Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (25 page)

Emma shrugged and floated past Tim Sullivan, whose father owned a string of sporting goods stores across Arizona and who was doing a keg stand as the entire football team cheered him on. Inside, a Jay-Z song was playing on Charlotte’s sound system. Girls in tiny dresses were dancing in groups, or with their arms entwined around boys in button-downs and jeans. Emma smiled and waved at everyone, reveling in just how much
fun
it was to be Sutton.

She passed the Twitter Twins holding court in the kitchen, taking turns telling a juicy story to a group of rapt junior girls. Madeline was draped across Antonio Ramirez’s lap on an overstuffed chair, whispering into his ear. Caroline Ellerby, an overeager freshman, came in the front door holding a tray of premade Jell-O shots. “Want one, Sutton?” she asked with a tentative smile. Emma grabbed a tiny cup of red Jell-O and slurped it carelessly.

Her phone kept vibrating in her snakeskin clutch, but she ignored it. It was probably just another text from Ethan saying he was on his way. She didn’t want to see Ethan right now. She didn’t want to talk to him. Or did she? Did she want to talk to him right away so she could tell him just what she thought of his little secret? She shoved the thought away and went back to the bar. Another drink might help her make up her mind.

Nisha stood in front of the array of bottles, measuring a precise amount of gin into her glass. She looked up just as Emma stumbled into her, grabbing her to stop her fall. “Whoa, girl. You okay?”

“I’m Sutton Mercer,” Emma said, striking a pose. “I am fabulous.” She reached for the vodka, but Nisha took the bottle before she could pour herself another cup.

“Slow down there, champ.” Nisha laughed and poured Emma a glass of water instead. “Where’s Ethan? Isn’t he supposed to be here?”

Emma sipped the water slowly. The room spun pleasantly, pretty and bright, like a children’s carnival ride. “Who knows? He’s probably watching a meteor shower or something.”

Nisha put her hand on Emma’s arm. “Hey, is everything okay with you two?”

Maybe it was the alcohol, but before Emma could stop herself, words started spilling out. “Remember how you helped me find that … information about my mom?” Emma whispered. “Well, Ethan had a file in there, too. A huge one.”

“Whoa,” Nisha said, her eyes widening. “Have you talked to him about it?”

Seeing the alarm on Nisha’s face made Emma’s vision spin even faster, and she suddenly realized what she had done. Yes, Ethan had betrayed her, but that was between him and her. “Forget it. I’m sure it’s nothing,” she mumbled, pushing her way back through the crowd.

“Hang on, Sutton,” Nisha called, but Emma kept going until she made it onto the patio. A couple of the boys were playing water volleyball in the pool, wearing nothing but their mesh shorts. Laurel and another girl were sitting by the hot tub, trailing their feet in the water. They beckoned her over, but Emma sank into a chaise longue instead. She leaned back and closed her eyes. When her phone vibrated again, she didn’t even bother checking it.

At ten, Poor Tony, the bare-chested DJ Emma had run into earlier, started to play from the upstairs landing. The entryway flooded with screaming partygoers. Emma wandered into the crowd, the heavy bass vibrating through her body like a second heartbeat. She spotted Madeline and started to head in that direction, then realized that Mads was with a boy and probably wouldn’t want to be bothered. She squinted—the boy definitely wasn’t Antonio. Mads moved fast.

Emma took a step backward, stumbling right into a tall guy with perfectly gelled blond hair. He gave her a withering look as she caught her balance. Garrett.

“Sorry,” she yelled over the music. He just rolled his eyes and leaned over to Celeste, who was standing next to him, wearing an ikat-print baby-doll dress and velvet stockings. She shook her hair, which was curled into thick ringlets, and laughed. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and danced close to him, staring pointedly at Emma.

The world started to tilt dangerously. Suddenly, Emma wanted nothing more than to escape, to go somewhere away from all the noise and chaos. The music was starting to feel less like a heartbeat and more like a hammer pounding at her skull. She tripped toward the front door, ducking as she passed Gabby and Lili to avoid being pulled into their hyperactive dance circle. She slipped out onto the porch and sighed in relief at the feel of the cool night air on her skin.

Even with the massive oak door shut, she could still hear the rumble of the music and the screams of the crowd. But compared to the rest of the party, the porch, tiled in elegant stone and covered with enormous potted plants, was an oasis of calm. Moths threw themselves again and again at the lights in antique iron sconces, battering them with their tiny bodies.

Emma closed her eyes and rested her head against one of the pillars. Garrett’s expression had shattered her good mood, and she suddenly felt sober.

Then she heard it. A soft rustle, the sound of someone moving nearby. She froze, rooted to the spot. Someone was on the porch with her.

“Mom?” she whispered, peering into the shadows where the noise had come from.

“Go back inside!” I hissed at her. “Hurry!”

But it was too late. A tall form moved out from the darkness, laughing softly. Both Emma and I screamed, my voice inaudible to everyone but me, hers swallowed by the noise from inside.

No one would hear us.

27

Emma scurried backward into a terra-cotta planter. Her pulse thudded loudly in her ears. Should she run out toward the street, or back inside? The alcohol slowed her thoughts, keeping her in dangerous indecision. She took another step backward. This was it. She was about to die.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Sutton. It’s just me,” said a male voice from the shadows.

Thayer stepped forward into the light. He looked gorgeous in a blue Hugo Boss button-down and khaki shorts.

