Before Emma could say anything else, Madeline pointed at her accusingly. “So what’s going on with you and my brother, anyway? I thought you said you were through with him.”
“I am through with him, I promise.” Emma lifted her hands defensively. “We were talking, he kissed me, I didn’t pull away quickly enough, and Ethan saw. End of story. It was an accident.”
Madeline snorted. “You’re quite the safety hazard. Thayer sure seems to have a lot of accidents when you’re around.”
“Is he okay?” Emma asked. She felt a little guilty that she’d run after Ethan last night without checking on Thayer, but it had looked as if they hadn’t had enough time to do any serious damage. Plus, Ethan was her boyfriend, not Thayer.
“He’s fine,” Laurel said without looking up from her makeup. One eye was painted with bright teal glitter shadow, and the other was still natural, giving her a weird Clockwork Orange squint. “I drove him home right after the fight and helped him clean up. As usual,” she added pointedly.
Emma cringed. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” she said softly. She picked up a stuffed fox from Laurel’s bed and hugged it to her chest.
“You can’t help it. You’re basically catnip to boys,” Charlotte said dismissively. “Speaking of boys, did you make up with Ethan all right?”
“Um, yeah.” Emma hid her face behind her coffee cup, her cheeks burning. Charlotte’s eyes narrowed.
“Sutton, is there anything you’d like to tell us?” she asked, a wicked smile slowly stretching across her face. Madeline looked up curiously from the magazine she’d been leafing through. Even the Twitter Twins put down their phones.
“Is she, like, glowing?” Charlotte asked the others.
“I’d say she definitely made up with Ethan okay.” Madeline grinned.
Emma hugged her knees to her chest and beamed through her blushing cheeks. Laurel poked her in the side. “Talk, woman!”
“Okay, okay!” Emma said. “Ethan and I … last night, we … you know …”
The end of her sentence trailed off, but it didn’t matter. The room roiled with shrieks and giggles. Only Nisha was looking at Emma with concern. Emma cringed, remembering how she’d spilled the story of Ethan’s file to Nisha last night.
Emma ducked, trying to fend off the girls’ demands for details. “Use your imagination, ladies,” she said.
Madeline smirked. “You don’t want us to do that,” she deadpanned.
After that, all was forgiven, and the Twitter Twins started typing away on their phones, alerting their followers to “stay tuned” for a big event that night.
“Don’t give it all away,” grumbled Madeline. “If Celeste catches wind of anything, the whole thing is blown.”
“I don’t think she gets Twitter feeds on Mars,” said Gabby.
Laurel put on the new Rihanna album, and soon they were all sprawled across the floor, making various props and chatting about how the séance would turn out.
Emma went downstairs to grab a bag of pretzels and some Diet Cokes from the kitchen. She stopped in the living room, where Drake was curled up happily atop a sofa he definitely wasn’t allowed on. His tail flopped lazily against the cushions as she stroked his neck. For the first time in ages, she felt as if she was where she belonged.
“Hey.” Nisha’s voice interrupted her thoughts. She came over and rested a hand on Drake’s ear. “I love this dog,” she said, scratching him. “My dad’s allergic, so we’ve never been allowed to have one. I’d probably get something little that I could put clothes on, though.”
“You could wear matching tennis outfits and carry it in your duffel,” Emma said. They both laughed at the image.
“So did you and Ethan talk about … you know?” Nisha asked.
Emma flushed and craned her neck to look up and down the hall. Mrs. Mercer was in the backyard gardening, and Mr. Mercer was out playing golf. She pulled the key card from her pocket and handed it back to Nisha.
“Yeah, he explained everything to me. It’s not a great story—things haven’t really been easy for him.” She blinked uncomfortably. “I’m sorry I unloaded all of that on you, and I’d really appreciate it if you could, you know, keep it to yourself.” She lowered her gaze. “But thank you for checking on me,” she added. “You’ve been a really good friend.”
Nisha opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, then closed it again. They stood looking at each other, secrets still hanging in the air. Then another burst of laughter came from Laurel’s room.
“I guess we’d better get back to work,” Emma said.
Nisha looked down, suddenly shy. “Sutton—thanks for letting me do this with you guys. I’m really excited about it.”
Emma hooked her arm through her friend’s and straightened her shoulders. “No, thank you. For the idea, and for all your help with my mom. Now, let’s go put on a show.”
“Let’s punk this bitch,” Nisha agreed. And arm in arm, my twin sister and my former archrival went upstairs.
30
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
A car door slammed in the darkness, and a middle-aged woman wearing a shiny gold turban stepped into the clearing. The sun had just slipped behind the mountains. Sabino Canyon was alive with sounds: Crickets and birds sang in the undergrowth, while farther away a chorus of coyotes started their nocturnal howls. An early owl swooped overhead.
Along with the turban, the woman had on a long purple velvet cloak and dramatic blue eyeshadow that swept up to her thinly plucked brows. Enormous gemstones glittered on each of her fat fingers. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “This is the séance?” she asked, blowing twin tusks of smoke out through her nose.
“Great, you made it,” Madeline said, walking over to the strange woman and shaking her hand. She’d told the other girls that she had a last-minute surprise for them, but Emma hadn’t imagined it would be this good. “Ladies, this is Madame Darkling. She’s a, um, real medium.”
The other girls barely concealed their grins. Madame Darkling looked as if she’d just come from central casting for a phone-a-psychic infomercial. Emma could see a grubby gray tennis shoe poking out from under her robes.
“Perfect,” said Charlotte. She rummaged in her shoulder bag and pulled out a manila folder, which was labeled GHOST WHISPERER PRANK in deceptively cheerful pink marker. “Here’s the intel on our subject,” she explained, handing it to the psychic. “We did a little research. Her grandmother was a pretty well-known writer. She died last year, but Celeste was close with her. Might be a good angle.”
Madame Darkling rifled through the pages. A photograph of Celeste’s grandmother, a plump old woman with rust-colored hair and too much rouge, fluttered to the ground.
“Jeanette Echols? Sure, I know her stuff. Piece of cake,” the medium said, leaning over to retrieve the photograph. She stubbed out her cigarette in the dirt before carefully picking up the butt and whisking it into a pocket hidden somewhere in her cloak. Laurel and Emma exchanged glances, stifling their giggles.
“Where’d you find her?” Charlotte whispered to Madeline as Madame Darkling helped herself to the carrots and dip they’d been munching on while they set up.
“Craigslist, of course,” Madeline said. “The venue of all lost souls.”
“She just stuck a finger in the hummus, you guys,” Laurel said under her breath.
“Maybe it’s haunted hummus,” Emma joked.
The girls had spent the afternoon running last-minute errands and setting the stage for the prank. They all wore long black robes embroidered with metallic stars that Charlotte had rented from a costume shop. Everyone except Nisha, that is, who wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, like a stage tech. Her job was to hide in the bushes and activate all the “special effects” they had devised for the prank, including a portable surround-sound system preloaded with Halloween noises like groans and rattling chains. But the best part was a group of helium balloons painted with scary, glow-in-the-dark faces that Nisha could drag around on a ribbon. The girls had tested them in Laurel’s bedroom earlier. In the dark, they gave a perfectly terrifying impression of floating disembodied heads.
I was proud of my friends for coming up with such a great prank—but I felt a little sad, too. They were about to conduct a fake séance in the same place I’d spent the last few hours of my life. If only there was a way I could really talk to Emma. If only Madame Darkling was a bona fide medium and I could use her to communicate with my friends. I’d tell Madeline and Charlotte how much I missed them. I’d remind Laurel that I was proud of her, and sorry we’d grown apart. I’d tell Emma that I love her, and thanks for everything she’s done for me. I’d even say hi to Nisha and the Twitter Twits. You don’t know how much your friends mean to you until you’re forced to watch them from the far side of the breach.
Emma’s skin hummed as if an electrical storm were brewing overhead, though the evening sky was clear and starting to fill with stars. She hadn’t been in the canyon since her first day here, when she’d waited for hours for Sutton to meet her. Her mind kept busily reconstructing what she knew about her sister’s last night—the date with Thayer and the runaway Volvo that had hit him, the argument with Mr. Mercer, and then … Becky. How could Becky have killed Sutton? Had she strangled her, or had she used a weapon? She’d had a knife when the cops took her to the hospital; maybe that had been the murder weapon.
And where had she hidden the body? It could be anywhere, even the underbrush just out of sight of the clearing. Emma took a few steps toward the woods, then stopped. Someone would have discovered it by now, if it were so easy to see. Here in the dark was not the time to hunt for clues.
“Almost showtime, ladies,” Madeline announced. Emma turned back to the circle, where the girls were gathering. Anticipation hung thick in the air. Charlotte held up her hands like a camera lens, surveying the area one last time. The Twins were doing some kind of theater warm-up exercise, saying “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue” back and forth to each other. Madeline started handing out small cardboard boxes.
Emma lifted the top of hers. Inside was a papier-mâché mask in the form of a horned satyr, nestled in a bed of tissue paper.
“These are awesome,” Lili said. She and Gabby wore comedy and tragedy masks, one smiling and one frowning. Once they’d put them on, Emma couldn’t tell which girl was which. There was a whiskered black cat for Laurel and an eerie porcelain-doll face for Charlotte. In true diva form, Madeline had secured the only beautiful mask for herself—a red, feathered domino that covered her eyes and cheeks.
“Be careful with these. They have to make it back to the ballet closet by Monday morning, or I’m screwed,” Madeline warned.
A rhythmic chanting from behind the rocks made Emma jump. Nisha had started the music. Tendrils of “mist” from the smoke machine crept across the clearing. Even being in on the joke, Emma felt the short hairs on the back of her neck prickle. A few years earlier she’d had a job at the ticket counter for a Halloween haunted house. She remembered how silly the whole thing had looked when the lights were on—anyone could see how fake the foam monsters were, and even the professional-quality monster makeup seemed cakey and silly in the harsh light of day. But when the lights went down, when the smoke machine billowed and the music echoed creepily and the actors hid in the shadows waiting to jump out at their victims, the house became greater than the sum of its parts.
Comments