Never Have I Ever

by Sara Shepard

Page 2

 

  Mr. Vega gazed at their half-drunk glasses on the table. His nostrils twitched, as if he could smel the alcohol. The smile remained on his face, but it had a false edge that made Emma uneasy. He reminded her of Cliff, the foster father who sold used cars in a dusty lot near the Utah border and could swing from volatile dad to smarmy, asskissing salesman in four seconds flat. Mr. Vega was silent a moment longer. Then he leaned forward and squeezed the top of Madeline’s bare arm. She flinched slightly.

  “Order anything you want, girls,” he said in a low voice.

  “It’s on me. ” He turned with military precision and started toward the brick-arched doorway to the golf course.

  “Thanks, Daddy!” Madeline cal ed after him, her voice trembling just slightly.

  “That’s sweet,” Charlotte murmured hesitantly after he left, glancing sideways at Madeline.

  “Yeah. ” Laurel traced her pointer finger around the scal oped edge of her plate, not making eye contact with Madeline.

  Everyone looked like they wanted to say more, but no one did . . . or dared. Madeline’s family was rife with secrets. Her brother, Thayer, had run away before Emma arrived in Tucson. Emma kept seeing his missing-person poster everywhere.

  For just a moment, she felt a pang of nostalgia for her old life, her safe life—a feeling she’d never thought she’d have about her foster-care days. She’d come to Tucson thinking she’d find everything she’d always wished for: a sister, a family to make her whole. Instead, she’d found a family that was broken without even realizing it, a dead twin whose life seemed more complicated by the minute, and potential murderers lurking around every corner.

  A flush rose on Emma’s skin, the unspoken tension suddenly too much for her. With a loud scrape, she pushed her chair away from the table. “I’l be back,” she said, fumbling through the French doors toward the bathroom. She entered an empty lounge fil ed with mirrors, plush, cognac-colored leather couches, and a wooden basket containing Nexxus hair spray, Tampax, and little bottles of Purel . Perfume lingered in the air, and classical music played through the stereo speakers.

  Emma col apsed in a chair at one of the vanities and inspected her reflection in the mirror. Her oval face, framed by wavy sienna hair, and eyes that looked periwinkle in some lights, ocean-blue in others, stared back at her. They were the very same features as the girl whose image smiled happily from the family portraits in the Mercers’

  foyer, the same girl whose clothes felt scratchy against Emma’s skin, as if her body sensed Emma didn’t belong in them.

  And around Emma’s neck was Sutton’s silver locket—

  the same locket the kil er used to strangle Emma in Charlotte’s kitchen, the one Emma was sure Sutton had been wearing when she was murdered. Every time she touched the smooth silver surface or saw it glinting in the mirror, it reminded her that al of this, no matter how uncomfortable, was necessary to find her sister’s kil er. The door swished open, and the sounds of the dining room rushed in. Emma whipped around as a blonde, col ege-age girl in a pink polo with the country club’s logo on the boob crossed the Navajo-carpeted floor. “Uh, are you Sutton Mercer?”

  Emma nodded.

  The girl reached into the pocket of her khakis. “Someone left this for you. ” She proffered a Tiffany-blue ring-sized box. A smal tag on the top read FOR SUTTON.

  Emma stared, a little afraid to touch it. “Who’s it from?”

  The girl shrugged. “A messenger dropped it off at the front desk just now. Your friends said you were in here. ”

  Emma took it hesitantly, and the girl turned and walked out the door. The lid lifted easily, revealing a velvet jewelry box. Al kinds of possibilities flashed through Emma’s mind. A smal , hopeful part of her wondered if it was from Ethan. Or, more awkwardly, maybe it was from Garrett, trying to win her back.

  The box opened with a creak. Inside was a gleaming silver charm in the shape of a locomotive engine. Emma ran her fingers over it. A shard of paper poked up from the velvet pouch inside the lid. She pul ed out a tiny rol ed-up scrol to find a note written in block letters.

  THE OTHERS MIGHT NOT WANT TO REMEMBER THE TRAIN

  PRANK, BUT I’LL BE SEIZED BY THE MEMORY ALWAYS. THANKS!

  Emma jammed the note back into the box and shut it. Train prank. Last night, in Laurel’s bedroom, she’d frantical y skimmed through at least fifty Lying Game pranks. None of them had to do with a train.

  The train charm etched itself in my mind and suddenly, a faint glimmer came to me. A train’s whistle shrieking in the distance. A scream, and then whirling lights. Was it . . . were we . . . ?

  But as quickly as it arrived, the memory sped away.

  Chapter 2

  CSI, Tucson

  Ethan Landry opened the chain-link gate to the public tennis court and let himself in. Emma watched him strol toward her, his shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets. Even though it was after ten, there was enough moonlight overhead to see his perfectly distressed jeans, scuffed Converse, and messy dark hair that curled sweetly over the col ar of a navy flannel shirt. An untied shoelace dragged across the court behind him.

  “Mind if I leave the lights off?” Ethan gestured to the coinoperated meter that turned on giant floodlights for night play.

