She rolled over, the events from last night flooding into her brain once more. Could Thayer be Sutton’s killer? His behavior certainly wasn’t dispelling her suspicions.
“Sutton?” Mrs. Mercer called again.
The sugary smell of maple syrup and waffles wafted up to Sutton’s bedroom, and Emma’s stomach rumbled with hunger. “Coming!” she yelled back.
With a groggy yawn, Emma climbed from the bed and pulled an Arizona Cardinals sweatshirt from the top drawer of Sutton’s white wooden dresser. She yanked the $34.99
price tag from the collar and slid it over her neck. The shirt was probably a present from Cardinals über-fan Garrett, who’d been Sutton’s boyfriend when she died—now her ex-
boyfriend after Emma turned down his naked and willing body at Sutton’s eighteenth birthday party. There were some things sisters weren’t meant to share.
Uh, yeah—like each other’s lives. But I guess it was a little too late for that.
Sutton’s iPhone buzzed, and Emma checked the screen. A small photo of Ethan Landry appeared in the upper right-hand corner, which made Emma’s heart do a flip. ARE YOU OKAY? he wrote. I HEARD THERE WERE COPS
AT YOUR HOUSE LAST NIGHT AFTER I LEFT. WHAT HAPPENED?
Emma shut her eyes and tapped her fingers on the keys. LONG STORY. THAYER BROKE IN. SUPER SCARY. MAYBE
HE’S A SUSPECT. MEET UP LATER AT THE USUAL PLACE?
AREN’T YOU GROUNDED? Ethan wrote back.
Emma ran her tongue over her teeth. She’d forgotten that the Mercers had grounded her for stealing the purse from Clique last week. They’d only let her go to Homecoming because she’d done well in school—a first for Sutton, apparently. I’LL FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET OUT, she typed back. SEE YOU AFTER DINNER.
Damn right she’d figure out a way. Other than my murderer, Ethan was the only person who knew who Emma really was, and the two of them had joined forces to try to identify Sutton’s killer. He’d definitely want to know about Thayer.
But that wasn’t the only reason Emma wanted to see Ethan. After the hubbub of last night, she’d almost forgotten that they’d reconciled … and kissed. She was dying to see him and take things to the next level. Ethan was the first real almost-boyfriend Emma had ever had—she’d always been too shy and moved around too much to make an impression on guys—and she wanted it to work out.
I was hoping that it would work out, too. At least one of us should find love.
Emma descended the stairs for breakfast, pausing for a moment to stare at the family photographs in the Mercers’
hallway. Black-framed photos showed Laurel and Sutton with their arms wrapped around each other at Disneyland, sporting matching neon pink–trimmed ski goggles on a ski trip, and making a sand castle on a beautiful whitesand beach. A more recent one showed Sutton and her dad in front of a British racing-green Volvo, Sutton holding up the key gleefully.
She looked so happy. Carefree. She had a life Emma had always wanted. It was a question that plagued her constantly: Why had Sutton gotten such a wonderful family and friends, while Emma had spent thirteen years in foster homes? Sutton had been adopted into the Mercer family when she was a baby, while Emma had remained with their birth mother, Becky, until she was five. What if their roles had been reversed, and Emma had gotten to live with the Mercers? Would she be dead now? Or would she have lived Sutton’s life differently, appreciated her privileges?
I gazed at the photos, zeroing in on a recent snapshot of the four of us on the front porch. My mom, my dad, Laurel, and I looked like the picture-perfect family, all of us dressed in white tees and blue jeans, the Tucson sun brilliant in the background. I blended so well with them, my blue eyes almost the same as those of my adoptive mother.
I hated when Emma assumed that I’d been a huge, ungrateful brat my whole life. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t appreciated my parents as much as I should have. And maybe I’d hurt some people with Lying Game pranks. But did I really deserve to die because of it?
In the kitchen, Mrs. Mercer poured golden batter into a waffle iron. Drake sat patiently beneath her, waiting for the batter to ooze over the sides and drip onto the floor. When Emma appeared in the doorway, Mrs. Mercer glanced up with a pinched, worried expression. The lines around her eyes stood out prominently, and there was just a hint of gray at her temples. The Mercer parents were a little older than most parents she knew, possibly in their late forties or early fifties.
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Mercer asked, shutting the top to the waffle iron and dropping the whisk back into the batter.
“Uh, fine,” Emma murmured, even though she would have felt a lot better if she knew where Thayer was.
A loud thwack sounded across the room, and Emma turned to see Laurel sitting at the kitchen table bringing a long silver knife down hard over a ripe, juicy pineapple.
Sutton’s sister caught her eye and grinned mockingly, holding out a dripping slice. “Some vitamin C?” she asked coldly. The knife glinted menacingly in her other hand.
If it had been a week or so ago, Emma would have been afraid of that knife—Laurel had been in her top-ten suspect list. But Laurel’s name had been cleared; she’d been at Nisha Banerjee’s sleepover the whole night of Sutton’s murder. There was no way she could have done it.
Emma looked at the pineapple and made a face. “No thanks. Pineapple makes me gag.”
Mr. Mercer, who was standing by the espresso machine, turned around and gave her a surprised look. “I thought you loved pineapple, Sutton.”
A fist inside Emma tightened. Emma hadn’t been able to eat pineapple ever since she was ten, when her then foster mother, Shaina, had won a lifetime supply of canned pineapple after submitting a pineapple upside-down cake recipe to a cooking magazine. Emma had been forced to eat the slippery yellow chunks at every meal for six months.