Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Sara Shepard

Page 15

 

  “Hey, Emma?”

  And before she could stop herself, she paused.

  “I thought so,” he said in a low voice.

  Emma turned, desperate to say something, anything, to fix her mistake—but Thayer was already gone.

  I’d been waiting all these months for someone to realize Emma wasn’t me. But now that it had finally happened, all I felt was cold, sick dread.

  Because what Thayer knew could kill him.

  14

  EAT YOUR HEART OUT, NANCY DREW

  Emma found Ethan on his way to German class. “Thayer knows,” she whispered urgently. Ethan stopped short, his jaw working soundlessly for a moment.

  “What? How?” he finally asked, his voice low. She pulled him toward an alcove behind a potted plant. A large picture window looked out over the soccer field.

  She bit her lip. Thayer had suspected ever since he’d kissed her at Charlotte’s party. Ethan knew about the kiss—he’d caught them—but she didn’t want to bring it up again.

  “He called me Emma, and I reacted,” she admitted, shame washing over her anew. “I’m such an idiot. ”

  “No, you’re not,” Ethan said fiercely. Emma gazed into his dark blue eyes, where anxiety vied with something else—a fierce vigilance, maybe. And even though she knew that Ethan couldn’t really protect her if the murderer was determined to kill again, his solid strength was comforting. She felt her muscles slowly unclench, calmed by his presence.

  Emma sighed and leaned her head against Ethan’s shoulder. “I mean . . . he doesn’t have a way to prove it. But what if he catches me in a lie? What if he figures something out?”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “The only way he could know for sure is if he did it. I still say he’s suspicious. ”

  She shook her head impatiently. “Thayer was on his way to the hospital when Sutton died. There’s no way he could have gotten back to the canyon with a broken leg. He was probably high on painkillers by that point anyway. ”

  Ethan gave a noncommittal snort, which she took to mean “Okay-fine-he-has-an-alibi-but-I-don’t-have-to-like-it. ” She opened her mouth to tell him how desperate Thayer had seemed to know the truth, how he really just wanted to know if it was the girl he loved at the bottom of that canyon, but before she could speak, Ethan’s gaze shifted. He was staring at something out the window.

  “Look!” he hissed. She turned to look where he was pointing.

  Garrett and Celeste had appeared on the soccer field. Emma couldn’t hear a word through the glass, but it was obvious they were shouting at each other. Celeste kept shaking her head no, her long blonde braids dancing around her head. Garrett’s face was an ugly red, screwed up in rage. He shook his hands violently in front of her, looking like he wanted to strangle her.

  I knew that expression. I knew that face. It surprised me, how familiar it suddenly was. New memories floated hazily to the surface. I remembered his mood swings, his bad temper. I remembered him punching a locker and leaving a dent in the metal, walking away from me in a rage. I remembered how his fingers left spots of blood on the clean linoleum behind him.

  “Wow,” Emma breathed. They both watched as Celeste threw one hand up dismissively, then turned to walk back toward the school. Garrett stood staring after her for a long moment, his chest heaving with anger. Then he turned away and stormed off across the field, toward the small cedar grove that separated campus from the busy street beyond.

  “That was . . . intense,” Ethan said uncertainly.

  “Now’s our chance,” Emma said, straightening up. Ethan frowned.

  “Our chance for what?” he asked, but she glanced up and down the empty hall, not answering. She grabbed Ethan’s hand and hurried down the hall to where the senior lockers were.

  Garrett’s locker was in a cul-de-sac around the corner from a Coke machine. It was obvious which was his—the good-luck sign the soccer boosters had made for the finals still hung there proudly in red and gold glitter letters. Emma walked quickly to it and examined the lock.

  “What are you doing?” Ethan whispered.

  “What we should have done a long time ago,” she said, setting her jaw. “You keep a lookout, okay?”

  He nodded, leaning back against the lockers and staring over her head.

  She slowly twisted the combination to zero, and then, crossing her fingers on both hands, she delivered a sharp little kick to the base of the locker. The door sprang open, shuddering with a wobbly metallic sound in the empty corridor. She glanced up and down the hall to see if anyone had heard.

  “Where the hell did you learn that?” Ethan asked, looking impressed.

  She grinned. “My friend Alex taught me, back in Henderson. ”

  The locker smelled strongly of peanut butter and some kind of musky aftershave. A hooded sweatshirt hung on the hook. Books were neatly stacked on the top shelf, surrounded by assorted bits of clutter—a plastic comb, a handful of loose change, an athletic mouth guard in a plastic case. Hanging on the inside of the door was a magnetized mirror, a faded Sports Illustrated picture featuring Mia Hamm celebrating a win by ripping off her shirt, a photo of Garrett and Louisa standing in front of the Grand Canyon, and a snapshot of Celeste curled up in an overstuffed armchair in a book-lined study.

  “What are you looking for?” Ethan whispered, peering into the locker.

  Emma shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe this is pointless. I guess he’s not going to have a sign saying I DID IT on the inside of his locker. ” She chewed her lip, her eyes running across Garrett’s things. “I read that some killers keep mementos of their crimes so they can relive them later. ” She shivered, imagining the kinds of things she would find in his locker if Garrett had taken a keepsake. It would have been horrifying to find a lock of Sutton’s hair or a piece of her clothing—or worse.

