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Chapter 18
Tremors and Treachery and
Threats, Oh My!
“Where is Gabby?” Lili shrieks as the train whooshes past.
I whirl around, frantically checking the tracks. I planned it all so carefully. There’s no way Gabby could have rolled under the train . . . right?
Then Laurel steps a few feet away and points a trembling finger at a crumpled figure by the curved walls of the underpass. It’s Gabby. Her blonde hair covers most of her face. Her pale hand splays open, her crystalstudded iPhone turned over on a patch of gravel.
“What the hell?” Madeline cries.
“Gabby!” Lili screams, running to her.
“Gabby?” I stand over her limp body. “Gabs?”
A sudden tremor travels from Gabby’s fingertips to her shoulders. Tiny pricks of spit dot her lips, and then her entire body starts convulsing. The train barrels on, rattling my teeth and blowing my hair. Gabby shakes harder and faster. Her arms and legs have minds of their own, jolting in random directions. Her eyes roll to the back of her head like she’s some kind of zombie.
“Gabby?” I scream. “Gabs? Come on! This isn’t funny!”
Suddenly, a black man with a carefully trimmed goatee and an earring in one ear nudges me out of the way. I catch sight of a blue jumpsuit with a glow-in-the-dark badge. pima county emt. I hadn’t even realized the ambulance had roared up, but there it is, a big white vehicle with whirling red lights on the top.
“What happened?” the medic asks, crouching next to Gabby.
“I have no idea!” Lili pushes in front of me. Her mouth is a triangle, her eyes wide and desperate. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s having a seizure.” The medic shines a light into Gabby’s eyes, but there’s no color there, only two orbs that look like shiny white marbles. “Has this ever happened before?”
“No!” Lili looks around frantically, as if she doesn’t believe this is real.
The EMT rolls Gabby onto one side and puts his ear next to her mouth to see if she’s breathing, but he just lets her lie there, flailing. She moves like one of those cartoon characters who touch a live wire and light up like Christmas trees, white skeletons showing through skin. I want to look away, but I can’t.
“Can’t you do something for her?” Lili screams, tugging at the EMT’s sleeve. “Anything? What if she’s dying?”
“I need you girls to get back,” the EMT barks. “I need some space to treat her.”
Cars swish by us on the highway. Some slow down and gawk, curious about the ambulance lights and the girl lying in the underpass, but no one stops. Tears stream down Lili’s face. She spins toward me, her eyes on fire. “I can’t believe you did this to her!”
“I didn’t do anything!” I scream through a clenched jaw.
“Yes, you did! This is all your fault!”
The train’s fading whistle drowns out Lili’s words. I refuse to feel guilty for this. It wasn’t like I even wanted the Twitter Twins to come tonight. How was I supposed to know Gabby was going to get so freaked she’d fall into a convulsive fit? All of a sudden, I’m so sick of the Twitter Twins I can barely breathe. “I didn’t want you two along tonight,” I say through my teeth. “I knew you couldn’t handle it.”
The red and blue ambulance lights streak across Lili’s face. “You could have killed all of us!”
“Oh please.” I ball up my fists. “I had it under control the whole time!”
“How were we supposed to know that?” Lili shrieks. “We thought we were going to die! You have no concept of other people’s feelings! You just . . . you just treat us like toys, doing whatever you want, whenever you want!”
“Watch what you say,” I warn her, aware of the medics around us.
“Or what?” Lili asks, turning to Madeline, who stands off to the side with a blank face. “You agree with me, don’t you, Madeline?” Lili says. “Sutton’s a user. Do you really think she gives a shit about our feelings—about anyone’s feelings? Look at how she toyed with your brother! She’s the reason he left!”
“That’s not true!” I scream, lunging toward Lili. How dare she bring up Thayer! As if she had any idea what things were really like between us!
Charlotte pulls me back before I can tackle Lili. More medics have gathered around Gabby, and a debate has begun over whether to move her or keep her where she is. Lili turns away from us and peers over the EMT’s shoulder at her sister. An oppressive, July-hot wind kicks up, blowing bits of trash along the ground. A Skittles wrapper plasters itself to Gabby’s twitching legs. A cigarette butt rolls dangerously close to one of her hands.
A low, keening wail sounds in the distance: a second set of sirens. We all stand up straighter when we realize it’s a police car. My heart begins to race, sweat dripping down my body.
I clear my throat and face my friends, my voice low and steady. “We cannot tell the cops what really happened. The car stalled for real, okay? This was just an accident.”
Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel look a little sickened, but Gabby’s condition has weakened them. They aren’t thinking of defying me anymore. And even though I violated a sacred Lying Game code, there’s another setin-stone tenet we all live by: If we ever get caught midprank, we stick together. When Laurel almost got busted messing with the twelve-foot holiday tree at La Encantada, we swore up and down she’d been home with us. When Madeline broke her wrist running from security the weekend we dragged the library tables into a ravine, we told her dad she’d fallen hiking. They’ll forgive me for falsely invoking our fail-safe code. We’ll get through this. We always do.
