Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s so stupid the court fete has to have a different theme than the dance. Sometimes I want to kill the seniors who came up with that tradition.”

Madeline walked to the window and heaved it open with her long, slender arms. “Oh, let’s just plan it and get it over with. I say it should be something spooky yet glam, but not so glam that the faculty will be pissed and not let us do it.”

Laurel propped her legs up on the coffee table. “What about vampires?”

“Ugh.” Madeline made a face. “I’m tired of vampires.”

“What about a gala event for the dead?” Emma said. “You know, a really fancy party, except everyone invited is a corpse?”

Charlotte narrowed her eyes, thinking.

“Wish you’d thought of it yourself, don’t you, Char?” Emma teased. She knew it was something Sutton would say.

Charlotte just shrugged. “It’s interesting,” she admitted. “But it should be rooted in something real. Not just a party full of dead people.”

A thought popped into Emma’s mind. “What about a fancy ball on the Titanic ? Except it can be after the ship sank. So it can be at the bottom of the ocean, and everyone can be a corpse, but they’re still partying in high style. Something Kate Winslet’s character in the movie would’ve approved of.”

Laurel widened her eyes. “I like that!”

“Agreed.” Charlotte clapped her hands. “I bet Calista could rustle up some really good Titanic décor.”

Madeline reached into her pocket and extracted a pack of Parliaments and a pink lighter. A blue spark shot into the air, followed by the heady smell of cigarette smoke. “Anyone want one?” she asked, exhaling out the window.

Everyone shook their heads. “You should stop that, Mads.” Charlotte hugged a throw pillow. “What’s Davin going to say when he goes to kiss you and you smell like an ashtray?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure I’m into him yet.” Smoke poured out of Madeline’s nose. “Maybe ashtray breath will keep him at bay.”

“Well, don’t breathe on me.” Charlotte formed her arms into an X and held them out in Madeline’s direction. “I don’t want anything ruining my chances of hooking up with Noah.”

“Who are you taking, Laurel?” Madeline asked.

Laurel ran a hand over a snag in the carpet. “Caleb Rosen.”

“Don’t know him,” Charlotte announced in a loud voice.

Madeline gave Laurel a tepid smile. “I have math with him,” she said. Her monotone made it unclear whether she approved or disapproved.

Emma blinked. “You guys have dates?”

Madeline ashed out the window. “You mean you don’t ?”

“Well, I was going with Garrett,” Emma said, remembering the ticket Garrett had given her when they broke up. He and Sutton must have planned it before she vanished. “But then I got grounded. So I didn’t ask anyone else.”

Madeline blew a plume of smoke out the window. “Just ask someone, Sutton. Tons of guys would be thrilled to go with you.”

Emma stared at the back issues of National Geographic and Motor Trend that lined the bookshelf. She wondered if school dances were Ethan’s thing. “I can’t think of anyone,” she said after a moment.

I wanted to elbow her. Sutton Mercer did not go stag to dances. Madeline gestured a wide arc with her cigarette like she was doing the top half of a ballet move. “Really, Sutton? You don’t even have a little crush on someone?”

“Nope.”

Charlotte smacked Emma with a pillow. “Stop lying. Laurel told us.”

Emma stared at Laurel, but Laurel just raised her shoulders unapologetically. “I know you snuck into that pool with someone. I heard you guys.”

“Spill it!” Madeline’s eyes twinkled.

Heat flooded Emma’s cheeks. “It’s no one, I swear.”

“Come on, Sutton!” Laurel pressed her palms together. “You can tell us!”

Emma ran her tongue over her teeth. Did she dare tell them about Ethan? They were Sutton’s friends, after all, not her murderers. And now that Emma had cleared them, they’d begun to feel like her friends, too.

Tell them , I wished I could say. My friends would probably encourage Emma to get over her oh-so- un -Sutton-Mercer shyness and ask Ethan out. Sure Ethan was a loner, but he was a hot loner.

Suddenly, the front door slammed. “Hello?” a man’s voice called out.

Madeline leapt up, stabbed out the cigarette on the windowsill, and fanned the fumes outside. There were footsteps, and then Mr. Vega peered into the den. “Oh. Hello, girls. Madeline didn’t tell me you were coming over today.”

“They’re just here to plan the Homecoming dance, Daddy,” Madeline said, jumping from the window seat to the La-Z-Boy chair. Her face was even paler than usual.

Mr. Vega turned and gave her a long, discerning stare. He tilted his nostrils up and sniffed the air. “Was someone smoking?” The transformation of Mr. Vega’s stony face into a fiery scowl now reminded Emma of Mr. Smythe, another one of her foster dads. He was like Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde: sweet one moment and volatile the next. The only way Emma could tell he was going to freak out was when he started feverishly licking his lips.

Madeline shook her head. “Of course not!”

“It’s from outside,” Charlotte said at the same time. “A bunch of kids walked by, and they were all smoking.”

A neutral look settled over Mr. Vega’s face again, but his eyes still burned. “Well, if you girls need anything, I’ll be in my office.” Then he eyed the episode of Jersey Shore on TV. “You shouldn’t watch that trash, Madeline.”

Madeline clicked the remote. A chase scene of a male lion taking down a frantic zebra filled the screen. After he left, Charlotte walked over and touched Madeline’s arm.

A tinny bleep issued from Madeline’s iPhone, which sat facedown on the coffee table. Everyone started. She grabbed it and studied the screen. “Surprise, surprise. Another text from Lili and Gabby. They’ve been begging to come to Mount Lemmon with us all day.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Charlotte said.

Sutton’s phone, which Mrs. Mercer had let Emma have back in case of an emergency, rang, too. Emma pulled it from her bag. HELLO, SWEETS! Gabby wrote. YOU TOTALLY WANT TO BE US, DON’T YOU? THAT MAKES THREE OF US—WE LOVE US, TOO! MWAH!

Charlotte groaned as she read her BlackBerry. “If they were any more full of themselves, they’d have to have ego liposuction.”

Their phones lit up once more. GUESS THE l IN LYING GAME STANDS FOR loser !

“ That’s not cool.” Laurel jabbed at her phone to delete the message. “If they keep this up no one will ever vote for them again.”

“I don’t know how they got voted in at all ,” Charlotte mused, fiddling with a ceramic donkey statue on the coffee table. “I took a look at the ballots online—Isabel Girard and Kaitlin Pierce were also on it, and guys are much more into them than Gabby and Lili.”

“I vote we stop hanging out with them.” Madeline reached for a handful of popcorn.

“I second that,” Emma said quickly, remembering Gabby’s eerie gun-trigger gesture at lunch the other day.

I third that , I thought.

The phones beeped once more, and everyone diverted their attention to their screens. TWO PRETTY COURT GIRLS DESERVE A SMOKIN’ PARTY! STEP IT UP, BITCHES!

“You know what I think we should do?” Madeline leaned back on the couch and curled her knees to her chest. “We should knock those princesses down to size. Hit ’em where it hurts.”