“Yeah, well, spare me your fatherly lectures,” Emma said darkly.
Ethan let out a small, incredulous sniff. They were silent for a little while, driving down the dark streets past the adobe houses and gravel lawns. A boy on a bicycle with a flashing light on the back wobbled on the shoulder.
“I just want you to be safe,” Ethan said finally. “Just hold off visiting him for now—for me? Maybe there’s another way we can figure out what happened that night. A way that gives you solid proof to bring to the police.” Emma let out a sigh. Ethan was right about the risks involved in a jailhouse visit. And she had to admit that the thought of facing Thayer again terrified her. “Fine. I’ll give it a couple more days. After that, if we haven’t made any progress, I’ll have no choice but to talk to Thayer.” Emma may have been reluctant, but I, for one, couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say.
9
STARSTRUCK
“Sutton?” Mrs. Mercer called out as Emma flew into the Mercer house after Ethan dropped her off. “You missed dinner!”
“Uh, yeah, I had some stuff to do after the tennis match,” Emma called vaguely on her way up the stairs.
She heard Mrs. Mercer’s footsteps in the hall. “I’ll leave a plate for you in the warming drawer, okay?”
“Got it,” Emma said, escaping into Sutton’s room like a fugitive. Not that she had any idea what a warming drawer was. And she wasn’t about to have a conversation with Mrs. Mercer right now. One look at Emma’s stricken, freaked-out expression and she’d know something was up.
She shut the door to Sutton’s bedroom and peered around, trying to get her bearings. Get a grip, Emma, she told herself, too keyed up to even make up a headline for what was happening right now. What she needed to do was figure out more about Thayer and his relationship with Sutton. Was it an intense friendship? A romantic tryst? Why had they secretly met the night Sutton died? If Thayer had arrived in Tucson the night of the thirty-first, then he was either the last person to see her alive—or he was her killer.
But where had he been hiding since then? Why had he come back now? And how was she going to find out the answers to those questions without asking him point-blank
—or revealing that she wasn’t Sutton?
Emma wished there were clues in Sutton’s room, but she’d already ransacked the place several times over since she arrived. She’d found information about what the Lying Game was, including pranks Sutton and the others had played and people they’d hurt. She’d scoured Sutton’s Facebook page and emails. She’d even read Sutton’s diary—not that it told her much at all, most of it vague snippets and inside jokes. New evidence wasn’t going to fall into her lap just because she wanted it to.
If only it would. I wished I could beam my thoughts into Emma’s mind and let her know that I’d been in love with Thayer and that we’d gone hiking together the night I died.
This one-way-communication thing was a serious flaw in the whole being-dead thing.
Emma booted up Sutton’s MacBook Air laptop and navigated to the Greyhound website, researching the pickup and drop-off points for Greyhound buses in Seattle and Tucson. It was a long trip, over a day, with a driver change halfway, in Sacramento.
She dialed the customer service number on the site and waited almost ten minutes on hold, listening to a Muzak version of a Britney Spears song. Finally, a sweet-sounding woman with a Southern accent answered. Emma cleared her throat, steeled her nerves, and started to speak.
“I’m really hoping you can help me.” Emma tried to sound as though she were distraught. “My brother ran away and I have reason to believe that he took one of your buses out of Tucson. Is there any way you can tell me if he bought a ticket? It would have been in early September.” She couldn’t believe the story had just spilled from her lips. She hadn’t rehearsed it beforehand, but she was surprised at how natural it sounded. It was an old trick she remembered Becky doing quite a bit: sobbing when she needed to get her way. Once, when they were at an IHOP and were presented with a Bill they couldn’t pay, Becky told the waitress a long, drawn-out tale of woe about how her deadbeat husband must have cleaned out her wall et without telling her. Emma had sat next to her in the booth, gaping at her mother, but whenever she breathed in to correct Becky, her mother kicked her sharply under the table.
The woman on the other end of the phone coughed.
“Well, I’m not really supposed to do something like that, honey.”
“I’m really sorry to ask.” Emma let out a loud sob. “I’m just so, so desperate. My brother and I were really close.
I’m devastated he’s gone, and I’m worried he’s in danger.” The woman hesitated for a moment, and Emma knew she had her. Finally, she sighed. “What’s your brother’s name?”
Score. Emma bit back a smile. “Thayer. Thayer Vega.” She heard a series of clicks on the other end. “Ma’am, I see a Thayer Vega on a Seattle-to-Tucson bus that left at 9 A.M. on the morning of August thirtieth, but that’s the only entry I have with his name in the system.” Emma switched the phone to the other ear, feeling deflated. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s out of a different city?
What about Phoenix? Flagstaff?”
“Anything is possible,” the woman answered. “I only have his name on the original trip because he booked online. He could have paid cash at any station—there’s no way for us to track that.”
Emma jumped at this piece of information. “Is there any way to look at where he booked that ticket online?
