I smiled. Now there was a career path. But it impressed me how resourceful she was. It was like Ethan said the other night: Nothing seemed to overwhelm her.
“Thayer had a Honda bike, right?” Mr. Mercer said. “You didn’t ride on it with him, did you?”
Emma shrugged, her skin prickling at Thayer’s name. Emma had found out last week that Laurel and Thayer had been best friends, and that Laurel had a not-so-secret crush on him. But she’d also discovered that, at the very least, Thayer had liked Sutton.
I tried desperately to remember what Thayer meant to me. I kept seeing flashes of the two of us standing in the school courtyard, Thayer grabbing my hands and saying something in an apologetic voice, me wrenching my hands away and spitting something back at him, my words flinty and abrasive. But then the memory dissolved.
Mr. Mercer sank down on an overturned milk crate.
“Sutton . . . why did you steal today?”
Emma ran her fingers over the shifter. Because I’m trying to solve your daughter’s murder. But al she said was “I’m real y sorry.”
“Was it because of . . . everything at home?” Mr. Mercer asked gruffly.
Emma blinked, turning to face Mr. Mercer.
“Meaning . . . ?” Suddenly, a new list began to form in her mind: Things That Are Awkward About a New Family You Don’t Know but Are Supposed To. Heart-to-heart conversations with a dad she’d only met two weeks ago would be first on the list.
Mr. Mercer’s face folded into an exasperated, pleasedon’t-make-me-explain expression. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I know you’ve gone through a lot of . . . changes.”
More than you know, Emma thought wryly.
Mr. Mercer gave Emma a meaningful look. “I want to know what you’re feeling. I want you to know you can talk to me. About anything.”
The AC unit shuddered off and an earsplitting silence settled over the garage. Emma tried to keep her composure. She had no idea how to answer his question, and for a moment, she considered tel ing him the bald truth. But then she remembered Sutton’s kil er’s threat: If you tell anyone, if you say anything, you’re next.
“Okay . . . thanks,” Emma said awkwardly.
Mr. Mercer fiddled with the wrench. “And are you sure you didn’t steal because, wel , you wanted to get caught?”
I studied my dad’s clear blue eyes and a sudden flash came to me of voices and accusations flying through the air. I saw myself sprinting down a desert trail, heard my father’s angry voice cal ing out for me, and felt tears running down my face.
When Emma didn’t respond, Mr. Mercer broke his stare, shook his head, and threw a bal ed-up yel ow rag on the grease-stained floor. “Never mind,” he mumbled, now seeming annoyed. “Just throw the trash bag in the bin when you’re done, okay?”
He closed the door with a muffled thud. Behind it was a cork bul etin board that contained a calendar several years out of date, a business card for a local HVAC service, and a snapshot of Laurel and Sutton standing in the middle of the backyard, smiling into the camera. Emma stared at the photo long and hard. She wished the photo could talk back, wished Sutton could tel her something, anything, about who’d she’d been, what kinds of secrets she’d kept, and what had real y happened to her.
A snicker sounded behind her. Then a warm tickle, like someone’s breath on the back of her neck. Emma swung around, her heart in her throat, but found herself staring into the empty garage. Then, out the narrow square windows, she caught sight of an SUV slowly passing by the Mercers’
house. She ran to the windows and looked out, recognizing the white Lincoln SUV immediately. And this time she also recognized the two faces behind the windshield. It was the Twitter Twins.
Chapter 10
Fish Out of Water
Plink. Plink.
Emma shot up in Sutton’s bed. The moon cast a silver slant of light across the carpet. The screen saver on Sutton’s computer was playing a slideshow of photographs of happy Lying Game sleepovers. Sutton’s flat-screen TV
was tuned to an episode of The Daily Show. The Bell Jar, which Emma was rereading after she and Ethan had discussed it last week, sat overturned on the nightstand. The door to the hal was closed tight. Everything was exactly where Emma had left it when she’d gone to bed. Plink.
The sound was coming from the window. Emma threw back the covers. Just last week, she’d had a dream that had begun exactly like this. When she’d looked out the window in the dream, Becky stood in the driveway. Warning her. Tel ing her to be careful. And then she’d vanished. Emma hesitantly padded to the window and peered out. The streetlight made a soft golden circle on the prickly pear cactus beside the sidewalk. Laurel’s Jetta was parked directly below. Sure enough, someone stood in the driveway beneath the basketbal court. She half expected it to be Becky, but then the figure stepped into the light, arm aimed to pitch another rock at the window.
It was Ethan.
She inhaled sharply and moved away from the window. She pul ed on a heather-gray bra under Sutton’s seethrough camisole and kicked her bare legs into a pair of striped pajama pants. Then she reappeared at the glass, waved, and hefted open the window. Mrs. Mercer hadn’t locked it yet, and it gave easily. The night air was stiflingly hot without the faintest trace of wind.
“Have you heard of using your phone instead of a rock?”
she cal ed softly.
Ethan squinted up at her. “Can you come out?”