Page 31
The words sliced through Emma’s brain. She opened her mouth, but no sounds came out. How could he know that? Slowly, she felt the door handle with her free hand. It still didn’t open. “Of course I’m Sutton,” she said, her voice shaking. Her heart pounded.
“You’re acting nothing like her. ”
Emma swallowed awkwardly. She was beginning to feel woozy. “H-How would you know?”
Ethan leaned forward a little. “For a while I thought Sutton had changed—ever since that night you showed up in my driveway. But tonight you’re totally different. You’re someone else,” Ethan said in a lonely, sad voice. “It’s freaking me out. So you’d better tell me what’s going on. ”
Emma stared at him, her body stricken with fear. But as Ethan talked, things started to whirl in my head. Ethan’s lost, haunting smile. The smell of the desert plants, the dust. The feel of someone pulling something soft over my head and squeezing something thin and sharp around my neck. A giggle.
All of a sudden, a chain reaction went off in my head. Lights sparking other lights. Images rolling into new images. And just like that, a new, lucid memory unfurled before me, like a red carpet unrolled for a queen. All I could do was watch helplessly. . . .
Chapter 31
NOT FUNNY, BITCHES
The blurry, shadowed figure grabs my shoulders and pulls me out of the trunk. I bang my knee on the side of the car and twist my ankle on the hard ground. Hands press against my shoulder blades and shove me forward. I pitch my head down, trying to get a look at the ground beneath me, but it’s too dark. I can smell a desert fire somewhere in the distance, but I have no idea where I am. I could be in Tucson. I could be on the moon.
The same hands push me to sitting. The bones in my butt dig into what feels like a wooden folding chair. I make a couple of muffled cries, the gag in my mouth sopping wet from my saliva. “Shut up,” someone hisses.
I try to kick whoever is near me, but my feet grope in thin air. There’s more crunching through gravel, and then a tiny electronic ping. Through the blindfold, I see a small LED beam staring at me. I bite down hard on the gag.
“Go,” a voice whispers. A girl. More crunching footsteps. And then someone’s hands grab my neck. The chain of the locket I always wear pulls against my throat. My head jerks back. I wriggle my hands in their binds, but I can’t free them. My bare feet thrash, hitting the cold, rough ground.
“Harder,” I hear a voice whisper. “A little higher,” says another. The chain digs into my throat. I try to breathe, but my airway can’t expand. My lungs scream for air. My whole body starts to burn. I thrash my head forward and see the little red light still watching me. Two shapes hover behind the light, too. I can see whites of teeth, glitters of jewelry. I’m dying, I think. They’re killing me.
My vision starts to turn gray. Spots appear in front of my eyes. My head throbs, my brain desperate for oxygen. I want to fight, but all at once I’m too weak to kick or wriggle. My lungs shudder, wanting to give up. Maybe it would be easier to give up. One by one, each muscle surrenders. It’s like a delicious reprieve, like falling into bed after a long tennis match. All sounds around me dribble away. My vision narrows until it’s a tunnel of light. Even the chain collapsing my windpipe doesn’t hurt so much anymore. I feel my head flop forward, my neck no longer rigid. Darkness envelops me. I see no visions. I’m still afraid, but the fear feels muffled now. It’s too much effort to fight.
From far within my head, I hear sharp whispers. Someone calls my name. Then there’s a muffled scream, and then more footsteps. Something heavy hits the ground with a muted thud. Seconds later, my skin vaguely registers the sensation of someone pulling the blindfold from my head and the gag from my mouth.
“Sutton?” a soft voice calls. A guy’s voice. Wind whips across my face. I feel my hair tickle my forehead. “Sutton?” the same voice calls again.
Consciousness begins to dribble back to me. The tips of my fingers tingle. My lungs expand. A spot appears in front of my eyes, and then another. One of my eyelids flutters. I stare groggily around, feeling just like I had when I’d woken up from the anesthesia after I’d gotten my tonsils out. Where am I?
My vision clears and I see an empty tripod in front of me. A video camera lays tipped over on the grass, the red LED power button now flashing. I’m in a clearing of some sort, though I don’t see any cars or lights. The air smells a little like a cigarette. Then I notice someone crouching right next to me. I jump and stiffen.
“Are you okay?” whoever it is cries. He touches the rope on my hands. “Jesus,” he says under his breath.
I take him in, still so disoriented. He has close-cropped hair, startling blue eyes, and is wearing a black T-shirt, green cargo shorts, and black Converse sneakers. The blindfold that had just been covering my face is in his left hand. For a moment I wonder if he is the one who did this to me, but the look on his face is such a mix of disgust and concern that I immediately dismiss the idea. “I can’t really see that well,” I say in a hoarse, scratchy voice. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Ethan,” he says. “Ethan Landry. ”
I blink hard. Ethan Landry. My brain feels like it’s slogging through mud. I can’t quite think who he is for a minute. I remember a brooding boy roaming the halls. A hopeful face watching me from across a parking lot. “W-What happened?” I ask faintly.
