by Sara Shepard
The song ended on the stereo system. In the silence before the next started, they heard the distant bark of a dog down in Nisha’s subdivision. Then they heard a low, mournful cry.
“Did you leave the sound effects on?” Laurel asked Nisha. Nisha shook her head. Something crashed in the bushes nearby. Emma strained her ears.
“Seriously, guys?” Madeline said. “Who counter-pranked? I thought we agreed not to pull those anymore. That stopped being clever in middle school. I think whoever did it should have to sit out the next prank as punishment.”
“I didn’t do it!” Laurel quickly protested. “Cross my heart and hope to die!”
Everyone quickly repeated the safe word. They looked uncertainly at one another.
“Okay,” said Charlotte, rolling her eyes. Her robe hung open, revealing a pink sequined camisole. “It’s obviously just Celeste.”
Madeline slapped her forehead. “Oh my God, you’re right.”
“But we heard her leave.” Emma frowned.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me, are you new to this? She circled around somehow. There are trails all through here—it wouldn’t be hard. She’s just trying to make us think there’s some evil spirit on the loose.”
“I can’t believe she’s asking for seconds,” Laurel said.
“Just ignore her,” Charlotte said. “I’m so over that weirdo.”
The explanation seemed to be enough for the other girls. Nisha turned the music back up. The Twitter Twins replayed the whole séance on their new iPad, reading the comments that had already popped up on YouTube. “Spaceman77 says, ‘Who’s the babe in the satyr horns, she’s hawt!!’” Gabby turned to Emma, but Emma hardly noticed.
They were probably right—it must be Celeste, hoping to get back at them. But what if someone was hurt? The voice had sounded like it was crying. What if someone had gotten injured out in the woods?
Or … what if Becky had come back to the scene of the crime and taken another victim?
Emma imagined Sutton bleeding and running through the woods, trying to get away from Becky. What if someone had been in the clearing that night? What if someone could have helped her but had ignored her instead? Sutton could be alive now, at the fire with the rest of them. She couldn’t let Becky get away with it again.
She stood up and dusted off her butt. Out beyond the cheerful firelight the canyon was pitch-black. She peered up the trail in the direction she’d heard the crying.
“What are you doing?” Madeline asked, staring at her.
Emma glanced around at her friends. There was safety in numbers, in the clearing. But then she set her jaw in determination.
“I’m going to go prank Celeste back,” she said. “You guys stay here.”
“Wait, we want to come,” Gabby and Lili said, starting to stand up, but Emma held out a hand.
“I’m invoking Executive Diva privilege,” she announced, citing Sutton’s official Lying Game title. “You can hear about it later. I’ll give you an exclusive.” She tried to be lighthearted, but her heart was hammering. No matter how much she didn’t want to go out there alone, she would never be able to live with herself if she got one of her friends hurt.
“Okay, raise your hand if you don’t think it’s a brilliant idea for Sutton to go wandering in the woods by herself,” Laurel said, throwing her own hand in the air. Emma snorted.
“Whatever, guys,” she said, starting up the path with a flashlight.
“All right, but if you get murdered in the woods, I’m going to say I told you so,” Charlotte’s voice rang out behind her.
Touché, I thought.
The pale beam of the flashlight swept over the brush on either side, small bushes and cacti casting deep shadows. Emma stopped and listened for the sounds again. From farther away than before came another whimper, a rustle of leaves. She started jogging along the trail, trying to land softly on her feet so she could hear where the sound was coming from. A human groan echoed off the desert rocks. The trail led her higher up the mountain. She moved in silence for several minutes, until the bonfire glittered far below her, a tiny pinprick of light shining through the sparse trees.
Emma arrived at an overlook, with a park bench facing the neighborhood where Ethan and Nisha lived. She thought she could just make out Ethan’s porch light. Was he looking at the stars? She wished she could run all the way down the mountain and into his arms.
