I was afraid, too. What was going through our mother’s mind? Had she written this before or after we were born?
The garage door rattled open, and Emma jumped. She quickly slid the journal into her pocket and stood up. As quietly as she could, she went down the ladder, closing the hatch door after her.
The house was silent again when she reached the hall. She frowned and padded down the stairs to the entryway. “Hello?” she called. No one answered. She opened the front door and looked out on the lawn.
She had to blink her eyes several times to clear her vision. For a moment it looked as if an enormous agave plant was wobbling around the Mercers’ yard on uncertain human legs. After the quiet, dim attic, her eyes had to be playing tricks on her.
A moment later the walking plant was replaced by a tall, broad-shouldered boy carrying a giant succulent. She peeked around the plant’s prickly leaves. Thayer.
I swooned. What’s hotter than watching a gorgeous boy carry heavy things? At that moment I would have given anything for hands, just so I could run them over his shoulders and up into his damp, tousled hair.
“What’re you doing here?” Emma asked.
Thayer stopped and grinned at her, balancing on his good leg. “Laurel said your dad’s bummed out that he got hurt in the middle of landscaping the yard,” he explained. “I figured that since it’s partly my fault he got hurt, I should come and help him finish. Besides, I know all about knee injuries,” he said, nodding down at his own bad leg.
A flush of pleasure swept over Emma’s cheeks. She understood what Sutton saw in Thayer. He had so much more depth, and warmth, than she’d realized at first. “Here, let me help you,” she said, grabbing one side of the heavy plant. Together they wrestled it out of the plastic and into the hole Mr. Mercer had dug.
“Careful with the spines, they can hurt pretty bad,” Thayer warned.
“I’m used to cactus spines,” Emma answered. She laughed when they stood up in a shower of dirt. Their arms, even their faces, were covered with it. “It’s really nice of you to help my dad out,” she added, walking toward the willow tree to get out of the hot sun.
Thayer shrugged. “I’m just trying to put things right. As much as I can, anyway.” He glanced at Emma, then blinked, as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Is everything okay? You look kind of pale.”
Emma looked down, thinking about what she’d just found in the attic. “I saw my mom again two nights ago,” she admitted.
Thayer’s long-lashed hazel eyes opened wide with concern. “Where?”
Suddenly the whole story was pouring out of her—the hospital visit, the discovery that her mother had a history of mental illness. The fact that she’d pulled a knife on someone. Emma left out the part about Becky calling her by her real name, but as she told him the rest, she felt the compression around her heart relax ever so slightly. She breathed deeply.
Thayer let out a low whistle. “Damn.”
“I know,” she said. Talking to Thayer was so easy—she already felt calmer, more focused. “The worst thing is that I can’t really tell anyone. Mom—I mean, my adopted mom—doesn’t know, and my dad won’t let me tell her. He says it’d destroy her. I can’t tell Laurel either, and I can’t tell any of the other girls because they’d tell Laurel. The whole thing is awkward and stupid.”
“Keeping secrets for your parents sucks,” Thayer agreed, his expression darkening. He leaned back against the tree, and frowned. Emma watched him from the corner of her eye. Thayer knew all about family secrets. He rarely talked about it, but part of the reason he’d run away from home was to escape his father’s violent temper.
When he spoke, his voice was low. “I never told you this, but I caught my dad having an affair last year.”
Emma’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?” She imagined hotheaded, strict Mr. Vega. His brow was always furrowed, his spine stiff and straight, and he seemed to disapprove of everything. Who would even want to have an affair with him?
Thayer nodded. “Yeah. I caught his girlfriend or whatever leaving our house when my mom was away visiting my aunt. I tried to talk to him about it, but he just blasted me for messing with his business. Acted like he could do no wrong.” Thayer gritted his teeth. “My mom didn’t factor into the equation at all.”
“That sucks,” Emma said softly. She reached over and squeezed his hand. When their skin touched, an electric hum started at the point of contact. Realizing what she’d done, she pulled her hand away, blushing. Thayer looked away, too.
