Madeline was dressed in a black camisole and her black hair was pulled back in a perfect bun even though it was the middle of the night. She elbowed her way between Laurel and Mrs. Mercer. Her mouth fell open. She reached out for Laurel’s arm as if she might fall to the ground in shock.
“Thayer!” Madeline’s voice was shrill, her expression an odd mixture of anger, confusion, and relief. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? Are you okay?” The muscles in Thayer’s arms flexed as he balled his fists. He glanced around at Laurel, Madeline, Emma, and the Mercer parents like he was a wounded animal wanting to flee his attackers. After a beat, he spun on his heel and bolted in the opposite direction. He shot across Sutton’s bedroom, hoisting himself out the window and shimmying down the oak tree that served as an escape hatch from Sutton’s room. Emma, Laurel, and Madeline flew to the window and watched Thayer scramble through the darkness. His gait was uneven—he favored his left leg with a pronounced limp as he moved across the grass.
“Get back here!” Mr. Mercer screamed, racing from Sutton’s bedroom and banging down the stairs. Emma scampered after him, with Mrs. Mercer, Laurel, and Madeline following behind. Charlotte and the Twitter Twins staggered out from the den, looking sleepy and confused.
Everyone gathered around the open doorway. Mr.
Mercer had run halfway across the yard. “I’m calling the cops!” he shouted. “Get back here, damn it!” No answer came. Tires screeched around the corner.
Just like that, Thayer was gone.
Madeline whirled around to stare at Emma. Tears welled in her blue eyes and her face was red and blotchy.
“Did you invite him here?”
Emma gasped. “What? No!”
But Madeline sprinted out the door. A few sharp bleep s pierced through the air, and Madeline’s SUV lights ill uminated the darkness.
Laurel shot Emma a pissed-off look. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Emma protested.
Laurel looked at the other girls for support. Charlotte cleared her throat. The Twitter Twins fingered the iPhones in their hands, surely itching to post an update about this to their many social-networking sites. Laurel’s glare was icy and incredulous, and Emma could guess why. Laurel and Thayer had been best friends before his disappearance, and Laurel had a major crush on him. But Thayer had barely registered Laurel’s existence in Sutton’s bedroom. From what Emma had gathered over the past few weeks in Tucson, something big had gone on between Sutton and Thayer before he went missing.
“Didn’t do anything?” Laurel whipped back to face Emma. “You got him in trouble! Again. ” Mrs. Mercer ran her hands over her face. “Please, Laurel. Not now.” She stepped toward Emma, cinching the belt of the pink terry-cloth bathrobe she’d stopped to grab on her way downstairs. “Sutton, are you alright?” Laurel rolled her eyes. “Look at her. She’s fine.” Finally, Drake, the Great Dane, trotted down the stairs and nudged Mrs. Mercer’s hand with his slobbery nose.
“Some guard dog you are,” Mrs. Mercer muttered. Then she turned back to Emma, Laurel, and the three remaining girls in the foyer. “I think you girls should go home now,” she said wearily.
Without a word, Charlotte and the Twitter Twins turned back to the den, presumably to gather up their stuff.
Emma’s head felt too foggy to follow them, so she trudged back upstairs and took refuge in Sutton’s bedroom to get her bearings. The room looked exactly as she’d left it: Old issues of Vogue lay neatly stacked on Sutton’s bookshelf, necklaces were twined together on her dresser, school notebooks were piled on her white oak desk, and the computer cycled through images of Madeline, Charlotte, Laurel, and Sutton with their arms wrapped around each other—probably celebrating some perfectly pulled-off Lying Game prank. Nothing was missing. Whatever reason Thayer had to break in, it wasn’t theft.
Emma sank to the floor, Madeline’s hurt look flashing through her mind once more. One thing Thayer definitely had stolen was the tenuous peace she’d finally made with Sutton’s friends and Laurel. Sutton had ruffled a lot of feathers while she was alive, and it had taken a fair amount of work to repair her relationships.
I bristled at Emma’s thoughts. These were my friends she was talking about. People I had known forever and loved, and who loved me back. But even I couldn’t deny that I’d made some questionable decisions. I’d stolen Charlotte’s boyfriend, Garrett. I’d clearly had some sort of rocky relationship with Madeline’s brother. I’d given Gabby a seizure during a Lying Game prank—and then told her sister that if she told anyone what I’d done, I’d make her life in high school a living hell. And I’d been dismissive of Laurel’s feelings in too many ways to count. One thing I’d learned being dead was that I’d made a lot of mistakes when I was alive. Mistakes I could never set right. But maybe Emma could.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, Emma slipped out of Sutton’s room and slowly went down the stairs. The scent of roasted hazelnuts greeted her in the kitchen.
Sutton’s father was staring into a cup of black coffee, his face still twisted into an angry, almost unrecognizable mask. Mrs. Mercer traced circles between his shoulder blades with the tips of her fingers and whispered something into his ear. Laurel stared listlessly out the window, spinning a pineapple suncatcher around.
When Mrs. Mercer noticed Emma, she looked up and gave her a small smile. “The police will be here any minute, Sutton,” she said softly.