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“I don’t know.” My heart rattles. “Mom, I don’t even know if it’s love with him.”
“I think you do,” she whispers confidently.
Crap, she’s right.
She always is.
Like it or not, I’m in flipping love with Lucas Graves.
And I don’t know how to handle love without burning it to ashes.
My eyes sting with panic.
I press my fingers to my lips, steadying my voice. “I... I gotta go. I have to teach in the morning and it’s crazy late. Those little monsters wear me out.”
“But they love you anyway, don’t they?” She laughs. “So do I, sweet girl. You be safe out there, all right? And call if you need anything else.”
“I will.”
Yeah, right.
Real safe with dead bodies everywhere.
I didn’t even hint at why Redhaven still might eat me alive.
But I’m smiling anyway, and I don’t want to worry her this late.
“Love you too, Mom. Good night.”
“Good night, sweet girl.”
The call ends and I sprawl out sideways across the bed, staring at the room with my heart in a knot.
That was helpful and entirely awful, making me look at things I’ve been refusing to admit.
Like the fact that I love Lucas Graves.
Just what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
By my lunch break the next day, I’m still as confused as ever about Lucas and turning some things over about Emma.
About Roger.
About this gory mess, and why it seems to revolve around me.
I nibble at the little finger sandwiches I threw together this morning, scrolling my phone as I search Emma Santos Instagram model.
The results immediately bring me to her Insta account.
Only, it’s been taken over by someone else.
Her mother, I think, and all of the most recent posts are—oh.
My heart can’t take this.
All of the most recent posts are desperate pleas for any information on her whereabouts. She’s asking for recent sightings, tips, offering a cash reward that sounds like it’s all they can afford.
God.
Emma looked so much like her mother, Marina Santos. She’s a tall, slim woman with a pointed chin and a heart-shaped face and soft brown eyes that look as liquid as Emma’s probably did when she was alive.
In one photo, she’s holding a huge piece of poster board with a blown-up color photograph of a smiling, laughing Emma taped to it. Below it, big blocky Magic Marker letters are colored in with a phone number and email listed.
Have you seen my daughter?
Help my baby girl come home.
Wrecked.
I’m about to start bawling right here in the break room at school.
I linger on the number, temptation itching in my fingers, but I make myself scroll past to older photos. Emma’s photos aren’t the sort of staged perfection you’d expect from Instagram influencers, but instead they’re candid shots of her just living life.
Always in motion, this vibrant thing who always seems like she’s mid-laugh, mid-turn, never quite holding still, her eyes bright and sparkling clear.
She was so beautiful.
So full of life.
It’s hard for me to think a girl like her would have overdosed so easily. The patterns in her posts don’t reflect that at all.
Fitness, lifestyle, healthy foods, taking pleasure in so many simple things. I can’t see where she’d even be a drug fiend, but I guess you never know what demons people are really fighting behind closed doors.
I keep scrolling, unsure what I’m looking for.
It’s not like she’s going to have an old photo posted with any of the Arrendells—let alone Culver Jacobin.
Also, my battery’s at 9%. My break’s almost over and I should just give it up.
I start swiping the app closed, but accidentally flick to another photo instead.
Emma again, this time dancing in a club. The colored lights play beautifully off her gold skin. I can’t make out her dance partner in the shadows.
But I can see the bracelet glimmering on her wrist, shining rose gold against disco spangles.
A simple bar. A delicate chain.
Xs engraved on the familiar bar.
Holy shit!
It’s the same bracelet I stuffed in the bottom drawer of my dresser, hoping to never look at it again after what Lucas told me about Celeste and Montero Arrendell.
Only mine has seven Xs.
Emma’s...
I think Emma’s has six.
Every muscle seizes up. I stare at her slender wrist, at the look of joy on her face, my lungs slowly filling with cement.
No. No fucking way.
Oh, something is very, very rotten in the state of Denmark—especially when I’m sure she wasn’t wearing that bracelet when I found her body.
And I’ve got 8% battery left to do something about it.
Inhaling sharply, I start to punch in the phone number—when my phone buzzes in my hand, nearly making me shriek.
I jump back like I’m holding a palmful of bees.
I stare at a number I don’t recognize.
Local area code.
The only local numbers I have saved are Lucas, Ulysses, Nora, Janelle, and the furniture shop that delivered my bed, and it’s not any of them.
