LITMIR.BIZ

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away, not died. It was a way for the killer to cover her ass.”

      Ethan rolled a forgotten tennis ball on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yellow fabric. “It still doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later telling you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves.

      A feathery chill darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the killer wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the killer 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 still 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 fall into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died.”

      “What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried. “Crumpled-up notes in her trash can?”

      “Nope.” Emma’s eyes dropped to the space between her feet. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.

      Ethan sighed. “Okay. How about her friends? Do you know where they were that night?”

      “I asked Madeline,” Emma said. “She told me she didn’t remember.”

      “That’s convenient.” Ethan scuffed the tip of his sneaker over the court. “I could see Madeline doing it, though. The beautiful, unhinged ballerina. Like Black Swan for real.”

      Emma gave a short laugh. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She’d hung out several times with Madeline over the past week. They’d even had a heart-to-heart about Thayer and a few laughs in a spa hot tub. In those moments, Madeline had reminded Emma of her tough-but-caring friend Alexandra Stokes, who lived in Henderson, Nevada.

      Emma looked at Ethan. “Maybe Madeline was telling the truth. I mean, do you remember what you were doing on the thirty-first?”

      “Actually, I do. It was the first day of the meteor shower.”

      “The Perseids.” Emma nodded. The first time she’d met Ethan, he’d been stargazing.

      A shy smile crept onto Ethan’s face like he was remembering the moment, too. “Yep, I was probably on my front porch. The shower goes on for, like, a week.”

      “And you were camping out there because stars are more interesting than people, huh?” Emma teased.

      Pink colored Ethan’s cheeks and he looked away. “Some people.”

      “Should I ask Madeline again?” Emma pressed. “Do you think she’s hiding something?”

      Ethan shook his head slowly. “You never know with those girls. Not that I was privy to their inner-circle secrets, but something has always seemed off about Madeline and Charlotte. Before you came to town, when Sutton was still alive, it constantly seemed like they were vying for her attention and her position at the same time.” He stared off into the distance. “Like they loved her and hated her.”

      Gripping Sutton’s phone, Emma touched the Twitter icon and called up each of Sutton’s friends’ pages, finding nothing remarkable on the thirty-first. But when she flipped to the tweets on September 1, something on Madeline’s page caught her eye. She’d written a shout-out to @Chamberlainbabe, Charlotte’s Twitter handle. Thanks for being there for me last night, Char. True friends stick together, no matter what.

      “True friends,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Aw.”

      “More like Huh?” Something wasn’t right. “Madeline and Charlotte aren’t touchy-feely. At all.” To Emma, they seemed more like uneasy comrades in the same popular-girl army. Then Ethan pointed to last night. “Madeline’s talking about the thirty-first.”

      I shivered. Maybe they’d been with me that night. Maybe they’d finished off their pseudo–best friend together. And maybe, if Emma wasn’t careful, she’d be next.

      Emma ran her hands down her face, then glanced at Ethan again. Guilt welled up in her chest. Whoever killed her sister was monitoring Emma’s every move. How long before the murderer realized Ethan knew the truth about her and tried to silence him, too?

      “You don’t have to help me, you know,” she whispered. “It’s not safe.”

      Ethan turned to face her, his eyes intense. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

      “Are you sure?”

      When he nodded, Emma was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. “Well, thank you. I was drowning by myself.”

      Ethan looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who drowns in anything.”

      Emma wanted to reach out and touch the spot where moonlight splashed his cheek. He shifted an inch closer until their knees bumped and his face angled toward hers, like he was about to kiss her. Emma felt the heat of his body as he moved closer, very aware of his full bottom lip.

      Her mind swirled, remembering the night before, when he’d told her he’d begun to fall for the girl who’d taken over Sutton’s life. That he’d begun to fall for her. A different kind of girl would know how to seal the deal. Emma kept a list in her journal called Ways to Flirt, but she’d never actually put any of the techniques into action.

      Snap.

      Emma shot up, cocking her head to the right. Across the court, just behind a tree, came the faint blue glow of a cell phone, like someone was standing there, watching them.

      “Do you see that?”

      “What?” Ethan whispered.

      Emma craned her neck. But there was only darkness, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that someone had seen—and heard—everything.

      

3

      SPINNING HER WHEELS

      On Monday morning, Emma sat at a potter’s wheel in the ceramics room at Hollier High. She was surrounded by lumps of cement-gray clay, wood tools for carving and cutting, and lopsided bowls on wooden slats waiting for kiln firing. The air smelled earthy and wet, and there was the constant whir of wheels spinning and clunky feet clopping the treadles.

      Madeline perched on the stool to Emma’s right, glowering at her potter’s wheel as though it were a torture device. “What’s the point of making pottery? Isn’t that what Pottery Barn is for?”

      Charlotte snorted. “Pottery Barn doesn’t sell pottery! Do you think Crate and Barrel sells crates and barrels, too?”

      “And Pier 1 sells piers?” Laurel giggled a row ahead of them.

      “Less talking, more creating, girls,” said Mrs. Gilliam, their ceramics instructor, snaking around the wheels, her bell anklet jingling as she walked. Mrs. Gilliam was one of those people who looked as though she couldn’t be anything but an art teacher. She wore billowing jersey pants, jacquard vests, and statement necklaces over batik tunics that smelled like musty patchouli. Her words were emphatic, reminding Emma of an old social worker she’d known named Mrs. Thuerk, who always spoke as though she was delivering a Shakespearean monologue. How now, Emma … art thou being treated well in this Nevada

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