Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

To calm her nerves, Emma took a long sip of spiked tomato juice and summoned her inner Sutton, a girl she’d learned was snarky and sassy and didn’t take shit from anyone. “Aww. Did you miss me? Or were you nervous that someone dragged me away and left me for dead in the desert?” She glanced at the three faces staring back at her, trying to detect anything that looked like an admission of guilt. Madeline picked at her chipped peach nail polish. Charlotte coolly sipped her Bloody Mary. Laurel gazed out at the golf course as if she’d just spotted someone she recognized.

Then Sutton’s iPhone chimed. Emma pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. She had a text from Ethan. HOW ARE YOU AFTER LAST NIGHT? LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.

Emma shut her eyes and pictured Ethan’s face, his raven hair and lake-blue eyes, and the way he’d looked at her, a way no boy had ever looked at her before. Her body flooded with desire and relief.

“Who’s that from?” Charlotte leaned over the table, nearly impaling her boobs on the cactus arrangement. Emma covered the screen with her hand.

“You’re blushing!” Laurel pointed a finger at Emma. “Is it a new boyfriend? Is that why you ran out on Garrett last night?”

“It’s just Mom.” Emma quickly deleted the text. Sutton’s friends wouldn’t understand why she’d left her birthday bash with Ethan, a mysterious boy who was more interested in stargazing than popularity. But Ethan was the sanest person Emma had met in Tucson so far—and the only person who knew who she really was and why she was here.

“So what exactly happened with Garrett?” Charlotte pursed her glossy, blackberry-tinted lips. From what Emma had gleaned in the past two weeks, Charlotte was the bossiest of their four-girl clique—and also the most insecure about her looks. She wore way too much makeup and talked too loudly, as though no one would listen to what she had to say otherwise.

Emma jabbed the ice at the bottom of her Bloody Mary with her straw. Garrett. Right. Garrett Austin was Sutton’s boyfriend—or, more accurately, ex -boyfriend. Last night, his birthday gift to Sutton had been his naked, willing body and a pack of Trojans.

It had been painful to see the shattered look on my boyfriend’s face when Emma rejected him. I could only guess at what our time together had been like, but I knew our relationship hadn’t been a joke. Although now he probably thought that’s what it had been to me.

Laurel’s crystal-clear blue eyes narrowed as she took a sip of her drink. “Why did you run out on him? Does he look freaky naked? Does he have a third nipple?”

Emma shook her head. “None of that. It’s my deal, not his.”

Madeline pulled the wrapper off her straw and blew it in Emma’s direction. “Well, you’d better find a rebound. Homecoming’s in two weeks, and you need to snag a date before all the decent guys are spoken for.”

Charlotte snorted. “As if that’s ever stopped her?”

Emma flinched. Sutton had stolen Garrett from Charlotte last year.

It didn’t make me the nicest friend, I admit. And from the doodles of Garrett’s name on Charlotte’s notebook and the pictures of him hidden under her bed, she was clearly still pining for him—which gave her a pretty solid reason to want me dead.

A shadow fell over the round table. A man with slicked-back hair and hazel eyes stood above Emma and the others. His blue polo was starched to a crisp and his khakis were perfectly pressed.

“Daddy!” Madeline exclaimed in a shaky voice, her controlled, cool-girl disposition instantly melting away. “I-I didn’t know you were going to be here today!”

Mr. Vega gazed at their half-drunk glasses on the table. His nostrils twitched, as if he could smell the alcohol. The smile remained on his face, but it had a false edge that made Emma uneasy. He reminded her of Cliff, the foster father who sold used cars in a dusty lot near the Utah border and could swing from volatile dad to smarmy, ass-kissing salesman in four seconds flat.

Mr. Vega was silent a moment longer. Then he leaned forward and squeezed the top of Madeline’s bare arm. She flinched slightly.

“Order anything you want, girls,” he said in a low voice. “It’s on me.” He turned with military precision and started toward the brick-arched doorway to the golf course.

“Thanks, Daddy!” Madeline called after him, her voice trembling just slightly.

“That’s sweet,” Charlotte murmured hesitantly after he left, glancing sideways at Madeline.

“Yeah.” Laurel traced her pointer finger around the scalloped edge of her plate, not making eye contact with Madeline.

Everyone looked like they wanted to say more, but no one did . . . or dared. Madeline’s family was rife with secrets. Her brother, Thayer, had run away before Emma arrived in Tucson. Emma kept seeing his missing-person poster everywhere.

For just a moment, she felt a pang of nostalgia for her old life, her safe life—a feeling she’d never thought she’d have about her foster-care days. She’d come to Tucson thinking she’d find everything she’d always wished for: a sister, a family to make her whole. Instead, she’d found a family that was broken without even realizing it, a dead twin whose life seemed more complicated by the minute, and potential murderers lurking around every corner.

A flush rose on Emma’s skin, the unspoken tension suddenly too much for her. With a loud scrape, she pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ll be back,” she said, fumbling through the French doors toward the bathroom.

She entered an empty lounge filled with mirrors, plush, cognac-colored leather couches, and a wooden basket containing Nexxus hair spray, Tampax, and little bottles of Purell. Perfume lingered in the air, and classical music played through the stereo speakers.

Emma collapsed in a chair at one of the vanities and inspected her reflection in the mirror. Her oval face, framed by wavy sienna hair, and eyes that looked periwinkle in some lights, ocean-blue in others, stared back at her. They were the very same features as the girl whose image smiled happily from the family portraits in the Mercers’ foyer, the same girl whose clothes felt scratchy against Emma’s skin, as if her body sensed Emma didn’t belong in them.

And around Emma’s neck was Sutton’s silver locket—the same locket the killer used to strangle Emma in Charlotte’s kitchen, the one Emma was sure Sutton had been wearing when she was murdered. Every time she touched the smooth silver surface or saw it glinting in the mirror, it reminded her that all of this, no matter how uncomfortable, was necessary to find her sister’s killer.

The door swished open, and the sounds of the dining room rushed in. Emma whipped around as a blonde, college-age girl in a pink polo with the country club’s logo on the boob crossed the Navajo-carpeted floor. “Uh, are you Sutton Mercer?”

Emma nodded.

The girl reached into the pocket of her khakis. “Someone left this for you.” She proffered a Tiffany-blue ring-sized box. A small tag on the top read FOR SUTTON.

Emma stared, a little afraid to touch it. “Who’s it from?”

The girl shrugged. “A messenger dropped it off at the front desk just now. Your friends said you were in here.”

Emma took it hesitantly, and the girl turned and walked out the door. The lid lifted easily, revealing a velvet jewelry box. All kinds of possibilities flashed through Emma’s mind. A small, hopeful part of her wondered if it was from Ethan. Or, more awkwardly, maybe it was from Garrett, trying to win her back.

The box opened with a creak. Inside was a gleaming silver charm in the shape of a locomotive engine.

Emma ran her fingers over it. A shard of paper poked up from the velvet pouch inside the lid. She pulled out a tiny rolled-up scroll to find a note written in block letters.