While Emma stared out over the city, I saw a figure step quietly out from the shadows. It was a gaunt woman, mascara and tears trickling down her cheeks. She watched Emma for a moment, chewing her lip. An old hospital bracelet still stuck to her wrist, as if she’d forgotten to cut it off.
Becky.
Emma’s back was to her. I couldn’t believe how silently our mother could move when she wanted to—just a moment ago she’d been crashing around through the underbrush, but there was nothing here to trip her up. She stepped toward Emma, eyes glued to her back.
A few pebbles dribbled down the side of the mountain from where Emma’s feet displaced them. It was a sheer drop to the next overhang, forty feet or more. Becky kept advancing, her eyes glowing strangely in the darkness, like a mountain lion’s.
“Emma!” I screamed, as loudly as I could.
Emma cocked her head. “Hello?” she whispered. The voice that had called her was so tiny, so faint it was almost like a breeze.
My knuckles clenched. She’d heard me. I was right—I was stronger here, for some reason.
“It’s Becky!” I shrieked, focusing every fiber of my ghostly being on the words. “She’s right behind you!”
“Sutton?” Emma breathed. But before I could answer, before Emma could make another move, a hand clamped on her arm. Emma’s body spun forcefully around so she was looking into Becky’s face.
And just like that, something snapped into place at the back of my mind. That familiar feeling came over me, of something unknown finally making sense, and a memory tugged me backward in time …
31
ORIGIN STORY
My lungs burn in my chest as my mother’s arms tighten around me. Bright colors kaleidoscope behind my closed eyes, reds and greens exploding across my vision. Some ancient part of my brain, a primitive survival instinct, kicks in. My body wrenches around in her grasp. She’s stronger than she looks—but so am I. I thrash back and forth, gasping for breath, my arms and legs writhing in all directions. And then all at once I break free and stagger away from her.
I fall to the ground, too dizzy and breathless to move.
She steps toward me. I open my mouth to scream for help, to scream at her to stay away from me, but my lungs are flat inside of me. Her face is hidden in the shadows of her hair. She walks over like some kind of monster, in a halting shuffle, and kneels down next to me.
The moon blazes out from behind a cloud, and suddenly I can see her face as clearly as if it were day. She’s crying.
“Sutton, I know you’re upset, but you have to breathe, sweetheart. Take a deep breath. You’re hyperventilating.” She reaches for my hand. I search her face for the grotesque sneer, the anger that I thought I had seen just a few seconds earlier, but I can’t. With a jolt, I wonder: Was that just the face of a woman trying not to cry?
I take a deep, shuddering breath, and when I exhale, the world seems clearer.
“What do … you want from me?” I pant.
Becky shakes her head back and forth, her lip quivering. “I just wanted to meet you, Sutton. That’s all. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just grabbed you like that. But … I’ve wanted to hold you for almost eighteen years now.”
Wanted to … hold me? That was a hug? My mind reels. A humiliating realization dawns on me—she didn’t crush me at all. I had just panicked when she put her arms around me.
Some prankster queen I am. I almost just asphyxiated myself in fear.
I take three or four more gigantic breaths. She doesn’t touch me again, but she sits down beside me, watching me with co
ncern. Her eyes are still wet, but her tears have stopped running.
“Here we are, sitting in the dirt again,” she says. I don’t say anything. She bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Sutton. I always do this. I always find a way to mess things up.”
She looks so forlorn sitting there that I almost feel sorry for her. But I’m not ready to feel sorry for her yet, to forgive her. She did mess things up, starting when she left me behind with my grandparents, and ending with us screaming at each other in the mountains.
Becky’s eyes fall to the locket I always wear. I grip it in my hand self-consciously, half to hide it from her, half to reassure myself that it’s still there.
“You’re still wearing my locket,” she says softly.
My hackles go up again. Her locket? This is my trademark, the centerpiece of my style. My parents gave it to me when I was little, and now everyone knows that I’m never seen without it. The little silver sphere is cold in my fingers. I don’t want to believe that something of hers has been hanging around my neck all this time.