They sat together in silence for a moment. Emma’s hand still tingled from touching his. She felt a little guilty confiding so much in Thayer, as if she were sneaking around behind Ethan’s back. But it wasn’t like that at all. She and Thayer were just friends, and friends were allowed to confide in each other when something was on their minds. Besides, the only reason Thayer was even interested in her was that he thought she was Sutton—his ex-girlfriend.
I hoped she was right about Thayer still being in love with me. Of all the things my death had taken away from me, Thayer had been the hardest to lose.
He stood up carefully, testing his weight on his bad knee. “I should go. I’ve got physical therapy in thirty minutes.”
“How’s that going?”
“Better,” he said. “If I keep working on it, I might even get to play soccer next year.”
Emma beamed. “That’s great!”
“Yeah.” When Thayer smiled, a dimple appeared in his left cheek. “Anyway, tell your dad … well, whatever.”
“I’ll tell him you said hi,” Emma said.
Thayer saluted her, then turned and headed unstably to his car. For a moment, Emma wanted to run to him and hug him good-bye … but something told her that wasn’t a great idea.
Maybe that something was me. I hovered next to her, and together we watched as he started his car and drove away.
13
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A LITTLE RETAIL THERAPY
Emma was still standing on the porch when she heard something creak behind her. Her heart skipped a beat. What if it was Becky, escaped from the hospital? The journal pages covered with Emma swirled in her mind. But when she spun around, she came face-to-face with Laurel.
“You scared me,” Emma accused, her hand over her heart.
“Geez, you never used to scare so easy.” Laurel laughed, looping her arm in Emma’s elbow. “Dating a nice boy is making you soft. Now come on, we need to go.” She checked her lipstick in a Chanel compact, then pulled Emma toward the door.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked, grabbing her purse.
Laurel gave her an incredulous look. “Duh, space cadet. Only the biggest Saks sample sale of the year?”
Emma blinked. “Right,” she said. She had no idea what Laurel was talking about, but no doubt Sutton would have had this marked on her virtual calendar for months. She mock-slapped herself on the forehead. “It’s that time again?”
“Uh, it’s the same time every year.” Laurel rolled her eyes. “I think all that time at the hospital the other night must have affected your memory.”
She opened the door to her Jetta, and Emma climbed in. They drove past an emerald green golf course, vivid against Tucson’s tawny fall colors. Usher crooned softly on the stereo. Emma tipped her head up and felt the wind on her cheeks.
Laurel chattered happily as she drove. “I want something really special for Char’s party next weekend. I’m so tired of everything in my closet.”
“Tell me about it,” Emma lied. Sutton’s closet was, in a word, amazing. She had a zillion pairs of jeans. A bag for every pair of shoes. Racks of party dresses, some of them with tags still attached. A whole drawer of belts and scarves. A single outfit of Sutton’s cost more than Emma’s entire wardrobe from her former life. In a strange way, though, she kind of missed thrift stores—digging through the bins for buried treasure, laughing at the hideous pairs of shoes no one in their right mind should have bought the first time a
round, let alone the second, and picking up a knickknack from the housewares department just because. Not that she’d ever tell Laurel that.
Yeah, my friends aren’t exactly the Goodwill type. Emma had dragged Mads into a thrift store when she first arrived. And even though she’d scored a sweet pair of Chanel shades, poor Mads had backed away from the place as if everything was crawling with lice.
As the Saks Fifth Avenue sign glittered into view, Laurel gave Emma an awkward glance. “Um, I invited Nisha to meet us,” Laurel blurted. “Is that okay?”
Emma blinked. “Nisha?”
Laurel angled the car into a parking space and turned off the ignition. “It’s just—it seems like you guys are getting along better now.... She really put Celeste in her place at tennis, you know? We’ve been working together on that physics project and I just thought …”
“Sure, it’s fine. I was just surprised,” Emma said.
A relieved smile crossed Laurel’s face. Emma remembered how nervous Laurel had been when Emma discovered she’d been at Nisha’s slumber party the night Sutton died. Poor Laurel had closed her eyes, almost as if to brace herself for some kind of punishment. She wondered why Sutton had cared so much about who her sister had spent time with. The Lying Game girls were extremely invested in managing each other’s social lives.
