Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

Emma’s mind drifted back to her brief encounter at the police station. The cops had written her off so fast when she tried to explain who she was, not believing for a second she could’ve been anyone other than Sutton. Then again, Sutton had a long track record—the cop on duty, Detective Quinlan, had brought out an enormous manila file packed with Sutton’s past misdeeds. It probably contained countless Lying Game pranks.

Emma straightened up, a thought striking her hard. What if the file contained something about the train prank? Madeline had said something about the cops showing up. At the back of the store, Samantha glanced at Emma out of the corner of her eye.

Ethan touched Emma’s shoulder. “I don’t like that look on your face,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“You’ll see.” Emma casually picked up a teal Tori Burch clutch from the table. When she was sure Samantha was watching, she shoved it up her shirt. The leather was soft on her bare skin.

“What the hell?” Ethan made a frantic slashing motion across his throat. “Are you nuts?”

Emma ignored him.

Her pulse quickened. This felt so foreign, so wrong . Becky used to steal from convenience stores all the time—swiping a candy bar here, slipping a pack of gum into Emma’s pocket there, once even walking out with several two-liter bottles of Coke stuffed up her shirt like two freaky boobs. Emma had lived in fear that the cops would haul both of them off to jail—or, worse, take her mother away from her. But in the end, it hadn’t been the police who’d taken Becky away. Becky abandoned her daughter of her own volition.

“Stop right there!”

Emma froze, her hand on the doorknob. Samantha spun her around. Her eyebrows made a perfect V . “Nice try. Give it back.”

Sighing, she removed her hand from her midriff and shook out her shirt. The clutch clunked to the ground, the gold chain clanging on the tiled floor. A half-dressed girl poked her head out of the fitting room and gasped.

Samantha scooped up the clutch with a smug grin and pulled a BlackBerry from the pocket of her skintight jeans. She placed the call on speaker.

“Wait.” Ethan scuttled around a wine-colored velvet sofa. “This was a misunderstanding. I can explain.”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice squawked on the other line.

Samantha’s eyes narrowed on Emma. “I’d like to report a robbery in progress.”

Emma shoved her shaking hands in her pockets and tried to keep the saucy, entitled, I’m-Sutton-Mercer-and-I’m-thrilled-to-be-hauled-off-to-jail smirk glued to her lips.

In a way, it wasn’t hard—going to the police station was exactly what she’d wanted.

Emma sat on a plastic yellow chair in a cinder-block room inside the police station. The room was no bigger than a chicken coop, smelled like rotting vegetables, and, inexplicably, had two pictures of serene-looking Japanese geishas hanging on the far wall. It would be a great setting for a news story . . . if she were the writer, not the subject.

The door creaked open, and Detective Quinlan stepped inside, the same cop who had refused to believe Emma when she said she was Emma Paxton and her long-lost twin, Sutton, was missing. There, hooked under his arm, was a file bearing the name SUTTON MERCER. Emma bit back a grin.

Quinlan plunked himself down across from her and laced his fingers atop the folder. Boots thundered down the hall, shaking the whole shoddily built complex. “Shoplifting, Sutton? Honestly?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Emma squeaked, shrinking down in her seat.

Long ago, Emma had sat in a police station with Becky in the middle of the night after the cops had brought her in for reckless driving. At one point, a cop lifted the big black telephone and handed it to Becky, but Becky pushed it away, imploring, “Please don’t call them. Please ,” she said. At dawn, after Becky was released with a warning, Emma asked whom the policewoman had tried to call. But Becky just lit a cigarette and pretended she had no idea what Emma was talking about.

“You didn’t mean to get caught ?” Quinlan held up Sutton’s file. “Have you forgotten you already got busted for shoplifting?” He pulled a sheet of paper from the folder. “A pair of boots from Banana Republic, January sixth. So you’re a repeat offender. That’s serious, Sutton.”

Emma scuffed her feet over the linoleum, her sweaty bare legs sticking to the plastic seat.

The handcuffs on Quinlan’s belt jingled as he sat back in the chair. “What are you trying to do, go to juvie? Or are you going to pretend you’re someone else this time, too, Sutton’s secret twin? What did you say your real name was? Emily . . . something?”

But Emma wasn’t listening. With a jerk, she grabbed her throat. She gasped, buckled over at the waist and began to cough. She hacked until it hurt her lungs.

Quinlan frowned. “Are you okay?”

Emma shook her head, dredging up another series of hacks. “Water,” she croaked between breaths. “Please.”

Quinlan rose from the table and pushed out into the hall. “Don’t move,” he growled.

Emma let out a few more coughs after he shut the door and then sprang into action, sliding the manila folder over to her seat. Her fingers trembled as she opened it and shuffled through the pages. On the top was the most recent write-up, when Emma had visited the station on the first day of school. Returned Miss Mercer to school in squad car , someone had typed. Four more forms had been filled out saying exactly the same thing.

“Come on ,” Emma muttered under her breath, flipping through more pages. There were reports for disturbing the peace and a claim for Sutton’s impounded car, a 1960s Volvo, for unpaid parking tickets. Next on the stack was a statement Sutton had made about Thayer Vega’s disappearance. Emma’s eyes scanned the transcript. We hung out sometimes , Sutton said to the interviewer. I guess he had a little crush on me. No, of course I haven’t seen him since he vanished. Further down the page were the interviewer’s notes: Miss Mercer was very fidgety. Evaded several questions, mostly about Mr. Vega’s . . .

Emma flipped the page and rooted through the files until two words caught her eye. Train tracks. Emma yanked the paper out of the stack. It was a police report, dated July 12. Under LOCATION OF INCIDENT, it said Train tracks, corner of Orange Grove and Route 10. Under the description of the incident it said S. Mercer . . . vehicle endangerment . . . oncoming train. Sutton had been interviewed along with Charlotte, Laurel, and Madeline. Gabriella and Lilianna Fiorello were listed as witnesses, too.

Gabby and Lili? Emma frowned. Why had they been there?

I saw a flash and felt a strange tingling sensation. A far-off train whistle roared in my head. I heard screams, desperate pleas, and sirens.

Just like that, the memory of that night whooshed back to me.

I’m behind the wheel of my British racing-green 1965 Volvo 122. My hands squeeze the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and my foot shifts easily on and off the clutch. Madeline sits next to me, twisting the dial on the souped-up radio. Charlotte, Laurel, and the Twitter Twins squish in the back, giggling whenever the car careens around a corner and flattens all of them to one side. Gabby waves around a tube of red lipstick like a magic wand.

“Don’t you dare get lipstick on Floyd’s leather seats,” I warn.

Charlotte giggles. “I can’t believe you call your car Floyd .”