She sighed. “I’ve only been here for ten minutes and already it’s been a long day,” she moaned. “And from the way Madeline’s acting, something was definitely going on between Sutton and Thayer before he skipped town.” Ethan nodded. “Sounds like Sutton was playing Garrett, then.”
“I guess,” Emma said. She didn’t want to assume her sister was cheating, but it was really looking like she had been.
“So how are you going to find out more?” Ethan asked.
Emma took a long sip of the coffee Charlotte had brought for her. “Continue eavesdropping on all the gossip, maybe?” she said with a shrug.
Ethan looked like he was going to say something else, but he was cut off by the final bell. Both of them snapped to attention. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
“Okay,” Ethan said. He stepped forward just as Emma did. They bumped feet and stepped back.
“Sorry,” Emma murmured.
“It’s cool,” Ethan said gruffly, shifting his backpack higher on his shoulder. Their eyes met for a moment, but then Ethan lowered his head again and scuttled toward the doors. “I’ll see you,” he mumbled.
“Okay,” Emma said to his disappearing shape. She swung around and began to walk in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, a rustling in the bushes made her stop short.
Someone snickered behind a podium. Emma squinted, trying to make out who it was. Was someone watching her?
Was it Laurel again, spying on her and Ethan? Before she could get a glimpse, whoever it was ducked into the school and darted up the stairs.
5
GAME, SET,
OUTMATCHED
After school that day, Emma walked off the tennis court at Wheeler High, Holl ier’s main rival, shading her eyes from the bright glare and smiling bashfully at the smattering of applause. All of Holl ier’s sports teams were playing Wheeler that week, and Emma had just finished a grueling match against a petite redhead. Well, it wasn’t supposed to be grueling—Coach Maggie had basically said that the girl was so subpar she could be beaten with an ankle strain and a badminton racket. Before Emma had arrived in Tucson, the most tennis she’d ever played was on a Ping-Pong table in a dingy basement with Stephan, her Russian foster brother. She did use some of the Russian curse words he had taught her when she wanted to swear during a match without getting in trouble, though.
For me, it was yet another reminder of how different our childhoods had been.
“Good game, Sutton,” several people Emma didn’t recognize said as she passed. She collapsed into a chair on the sidelines, kicked off the state-of-the-art tennis sneakers she’d found in Sutton’s closet—not that they helped her game any—and let out a groan.
“Someone still out of shape?” a voice lilted.
Emma looked up and saw Nisha Banerjee leaning against the fence, a smirk on her face. Nisha’s long, slender fingers rested on her trim waist, her überwhite tennis uniform gleamed—she probably bleached it after tennis uniform gleamed—she probably bleached it after every match—and there wasn’t even a hint of sweat on the terrycloth band that circled her head of sleek, dark hair. She was Sutton’s tennis co-captain, and she never missed a chance to tell Emma how undeserving she was of the title.
Emma bit her lip and tried to tell herself that Nisha was being mean because she was hurting inside—she’d lost her mother this past summer and was dealing with a lot of pain. In a paral ell universe, maybe she and Emma would even bond over their absent mothers.
But not in this universe, I wanted to tell her. Nisha Banerjee and Sutton Mercer were sworn enemies and always would be. If Nisha hadn’t had a solid alibi for the night of my murder—she’d had the entire tennis team over at her house for a sleepover—she would have been at the top of my suspect list.
Emma grabbed her gym bag and made her way inside the school. Wheeler’s locker room smelled like old socks and strawberry-scented body spray. A shower head dripped in the corner, and a flyer for intramural water polo hung limply on the cinderblock wall. Emma crumpled her sweaty white socks into her gym bag, pulled her tennis uniform over her head, and changed into Sutton’s pink ball et flats, denim shorts, and V-neck tee. As she walked toward the sinks, the muscles along the backs of her thighs protested loudly, and she winced. She had eight more tennis matches to go before the end of the season. She’d probably have to get thigh replacements after that.
As she turned the corner, she saw girls in swim caps printed with HOLLIER SWIM TEAM. The room was filled with steam, and shower taps whooshed. Emma caught snippets of conversation: about someone’s butterfly splits, and then about some hot Wheeler swimmer named Devon. When she heard the name Thayer Vega, the hair rose on the back of her neck. She inched toward the showers.
“And you just know Sutton Mercer had something to do with it,” a girl chirped.
“Doesn’t she always?” said another, her voice raspier than the first.
“It’s unreal how Thayer went to her house after everyone says she put his life in danger. I mean, what’s that guy thinking getting involved with her again?” A prickly feeling crawled along Emma’s body. Sutton had put Thayer’s life in danger? Suddenly, she remembered something Ethan had told her on Friday, right before they kissed: There was a rumor that Sutton had almost killed someone with her car. She pictured Thayer’s exaggerated limp as he ran from the Mercers’ house. Was it possible?
Sutton’s iPhone buzzed, and Emma scrambled to answer it. She ducked into a bathroom stal so that the swimmers wouldn’t see her spying and checked the screen. It was an unknown number with a 520 area code.
“hello?” she whispered.
“Sutton?” a low voice grumbled. “This is Detective Quinlan.”
She clenched the phone tighter, her heart lurching.
Emma had grown up fearing the police. Becky had had some run-ins with them, and Emma had always worried the cops would throw her in jail, too, by association. “Yes?” she squeaked.
“I need you to come to the station to answer some questions,” Quinlan barked.
“About… what?”
“Just come.”
Emma couldn’t exactly say no to the police. Sighing, she said she’d be there soon. Then she pocketed the phone and pushed out of the changing room into Wheeler’s marble halls. There was a long line of lockers on the far wall, many of them decorated with stickers, miniature pom-poms, and graffiti that said things like GO WHEELER or ENGLISH SUCKS or JANE IS A HO. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through an open window and cast rectangles of gold onto the cornflower-blue walls.
Emma looked at her phone again. The police station was right next to Holl ier High, five miles away. How was she going to get there? Laurel still wasn’t talking to her, and she’d no doubt report back to the Mercers that Sutton was in trouble again. The questioning could have something to do with Thayer, which meant she couldn’t call Madeline.
Charlotte was still finishing up her tennis match, and Ethan was taking his mom to the doctor. The Twitter Twins were the only option left.
Emma scrolled through Sutton’s iPhone and found Lili’s number.
“Of course I’ll drive you,” Lili said when she answered and Emma explained her plight. “What are friends for?
Gabby and I are on our way!”
In minutes, the Twitter Twins’ shiny white SUV pulled up to the curb. Lili sat in the driver’s seat, wearing a Green Day T-shirt and ripped jeans, while Gabby lounged in überpreppy rugby stripes on the passenger side. Both girls had their iPhones in their laps. As Emma hopped into the back seat, she could feel the twins’ eyes on her.
“So,” Gabby started as they pulled away, her voice dripping with hunger. “You’re going to visit Thayer in jail, aren’t you?”
“We knew it,” Lili said before Emma could answer. Her blue eyes widened as she glanced in the rearview mirror, clumps of mascara dotting her lashes. “We knew you couldn’t stay away.”
“But we won’t tweet about it if you don’t want us to,” Gabby said quickly. “We can keep a secret.” The Twitter Twins, true to their name, were the school’s biggest gossip hounds, airing everyone’s dirty laundry on their Twitter pages.
“I heard his trial is set for a month from now and his dad’s going to let him rot in jail until then,” Lili said. “Do you think he’ll go to prison?”
“I bet he looks good in orange,” Gabby trilled.
“I’m not going to see Thayer,” Emma said as lightly as she could, leaning against the leather backseat. “I, um, just need to sign something about the shoplifting fiasco. The shopkeeper is dropping all charges.” That piece, at least, was true. Ethan knew the salesgirl at Clique and had gotten her to back down.
Gabby frowned, looking disappointed. “Well, since you’re there, you could stop in to see him just for a second, couldn’t you? I’m dying to know where he’s been all this time.”
“You know, don’t you?” Lili jumped in, waving her finger in the air. “Naughty, naughty, Sutton! You knew where he was this whole time and you didn’t tell anyone! So how did you guys communicate? I heard it was secret email accounts.”
Gabby nudged her sister. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Caroline’s sister is friends with a girl whose friend hooked up with the goalie on Thayer’s traveling soccer team,” Lili explained. “Apparently, Thayer told him lots of stuff before he took off.”
Emma glared at the Twitter Twins in the front seat. “I think I feel a migraine coming on,” she said icily, summoning up her best I’m-Sutton-Mercer-and-you-will-do-anything-I-ask voice. “How about we ride the rest of the way in silence?”
The twins looked deflated, but turned down the radio and drove the final stretch in utter silence. Emma glanced out the window at the sand-colored buildings of the University of Arizona whizzing past. Could Sutton have communicated with Thayer through a secret email account?
She hadn’t come across anything on Sutton’s computer or in her bedroom, but Sutton was nothing if not sneaky and smart. They could have communicated any number of ways
—disposable cells, fake email addresses or Twitter accounts, regular old mail …
I racked my memory for any kind of correspondence with Thayer—secretive or not. I saw myself sitting at my desk with a blank computer screen in front me, a familiar feeling of restlessness in my body, like there was something I needed to tell someone, anyone. Maybe Thayer. But the computer screen stayed as white and untouched as fresh snow, the blinking cursor mocking me with its steady beat.
The car passed a ranch called the Lone Range, where three palomino horses grazed in a rectangular pasture. A woman dressed in a flowing white skirt and a raisin-colored tube top sold turquoise jewelry next to a handwritten sign advertising HIGH QUALITY, LOW PRICE. The sun blazed just above the horizon.
When they pulled into the parking lot of the police station, Lili caught Emma’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Do you want us to wait for you?”