Emma exhaled in relief.

I watched enviously as he reached out to take Emma’s arm and led her over to the porch swing. They sat down next to each other in friendly silence.

“What were you doing out here?” Emma finally asked. Her heart still hadn’t slowed down to its resting rate.

Thayer smiled sadly, holding up his Coke can. “Turns out being in recovery makes you kind of a buzzkill.”

Emma thought about what it must be like for Thayer, showing up to a party like this. It wasn’t easy resisting that kind of pressure, listening to drunken teenagers wreaking havoc inside, knowing he couldn’t really be one of them.

Thayer pushed them gently back and forth on the swing, his feet on the floor. Overhead Emma could hear the squeaking call of hunting bats. The slow rocking of the swing calmed her nerves. She had to get a grip. What if he
had
been Becky? Screaming and tripping over furniture wouldn’t exactly do her any good. She needed to always be ready for anything. She shouldn’t have let her guard down, even for one night. She sighed. It just wasn’t fair. She was so tired of being constantly alert. She wanted to be vulnerable, to be
normal
, just once.

“You feeling okay?” Thayer asked.

“Everyone keeps asking me that tonight,” Emma said. “Don’t I look okay?”

“You look perfect, as always. I asked how you
felt
.”

She turned toward Thayer. It struck her that he was probably the only person who would have pressed her on that point, forcing her to distinguish between appearance and reality. He gazed back at her seriously, his eyes bright against his tanned skin. She didn’t know how to begin to answer. She hadn’t felt like herself in weeks. Or maybe she had never felt so much like herself? The alcohol softened the edges of all her thoughts, so she wasn’t quite sure what she meant until she said it out loud. Nothing made sense anyway tonight—not her and Thayer, sitting here on this bench in the cool November evening; not her friends; not even Ethan. Especially not Ethan.

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ears. “Do you ever feel like no one is really what they seem?”

Thayer’s lips twisted ironically. “All the time. Why do you think I didn’t tell people I went to rehab? I knew half of the people I thought were my friends would turn their backs on me.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “I knew I’d end up alone on the porch drinking soda while almost everyone I knew pretended they hadn’t seen me there.”

Emma suddenly felt self-conscious. Here she was, smelling like beer while she sat next to a boy who’d won a hard-fought battle for sobriety. She fidgeted with Sutton’s clutch, opening and closing the clasp.

“I just don’t know who I can count on anymore,” she said softly. “I keep getting hurt by people I think I know.”

Thayer looked out over the wrought-iron porch railing. The Chamberlains’ sprawling front lawn looked like an elephant graveyard in the darkness, cars parked haphazardly across it. Someone had angled their Miata right into one of Mrs. Chamberlain’s prize rosebushes. Emma wondered distantly how Charlotte would talk her way out of that one.

“That sucks,” Thayer said, playing with the pop-top on his Coke can. It broke off in his fingers and he set it on the swing’s armrest. “Maybe you need some new people in your life.”

Emma bit her lip and gave an awkward little laugh. “The problem is some of them are related to me.”

“Ah,” he said. “Yeah, I know that story, too. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could pick your family?”

“I’ll take Steve Carell for a dad and Tina Fey for a mom,” she joked.

“Bart Simpson for a brother.”

“Wednesday Addams for a sister.”

Thayer smiled. He leaned back into the porch swing, his expression thoughtful. “You know, one of the things I learned in rehab that turned out not to be a total cliché is that you can’t control other people. The best you can do is be honest with the people you love and hope that they’ll care enough about you to listen. But you can’t make someone be something they’re not.”

“That sounds very … adult,” Emma said.

“Well, a lot of addicts act like children,” he said, shrugging. “I’m just saying—you can’t prevent other people from disappointing you. It’s bound to happen at some point. We’re all only human. What you
can
do is decide how you’re going to respond to it, how you’re going to deal with it.”

Emma nodded slowly. It was good advice—she just wasn’t sure it really worked in her situation. This was a murder investigation, and she had to fight fire with fire. She couldn’t play a defensive game, not anymore. “It’s all just so complicated sometimes,” she said, wishing she could tell Thayer everything.

“Yeah, I know.” He exhaled loudly. “Believe me. Living with my dad, there’s so much I have to let go of. Sometimes I want to hit him, to punish him. I’ve done that, you know—before I went to Seattle, I took a few swings at him.” He shook his head. “But that’s just me thinking I can change him somehow. Make him sorry. I can’t, obviously.”

They sat there in the shadows, rocking back and forth, Poor Tony’s music still shaking the house. Emma was sobering up quickly thanks to the cool air and the rush of adrenaline from thinking Becky was on the porch. But she was still tipsy enough to admire Thayer without feeling self-conscious. She kept sneaking glances at his profile, studying the curve of his cheek, the small scar along his jawline. She wondered if that, too, was a reminder of the accident in Sabino Canyon.

“Thayer,” she whispered. He turned to face her, and the intensity of his eyes made her lose her breath for a moment. She coughed into her hand. “I never said this, but … I’m really proud of you.” It was true: She admired Thayer’s resolve, his strength. Even though she hadn’t known him before, she felt that he wasn’t the boy from the
MISSING
posters any longer. The boy who’d vanished without a word. He’d come back a new person. More than anyone else here tonight, he knew exactly who he was and what he believed. It was refreshing—especially after all the lies and pretending she’d been piling up.