“Mom and Dad gave this to me,” I say, as snidely as I can. “If it was yours, it’s not anymore.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean—I mean, I left it for you, Sutton. I left it so you would have a piece of me. Something to remember me by.”
We’re silent for a long moment. An owl calls out overhead, on the hunt. I pick at a sticker embedded in my jean shorts from my long tumble through the woods. Finally, I speak.
“I wear it every day,” I whisper. The silver starts to get warmer in my grip.
Becky plucks a rubber band from her wrist and pulls her hair back in a low ponytail. With her hair tamed she looks calmer. She takes a deep breath.
“Maybe now you can see, a little, why I had to leave you. I’m no good with people, Sutton. I get … agitated. Easily confused. Short-tempered.”
“What made you like that?” I blurt. Her forehead crumples into a sad frown. She shrugs.
“It’s just how I am. Mom and Dad … your grandparents, I mean … they did their best for me. But some people are just damaged on the inside, no matter what their lives look like. Sometimes I get better for a little while. I think I can take care of myself, maybe even of you … but it never lasts.” She exhales loudly. “Leaving you with my parents was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You have to understand that. I didn’t want to do it—I kept trying to convince myself that I could look after you. After you and your sister both.”
I frown. “Laurel’s yours, too?” That doesn’t make any sense. Laurel is only six months younger than me. It’d be impossible.
“No, no.” She stands up and slaps the dead leaves and branches off her bottom. She stretches, then looks out over the city lights, her back to me. “Have you ever wondered what the ‘E’ in your locket stands for?”
I shrug, even though she’s not looking at me. I push myself up with my raw, tender palms. My legs are one big scrape, and there’s an ache in my lower rib cage that I know is going to be a serious bruise. My shirt is pretty much ruined, torn and covered in dirt. I sigh, moving next to her on the ledge to look down over the subdivision.
When I was little, I used to have this recurring dream that my reflection would step out of the mirror and we would play together. When I explained the dreams to Laurel, she said they sounded scary, but they never were. My reflection and I would run across a playground hand in hand while the sun rolled up into the sky. I knew, the way you know in dreams, that we were two parts of a whole, that we were each incomplete without the other. I would wake up from those dreams feeling complete in a way I never did during my waking life. I never told anyone, but I used to pretend that the E in my locket stood for my reflection.
“Mom always said the locket was vintage, and it stood for whoever owned it before me.” I take a deep breath. “But when I was little I pretended it belonged to a friend of mine.”
Becky nods slowly. She reaches into her back pocket and takes out a hard pack of cigarettes. She slides one between her lips, then fumbles with a match. Her hands are shaking, and the flame wavers for a moment before she gets the cigarette lit. She takes a long drag and exhales.
“When I got pregnant with you,” she says very quietly, “I was really excited. I mean, it wasn’t a planned pregnancy, obviously. I was young, I was constantly in trouble. I didn’t know how I was going to take care of you. But when I felt you kick for the first time, I knew I couldn’t give you up.”
I open my mouth to interrupt her, but she holds up a finger. “Please, Sutton, this is hard for me to talk about. Just wait and let me tell you the whole story. Then you can yell at me some more.”
I bite my lip, but nod. She takes another drag from her cigarette, the smoke wreathing her face. “I started getting ready for you. I scraped together enough money for a stroller and a crib. I read a bunch of books from the library about babies. I didn’t have any money for an ultrasound or any of that, but I took vitamins and ate green vegetables every day and played music for you. You loved salsa music. You’d go crazy in there.” She laughs, and for a moment she almost sounds like a normal mom.
“Then I went into labor. I’ll spare you the details—hell, I don’t remember most of the details. You weren’t positioned right, and they had to operate. They gave me so much pain medication that I didn’t really know what was going on until it was over. Then they brought you to me. You—and your sister. Your twin. Emma.”
