The box opened with a creak. Inside was a gleaming silver charm in the shape of a locomotive engine.
Emma ran her fingers over it. A shard of paper poked up from the velvet pouch inside the lid. She pulled out a tiny rolled-up scroll to find a note written in block letters.
THE OTHERS MIGHT NOT WANT TO REMEMBER THE TRAIN PRANK, BUT I’LL BE SEIZED BY THE MEMORY ALWAYS. THANKS!
Emma jammed the note back into the box and shut it. Train prank. Last night, in Laurel’s bedroom, she’d frantically skimmed through at least fifty Lying Game pranks. None of them had to do with a train.
The train charm etched itself in my mind and suddenly, a faint glimmer came to me. A train’s whistle shrieking in the distance. A scream, and then whirling lights. Was it . . . were we . . . ?
But as quickly as it arrived, the memory sped away.
Chapter 2
CSI, Tucson
Ethan Landry opened the chain-link gate to the public tennis court and let himself in. Emma watched him stroll toward her, his shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets. Even though it was after ten, there was enough moonlight overhead to see his perfectly distressed jeans, scuffed Converse, and messy dark hair that curled sweetly over the collar of a navy flannel shirt. An untied shoelace dragged across the court behind him.
“Mind if I leave the lights off?” Ethan gestured to the coin-operated meter that turned on giant floodlights for night play.
Emma nodded, feeling her insides leap. Being in the dark with Ethan didn’t sound so shabby.
“So what’s this train prank?” he asked, referring to the text Emma had sent hours earlier when she asked him to join her at the courts. It had become a meeting place for them, somewhere that felt uniquely theirs.
Emma handed the silver charm to Ethan. “Someone left it for Sutton at the country club. There was a note attached.” A chill ran down her spine as she relayed what the note had said.
A motorcycle rumbled in the distance. Ethan turned the charm over in his hands. “I don’t know anything about a train, Emma.”
Emma’s heart tugged when Ethan called her by her real name. It was such a relief. But it also felt dangerous. The killer had told her to tell no one. And she’d broken the rule.
“But it sounds like whoever gave it to you was part of the prank,” Ethan went on, “or a victim of it.”
Emma nodded.
They were silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of a lone basketball bouncing on the far court. Then Emma reached in her pocket. “I have something to show you.” She passed her iPhone to him, her stomach flipping over as their fingers accidentally brushed. Ethan was cute—really cute.
I had to admit Ethan was cute, too—in that disheveled, brooding, mystery-boy way. It was fun to watch my sister’s crush develop. It made me feel closer to her, like it was something we would’ve obsessed over together if I were still alive.
Emma cleared her throat as Ethan scrolled through the page she’d loaded. “It’s a list of everyone in Sutton’s life,” she explained, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth. “I’ve gone through everything—Sutton’s Facebook, her phone, her emails. And now I’m almost positive I’ve got the date of her death narrowed down to August thirty-first.”
Ethan turned toward her. “How can you be sure?”
Emma took a quick breath. “Check this out.” She tapped the Facebook icon. “I wrote to Sutton at ten-thirty the night of the thirty-first.” She moved the screen over so Ethan could read her note: This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. You’re not by any chance adopted, are you? “And then Sutton responded at twelve-fifty-six, here.” Emma scrolled down the message page and showed what Sutton had written back: OMG. I can’t believe this. Yes, I was totally adopted . . .
An unreadable expression flickered across Ethan’s face. “Then how can you think she died on the thirty-first if she was writing you messages on Facebook?”
“I was the only person Sutton wrote or talked to that night.” Emma scrolled through Sutton’s call log from the thirty-first. The last answered call was from Lilianna Fiorello, one of Sutton’s friends, at 4:32 P.M. Then at 8:39, MISSED CALL, LAUREL. Three more missed calls at 10:32, 10:45, and 10:59 from Madeline. Emma flipped ahead to the next day’s log. The missed calls began again the following morning: 9:01, Madeline; 9:20, Garrett; 10:36, Laurel.
“Maybe she was busy and didn’t pick up her phone,” Ethan suggested. He took back the phone and clicked to Sutton’s Facebook page, scrolling through her Wall posts.
Emma grasped Sutton’s locket. “I’ve looked through Sutton’s entire call log back to December. Practically every call she gets, she answers. And if she doesn’t answer it, she calls whoever it was back later.”
“Then what about this post she wrote on the thirty-first?” Ethan asked, pointing to the screen. “Couldn’t this mean she was avoiding everyone?” The last post Sutton had ever written was a few hours before Emma’s note: Ever think about running away? Sometimes I do.
Emma shook her head vehemently. “Nothing fazed my sister. Not even being strangled.” Just saying the words my sister connected her to Sutton in a deep, powerful way. At first, Emma had wondered if Sutton really had run away—maybe sticking her long-lost twin sister in her place had been part of an elaborate prank. But once someone nearly strangled Emma in Charlotte’s house, she became convinced Sutton’s death was for real.
“Ethan, think about it,” she went on. “Sutton writes this random post about wanting to run away . . . and then someone kills her? It’s too much of a coincidence. What if Sutton didn’t write this—what if the killer did? That way, if someone noticed Sutton was missing, they’d read her Facebook and assume she ran away, not died. It was a way for the killer to cover her ass.”
Ethan rolled a forgotten tennis ball on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yellow fabric. “It still doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later telling you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves.
A feathery chill darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the killer wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the killer realized I existed, she wanted me here so I could slip into Sutton’s life. No body, no crime.”
Ethan’s eyes darted across the court, like he still didn’t believe Emma, but I was almost positive my sister was right. I woke up in Emma’s life the night of August 31, just hours before Emma discovered the snuff film of me. I doubted I’d straddled both Alive Sutton and Ghost Sutton worlds at the same time.
Emma gazed at the dark silhouettes of trees in the distance. “So what was Sutton doing that night? Where was she, who was she with?”
“Have you found any hints in her room?” Ethan asked. “Any emails, notes in her calendar . . . ?”
Emma shook her head. “I’ve scoured her journal. But it’s so cryptic and random, like she assumed it was going to fall into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died.”
“What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried. “Crumpled-up notes in her trash can?”
“Nope.” Emma’s eyes dropped to the space between her feet. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.
Ethan sighed. “Okay. How about her friends? Do you know where they were that night?”
“I asked Madeline,” Emma said. “She told me she didn’t remember.”
“That’s convenient.” Ethan scuffed the tip of his sneaker over the court. “I could see Madeline doing it, though. The beautiful, unhinged ballerina. Like Black Swan for real.”