  She crouched down to unzip a Nike duffel bag slouched on the floor of the locker, but all it held was a pair of soccer cleats, white socks, mesh shorts, an enormous green plastic water bottle—and a flask of something that smelled like bourbon. She zipped it back up, still kneeling, and sighed.

  “I guess it’s a bust,” she said, disappointed. Ethan didn’t answer. She looked up at where he stood next to her, frowning. “Ethan?”

  He was gazing at something on the top shelf. He reached slowly upward, and carefully, as if it were something dirty, he picked up a tiny silver key hanging on a metal tag.

  “Ethan?” She rose slowly to her feet. “What is it?”

  She held out her hand, and he let the key fall into her palm. It was small—too small to be a house key. On one side of the metal fob, she could just make out the word ROSA. A second word was too scratched to decipher. Below that was the number 356.

  She frowned. “Does this mean something to you?” She didn’t know anyone named Rosa at Hollier.

  “Flip it over,” Ethan said, his eyes round in his face. She cocked her head quizzically. He nodded at the key fob in her hand. She turned it over and stared down at it.

  On the reverse side of the tag, someone had scratched the initials S. M. into the metal. Her hand started to shake so hard the text blurred in her vision. Ethan moved toward her, putting a hand on each of her shoulders to hold her steady.

  “What does it mean?” Her voice was a hoarse, pleading whisper.

  Before Ethan could answer, the sound of footsteps echoed from around the corner. Emma shoved the key into her jeans pocket and shut the locker as quietly as she could. Then she looked frantically around for somewhere to hide.

  “Here,” Ethan breathed, backing her against the wall and gazing down into her eyes. She struggled for a moment, disoriented—but then she fell still as she realized what he was doing. He pressed his lips to hers, and even though her blood was still rushing in her ears, for one sweet moment the kiss took over and her panic subsided.

  “Oh! I’m sorry!”

  They both looked up to see Celeste, who had
stopped in her tracks when she saw them. She was dressed with her usual Arwen-of-Middle-Earth flair, in a green tunic printed all over with Celtic knots and a pair of leggings. Bangles jingled on her wrists, and dozens of mismatched silver earrings hung from her multiple ear piercings. Her eyes were bloodshot, her voice thick with tears. She wiped furiously at her face and tried to force a smile. “I didn’t mean to, uh, interrupt. ”

  Emma gently pushed Ethan away from her. Celeste stood uncertainly in the hallway, looking everywhere but at them. Emma could see a folded piece of paper in her fingertips. She must have been about to put a note in Garrett’s locker.

  “Are you okay?” Emma asked.

  Celeste shifted her weight, her bracelets jangling musically against one another. She usually had an airy, ethereal sensibility, but today she seemed weighed down with sadness.

  “I’m fine. I mean, you know how Garrett is. ”

  Celeste was clearly trying to sound dismissive, but the words hit Emma like an electric shock. She didn’t know how Garrett was, not really—but standing in front of her was someone who did. She glanced at Ethan, who stood a little apart, looking anywhere but at Celeste. “Hey, Ethan, can I meet up with you later?”

  He looked startled for a moment. She widened her eyes meaningfully at him, trying to communicate that she wanted to talk to Celeste alone. He jumped up from where he’d been leaning on the wall, fumbling at his books. “Oh, uh, yeah. I should get to class anyway. See you, Celeste. ”

  Ethan’s footsteps disappeared down the hall. The Coke machine hummed loudly. Emma fidgeted with her purse strap. “I know we’re not exactly friends, Celeste, but I—I just don’t want you to get hurt. ”

  Celeste sighed, glancing up through her wet lashes to meet Emma’s eyes. “He’s an Aries. They’re always intense, you know?”

  “Um, right,” Emma said. She bit her lip, thinking about what she’d just seen through the window. Garrett hadn’t looked intense—he’d looked like he wanted to hurt someone. “We used to fight a lot when we were together. He has a . . . scary temper. ”

  Celeste leaned back against the wall of lockers, watching Emma warily, like she was reluctant to confide too much. Emma couldn’t exactly blame her—the Lying Game girls had pranked her a few weeks ago. But after a moment Celeste spoke, her voice quiet, tentative.

  “It just all comes back to Louisa. The weird thing is that Louisa is actually doing okay. I mean, her mom put her in therapy, so she’s had help. But the whole thing, like . . . broke him. His spirit is so wounded. I keep asking him to meditate with me. It helped a lot, after my parents got divorced. But he won’t even try. ”

  Emma nodded carefully. “So you think he’s angry because of . . . because of what happened with Louisa?”

  Celeste gave her an odd look. “Yeah. Of course. ”

  “Oh, well, I never heard the whole story. I knew he was upset about it, obviously, but I don’t really know what he was upset about,” Emma fished.

  The color drained from Celeste’s face. She glanced back over her shoulder as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I shouldn’t have said anything, then. It’s not my business to spread around. ”