  Emma nodded, feeling her insides leap. Being in the dark with Ethan didn’t sound so shabby.

  “So what’s this train prank?” he asked, referring to the text Emma had sent hours earlier when she asked him to join her at the courts. It had become a meeting place for them, somewhere that felt uniquely theirs.

  Emma handed the silver charm to Ethan. “Someone left it for Sutton at the country club. There was a note attached. ” A chil ran down her spine as she relayed what the note had said.

  A motorcycle rumbled in the distance. Ethan turned the charm over in his hands. “I don’t know anything about a train, Emma. ”

  Emma’s heart tugged when Ethan cal ed her by her real name. It was such a relief. But it also felt dangerous. The kil er had told her to tel no one. And she’d broken the rule.

  “But it sounds like whoever gave it to you was part of the prank,” Ethan went on, “or a victim of it. ”

  Emma nodded.

  They were silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of a lone basketbal bouncing on the far court. Then Emma reached in her pocket. “I have something to show you. ” She passed her iPhone to him, her stomach flipping over as their fingers accidental y brushed. Ethan was cute—real y cute.

  I had to admit Ethan was cute, too—in that disheveled, brooding, mystery-boy way. It was fun to watch my sister’s crush develop. It made me feel closer to her, like it was something we would’ve obsessed over together if I were stil alive.

  Emma cleared her throat as Ethan scrol ed through the page she’d loaded. “It’s a list of everyone in Sutton’s life,”

  she explained, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth.

  “I’ve gone through everything—Sutton’s Facebook, her phone, her emails. And now I’m almost positive I’ve got the date of her death narrowed down to August thirty-first. ”

  Ethan turned toward her. “How can you be sure?”

  Emma took a quick breath. “Check this out. ” She tapped the Facebook icon. “I wrote to Sutton at ten-thirty the night of the thirty-first. ” She moved the screen over so Ethan could read her note: This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. You’re not by any chance adopted, are you? “And then Sutton responded at twelve-fifty-six, here. ” Emma scrol ed down the message page and showed what Sutton had written back: OMG. I can’t believe this. Yes, I was totally adopted . . .

  An unreadable expression flickered across Ethan’s face.

  “Then how can you think she died on the thirty-first if she was writing you messages on Facebook?”

  “I was the only person Sutton wrote or talked to that night. ” Emma scrol ed through Sutton’s cal log from the thirty-first. The last ans
wered cal was from Lilianna Fiorel o, one of Sutton’s friends, at 4:32 P. M. Then at 8:39, MISSED

  CALL, LAUREL. Three more missed cal s at 10:32, 10:45, and 10:59 from Madeline. Emma flipped ahead to the next day’s log. The missed cal s began again the fol owing morning: 9:01, Madeline; 9:20, Garrett; 10:36, Laurel.

  “Maybe she was busy and didn’t pick up her phone,”

  Ethan suggested. He took back the phone and clicked to Sutton’s Facebook page, scrol ing through her Wal posts. Emma grasped Sutton’s locket. “I’ve looked through Sutton’s entire cal log back to December. Practical y every cal she gets, she answers. And if she doesn’t answer it, she cal s whoever it was back later. ”

  “Then what about this post she wrote on the thirty-first?”

  Ethan asked, pointing to the screen. “Couldn’t this mean she was avoiding everyone?” The last post Sutton had ever written was a few hours before Emma’s note: Ever think about running away? Sometimes I do.

  Emma shook her head vehemently. “Nothing fazed my sister. Not even being strangled. ” Just saying the words my sister connected her to Sutton in a deep, powerful way. At first, Emma had wondered if Sutton real y had run away—

  maybe sticking her long-lost twin sister in her place had been part of an elaborate prank. But once someone nearly strangled Emma in Charlotte’s house, she became convinced Sutton’s death was for real.

  “Ethan, think about it,” she went on. “Sutton writes this random post about wanting to run away . . . and then someone kil s her? It’s too much of a coincidence. What if Sutton didn’t write this—what if the kil er did? That way, if someone noticed Sutton was missing, they’d read her Facebook and assume she ran away, not died. It was a way for the kil er to cover her ass. ”

  Ethan rol ed a forgotten tennis bal on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yel ow fabric. “It stil doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later tel ing you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves. A feathery chil darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the kil er wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the kil er realized I existed, she wanted me here so I could slip into Sutton’s life. No body, no crime. ”

  Ethan’s eyes darted across the court, like he stil didn’t believe Emma, but I was almost positive my sister was right. I woke up in Emma’s life the night of August 31, just hours before Emma discovered the snuff film of me. I doubted I’d straddled both Alive Sutton and Ghost Sutton worlds at the same time.

  Emma gazed at the dark silhouettes of trees in the distance. “So what was Sutton doing that night? Where was she, who was she with?”

  “Have you found any hints in her room?” Ethan asked.

  “Any emails, notes in her calendar . . . ?”

  Emma shook her head. “I’ve scoured her journal. But it’s so cryptic and random, like she assumed it was going to fal into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died. ”

  “What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried.