Perhaps Emma was right, I thought. Perhaps they’d been for me.
Emma moved the mouse over the girls standing next to Sutton in the photo. MADELINE VEGA, said a small pop-up tag. Madeline had sleek black hair, huge brown eyes, a willowy build, and a gap between her front teeth, just like Madonna. Her head tilted suggestively to one side. There was a fake—or perhaps real?—tattoo of a rose on the inside of her wrist, and her bloodred dress plunged provocatively to her breast bone.
The girl next to Madeline was a redhead named Charlotte Chamberlain. She had pink, pale skin and pretty green eyes, and wore a black silk dress that tugged over her broad shoulders. Two blondes with similar wide eyes and upturned noses stood on either end of the group. Their names were Lilianna and Gabriella Fiorello; in the caption Sutton had nicknamed them THE TWITTER TWINS.
I looked over Emma’s shoulder. I recognized the girls in the photos. I understood we used to be close. But they were like books I’d read two summers ago; I knew I’d liked them, but I couldn’t tell you now what they’d been about.
Emma scrolled down the page. Most of the Facebook profile was public. Sutton Mercer was going to be a senior this year, just like Emma. She attended a school called Hollier High. Her interests were tennis, shopping at La Encantada Mall, and the Papaya Quench full body wrap at Canyon Ranch. Under LIKES AND DISLIKES, she’d written, I love Gucci more than Pucci, but not as much as Juicy. Emma frowned at the line.
Yeah, I had no idea what it meant, either.
Next, Emma clicked on the photo page and peered at a picture of a bunch of girls in tennis polos, skirts, and sneakers. A plaque that said HOLLIER TENNIS TEAM rested at their feet. Emma rolled the mouse over the girls’ names until she found Sutton’s. She stood third from the left, her hair pulled back tautly into a smooth ponytail. Emma moved the mouse to the dark-haired Indian girl to the right. A tag over her head said NISHA BANERJEE. There was a saccharine, kiss-ass smile on her face.
I stared hard at her, a spotty, snapping sensation coursing through my weightless body. I knew I didn’t like Nisha, but I didn’t know why.
Next Emma looked at a shot of Sutton and Charlotte standing on the tennis courts next to a tall, handsome, graying man. There was no tag over his face, but the caption said, Me, C, and Mr. Chamberlain at Arizona Tennis Classic. After that was a shot of Sutton with her arms around a handsome, sweet-looking, blond-haired guy wearing a Hollier soccer jersey. Love ya, G! she’d written. Someone named Garrett had replied in the comments window: I love u too, Sutton.
Aw, Emma thought.
My heart warmed, too.
The last picture Emma clicked on was a shot of Sutton sitting around a patio table with two attractive, older adults and a dirty-blond, square-jawed girl named Laurel Mercer. Sutton’s adoptive sister, presumably. Everyone was grinning and holding slushy drinks in a toast. I heart the fam, the caption proclaimed.
Emma lingered on the photo for a long time, her chest aching. All of her daydreams about a Mom Star, Dad Star, and Emma Star family looked pretty much like this: an attractive, happy family, a nice house, a good life. If she cut her own head out of a snapshot and pasted it on Sutton’s body, the picture would look no different. Yet her story was as opposite from this as could be.
There were a few YouTube clips on the Facebook page, and Emma clicked on the first one. Sutton stood on what looked like a lush green golf course with Madeline and Charlotte. Everyone knelt down and vigorously shook canisters in their hands. Slowly, silently, they spray-painted designs on a large rock. WE MISS YOU, T, Madeline’s message said. Sutton’s message said NISHA WAS HERE.
“Where’s Laurel?” Charlotte asked.
“A thousand bucks says she’s too scared,” Sutton murmured on the screen. Her voice was so familiar it made Emma’s throat catch.
Emma clicked on the other videos. There was one of Sutton and her friends skydiving, another of them bungee jumping. A whole bunch of videos showed one of the girls walking around the corner unaware, and the rest of them ambushing her and making her scream. The last video was titled “Cross my heart, hope to die.” It opened with Madeline pirouetting into a pool at night. As soon as she hit the water, she started to flail. “Help!” she screamed, her dark hair plastered against her face. “I think I broke my leg! I . . . can’t . . . move!”
The camera wobbled. “Mads?” Charlotte cried out.
“Shit,” someone else said.
“Help!” Madeline continued to flail.
“Wait a minute,” Sutton’s voice called haltingly. “Did she say it?”
The camera zinged to Charlotte, frozen midstep. She held a red-and-white life preserver in her hands. “What?” she asked dazedly.
“Did she say it?” Sutton said again.
“I-I don’t think so,” Charlotte squeaked. She clamped her lips together and dropped the life preserver on the deck. “Very funny. We know you’re faking, Mads,” she yelled, annoyed. “Such a bad actress,” she said under her breath.
Madeline stopped splashing. “Fine,” she panted, paddling for the ladder. “But I had you going for a minute. Char looked like she was going to pee her pants.” Everyone cackled.
Whoa, Emma thought. So this was what they did for fun?
I was a little freaked, too.
Emma searched the rest of the Facebook profile for any references to the weird strangling video Travis had found, but there wasn’t a single mention. The only semi-spooky thing she found was a scan of a black-and-white flyer that said MISSING SINCE JUNE 17, a boy’s face grinning back at her. THAYER VEGA, it said in block letters under the photo. Emma clicked back to the names on Sutton’s profile picture. Madeline’s last name was Vega, too.