Watching from this distance, I wasn’t sure why myself. I remembered the rush of power, of strength, when I drove people together or apart, when I told my friends who they were allowed to like, or date. Now it just seemed … small.
Nisha stood outside the Saks entrance, her straight, shiny hair loose around her shoulders. She lifted her hand almost shyly as they approached. The light was fading fast, the sky a pale silvery blue overhead. Magpies flitted through the parking lot, screaming from the tops of light posts and swooping down to get the crumbs trailing from the food court to the cars. The three girls stood awkwardly for a moment, looking at each other.
Then Emma grinned and gestured toward Saks. “You girls ready for combat?”
Nisha’s dark brown eyes lit up. “Born ready. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Of course,” Laurel said, pushing through the wide glass door. “Let’s do it.”
The scene inside the store was a madhouse. Women swarmed like angry bees, grabbing clothes off hangers and out of bins. Two girls Emma recognized from her German class were actually yanking a pair of jeans back and forth between them, arguing loudly over who’d seen them first. Older women reeking of Chanel No. 5 pursed their lips in disdain at the disorder, but snatched at hats and bags just as eagerly when they found the labels they were looking for. Salesgirls tottered around on five-inch heels looking harassed.
Emma ran her hand over a cashmere T-shirt left rumpled on a table. When she flipped over the tag, she burst into a fit of coughing. Even with the price reduction, the shirt was four hundred dollars. Laurel grabbed her elbow.
“Ralph Lauren? Who are you shopping for, Grandma? Come on.” She steered her toward a cluster of cocktail dresses. Nisha was already sorting through a rack of jewel-toned Oscar de la Rentas. Laurel whipped her sweater off and pulled a strapless yellow minidress over her camisole and jeans, then, frowning, tugged off the jeans underneath. It would have been strange if all the other women in the store hadn’t been doing the same thing. Laurel studied her reflection in a full-length mirror on a pillar, then looked enviously at Emma. “I wish I had your shoulders.” She pulled off the minidress and handed it to her. “You try it on.”
Emma tugged the dress over her head. She pivoted back and forth in the mirror, scrunching up her face. The color was way too banana.
Come on, I wanted to tell her. Didn’t she know yellow was the color this year? And she and I actually have the skin tone to pull it off.
Now Laurel was wearing a gold lace Dolce & Gabbana number that made her skin glow. “So you’re talking to Thayer again, huh? I saw you guys in the front yard.”
Emma shrugged as she took the dress off. “Yeah. It’s been kind of awkward between us, but I don’t want to lose him as a friend.”
Laurel scoffed. “Well, what’d you expect? I don’t know what happened between you or why you decided to break it off with him, but he’s not over it.”
Emma eyed her carefully. Laurel had forgiven her sister for coming between her and Thayer, but her tone was still tinged with wistfulness. She grabbed a short red Alice + Olivia dress.
“You would look drop-dead in this,” Emma said, holding the dress out to Laurel. “Every guy at the party will be drooling over you.”
“Really?” Laurel said, looking touched.
“Promise.” Emma grabbed more dresses from the rack and held them up to her body without trying them on. Tucking a black sheath under her chin, she used both hands to pull her hair away from her face to see what the dress would look like in an updo.
Laurel glanced at her and made a jealous snort. “You and your cheekbones. It’s so unfair. Who was your birth mom, some Russian ballerina?”
Emma’s eyebrows shot up. She and Laurel had never talked about Sutton’s birth mother before. Had she and Sutton? She appraised Laurel’s face out of the corner of her eye. Their coloring was completely different—Laurel had the peachy skin and sandy-blond hair of Mr. Mercer’s side of the family, while Emma had inherited Mrs. Mercer’s dark hair and porcelain skin. At first glance they looked nothing alike. But the longer she looked, the more she noticed the things they shared: the arching brows, the same small, delicate earlobes, the same hairline. She wondered if Sutton and Laurel had ever noticed or commented on it growing up.
