”
Ethan frowned. “Strangled?”
“With this necklace.” She lifted the locket from under her dress to show him. “In the woods. Her friends caught it all on tape. They even posted it online.”
Ethan’s gaze shifted to the right. A horrified look of understanding swept over his face. “Oh. Oh.”
“What?”
Ethan sank back into the seat and covered his face with his hands. “Was she blindfolded in this video?”
“Yes . . .”
Ethan took a deep breath and looked at her again. “I was there that night.”
Emma blinked hard. “You were there?”
“I was riding my bike when I saw this familiar car whip past,” he explained. “I recognized it by the SWAN LAKE MAFIA sticker on the back window—Madeline and I had assigned parking spots next to each other last year. It stuck in my head.”
Emma gulped.
“I don’t know why, but something made me follow them down this hill into a clearing,” Ethan went on. “By the time I got there, the camera had been set up and they’d just started strangling Sutton. I didn’t know what was going on or why they were doing it, but it seriously looked like they’d killed her.”
