Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

A deep groan made her turn. Lights shone through the slats in the fence. A car idled on the street. Emma grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Someone’s here!”

“Shit.” Ethan tucked his shoes and clothes under his arm and ran barefoot to the back of the block fence. Emma shimmied into her pajama pants, wrung out her camisole, and ran after him. He gave Emma a boost, then climbed over himself. On the other side of the Paulsons’ backyard was a dried-out creek bed filled with random sticks and rocks, tumbleweeds, and overgrown cacti. The Mercer house was to the left, but Ethan veered right.

“I should get home,” he said.

“You walked here?” Emma asked, surprised.

“Jogged, actually. I like jogging at night.”

The car’s engine idled on the street. Emma squinted in the darkness. The desert went on forever. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine. Catch you later.”

Emma watched Ethan until she could no longer see the reflective patches on the back of his sneakers. Then she followed the path to Sutton’s backyard, crept close to the edge of the fence, and emerged onto the driveway next to Laurel’s Jetta. When she looked over, she fully expected to see a car in the Paulsons’ driveway, maybe even Mr. Paulson prowling around the property with a baseball bat. But the driveway was empty. The newspapers lay in the exact same spots they’d been an hour before. No lights were on inside the house either.

A cold, slimy realization washed over Emma’s skin. The car didn’t belong to the Paulsons at all. Whoever had been idling there, watching them, had been someone else entirely.

A few minutes later, Emma scampered up the front walk of the Mercers’ house. The tree outside Sutton’s bedroom window didn’t have a low enough branch to climb back up, so the only way she could get back inside was through the front door.

The key was under a large rock beneath a desert hackberry tree, just as it had been the first night Emma had entered the Mercer home. She slid it into the lock, praying that the Mercers hadn’t set an alarm tonight. The lock turned. Silence. Score.

The door swung open easily, and Emma scuttled inside. The AC was on full blast, and goose bumps warped her damp skin. The glass panes over the family portraits glimmered in the pale streetlight. Detective Quinlan’s card sat on the console table by the door, just where Sutton’s mother had left it that afternoon. Emma cupped her palm over her wrist and remembered what it had felt like when Ethan rested his fingers there. She shut her eyes and leaned her head against the wall.

What was wrong with her? I wanted to ask. Why hadn’t she kissed him?

Creak. Emma froze. Was that a footstep?

Creak. Creeaaaak. A shadow appeared at the end of the hall. Feet tapped the floor, getting louder and louder, until Laurel stepped into the light. Emma jumped back and suppressed a scream.

“Whoa!” Laurel held up her hands. “Someone’s jumpy!” She stared closer at Emma. “Why are you all wet?”

Emma glanced down at the soggy camisole clinging to her skin. “I just took a shower,” she said.

“In your clothes ?”

Emma walked into the powder room and dried her face with a sea-green hand towel. When she glanced at her reflection, she saw Laurel watching her in the mirror. Had Laurel seen her and Ethan in the pool? Had she heard their conversation? Was she the one who’d turned the headlights on them?

It seemed possible. From the flashes I’d seen of my past, Laurel was a hanger-on, a snoop, a spy. I didn’t know why we’d let her into the Lying Game, but I knew I hadn’t supported it. I think, deep down, I was jealous. Laurel was my parents’ real daughter, clearly loved more than me. I didn’t want my friends to love her more, too.

Laurel padded into the powder room and sat down on the closed toilet seat. “So when were you going to tell me?”

“About what?” Emma pretended to be fascinated with the mini soaps lined up on the edge of the sink.

“About who you’ve been seeing. About who you were talking to outside just now.”

Nerves snapped under Emma’s skin. So Laurel had seen. And if Laurel had killed Sutton, if Laurel knew Emma was with Ethan, Emma might have just risked Ethan’s life, too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice trembled slightly.

“Come on,” Laurel snapped. “You were with someone named Alex, weren’t you?”

Alex? Emma let the towel go slack in her hands, racking her brain for someone named Alex at Hollier. The only Alex she knew was her friend from Henderson. . . .

“I saw that text on your phone in Ceramics,” Laurel said, crossing her arms and staring at Emma’s face in the mirror. “Someone named Alex wrote to you. He said he was thinking of you .” Her eyes sparkled. “Was this the guy you vanished with at your party, too?”

Emma’s head spun. “Alex is a girl,” she blurted.

“Uh-huh.” Laurel rolled her eyes. “When are you ever going to trust me again?” she asked in a low voice. Something painful passed between the two of them, something Emma couldn’t quite get a grip on. Sutton had hurt Laurel in the past—of that Emma was sure—and it seemed that maybe Laurel had hurt Sutton, too.

“She is a girl . ” Emma wheeled around, banging her hip against the edge of the sink. “And . . . and that’s not cool that you looked at my phone.”

Laurel lowered her chin and gave her a knowing smirk. “Like you don’t look at mine all the time? So who is this Alex guy? Someone from Valencia Prep? U of A? Were you guys skinny-dipping? Good thing the Paulsons are in Hawaii!”

“I wasn’t in the pool,” Emma repeated, but then she looked down at herself. Droplets of water from the ends of her hair cascaded down her shoulders. She reeked of chlorine. “Okay. Fine. I was in the pool. But I was alone.”

Laurel traced her fingers on top of a wrought-iron sculpture of the words LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE that sat on the back of the toilet. “Why won’t you tell me the truth?” she said, sounding injured. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. I can keep a secret.”

Emma lowered her eyes. The only person she could trust in Tucson was Ethan. “I was alone in the pool, I swear. I was hot, I was awake . . . end of story. And Alex is a girl I met at tennis camp.” Hopefully, Sutton had gone to tennis camp . . . and hopefully Laurel hadn’t gone with her. Then, trying to act annoyed and aloof, she pushed around Laurel and into the hall.

“Sutton, wait.”

Emma turned around. Laurel stood behind her, a dangerous smile on her lips. “I’m onto you. You’re going to tell me what you’re up to. Or else . . .”

The words hung in the air, almost palpable. “Or else what ?”

Laurel was so close Emma could smell her lemony shampoo. Her shoulders were square and strong. Her broad hands curled at her sides. All at once, Emma was transported back to that awful night in Charlotte’s house when someone had grabbed her from behind and nearly killed her . Laurel was taller than Emma, about the right height of the person who’d assaulted her. And there was a solid strength about her, a sureness that made Emma think she could be capable of such a thing. After all, Emma had watched Laurel violently choke Sutton in the fake snuff film.

Laurel stepped even closer, and Emma flinched and looked away. “You’d better tell me what you’re up to soon, or I’ll really give you something to be scared about. You think the train prank is something to laugh about now? What if I tell Mom and Dad all about it? What if I tell them what really happened?”