“Thayer’s still got it bad for you, you know,” Laurel went on. “He looks at you the same way he did two summers ago at that county fair. Remember that? He spent three hours to win you that giant Scooby-Doo prize in the ring toss? That’s dedication. That kind of feeling doesn’t go away overnight.”
Emma hid a smile. That was dedication. No one had spent three hours doing anything for her, but it was the kind of goofy romantic gesture she loved. She imagined the two of them sharing a funnel cake, riding the Ferris wheel. But then she stopped in confusion. Who was she picturing in this memory—Sutton, or herself?
Watch it, Emma. Like I said, I don’t share well, especially with sisters.
Nisha appeared beside them, wearing a paper-thin purple dress that made her skin look radiant. She’d already been through the register and carried two black Saks bags over her shoulder. “So how are things with you and Ethan?” she asked.
“Good,” Emma said. “He’s such a romantic.”
Nisha nudged her. “And he’s got a pretty fierce right hook, too.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “How stupid was that fight? I could have strangled them both.”
Laurel laughed from the depths of a black peplum dress she was in the process of tugging on over her head. “Like you haven’t been playing him and Thayer off each other. Seriously, Sutton, everyone knows how you work. You like keeping them jealous.”
“I do not!” Emma insisted, crossed her arms over her chest and glaring. “Why can’t they just mellow out and accept that I’m not in the market for more drama right now?”
“I wouldn’t worry. Ethan’s obviously nuts about you. If he can’t handle a little competition, he can’t handle dating Sutton Mercer.” Laurel gave her a playful body check, then ripped off the dress without even glancing at it in the mirror. “Let’s check out the shoes.”
Emma ditched a sequined Badgley Mischka dress and followed Laurel across the store. Shoe boxes, tissue paper, and crumpled disposable nylon socks were strewn all over the footwear section. A blond woman with skin so tan it looked like leather modeled a pair of leopard-print six-inch heels, while a balding middle-aged man in an Armani suit held her purse. A gaggle of preteen girls giggled and took pictures of one another in Lanvin platforms they clearly weren’t going to buy.
Laurel reached out hungrily toward a pair of velvet Louboutins. She slid them onto her small feet and cocked h
er hip critically.
“Mom and Dad would kill me,” she said, looking at the price. “But at least I’d die happy.”
“They look …” Suddenly Nisha trailed off and grabbed Emma’s arm. “Uh-oh,” she said under her breath.
Emma followed her gaze across the store. Just twenty feet away, standing in front of a rack of silk scarves, was Garrett Austin, Sutton’s ex-boyfriend.
Emma stared back. Garrett was wearing a crisp, striped oxford shirt and a pair of perfectly broken-in J Brands. He’d grown out his sandy blond hair, trading the preppy cut he’d had while dating Sutton for a longer, more tousled look. All in all, he was pretty cute … except for the fiery expression on his face.
Emma recoiled and looked down, surprised to see him so angry. She knew that Garrett harbored a lot of ill will toward her, both for rejecting him the night of Sutton’s birthday party and for breaking up with him soon afterward. He’d practically attacked her at the Halloween dance. If it hadn’t been for Ethan interrupting them, who knew what would have happened.
At that moment, two girls approached Garrett, their arms full of overstuffed shopping bags. “We’re all done,” said a girl in a fedora and black lace miniskirt. Emma was pretty sure she was Louisa, Garrett’s little sister. The other girl was Celeste.
“Thanks so much again for the ride, Garrett,” Celeste cooed, touching Garrett suggestively with her long, multiringed fingers. “It’s so sad that people in Tucson waste gas going in separate cars. In Taos, everyone carpools everywhere.”
Nisha made a noise at the back of her throat.
Garrett blushed, smiling bashfully at the new girl. “I totally agree. We’ve got to, like, preserve the earth’s resources. But some people are selfish, I guess.”
I snorted with laughter. This, coming from the guy who begged his dad for a gas-guzzling Hummer.
Emma looked at Nisha. “I guess this means you and Garrett aren’t together anymore?” she murmured.
The Lying Game #5: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die Page 8