Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

Madeline checked her watch. “No! I need you to stay up there for a little while longer.”

“Uh . . .” Feedback screeched through the walkie-talkie speaker. “Actually? I’m not sure that’s possible.”

The door to the lighting booth flung open, and the Twitter Twins appeared on the landing. They were dressed in skimpy string bikinis and tall silver stilettos. Their tanned skin gleamed. Their legs stretched for miles. But they also looked naked compared to the glamorous court girls in their gowns. Laurel stood behind them, shooting a helpless look to Charlotte, Madeline, and Emma on the ground. “I tried!” she mouthed.

As Gabby and Lili pranced down the stairs with proud, pageant-queen smiles on their faces, Emma was able to pinpoint the exact moment they noticed the other court nominees in their gowns. Their mouths dropped. They halted in their place. Norah nudged Madison. Alicia began to giggle. Everyone was suddenly in on the joke.

“Priceless,” Charlotte murmured excitedly.

“Sweet,” Madeline whispered, arching onto her toes in anticipation of the reveal to the crowd.

Emma tensed, waiting for their reaction. But the scantily clad Twitter Twins simply shared a private look, then Lili marched to a dark alcove at the back of the room. “Fear not, Gabs!”

She unearthed a wrinkled Saks shopping bag from the nook, a bag that had clearly been planted hours—if not days—before. Tissue paper crinkled as she reached her hand inside and pulled out two slinky black dresses.

Charlotte and Madeline gaped at each other, while Laurel looked sheepishly on.

“Where did these Yigal Azrouël wrinkle-free jersey dresses come from?” Gabby said in exaggerated wonder. “And, wow! They’re even in our size!”

The Twitter Twins slipped the dresses over their heads, whipped around, and glowered at Charlotte, Madeline, Laurel, and Emma. “Nice try,” Lili said icily as one of the makeup artists rushed to her and swiped blue shadow under her eyes. “We could see your lame trick from a mile away.”

Gabby turned to Emma. “We’re not as stupid as we look, Sutton . You of all people should know that.”

Emma pressed a hand to her chest. “I never said you were stupid.”

A sarcastic snort escaped from Gabby’s mouth. “ Right. ” Without averting her gaze, she marched up to Emma, reached into the Saks bag, and pulled out a pill bottle with the same pink top Emma had noticed the other day. The prescription name, written in bold black letters, flashed before Emma’s eyes. TOPAMAX. Emma flinched. She’d been sure Gabby was popping Ritalin or Valium or some other party drug. But Topamax sounded serious.

Gabby removed the top and shook two capsules into her hands. She belted them down without water. After she swallowed, she shook the medicine bottle like a castanet, her eyes on Emma once more. “Don’t you think you should get our sashes and take your place now, Sutton?” she said in a taunting voice. “You’re at stage left, right?”

For a moment, Emma couldn’t move. It was like Gabby had cast a spell on her, paralyzing all her limbs. Charlotte nudged her side. “This blows, but she’s right. It’s time to go. Places, girls!”

“One sec!” Lili shouted, heading for the stairs to the lighting booth once more. “I forgot my iPhone!”

“You don’t need your iPhone!” Madeline growled. “You’re going to be busy onstage!”

But Lili didn’t slow down, her heels clacking on the metal stairs. “It’ll just take a second.”

The door to the lighting booth slammed. Emma turned, grabbed sixteen orange silk Homecoming Court sashes, and found the X on the side of the stage where she was supposed to stand, behind a side curtain and completely isolated from the rest of the court and planners. “Pull the curtain!” Charlotte commanded.

The crowd’s murmurings grew louder. The court nominees, save for Lili, who was still upstairs, did a few last minute hair-fluffs and blush-brush sweeps. But when Emma looked past the blinding floodlights to the stage, Gabby was staring at her with a whisper of a smile on her face. In her corpse makeup, blue circles under her eyes, stitches across her cheeks, bloody gashes on her neck, she looked menacing. Evil.

Emma took a step back. And then she noticed something else, something she hadn’t seen before: a silver charm bracelet hung from Gabby’s wrist. Tiny objects dangled from the chain—a little iPhone, a tube of lipstick, a mini Scottie dog. They were made out of the same silver as the miniature locomotive engine that rested snugly in Emma’s purse.

A chill came over me and Emma. The Twitter Twins had killed me. I could feel it.

“Greetings, Hollier High!” Madeline boomed into the microphone, so loudly it made Emma jump. “Everyone ready for Homecoming?”

A cheer rose up, and Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” blasted out of the speakers. The noise was so thunderous that Emma barely heard the snaps of cords breaking above her head. By the time she looked up, the heavy light fixture in the rafters was hurtling swiftly toward her. She screamed and jumped away just as it crashed to the ground with an earsplitting crack.

Amber glass spewed everywhere. Someone yelled—maybe Emma herself. She felt her body go limp and fall to the ground, the court sashes slipping from her grasp and landing on the hard floor. Just before her eyes fluttered closed, she saw Lili join Gabby in the wings. Emma tried to call out, to maintain consciousness, but she felt herself slipping away. Gabby shook the pill bottle up and down, up and down. It sounded like chattering teeth.

The noise reminded me of something else entirely. A tiny pinhole opened in my mind, slowly widening. The world began to whirl like I was on an out-of-control carousel. I didn’t hear pills shaking in a bottle anymore. I heard, distinctly and most definitely, a commuter train clacking noisily over the tracks. . . .

“Where is Gabby?” Lili shrieks as the train whooshes past.

I whirl around, frantically checking the tracks. I planned it all so carefully. There’s no way Gabby could have rolled under the train . . . right?

Then Laurel steps a few feet away and points a trembling finger at a crumpled figure by the curved walls of the underpass. It’s Gabby. Her blonde hair covers most of her face. Her pale hand splays open, her crystal-studded iPhone turned over on a patch of gravel.

“What the hell?” Madeline cries.

“Gabby!” Lili screams, running to her.

“Gabby?” I stand over her limp body. “Gabs?”

A sudden tremor travels from Gabby’s fingertips to her shoulders. Tiny pricks of spit dot her lips, and then her entire body starts convulsing. The train barrels on, rattling my teeth and blowing my hair. Gabby shakes harder and faster. Her arms and legs have minds of their own, jolting in random directions. Her eyes roll to the back of her head like she’s some kind of zombie.

“Gabby?” I scream. “Gabs? Come on! This isn’t funny!”

Suddenly, a black man with a carefully trimmed goatee and an earring in one ear nudges me out of the way. I catch sight of a blue jumpsuit with a glow-in-the-dark badge. pima county emt. I hadn’t even realized the ambulance had roared up, but there it is, a big white vehicle with whirling red lights on the top.

“What happened?” the medic asks, crouching next to Gabby.

“I have no idea!” Lili pushes in front of me. Her mouth is a triangle, her eyes wide and desperate. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s having a seizure.” The medic shines a light into Gabby’s eyes, but there’s no color there, only two orbs that look like shiny white marbles. “Has this ever happened before?”