“You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“Are you sure?”
When he nodded, Emma was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. “Well, thank you. I was drowning by myself.”
Ethan looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who drowns in anything.”
Emma wanted to reach out and touch the spot where moonlight splashed his cheek. He shifted an inch closer until their knees bumped and his face angled toward hers, like he was about to kiss her. Emma felt the heat of his body as he moved closer, very aware of his full bottom lip.
Her mind swirled, remembering the night before, when he’d told her he’d begun to fall for the girl who’d taken over Sutton’s life. That he’d begun to fall for her. A different kind of girl would know how to seal the deal. Emma kept a list in her journal called Ways to Flirt, but she’d never actually put any of the techniques into action.
Snap.
Emma shot up, cocking her head to the right. Across the court, just behind a tree, came the faint blue glow of a cell phone, like someone was standing there, watching them.
“Do you see that?”
“What?” Ethan whispered.
Emma craned her neck. But there was only darkness, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that someone had seen—and heard—everything.
SPINNING HER WHEELS
On Monday morning, Emma sat at a potter’s wheel in the ceramics room at Hollier High. She was surrounded by lumps of cement-gray clay, wood tools for carving and cutting, and lopsided bowls on wooden slats waiting for kiln firing. The air smelled earthy and wet, and there was the constant whir of wheels spinning and clunky feet clopping the treadles.
Madeline perched on the stool to Emma’s right, glowering at her potter’s wheel as though it were a torture device. “What’s the point of making pottery? Isn’t that what Pottery Barn is for?”
Charlotte snorted. “Pottery Barn doesn’t sell pottery! Do you think Crate and Barrel sells crates and barrels, too?”
“And Pier 1 sells piers?” Laurel giggled a row ahead of them.
“Less talking, more creating, girls,” said Mrs. Gilliam, their ceramics instructor, snaking around the wheels, her bell anklet jingling as she walked. Mrs. Gilliam was one of those people who looked as though she couldn’t be anything but an art teacher. She wore billowing jersey pants, jacquard vests, and statement necklaces over batik tunics that smelled like musty patchouli. Her words were emphatic, reminding Emma of an old social worker she’d known named Mrs. Thuerk, who always spoke as though she was delivering a Shakespearean monologue. How now, Emma … art thou being treated well in this Nevada home for children of fosterly care?
“Great work, Nisha,” Mrs. Gilliam cooed as she passed the glazing table, where several students were painting their pottery in earth tones. Nisha Banerjee, who was Sutton’s cocaptain on the tennis team, turned around and smirked triumphantly at Emma. Her eyes flashed with pure hate, which sent a ripple of fear through Emma’s chest. It was clear Nisha and Sutton had some seriously bad blood between them—Nisha had been giving Emma the evil eye ever since she stepped into Sutton’s life.
Looking away, Emma positioned a gray clay blob in the center of the wheel, cupped her hands around it, and slowly let the wheel turn until she had a bowl-like shape. Laurel let out a low whistle. “How do you know how to do that?”
“Uh, beginner’s luck.” Emma shrugged like it was no big deal, but her hands trembled slightly. A headline popped in her head: Master Pottery Skills Expose Emma Paxton Posing as Sutton Mercer. Scandal! Emma had taken pottery back in Henderson. She’d spent hours using the wheel after school; it was a welcome alternative to going home to Ursula and Steve, the hippie foster parents she’d lived with at the time, who didn’t believe in bathing. The No-Suds rule applied to them, their clothing, and their eight mangy dogs.
Emma sliced her hand through the bowl and let out a fake sigh of disappointment when it collapsed. “So much for that.”
As soon as Mrs. Gilliam disappeared into the kiln, Emma eyed Madeline and lifted her foot from the treadle. Madeline and the others still made the most sense to be Sutton’s killers. But she had no proof.
Wiping her hands on a towel, she pulled out Sutton’s iPhone and scrolled through the calendar feature. “Uh, guys?” she said. “Does anyone know when I had my last highlights appointment? I forgot to put it in my calendar and I want to make a note for when I need to go in next. Was it … August thirty-first?”
“What day was that?” Charlotte asked. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. She mashed her hands way too hard into the clay, turning the bowl she was making into a soupy pancake.
Emma tapped on the phone again. “Uh … the day before Nisha’s party.” The day before Mads kidnapped me at Sabino Canyon, thinking I was Sutton. Or maybe knowing I wasn’t Sutton. “Two days before school started.”
Charlotte glanced at Madeline. “Wasn’t that the day we—”
“No,” Madeline snapped, shooting Charlotte an icy glare. Then she turned to Emma. “Neither of us know where you were that day, Sutton. Someone else will have to cure your amnesia.”
Fluorescent light gleamed over Madeline’s porcelain skin. Her eyes narrowed at Emma, as though challenging her to drop the subject. Charlotte glanced from Emma to Madeline, looking suddenly alert. Even Laurel’s back was stiff in front of them.
Emma waited, knowing she’d hit on something and hoping someone would tell her what it was. But when the tense silence persisted, she gave up. Take two, she thought, reaching into her pocket and wrapping her fingers around the silver train charm. “Whatever. So I was thinking it’s time for a new Lying Game prank.”
“Cool,” Charlotte murmured, her eyes focused back on the spinning lump of clay in front of her. “Any ideas?”
Across the room, a girl washed her hands at the sink, and a loud crash sounded from the kiln. “The prank where we stole my mom’s car was awesome.” She remembered seeing a video of the girls doing just that on Laurel’s computer. “Maybe we should do something like that again.”
Madeline nodded, thinking. “Maybe.”
“Except … with a twist,” Emma went on, saying the words she’d rehearsed the night before in Sutton’s bedroom. “Like, we could leave someone’s car in the middle of a car wash. Or drive it into a swimming pool. Or abandon it on the train tracks.”
At the word tracks, Charlotte, Laurel, and Madeline tensed. A hot, sharp pain streaked through Emma’s gut. Bull’s-eye.
“Very funny.” Charlotte slapped her clay down with a thwap.
“No repeats allowed, remember?” Laurel hissed over her shoulder.
Madeline swiped the back of her hand
