Sara Shepard - Toxic

Emily glanced nervously over her shoulder at her parents, who’d walked her in, but they were already talking to someone from her mother’s welcome wagon committee. Some support they were.

She peeked surreptitiously at her cell phone in her purse. The surveillance feed was up on her screen, the same four shots of the house unchanged except for an occasional leaf pressing up against the windows. It would be just her luck, though, that something would happen there the second she looked away. Spencer had seen someone on the cameras. That same person—or someone else—could come back.

Sharon continued to drag her into the ballroom. Emily looked around. A DJ table had been set up at the far end, and dance music pumped out of gigantic speakers. Tons of kids Emily recognized from high school were waving their arms in the air and grinding on one another. Just looking at their carefree faces made Emily want to turn around and never come back.

But Sharon’s grip was too forceful. “Here’s Hanna!” she chirped, pointing to a long table at the other side of the ballroom. Hanna was the only one sitting at it, punching desperately at her phone’s keyboard.

Emily broke away from the woman and walked over to her friend. Hanna looked up at her miserably, then pushed a plate of cookies toward her. “Sharon brought these for us. But there’s no way I can eat.” She gazed forlornly around the room, then at her hands. “Mike’s not speaking to me. Everything is a mess.”

Emily couldn’t think about eating right then, either. “How long have you been here?” she asked Hanna.

“About an hour. I don’t know where Aria went—her date went to look for her.” She sighed. “I tried texting Spencer, but I haven’t heard from her, either.”

Emily checked the surveillance images once more—nothing. Then she looked around the room. She didn’t see any signs of the other two girls anywhere. Her gaze locked on a large banner near the DJ that said WE LOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN ROSEWOOD! There were pictures of places around the town: the shops on Lancaster Avenue, the covered bridge, the fall foliage, the Hollis spire. As Emily looked at the images, she realized she had a negative association with each one of them. She’d received texts from A by the Hollis spire and outside the shops. She remembered kicking through a pile of fallen leaves last fall, still trying to process that Ali, her old friend, had tried to kill them. And she’d tried to kill herself by jumping off the covered bridge.

“I hate everything and everyone in Rosewood,” she whispered, realizing she pretty much meant it. Aside from her friendships with Spencer, Aria, and Hanna, she would have no warm and fuzzy memories to take with her when she left. Living here, experiencing what she had with A, had ripped away years of her life.

She stared around at all the dancing kids in their Marc Jacobs dresses and Jimmy Choo heels. They didn’t understand what Emily had gone through—not at all. And they probably never would. Why did they get to have happy lives? Why did they get to love and laugh and enjoy themselves, when all she faced was painful experience after painful experience?

Ali so deserved to pay for this.

“Emily!” Mrs. Fields was racing toward her, her cheeks flushed pink. She held a short-haired girl by the wrist. “This is Melodie. Melodie, Emily! I know her mother! And Melodie’s working at the country club this summer as the junior women’s golf coach and the assistant groundskeeper!” Emily’s mom turned to Melodie and smiled hopefully. “I think you guys have some, um, common interests.”

“H-hi?” Emily said uncertainly, annoyed that her mom was forcing her to make a friend right now. Why on earth would her mom think she’d want to meet this girl? But then she noticed how Melodie was checking her out, her eyes grazing the neckline of her dress. Emily’s whole body flushed hot. Common interests . Was her mother actually trying to set her up ?

Emily couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. She stood up awkwardly and backed away. “It’s really nice to meet you, Melodie, but I have to do something right now.”

Melodie’s face drooped. “Emily!” Mrs. Fields called out. But Emily didn’t turn back. She whipped blindly past kids in her class, fumbling for an exit. Across the room, she noticed Spencer in the doorway, a panicked, nervous look on her face. But Emily couldn’t go to her right then. She needed a few minutes alone.

She found a dark hall at the back of the country club and turned down it. Then she leaned against the wall and took heaving breaths. Get a grip , she told herself, but her mind felt like it was careening down a long, steep hill into a deep ravine. Even glancing at Melodie’s expectant expression had just made her think, Why bother? Ali would ruin that, too .

Then Ali’s red furious face looming above her in the natatorium flooded her thoughts, pumping her with so much anger she whipped around and smacked the wall hard. Why couldn’t they find her? Why wouldn’t she just die ?

Spikes of laughter drifted down the hall, along with the beginning notes of Lorde’s “Royals.” Emily slid to the floor and looked hard at the surveillance feed. There had to be something there. But it was the same birds landing on the same branches brushing across the window. The same flicker-and-pop in the fourth-quadrant image, the one that showed the only view of the main room. The same fluttering of leaves.

Until she realized.

The leaves kept fluttering against the window in exactly the same way. It was uncanny: One maple leaf would flatten completely against the window for a second, then droop. Was it that windy up there? Did the wind keep gusting in the same direction?

Then she noticed the same fizzle and pop from that same camera angle. There seemed to be a pattern: fizzle-pop, then gust of wind, then flattened leaf, then a long stretch of nothing. Emily looked at her watch. Five minutes passed, but the sequence repeated. She counted off another five minutes again. There was the fizzle-pop and flattened leaf again.

Her hands started to shake. It seemed like the video was on a loop. She’d seen it in movies: Burglars would use loops to fool security guards so they could sneak in unseen and steal the jewels. Had Ali done the same thing? That camera angle showed the inside of the house, unlike the others. When had this started?

“Emily!” Spencer ran down the hall, her hair streaming behind her and her breathing hard. “I don’t even know how to say this. The guy I’ve been seeing? He’s an Ali Cat . And I told him everything. About the cameras. About how we know where Ali is.” She winced. “So now he knows. Which means Ali knows, too.”

Emily held up the phone. “I know,” she said shakily. “And I think Ali’s already done something about it.”

Ten minutes later, Hanna had swung into the driver’s seat of the Prius and started the engine. Her friends piled in next to her, looking bare in their skimpy party dresses. Their faces glowed in the dim, greenish interior lights.

“Okay, what does all this mean?” Hanna demanded.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Spencer asked, her eyes wild. “When I told Greg about the camera, he was totally surprised. He must have told Ali, and she must have just made the loop to throw us off. Which means she had to be at the pool house to access the camera to make the loop. And the only reason she might want to make the loop is if she’s there, right now, doing something in the pool house. We have to get her before she leaves again!”