For a long moment I can’t move. I can’t speak. I look up and she’s watching me, a tentative, hopeful expression on her face. I shake my head slowly.
“You’re imagining things,” I say. “You must have been high as a kite. I don’t have a twin. That’s impossible.”
“You do have a twin,” she says. “I never told my father. I’ve never told anyone. But I want you to find her, Sutton.” A single tear fights its way loose and rolls down her bony cheek.
I think about my recurring dream, me and my reflection ruling the playground. I think about the feeling I’ve always had of missing somebody, missing somebody who should be right next to me and isn’t. I’d always assumed the feeling was about my birth mom, but now I wonder—have I always known she was out there, deep in my blood? My twin?
And suddenly, I know Becky’s telling the truth.
My mind is swimming, but a barrage of questions comes pouring out of me. “Where is she?” I ask. “Does she know about me? Does she know about our—our grandparents?”
“No. She doesn’t know any of it.” Becky stubs her cigarette out in the dirt, pocketing the filter. “I don’t know where she is anymore. I’ve lost track of her. The last time I knew where she was, it was a foster home in Las Vegas, but Family Services moves her around so often I don’t know where she is now. Her last name’s Paxton, unless she’s changed it.”
“Well, how am I supposed to find her, then?” I ask. Becky just shakes her head.
“You’ll figure it out. You two are meant to find each other, Sutton. You need each other. I should never have separated you in the first place.” She crosses her arms over her chest and heaves a loud sigh. “I have to go now, or everything will get too complicated.”
“What do you mean, go? You just got here. I just met you. And you have to help me find my sister,” I protest. A heavy feeling starts to knot up in my stomach. I’m not sad that she’s leaving, exactly. But I don’t want her to go either.
A strange look comes over Becky’s face. A few minutes earlier it might have looked sinister to me, but now that I’m really looking I can see that my mother just looks shattered. Heartbroken. It’s the look of someone who has already lost everything.
“I’m sick,” she says slowly. “I’m okay right now, but I can feel it coming on. Another episode.” Her body shudders again, as if the very thought is repellent. “I can’t be there for you. I’m so sorry. You’ll never know how sorry. But that’s why I gave you up. I thought you’d be safe with your grandparents, have a shot at a normal life.” She
wraps her thin arms around her body. “You know, I tried to come back for you once, when you were a few years old, but Dad wouldn’t give you up. You were his daughter by then. He could finally have a daughter he was proud of. I never gave him that. But you? Sutton, you’re my second chance.”
She smiles, and for just a moment she looks almost pretty again, almost young. The lines in her face relax and in the moonlight she seems smooth and innocent. Pure.
Then she turns, and without another word, she disappears into the night.
32
HELLO, AND GOOD-BYE
Becky’s hand lingered on Emma’s arm, as if it were hard for her to let go. Then she released her and took a step back. “Sutton,” she said softly.
Emma’s muscles were tense, ready to bolt. Even to fight, if it came to that. But something held her back. This was her chance to get answers. This was her chance to find out what had really happened that night between Sutton and Becky. She whirled around to face her mother, planting her legs firmly on the ground and crossing her arms over her chest.
Becky had changed out of her hospital clothes and into a pair of jeans and a secondhand T-shirt that said SOMEBODY IN VIRGINIA LOVES ME. Her face was still too thin, shadows collecting in its pits and hollows, but something about it had softened. Her eyes were clear, and the rictus had left her lips. She looked almost like the young, beautiful mother Emma remembered from thirteen years before, a little older, a little more weathered, but recognizable. Tears and makeup had dried on her face. She looked Emma up and down.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming back here. To the canyon,” Emma said. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. A charge of fear swept over her skin like a light fingertip, sending the hair on her arms straight up. She couldn’t see the girls’ bonfire at all anymore. Down in the subdivision she heard a motorcycle accelerate and then disappear. It echoed strangely off the canyon rock.
“I know,” Becky said. She hung her head, wringing her hands in front of her body. “But I wanted to see you before I left.”