“I love their red velvet,” Madeline said, her eyes fluttering back in her head in bliss. “Maybe you’d better request another dozen.”
“If I have to watch you eat a dozen cupcakes, I’m going to kill myself,” Charlotte complained, eyeing Madeline’s lithe dancer’s frame with envy.
“Are you bringing a date, Char?” Madeline asked, in what Emma suspected was an attempt to change the subject.
Charlotte applied NARS peach gloss in the rearview mirror at a stoplight. “John Hokosawa,” she said. “I wasn’t going to bother, but we were talking after Calc yesterday, and he’s looking amazing.”
“Oh my God, I love his new haircut,” Madeline agreed. “He looks like he should be racing motorcycles.” They both giggled.
“Wait, rewind,” Emma said, cocking her head at Charlotte. “What did you mean, you weren’t going to bother with a date?” As far as she knew, the Lying Game girls didn’t go stag to anything.
Charlotte shrugged. “There’s no one to date anymore.”
“Ugh, tell me about it.” Madeline leaned back against her seat, sticking her lip out in a pout. “I’m so tired of high school boys. I keep looking around the halls and thinking, this is it? They’re all such children.”
“So are you going alone?” Emma asked.
Madeline looked at her like she was crazy. “Of course not. I’m taking Jake Wood. I’m not going to go without for the next six months just because there are college guys on the horizon.”
Emma had never heard Madeline or Charlotte talk about college, but she probably shouldn’t have been shocked. College was on the horizon—at least for them. Everyone seemed to be looking ahead, ready to move forward with their lives, while she was stuck in someone else’s. What would happen if she couldn’t solve this case before college applications were due? Would she submit them as Sutton, or would she be stuck here in limbo, chasing dead leads and spinning her wheels?
I wondered, too. What if she got sick of wondering who’d killed me? What if she figured out a way to abandon my life without getting hurt? Then what would happen to me?
They pulled into the La Encantada parking lot. Young mothers in Lululemon yoga pants and diamond earrings pushed strollers through the sunny arcades. A group of senior citizens power walked past the girls, swinging their arms cheerfully. Upbeat jazz filtered through the PA speakers, and the smell of bread and frying things wafted through the air from AJ’s Market. As they walked toward the main shopping area, Emma’s phone chimed. ANY MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT BECKY? Ethan wrote.
NOT REALLY, Emma responded.
MAYBE WE SHOULD RESEARCH WHAT HER CONDITION IS, EXACTLY, Ethan suggested. IF IT’S SOMETHING HARMLESS, THEN WE CAN RULE HER OUT.
THAT’S A GOOD IDEA, Emma agreed. GOTTA GO.
ENGLISH IS THAT INTERESTING? Ethan joked.
Emma stared at the gleaming storefronts in front of her. What would Ethan think about her cutting class? She knew that he considered Sutton’s friends frivolous and superficial. TOTALLY INTERESTING, she wrote back, deciding not to tell him.
They hopped on the escalator up toward the Bebe store. Emma looked at the girls out of the corner of her eye. Charlotte’s gaze was hidden behind her aviators, while Madeline was texting furiously. A decal that said SWAN LAKE MAFIA covered the back of her iPhone—some kind of ballet inside joke. Once they walked through the doors, Madeline beelined straight for a rack of cropped sweaters, while Charlotte started leafing through dresses. As she studied a short, fringed dress that made her think of flappers and the Roaring Twenties, Emma had a sudden thought: Tons of people would be at Charlotte’s house, the very place she’d been attacked late one night during her first week in Tucson. The party would be unsupervised. What if Sutton’s killer was there?
She shuddered, remembering those strong hands at her throat, tightening the chain of Sutton’s silver locket against her skin until she could barely breathe. If only she’d been able to see her attacker’s face.
“Char?” Emma tried to look casual as she flipped through a rack of belts. “Are you going to disarm the security system for the party?”
Charlotte looked at her strangely. “Um, yeah? I don’t exactly want the cops showing up before the party’s even had a chance to start. The last thing I need is for some drunk moron to trip the switch.”
“Have you seen anyone, like, prowling around your house lately?”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “Is this the build-up to a Lying Game prank? Lame, Sutton. No repeats allowed, remember?”
“Repeats?”
“Oh, please. Don’t pretend you forgot about the guy who crashed my tenth-grade birthday with a chain saw and a Jason mask.”
I laughed silently. I wished I remembered that one.
Emma held up her hands. “I’m not planning anything, honest. I’m just curious. I mean, why do you guys even have such a serious alarm system? Has anyone ever broken in?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, Detective Mercer.”
Shooting one last look at Emma, she threw a few dresses over her shoulder and headed off to the fitting room. Emma stood there thinking. She could see puddles of fabric pooling around her friend’s perfectly pedicured toes. What she really wanted was to know who had access to the security codes—but Charlotte already thought she was acting weird.
