“Nisha?” Emma asked.
The other girl gave them a long, appraising look over the clay cat. Then she grinned. “Why not,” she said. “Count me in. I’ve always wanted to see a Lying Game prank from the other side.”
Across the room, Celeste painted astrological symbols around the rim of her bowl. An electric jolt charged down Emma’s spine as the new girl looked up and met her eyes. A slow, languid smile spread across her face—as if she had just caught Emma in a lie and couldn’t wait for the chance to expose her.
Or, I thought with a shudder, as if she’d just seen me, floating behind my twin.
15
HOPES AND SCHEMES
On Monday morning, Emma, Laurel, Madeline, Charlotte, and the Twitter Twins were perched on the low stone wall in the courtyard, enjoying the sun before the first bell rang. Emma felt a bit more rested after the weekend. She’d tried to regroup, spending a lot of time watching reality TV with Laurel on the couch and going on a bike ride with Ethan. Mr. Mercer hadn’t brought up the subject of Becky once, and she hadn’t asked.
Swarms of students moved through the quad on their way to lockers or classrooms, many of them casting the girls surreptitious looks and trying not to look too desperate. Word had gotten out that Charlotte was having a party on Saturday, and everyone wanted an invite.
“I can’t wait for your party, Char,” Laurel said, ripping the cover off a Chobani yogurt container.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Charlotte agreed. “I’ve got Poor Tony playing at ten.” She leaned back and took a sip of her iced latte, seemingly oblivious to the horde of would-be attendees.
“The DJ from Plush?” Madeline looked impressed. “How’d you swing that?”
“Money talks, girl.” Charlotte’s eyes glinted behind her aviator shades. “Mom and Dad left me an envelope of cash for the weekend, to buy food or whatever. They must be feeling guilty for something, because they went pretty overboard this time.”
A girl with blue streaks in her hair and a flowered romper suddenly appeared next to the wall. “Hey, Charlotte. I made all these blueberry scones for the drama club bake sale, but I ended up with way too many.” She gave a flustered little laugh, her round cheeks flushing. “Do you guys want some? They’re really good.”
Lili’s hand snaked out toward the plate of treats, but Charlotte swatted it back. “Thanks, but we already had breakfast.” Charlotte gestured toward the Starbucks cups and empty yogurt containers scattered around them.
The girl’s face fell. “Oh. Right.” She scampered away, cheeks blazing.
Madeline snorted in her wake. “Trying too hard, much?”
“The scones, or that outfit?” Charlotte asked.
“She’s not so bad, you guys,” Lili piped up. “I’m in P.E. with her and she’s actually pretty fun.”
“Whatever,” Charlotte said. “You can invite her when you see her this afternoon, Lili. Just tell her not to wear a whipped cream dress or something insane, okay?”
Emma sipped tentatively at her own coffee and winced. Sutton drank hers black, with just a hint of Splenda, and she still wasn’t used to the bitterness.
Madeline nudged her. “Someone’s quiet this morning.”
“Yeah, what are you planning?” Charlotte lowered her shades and peered sternly out at her over the tops of the frames. “I do not want pig blood anywhere near my parents’ Persian rug, Sutton, so don’t even think about it.”
Emma tossed her hair with what she hoped was convincing hauteur. “Relax, Char, I’m not planning anything for the party. Except showing the rest of you up, that is.”
“That’s not a plan, that’s just your terrible personality,” Laurel teased.
Before Emma could come up with a retort, someone placed an icy hand on her shoulder. “Ladies,” said a cool female voice.
Emma yelped in surprise. Her balance swayed violently, and before she knew it she was on the ground splayed out next to the low wall, looking up at Nisha’s startled face.
Everyone burst into hysterics. Tears of mirth poured down Laurel’s face. Charlotte and Madeline were paralyzed with laughter, clutching their stomachs. Lili and Gabby had fallen into each other’s arms. Nisha was the one to lean down and help Emma to her feet. “Sorry,” she said, sounding mortified. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Emma’s face burned. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, trying to shrug it off. “I just … thought you were someone else, that’s all.”
Yeah, my murderer. But Emma needed to keep her wits about her. The killer could be watching her right now. Not to mention that she was making me look bad.
The others stopped laughing long enough to catch their breath, and Nisha stepped forward. “I just wanted to show you what I made,” she said, pulling a piece of paper out of her coral messenger bag and handing it to Emma. The others leaned in over her shoulders to see what it said.
Across the top of the flyer, twenty-point Gothic script read CONFERENCE OF THE DEAD. Below it was a clip-art picture of a tombstone.
“‘Penetrate the mysteries beyond the veil of the living,’” Charlotte read out loud. “‘Join us Sunday evening in Sabino Canyon as we call upon the spirits to reveal themselves. Masks and cloaks required for entrance.’” There was an e-mail address at the bottom for an RSVP. Charlotte grinned.
“Oh, that’s too perfect,” Madeline said. “She’s going to eat it up.”
“Who?” Gabby asked, staring at it.