Maybe an IP address?”
There was a long pause. “No, I don’t have that ability.
And I’ve really told you more than I should …” Figuring she’d gotten everything she could, Emma thanked the woman for her time and hung up. Shit. She knew calling Greyhound was a long shot—she was lucky they had released any information at all.
She closed the laptop and ran her hands along its smooth, shiny surface. Suddenly, the four walls seemed to be closing in on her. Putting the computer back on Sutton’s desk, she slipped on Sutton’s ball et flats and started down the stairs.
Dusk had fall en outside, and the house was cool, dark, and silent. Emma didn’t know where the family had gone—
it was too early to go to bed. She walked down the empty hall, her footsteps ringing out on the terra-cottatiled floor, and entered the kitchen. The pungent scents of roasted potatoes and grilled beef filled the air. The oven was still on, and Emma could just make out a plate waiting for her in a little lower compartment. She couldn’t help but feel touched. No foster mom had ever made her a plate of leftovers. Mostly she’d had to fend for herself.
But she wasn’t hungry right now. Emma walked through the kitchen and let herself out onto the redtiled patio behind the Mercer’s house. The night had a cool edge to it and after the warmth of the day, it felt like plunging into a swimming pool after a soak in a hot tub. She dragged one of the wooden chaise lounges to the darkest corner of the lawn, then stretched out on it. She’d always done her best thinking outside.
The midnight blue sky was alive with stars. They twinkled like faraway Christmas lights, bright and clear. It had been ages since Emma had sat out and just stared up at the sky. One of the last times she’d done it was the night she discovered the strange snuff video of Sutton online, back when she was living in Vegas. She’d gazed up at the cosmos, picking out her favorite stars, the ones she’d named the Mom Star, the Dad Star, and the Emma Star shortly after Becky had abandoned her, holding on to the hope that one day her true family would unite on Earth just like in the sky. Little did she know that a few moments after that, her whole life would change. She would find a family member, a sister, something she wanted more than anything in the entire world. In a roundabout way, she’d get a family, too. She had even gotten a boyfriend. But none of it was in the way she wanted.
“What are you doing out here?”
Emma jumped and turned. Mrs. Mercer slid the glass door shut behind her and joined Emma out in the yard. She was barefoot, and her raven hair was down around her shoulders. She tugged a magenta cashmere scarf around her long, slender neck.
Emma pushed herself up into a seated position. “Just looking at the stars.”
Mrs. Mercer smiled. “That used to be your favorite thing when you were little. Remember how you gave the stars your own names? You said it wasn’t fair that other people got to name them just because they happened to be born thousands of years before you were.”
“I named stars?” Emma sat up, startled. “What did I call them?”
“Nothing that original. I think there was the Mom Star.
The Dad Star. The Laurel Star. The Sutton Star. And the E
Constel ation, for your favorite doll.” Mrs. Mercer pointed to a patch of stars just to the west. “Actually, I think that cluster up there might be it. See? It forms an E. You used to love that.”
Emma stared into the sky, dumbfounded. Sure enough, six stars formed a wide capital E.
A chil ran down her spine. It was the same cluster of stars she’d chosen, too. She knew Sutton had an old doll that she called E—maybe even for Emma—but it was uncanny that Sutton had fixated on those same stars, had even given them names. Was it a cosmic twin connection?
Did Sutton know of Emma’s presence, and vice versa, somewhere deep down inside?
For what felt like the millionth time, Emma wondered what her life would have been like if she and Sutton hadn’t been separated. Would they have been friends? Would they have helped each other survive Becky’s manic moods? Would they have been placed together in foster care, or separated?
I couldn’t help but wonder, too. If I had grown up with Emma, with a twin to watch my back, would I still be alive?
Mrs. Mercer sank down into the other chaise and laced her hands behind her head. “Can I ask you something without you biting my head off?”
Emma stiffened. She wasn’t really into prying questions. She got enough of those from Quinlan. “Uh, I guess.”
“What’s going on with you and your sister?” Mrs.
Mercer scooted farther back in her chair. “Ever since …
what happened on Friday night, things have been worse than usual between you two.”
Emma lowered her gaze from the sky and stared at her fingernails. “I wish I knew,” she said in a forlorn voice.
“You seemed to be getting along pretty well last week,” Mrs. Mercer said softly. “You guys went to Homecoming together, talked during dinner, didn’t get into the usual fights about the usual stupid things.” She cleared her throat. “Is it me, or did things change because Thayer appeared in your bedroom?”
Emma’s skin prickled just at the sound of Thayer’s name. “Maybe,” she admitted. “I think she’s … mad, somehow. But I didn’t ask him to show up that night.” Mrs. Mercer pulled her lower lip into her mouth, thinking. “You know, Sutton, Laurel loves you, but you’re not exactly the easiest sister to have.”
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