Emma gave a short laugh. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She’d hung out several times with Madeline over the past week. They’d even had a heart-to-heart about Thayer and a few laughs in a spa hot tub. In those moments, Madeline had reminded Emma of her tough-but-caring friend Alexandra Stokes, who lived in Henderson, Nevada.
Emma looked at Ethan. “Maybe Madeline was telling the truth. I mean, do you remember what you were doing on the thirty-first?”
“Actually, I do. It was the first day of the meteor shower.”
“The Perseids.” Emma nodded. The first time she’d met Ethan, he’d been stargazing.
A shy smile crept onto Ethan’s face like he was remembering the moment, too. “Yep, I was probably on my front porch. The shower goes on for, like, a week.”
“And you were camping out there because stars are more interesting than people, huh?” Emma teased.
Pink colored Ethan’s cheeks and he looked away. “Some people.”
“Should I ask Madeline again?” Emma pressed. “Do you think she’s hiding something?”
Ethan shook his head slowly. “You never know with those girls. Not that I was privy to their inner-circle secrets, but something has always seemed off about Madeline and Charlotte. Before you came to town, when Sutton was still alive, it constantly seemed like they were vying for her attention and her position at the same time.” He stared off into the distance. “Like they loved her and hated her.”
Gripping Sutton’s phone, Emma touched the Twitter icon and called up each of Sutton’s friends’ pages, finding nothing remarkable on the thirty-first. But when she flipped to the tweets on September 1, something on Madeline’s page caught her eye. She’d written a shout-out to @Chamberlainbabe, Charlotte’s Twitter handle. Thanks for being there for me last night, Char. True friends stick together, no matter what.
“True friends,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Aw.”
“More like Huh?” Something wasn’t right. “Madeline and Charlotte aren’t touchy-feely. At all.” To Emma, they seemed more like uneasy comrades in the same popular-girl army. Then Ethan pointed to last night. “Madeline’s talking about the thirty-first.”
I shivered. Maybe they’d been with me that night. Maybe they’d finished off their pseudo–best friend together. And maybe, if Emma wasn’t careful, she’d be next.
Emma ran her hands down her face, then glanced at Ethan again. Guilt welled up in her chest. Whoever killed her sister was monitoring Emma’s every move. How long before the murderer realized Ethan knew the truth about her and tried to silence him, too?
“You don’t have to help me, you know,” she whispered. “It’s not safe.”
Ethan turned to face her, his eyes intense. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“Are you sure?”
When he nodded, Emma was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. “Well, thank you. I was drowning by myself.”
Ethan looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who drowns in anything.”
Emma wanted to reach out and touch the spot where moonlight splashed his cheek. He shifted an inch closer until their knees bumped and his face angled toward hers, like he was about to kiss her. Emma felt the heat of his body as he moved closer, very aware of his full bottom lip.
Her mind swirled, remembering the night before, when he’d told her he’d begun to fall for the girl who’d taken over Sutton’s life. That he’d begun to fall for her. A different kind of girl would know how to seal the deal. Emma kept a list in her journal called Ways to Flirt, but she’d never actually put any of the techniques into action.
Snap.
Emma shot up, cocking her head to the right. Across the court, just behind a tree, came the faint blue glow of a cell phone, like someone was standing there, watching them.
“Do you see that?”
“What?” Ethan whispered.
Emma craned her neck. But there was only darkness, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that someone had seen—and heard—everything.
Chapter 3
Spinning Her Wheels
On Monday morning, Emma sat at a potter’s wheel in the ceramics room at Hollier High. She was surrounded by lumps of cement-gray clay, wood tools for carving and cutting, and lopsided bowls on wooden slats waiting for kiln firing. The air smelled earthy and wet, and there was the constant whir of wheels spinning and clunky feet clopping the treadles.
Madeline perched on the stool to Emma’s right, glowering at her potter’s wheel as though it were a torture device. “What’s the point of making pottery? Isn’t that what Pottery Barn is for?”
Charlotte snorted. “Pottery Barn doesn’t sell pottery! Do you think Crate and Barrel sells crates and barrels, too?”
“And Pier 1 sells piers?” Laurel giggled a row ahead of them.
“Less talking, more creating, girls,” said Mrs. Gilliam, their ceramics instructor, snaking around the wheels, her bell anklet jingling as she walked. Mrs. Gilliam was one of those people who looked as though she couldn’t be anything but an art teacher. She wore billowing jersey pants, jacquard vests, and statement necklaces over batik tunics that smelled like musty patchouli. Her words were emphatic, reminding Emma of an old social worker she’d known named Mrs. Thuerk, who always spoke as though she was delivering a Shakespearean monologue. How now, Emma . . . art thou being treated well in this Nevada home for children of fosterly care?
“Great work, Nisha,” Mrs. Gilliam cooed as she passed the glazing table, where several students were painting their pottery in earth tones. Nisha Banerjee, who was Sutton’s cocaptain on the tennis team, turned around and smirked triumphantly at Emma. Her eyes flashed with pure hate, which sent a ripple of fear through Emma’s chest. It was clear Nisha and Sutton had some seriously bad blood between them—Nisha had been giving Emma the evil eye ever since she stepped into Sutton’s life.
Looking away, Emma positioned a gray clay blob in the center of the wheel, cupped her hands around it, and slowly let the wheel turn until she had a bowl-like shape. Laurel let out a low whistle. “How do you know how to do that?”
“Uh, beginner’s luck.” Emma shrugged like it was no big deal, but her hands trembled slightly. A headline popped in her head: Master Pottery Skills Expose Emma Paxton Posing as Sutton Mercer. Scandal! Emma had taken pottery back in Henderson. She’d spent hours using the wheel after school; it was a welcome alternative to going home to Ursula and Steve, the hippie foster parents she’d lived with at the time, who didn’t believe in bathing. The No-Suds rule applied to them, their clothing, and their eight mangy dogs.
Emma sliced her hand through the bowl and let out a fake sigh of disappointment when it collapsed. “So much for that.”
As soon as Mrs. Gilliam disappeared into the kiln, Emma eyed Madeline and lifted her foot from the treadle. Madeline and the others still made the most sense to be Sutton’s killers. But she had no proof.
Wiping her hands on a towel, she pulled out Sutton’s iPhone and scrolled through the calendar feature. “Uh, guys?” she said. “Does anyone know when I had my last highlights appointment? I forgot to put it in my calendar and I want to make a note for when I need to go in next. Was it . . . August thirty-first?”
“What day was that?” Charlotte asked. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. She mashed her hands way too hard into the clay, turning the bowl she was making into a soupy pancake.