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“Not anytime soon,” Lili said stiffly. Then she perked up.
“Hel o? Yes, I need a cab, please. I’m at the Super Stop on Tanque Verde and Catalina . . .”
A stiff, dusty wind kicked up, fluttering the ends of the girls’ dresses and wafting the acrid scent of gasoline into their nostrils. After Lili hung up, she walked to the front of the mini-mart and perched on the large square ice chest. The pimply smoking boys approached her almost immediately, but she gave them a death glare that sent them scurrying away.
Slowly, the girls piled back into the car. “Should we real y go?” Charlotte asked.
“I hate leaving her alone like this,” Laurel said.
“She’l be fine,” Gabby said in a tight voice. “We’re like a mile from our house—she could walk home if she wanted. She’s just being a stubborn sore loser. We’l have a better time without her.”
As Madeline maneuvered the car onto the highway, Emma twisted around to look at Lili one last time. She was staring at the car with unmasked fury, her crown now crumpled in her hand. A chil crawled down Emma’s spine, and she said a silent thank-you that Lili wasn’t coming on the camping trip. She could handle just one Twitter Twin. Right?
Wrong, I thought. Emma was going into the desert at night with one of my kil ers, and I had no idea if she’d be coming back out again.
Chapter 27
A Shove in the Dark
As the car climbed higher up Mount Lemmon, the cacti gave way to deciduous pine trees, and the air thinned. The road curved up the rocky slope, offering stunning views of sparkling Tucson below.
“How much higher are we going?” Charlotte asked as they passed yet another camping spot. Several campers were parked in the lot, and a family was cooking burgers on one of the public barbecue gril s.
“A little higher stil ,” Gabby said, leaning forward between the seats.
Final y, after they passed three more scenic lookouts and made two wrong turns that forced them to reverse back down the mountain, Gabby screeched, “There it is!”
Madeline pul ed the car into a flat gravel lot. A tiny wooden sign read CAMPING. Another was marked TRAILS, and a third warned WATCH FOR RATTLESNAKES.
The girls got out and unloaded the gear from the backseat. They’d climbed several thousand feet in elevation, and the air was sharp and cold. Goose bumps rose on Emma’s skin. Gabby slipped out of her toga and changed into jeans and a hoodie, and the other girls did the same.
“We should probably put on sneakers, too,” Gabby instructed, pul ing a pair of Nikes from her bag. “The springs are about a mile hike from here.”
“We’re going to hike in the dark?” Emma blurted. She could barely see the scrubby trail that wound into the desert. A whistling, lonely wind blew tumbleweeds across the parking lot.
“That’s what flashlights are for.” Gabby pul ed out a long, silver Maglite, heavy enough to bash someone’s head in. When she switched the knob to the on position, nothing happened. “Huh.”
Madeline and Charlotte had flashlights, too, but only one of them worked, spewing a weak, pale yel ow beam onto the trail before them. “This seems like a bad idea,” Emma said, her heart beating furiously. “Maybe we should come back another time.”
Gabby hefted her backpack onto her shoulders. “Is Sutton Mercer . . . afraid?”
Emma gritted her teeth. Laurel looped her arm through Emma’s. “It’l be fine,” she said. “Promise.”
“Let’s go.” Gabby’s shoes made a crunching sound on the gravel as she marched toward the trailhead. Madeline pul ed something out of her backpack. A flash of chrome glinted in the moonlight, and there was a sloshing sound of liquid hitting the sides of a bottle. “Here,” she whispered, handing the flask to Emma. “Liquid courage.”
Emma closed her fingers around the bottle and undid the top, but she only pretended to drink; she had to stay alert. The girls started down the trail, one after the other, dark shadows against a blue-black sky. Gabby’s white hoodie gave off a soft glow, making it easier to keep sight of her, but the trail was narrow, and prickly cacti jutted out from al angles. Behind Emma, Laurel stumbled on a root, and Madeline’s sleeve tangled in a tree branch. Gabby zigzagged the flashlight back and forth along the trail, but about five minutes after they’d started, the light died out, leaving them in complete darkness.
Everyone stopped. “Uh-oh,” Charlotte said.
Emma turned around and squinted at where they’d come from, but the trail snaked over rol ing hil s, and she could no longer see the parking lot. She pul ed out Sutton’s iPhone and put it on flashlight mode, but it shed very little light. She also noticed she had no service. Her palms began to sweat. “What do we do?”
“Let’s keep going,” Gabby insisted. “It’s not much farther. I promise.”
Each of them pressed close to the girl in front of her, not wanting to get lost from the pack. “This is freaking me out,”
Madeline said. “Someone tel a story or something. I need a distraction.”
“Two Truths and a Lie!” Laurel suggested with a nervous giggle. “We haven’t played in forever.”
“Fun!” Gabby said, pushing a tree branch out of the way. It snapped back and smacked Emma’s jaw.
Madeline snickered. “Do you even know how to play, Gabs?”
“Uh, yeah.” Gabby skirted around a boulder. “Just because I’m not a member of the Lying Game doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”
