“So how are you going to find out more?” Ethan asked.
Emma took a long sip of the coffee Charlotte had brought for her. “Continue eavesdropping on all the gossip, maybe?” she said with a shrug.
Ethan looked like he was going to say something else, but he was cut off by the final bell. Both of them snapped to attention. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
“Okay,” Ethan said. He stepped forward just as Emma did. They bumped feet and stepped back.
“Sorry,” Emma murmured.
“It’s cool,” Ethan said gruffly, shifting his backpack higher on his shoulder. Their eyes met for a moment, but then Ethan lowered his head again and scuttled toward the doors. “I’ll see you,” he mumbled.
“Okay,” Emma said to his disappearing shape. She swung around and began to walk in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, a rustling in the bushes made her stop short.
Someone snickered behind a podium. Emma squinted, trying to make out who it was. Was someone watching her?
Was it Laurel again, spying on her and Ethan? Before she could get a glimpse, whoever it was ducked into the school and darted up the stairs.
5
GAME, SET,
OUTMATCHED
After school that day, Emma walked off the tennis court at Wheeler High, Holl ier’s main rival, shading her eyes from the bright glare and smiling bashfully at the smattering of applause. All of Holl ier’s sports teams were playing Wheeler that week, and Emma had just finished a grueling match against a petite redhead. Well, it wasn’t supposed to be grueling—Coach Maggie had basically said that the girl was so subpar she could be beaten with an ankle strain and a badminton racket. Before Emma had arrived in Tucson, the most tennis she’d ever played was on a Ping-Pong table in a dingy basement with Stephan, her Russian foster brother. She did use some of the Russian curse words he had taught her when she wanted to swear during a match without getting in trouble, though.
For me, it was yet another reminder of how different our childhoods had been.
“Good game, Sutton,” several people Emma didn’t recognize said as she passed. She collapsed into a chair on the sidelines, kicked off the state-of-the-art tennis sneakers she’d found in Sutton’s closet—not that they helped her game any—and let out a groan.
“Someone still out of shape?” a voice lilted.
Emma looked up and saw Nisha Banerjee leaning against the fence, a smirk on her face. Nisha’s long, slender fingers rested on her trim waist, her überwhite tennis uniform gleamed—she probably bleached it after tennis uniform gleamed—she probably bleached it after every match—and there wasn’t even a hint of sweat on the terrycloth band that circled her head of sleek, dark hair. She was Sutton’s tennis co-captain, and she never missed a chance to tell Emma how undeserving she was of the title.
Emma bit her lip and tried to tell herself that Nisha was being mean because she was hurting inside—she’d lost her mother this past summer and was dealing with a lot of pain. In a paral ell universe, maybe she and Emma would even bond over their absent mothers.
But not in this universe, I wanted to tell her. Nisha Banerjee and Sutton Mercer were sworn enemies and always would be. If Nisha hadn’t had a solid alibi for the night of my murder—she’d had the entire tennis team over at her house for a sleepover—she would have been at the top of my suspect list.
Emma grabbed her gym bag and made her way inside the school. Wheeler’s locker room smelled like old socks and strawberry-scented body spray. A shower head dripped in the corner, and a flyer for intramural water polo hung limply on the cinderblock wall. Emma crumpled her sweaty white socks into her gym bag, pulled her tennis uniform over her head, and changed into Sutton’s pink ball et flats, denim shorts, and V-neck tee. As she walked toward the sinks, the muscles along the backs of her thighs protested loudly, and she winced. She had eight more tennis matches to go before the end of the season. She’d probably have to get thigh replacements after that.
As she turned the corner, she saw girls in swim caps printed with HOLLIER SWIM TEAM. The room was filled with steam, and shower taps whooshed. Emma caught snippets of conversation: about someone’s butterfly splits, and then about some hot Wheeler swimmer named Devon. When she heard the name Thayer Vega, the hair rose on the back of her neck. She inched toward the showers.
“And you just know Sutton Mercer had something to do with it,” a girl chirped.
“Doesn’t she always?” said another, her voice raspier than the first.
“It’s unreal how Thayer went to her house after everyone says she put his life in danger. I mean, what’s that guy thinking getting involved with her again?” A prickly feeling crawled along Emma’s body. Sutton had put Thayer’s life in danger? Suddenly, she remembered something Ethan had told her on Friday, right before they kissed: There was a rumor that Sutton had almost killed someone with her car. She pictured Thayer’s exaggerated limp as he ran from the Mercers’ house. Was it possible?
Sutton’s iPhone buzzed, and Emma scrambled to answer it. She ducked into a bathroom stal so that the swimmers wouldn’t see her spying and checked the screen. It was an unknown number with a 520 area code.
“hello?” she whispered.
“Sutton?” a low voice grumbled. “This is Detective Quinlan.”
She clenched the phone tighter, her heart lurching.
Emma had grown up fearing the police. Becky had had some run-ins with them, and Emma had always worried the cops would throw her in jail, too, by association. “Yes?” she squeaked.