“Celeste,” Charlotte said. “She’s our next victim.”
Lili looked confused. “That hippie chick? Since when?”
“Since she started seriously creeping me out,” Emma explained. “And Nisha is helping us. It was her idea.”
Gabby and Lili raised their eyebrows, but neither said a word. For once, their fingers were still hovering over their phone keypads.
Laurel pointed at the invite. “What’s with the masks?”
“That way she won’t recognize us and leave right away,” Nisha explained. “Plus, masks are scary, right? All part of the smoke and mirrors.”
“We’ll meet at Sutton and Laurel’s on Sunday to finalize everything,” Charlotte said, tossing her cup in the garbage and standing up.
“We’re doing it in Sabino Canyon?” Emma couldn’t keep a note of dismay out of her voice. The less she had to be at the scene of her sister’s murder, the better.
“It’s close to my house,” Nisha explained. “I thought that afterward we could order takeout and celebrate our success. If you guys want to, that is,” she added.
“Sabino is totally perfect,” Madeline said, squeezing Emma’s elbow. “It’s so spooky out there, it’ll be the perfect place for a séance. That freak is going to be sorry she ever tried to mess with you.”
Emma’s gaze traveled across the courtyard to where Celeste sat in a half-lotus pose. Today she was wearing hemp pants and knotted rope sandals, with a five-point Wiccan star on a chain around her neck. For a moment, Emma felt almost bad about the prank—Celeste reminded her of a weirder version of Erin Featherstone, a girl at her school in Henderson who was a devout Buddhist and cried whenever bugs died. But then Celeste looked up and met Emma’s gaze. A slow, dreamy smirk came to her lips, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. It didn’t matter what Emma thought, she realized—right now she was Sutton Mercer, and no one messed with Sutton.
She turned to the others. “Let’s do this.”
Damn right, I agreed.
Everyone got up and headed to Celeste’s locker, which was in the fine arts hall between the auditorium and the dance studio. They nominated Charlotte to shove the invitation through the ventilation slats, then ran behind a corner and waited breathlessly for Celeste to appear, choking back their laughter.
The cacophonous warm-up of the school orchestra crashed out from the music room down the hall. The smell of turpentine was pungent in the air. “She’s coming!” Laurel whispered, and they all craned their necks around the corner to watch.
Celeste drifted toward her locker. Even her walk was dreamy, as though she wasn’t entirely touching the ground. She swung open the locker door and the flyer fluttered out. Laurel bit down on her knuckles to stifle her giggles as Celeste leaned over to pick it up.
“She’s reading it,” hissed Lili.
Charlotte slapped her shoulder. “That’s what we want her to do, idiot.”
Celeste looked up and down the hall, then carefully folded the sheet of paper and slid it into a book. She shut her locker and started down the hall toward them.
“Quick!” Gabby shrieked.
The girls ran down the hall into the pottery studio for cover. A few moments later, Nisha’s iPhone vibrated. “She RSVP’d,” she announced, locking eyes with Emma and grinning. “Ladies, it’s time to raise the dead.”
If only she meant it literally, I thought. But a prank on a girl who deserved it was almost as good.
16
EVERY DAY SHOULD BE SENIOR SKIP DAY
The next day, before third period, Charlotte and Madeline swooped in on either side of Emma and steered her toward the door to the student parking lot. “Guys?” Emma asked as they passed her classroom. “I have English next. I have to turn in a paper on Jane Eyre.”
No matter how important it was for her to pretend to be Sutton, Emma hadn’t been able to give up her own study habits. She’d finished Jane Eyre for the second time and loved it, not that she could ever admit it to Sutton’s friends. She doubted Sutton would have gushed over angsty Victorian literature.
Um, no. I would have been more likely to browse the Wikipedia entry ten minutes before class and hope no one called on me. But good for my sister. It was nice to know that one of us was a brainiac.
Madeline snorted. “So turn it in at the end of school. Anyway, who wants to talk about some weird old book by a chick who obviously never got laid? I gave up after the first page. We totally deserve a mental health day. And we need new clothes for the party.”
Emma paused. In her old life back in Nevada, she wouldn’t have dreamed of skipping class. She’d always been a good student—she knew her only shot at going to college was to land a top-notch scholarship, so she’d worked hard. She’d also liked school—it was an escape from the more depressing living situations in which she found herself, a place she could slip anonymously into the crowd and disappear from the eyes of creepy foster siblings or eccentric guardians and just be a normal kid.
But a mental health day did sound like just what she needed right now. “Okay, I’m in,” she agreed, linking arms with Madeline and walking out into the sunshine.
The girls climbed into Charlotte’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and blasted a Kelly Clarkson song as they turned out into the street. Emma felt the weight on her shoulders lightening for the first time in days. This was better than sitting in class.
“So, I ordered dessert for the party from Hey, Cupcake!” Charlotte said as they drove past a comic book shop with a life-sized fiberglass Spider-Man attached to the outside wall. “Do you think seven dozen will be enough?”