“I don’t know. ” Ethan reaches down to untie my hands. “I saw someone strangling you. I ran into the clearing and they took off. ”
“They threw me in a trunk,” I murmur. “Someone dragged me here. ”
“Did you see who?”
I shake my head. Then I gaze at Ethan, trying to figure out what I know about him. Why I don’t like him. Maybe it’s just one of those things—we haven’t liked him for so long we forgot what started it. But it suddenly feels like he’s my only friend in the world.
Crack. Twigs snap behind me, and I turn. Three figures emerge from the trees and scamper toward me. “Gotcha!” Charlotte cries, stepping into the light. Madeline follows. And then Laurel appears, a ski mask in her hand. She looks like she might cry.
Ethan gapes at them. “This was a joke?”
“Uh, duh. ” Madeline scoops up the video camera from the ground. “Sutton knew it all along. ”
Ethan stands in front of me protectively. “You almost killed her. ”
The girls pause and exchange a glance. Laurel licks her lips. Madeline slips the camera into her bag. Finally, Charlotte sniffs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “What were you doing following us anyway? Stalker. ”
Ethan looks at me for a moment. I turn away, feeling both vulnerable and humiliated. He waves his hand dismissively and backs away toward the brush. But as Madeline bends down to cut through the knots around my hands, I catch his eye again. Thank you, I covertly mouth, my heart banging steadily but firmly in my chest. Ethan nods, resigned. You’re welcome, he mouths back.
And then, just like that, everything fades out once more. My memory has hit yet another dead end.
Chapter 32
THE BITTER TRUTH
In the car, Ethan was still gazing intently at Emma. “What’s going on?” he asked again.
“I’m Sutton,” Emma answered, trembling. “I swear. ”
“You’re not. ” A sad smile appeared on Ethan’s face. “Just tell me the truth. ”
Emma stared at his glowing teeth in the darkness. She glanced around at the dark desert before them. A terrible thought crackled through her head like a lightning bolt: He sounded so sure. But how could he be positive, unless . . . “Did . . . did you kill her? Is that how you know?”
Ethan jolted back. He triple blinked, his face turning gray. “Kill her? Sutton’s . . . dead?”
Emma bit hard on her lip. Ethan looked shattered. “She was murdered,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “I think someone strangled her. Someone she knows. I saw it on a video. ”
Ethan frowned. ??
?Strangled?”
“With this necklace. ” She lifted the locket from under her dress to show him. “In the woods. Her friends caught it all on tape. They even posted it online. ”
Ethan’s gaze shifted to the right. A horrified look of understanding swept over his face. “Oh. Oh. ”
“What?”
Ethan sank back into the seat and covered his face with his hands. “Was she blindfolded in this video?”
“Yes . . . ”
Ethan took a deep breath and looked at her again. “I was there that night. ”
Emma blinked hard. “You were there?”
“I was riding my bike when I saw this familiar car whip past,” he explained. “I recognized it by the SWAN LAKE MAFIA sticker on the back window—Madeline and I had assigned parking spots next to each other last year. It stuck in my head. ”
Emma gulped.
“I don’t know why, but something made me follow them down this hill into a clearing,” Ethan went on. “By the time I got there, the camera had been set up and they’d just started strangling Sutton. I didn’t know what was going on or why they were doing it, but it seriously looked like they’d killed her. ”
Emma sat completely still as Ethan explained what had happened: Just as Sutton had lost consciousness, he’d run into the clearing. The girls screamed and hid, knocking the camera off its tripod. He ran to Sutton and worked to untie her hands. “Sutton was still breathing,” he told Emma. “She came around. ”
Emma stared out the dark windshield. “So . . . you were that person at the end of the video who took the blindfold off her? You saved her?”
Ethan shrugged. “I guess. ”
He cleared his throat and went on. “But see, after that night, I didn’t hear anything from Sutton. Not that I thought she owed me anything, but it would’ve been nice to get . . . I don’t know. A real thank-you, maybe. So when you approached me outside Nisha’s party, I figured that’s what was about to happen. Something seemed off that night though. Different. The way you talked about Bitch Stars . . . your sense of humor. And every time I saw you after that, I kept getting that same nagging feeling. You were . . . sweet. And funny. And interesting. And . . . remorseful. The Sutton I knew—everyone knew—wouldn’t have felt bad about anything, ever. So I started to wonder if she had multiple personalities. Or had had, like, a spiritual awakening that made her not so . . . hard. ” He pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. “Whatever happened, I started to kind of fall for her. ”
“That was me,” Emma said quietly, staring at her lap. “I was that girl at Nisha’s party. And every time after that. Not Sutton. ”
Ethan ran his tongue over his teeth, nodding slowly. “So . . . who are you?”
A firecracker boomed in the distance. After it finished crackling, Emma took a breath. “I’m Sutton’s twin. Well, long-lost twin. We never knew each other. I didn’t even get to meet her once. ”