Thayer smirked as though he was reading her mind. “I’m sure you have your reasons.” And then he leaned back and stared at her like he could see right through her—like he was why she was here, pretending to be her dead sister.
Emma looked around, assessing her options for escape, but Thayer grabbed her arm before she could put any distance between them. His grip was hard, and she let out an instinctive, piercing scream. Thayer clamped a hand over her mouth. “Are you insane?” he growled.
“Mmm!” Emma moaned, struggling to breathe through Thayer’s suffocating hold. He was standing so close that Emma could smell his cinnamon gum and see the tiny freckles that dotted the bridge of his nose. She struggled against him, panic welling in her chest. She bit down hard on his hand, tasting earthy, salty sweat.
Thayer swore and stepped back, letting Emma go. She spun away from him. His elbow crashed into a sea-green vase on Sutton’s bookshelf. It tipped over, plummeted to the ground, and shattered into dozens of tiny pieces.
A light flipped on in the hall. “What the hell was that?” a voice called. Footsteps sounded and, seconds later, Sutton’s parents burst into the room.
They moved to Emma’s side. Mrs. Mercer’s hair was mussed and she wore a baggy yellow nightshirt under a robe. Mr. Mercer’s white undershirt was messily tucked into blue flannel pajama bottoms and his hair stood out straight from his head in silver-flecked spikes.
As soon as the parents noticed the intruder, their eyes widened. Mr. Mercer inserted himself between Emma and Thayer. Mrs. Mercer wrapped a protective arm around Emma’s shoulders and pulled her close. Emma sank gratefully into Sutton’s adoptive mother’s embrace, rubbing the five angry marks that had popped up on her skin where Thayer had gripped her.
I had mixed feelings about my parents protecting Emma from Thayer. Were they simply worried because she’d screamed … or was it because of something more sinister about Thayer himself, something they knew about him from a past run-in?
“You!” Mr. Mercer bellowed at Thayer. “How dare you? How did you get in?”
Thayer just stared at him, a hint of a smirk on his face. Mr. Mercer’s nostrils flared. His square jaw was set menacingly, his blue eyes blazed, and a vein stuck out on his temple, visibly throbbing. For a second, Emma wondered if Mr. Mercer assumed Sutton had invited Thayer into her room and was mad that his daughter let a boy in at three in the morning. But then she noticed the way Mr. Mercer and Thayer were crouched, as if ready to fight. It felt like something dark and hate-filled hung in the air between them, something that had nothing to do with Sutton at all.
More footsteps pounded up the stairs. Laurel and Madeline appeared in the doorway, having come from the den where the sleepover was taking place. “What’s going on?” Laurel grumbled, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight of Thayer. Her light eyes opened wide and she covered her mouth with trembling fingers.
Madeline was dressed in a black camisole and her black hair was pulled back in a perfect bun even though it was the middle of the night. She elbowed her way between Laurel and Mrs. Mercer. Her mouth fell open. She reached out for Laurel’s arm as if she might fall to the ground in shock.
“Thayer!” Madeline’s voice was shrill, her expression an odd mixture of anger, confusion, and relief. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? Are you okay?”
The muscles in Thayer’s arms flexed as he balled his fists. He glanced around at Laurel, Madeline, Emma, and the Mercer parents like he was a wounded animal wanting to flee his attackers. After a beat, he spun on his heel and bolted in the opposite direction. He shot across Sutton’s bedroom, hoisting himself out the window and shimmying down the oak tree that served as an escape hatch from Sutton’s room. Emma, Laurel, and Madeline flew to the window and watched Thayer scramble through the darkness. His gait was uneven—he favored his left leg with a pronounced limp as he moved across the grass.
“Get back here!” Mr. Mercer screamed, racing from Sutton’s bedroom and banging down the stairs. Emma scampered after him, with Mrs. Mercer, Laurel, and Madeline following behind. Charlotte and the Twitter Twins staggered out from the den, looking sleepy and confused.
Everyone gathered around the open doorway. Mr. Mercer had run halfway across the yard. “I’m calling the cops!” he shouted. “Get back here, damn it!”
No answer came. Tires screeched around the corner. Just like that, Thayer was gone.
Madeline whirled around to stare at Emma. Tears welled in her blue eyes and her face was red and blotchy. “Did you invite him here?”
Emma gasped. “What? No!”
But Madeline sprinted out the door. A few sharp bleeps pierced through the air, and Madeline’s SUV lights illuminated the darkness.
Laurel shot Emma a pissed-off look. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Emma protested.
Laurel looked at the other girls for support. Charlotte cleared her throat. The Twitter Twins fingered the iPhones in their hands, surely itching to post an update about this to their many social-networking sites. Laurel’s glare was icy and incredulous, and Emma could guess why. Laurel and Thayer had been best friends before his disappearance, and Laurel had a major crush on him. But Thayer had barely registered Laurel’s existence in Sutton’s bedroom. From what Emma had gathered over the past few weeks in Tucson, something big had gone on between Sutton and Thayer before he went missing.
“Didn’t do anything?” Laurel whipped back to face Emma. “You got him in trouble! Again.”
Mrs. Mercer ran her hands over her face. “Please, Laurel. Not now.” She stepped toward Emma, cinching the belt of the pink terry-cloth bathrobe she’d stopped to grab on her way downstairs. “Sutton, are you alright?”
Laurel rolled her eyes. “Look at her. She’s fine.”
Finally, Drake, the Great Dane, trotted down the stairs and nudged Mrs. Mercer’s hand with his slobbery nose. “Some guard dog you are,” Mrs. Mercer muttered. Then she turned back to Emma, Laurel, and the three remaining girls in the foyer. “I think you girls should go home now,” she said wearily.
Without a word, Charlotte and the Twitter Twins turned back to the den, presumably to gather up their stuff. Emma’s head felt too foggy to follow them, so she trudged back upstairs and took refuge in Sutton’s bedroom to get her bearings. The room looked exactly as she’d left it: Old issues of Vogue lay neatly stacked on Sutton’s bookshelf, necklaces were twined together on her dresser, school notebooks were piled on her white oak desk, and the computer cycled through images of Madeline, Charlotte, Laurel, and Sutton with their arms wrapped around each other—probably celebrating some perfectly pulled-off Lying Game prank. Nothing was missing. Whatever reason Thayer had to break in, it wasn’t theft.