The door opened a half inch, and Charlotte’s face appeared in the gap. “Oh good, you’re still here. Can you help zip me up?”
Charlotte turned around and lifted her hair out of the way. Emma tugged at the zipper, but it wouldn’t move. The jade green dress was pulled tight across Charlotte’s midsection. “Um,” Emma said uncomfortably, not wanting to say the words I think you need a bigger size. Charlotte was sensitive enough about her weight already.
Unfortunately, that was the moment Madeline chose to come bounding out of an adjacent fitting room, a midriff-baring sweater stretched tight over her slender torso, exposing her toned abs and narrow waist. She did a quick pas de bourrée in the mirror, landing in a graceful half curtsey. “What do we think, ladies?”
Charlotte tore away from Emma and slammed the door shut.
Madeline froze, her eyes wide. “What the hell?” she mouthed silently at Emma.
Emma gritted her teeth, not knowing how to answer. How could she tell Madeline she’d picked the wrong moment to dance around looking like a Victoria’s Secret model?
Then she turned to Charlotte’s dressing room. “Char?” she called softly, laying her cheek against the door. “Are you okay?”
She heard a sniff inside the dressing room. “I’m fine.”
Madeline shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Did I do something?” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around her waist as if she suddenly felt naked. Emma shook her head. “No, I did.” She turned back to the fitting room door.
“Let’s go,” Emma said. “This place sucks. Plus, I saw an amazing bronze dress down at Castor and Pollux that will look perfect with your skin tone.”
The door flew open. Charlotte’s cheeks were blotchy and her eyes were wet, but she’d conjured up a blasé expression. Behind her, dresses lay in unkempt piles on the floor. Normally Emma would have hated to leave a mess like that for the shop assistants to clean up—she had, after all, been a working-class girl herself in her former life—but now she just laced her arm through Charlotte’s and led her toward the door. Madeline rushed behind them, but Emma twisted around and gave her a look that said, She’s cool, just give me a little time alone with her. Madeline nodded, waiting a beat so she was a few steps behind them.
“So, Castor and Pollux?” Emma asked.
Char shrugged. “Whatever.”
Emma watched Charlotte carefully as they stepped onto the down escalator, trying to read her. Char always carried herself with alpha-female confidence, but it must have been hard to run around with Madeline the Prima Ballerina and Stone-Cold Sutton Mercer, both of whom wriggled into the lower sizes on the racks with ease. Then there was Charlotte’s mother, who ate nothing but grapefruit and who looked as if she could be Charlotte’s older sister.
She placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Char. You know you’re gorgeous, right?”
Charlotte’s face didn’t budge from its cool, aloof mask. She watched three elderly women on the lower level as though they were the most fascinating people in the world.
“Seriously,” Emma persisted. “You’ve got an awesome body. I’d give anything to be able to fill out a V-neck the way you can.”
Charlotte’s face whipped toward Emma, her lips curling angrily. “Spare me, Sutton. If my body was so great, that stupid prank with my tags wouldn’t have worked.”
“Tags?” Emma blinked.
“Last year, when you guys spent a whole month switching tags on my clothes so I thought I was gaining weight?”
Emma’s lips parted. They’d seriously done that?
“I got a real kick out of spending half my junior year thinking I was too fat for a size fourteen,” Charlotte spat angrily.
“That was an awful joke,” Emma said seriously. “I’m really sorry, Char.”
The apology seemed to knock Charlotte off kilter for a moment, but then her expression became impassive once more. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does,” Emma insisted. “It was a mean thing to do.”
Charlotte sniffed. “It was your idea.”
Emma winced. Of course it was Sutton’s idea. “Well, it was a bad move, and I’d take it back if I could. I’m sorry.”
Charlotte stopped in front of Williams-Sonoma and lifted up her shades to peer at Emma from under them. “Okay, I’m starting to think Celeste might be right. You’ve been replaced by a pod person or something.”
Emma smiled. “No pod person here. I’ve just … well, I realized that I sometimes take you guys for granted. I hope you know how much you and Madeline mean to me. You’re my best friends.”
I hovered by my sister in silent agreement. Being dead had given me an entirely new perspective on the way that I had lived. I guess even ghosts could grow up.
“Wait a minute,” Madeline said, stepping forward to join them for real. “Sutton, having a heart-to-heart? Is this the influence of Mr. Sensitivity?”
Charlotte grinned. “Mads, I think you’re onto something. Are you going to start writing poetry now, Sutton?”
Madeline and Charlotte both giggled, startling a nearby pigeon that sat perched on top of a pretzel. “What about bottle-feeding kittens?” Madeline teased.
“Donating your hair to cancer kids?” Charlotte giggled.
“Taking up the guitar and going to open mikes?” Madeline added.
The tension had broken. Emma wrinkled her nose in mock irritation while Madeline and Charlotte leaned into each other, laughing. “You’re both hilarious,” she said haughtily.