Never Have I Ever
Prologue
Life After Death
It’s the little things you miss when you die. The feel of sliding into bed when you’re exhausted, the clean scent in the Arizona air after a storm during monsoon season, the flutter in your stomach when you see your crush walking down the hal . My kil er took al those things away from me just before my eighteenth birthday.
And because of fate—and a threat from my murderer—
my long-lost twin sister, Emma Paxton, stepped into my life. When I died two weeks ago, I popped into Emma’s world, a world that was about as different from mine as you could get. From that very first moment I saw what Emma saw, went where she went . . . and watched. I watched as Emma reached out to me on Facebook and as someone posing as me told her to visit. I watched as Emma traveled to Tucson, cautiously hopeful about our reunion. I watched as my friends tackled Emma, thinking she was me, and brought her to a party. I stood beside her when she got the note that said I was dead, warning her that if she didn’t continue to pretend to be me, that if she told anyone who she real y was, she’d be dead, too.
I watch today as Emma pul s on my favorite thin white tee and swipes my shimmery NARS blush onto her high cheekbones. I can say nothing as she slides into the skinny jeans I used to live in on weekends and sorts through my cherrywood jewelry box for my favorite silver locket, the one that sends rainbow prisms around the room when it catches the light. And I sit silently by as Emma sends a text confirming brunch plans with my best friends, Charlotte and Madeline, even though I would’ve worded it differently. Stil , Emma has the basics of me down cold—almost no one has noticed she isn’t me.
Emma puts my phone down, an uneasy look on her face.
“Where are you, Sutton?” she asks aloud in a nervous whisper, as if she knows I’m close.
I wish I could send her a message from beyond the grave: I’m here. And this is how I died. Only when I died, my memory died, too. I have glimpses here and there of who I used to be, but only a few solid, fleshed-out moments have bobbed to the surface. My death is as much a mystery to me as it is to Emma. Al I know in my heart, in my bones, is that someone kil ed me. And that same someone is watching Emma as closely as I am.
Does this scare me? Yes. But through Emma, I’ve been given a chance to uncover what happened in those final moments before I took my last breath. And the more I discover about who I was and the secrets I kept, the more I realize how much danger surrounds my long-lost twin. My enemies are everywhere. And sometimes, those we least suspect turn out to be our biggest threats.
Chapter 1
Charmed Life
“This way to the terrace.” A tanned, button-nosed hostess grabbed four leather-bound menus and marched through the dining room of La Paloma Country Club in Tucson, Arizona. Emma Paxton, Madeline Vega, Laurel Mercer, and Charlotte Chamberlain fol owed her, snaking around tables ful of men in tan blazers and cowboy hats, women in tennis whites, and children munching on organic turkey sausage.
Emma dropped into a booth on the stucco veranda, staring at the tattoo on the back of the hostess’s neck as she glided away—a Chinese character that probably meant something lame, like faith or harmony. The terrace had a view of the Catalina Mountains, and every cactus and boulder was in sharp relief in the late-morning sun. A few feet away, golfers stood around a tee, contemplating their drives or checking their BlackBerrys. Before Emma had arrived in Tucson and assumed her twin sister’s life, the closest she’d gotten to setting foot in a country club was working as an attendant at a mini-golf course outside Las Vegas.
I, however, knew this place like the back of my hand. As I sat, invisible, next to my twin, tethered to her always like a bal oon tied to a little kid’s wrist, I felt a tingle of memory. The last time I ate at this restaurant, my parents had brought me to celebrate getting straight Bs on my report card—a rarity for me. A whiff of peppers and eggs brought back my favorite meal—huevos rancheros, made with the best chorizo in al of Tucson. What I wouldn’t give for just one bite.
“Four tomato juices with lime wedges,” Madeline chirped to the waitress who’d appeared. When the waitress sauntered off, Madeline straightened her spine into her signature bal et-diva posture, whipped her obsidian black hair over her shoulder, and produced a silver flask from her fringed purse. Liquid sloshed as she shook the container back and forth. “We can make Bloody Marys,” she said with a wink.
Charlotte tucked a piece of red-gold hair behind her freckled ear and grinned.
“A Bloody Mary might knock me out.” Laurel pinched her thumb and forefinger on the bridge of her sun-kissed nose.
“I’m stil exhausted from last night.”
“The party was definitely a success.” Charlotte inspected her reflection in the back of a spoon. “What do you think, Sutton? Did we properly usher you into adulthood?”
“Like she’d know.” Madeline nudged Emma. “You weren’t even there half the time.”
Fast-forward to the very next day when Emma learned that Sutton had been murdered—and that Emma would be next unless she took Sutton’s place. Even though she felt anxious about living a lie, even though her skin prickled every time someone cal ed her “Sutton,” Emma didn’t see any other option. But it didn’t mean she was going to sit silently by and let her sister’s body languish somewhere. She had to find out who kil ed Sutton—no matter what. Not only was it justice for her twin, but it was the only way for Emma to get her own life back and stand a chance of keeping her new family.
The waitress returned with four glasses of tomato juice, and as soon as her back was turned, Madeline unscrewed the cap of the stainless-steel flask and dumped clear liquid into each cup. Emma ran her tongue over her teeth, her journalism-obsessed mind producing a headline: Underage Girls Caught Boozing at Local Country Club. Sutton’s friends . . . wel , they lived on the edge. In more ways than one.
“Wel , Sutton?” Madeline slid a glass of spiked tomato juice toward Emma. “Are you going to explain why you bailed on your own birthday party?”
Charlotte leaned in. “Or if you told us, would you have to kil us?”
Emma flinched at the word kill. Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel were her number-one suspects in Sutton’s murder. Someone had tried to strangle Emma with Sutton’s locket during a sleepover at Charlotte’s house last week, and whoever had done it was either capable of hacking the house’s many alarms . . . or already inside. And last night, at Sutton’s birthday party, Emma had discovered that her friends were behind Sutton’s strangulation video. It was only a prank; Sutton’s friends were part of a secret club cal ed the Lying Game that prided itself on scaring the crap out of its members and the other kids at school. But what if Sutton’s friends had meant to take things much, much further? They’d been interrupted by Ethan Landry, Emma’s only real friend in Tucson, but maybe they’d finished Sutton off later.
To calm her nerves, Emma took a long sip of spiked tomato juice and summoned her inner Sutton, a girl she’d learned was snarky and sassy and didn’t take shit from anyone. “Aww. Did you miss me? Or were you nervous that someone dragged me away and left me for dead in the desert?” She glanced at the three faces staring back at her, trying to detect anything that looked like an admission of guilt. Madeline picked at her chipped peach nail polish. Charlotte cool y sipped her Bloody Mary. Laurel gazed out at the golf course as if she’d just spotted someone she recognized.
Then Sutton’s iPhone chimed. Emma pul ed it out of her bag and checked the screen. She had a text from Ethan. HOW ARE YOU AFTER LAST NIGHT? LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED
ANYTHING.
Emma shut her eyes and pictured Ethan’s face, his raven hair and lake-blue eyes, and the way he’d looked at her, a way no boy had ever looked at her before. Her body flooded with desire and relief.
“Who’s that from?” Charlotte leaned over the table, nearly impaling her boobs on the cactus arrangement. Emma covered the screen with her hand.
“You’re blushing!” Laurel pointed a finger at Emma. “Is it a new boyfriend? Is that why you ran out on Garrett last night?”
“It’s just Mom.” Emma quickly deleted the text. Sutton’s friends wouldn’t understand why she’d left her birthday bash with Ethan, a mysterious boy who was more interested in stargazing than popularity. But Ethan was the sanest person Emma had met in Tucson so far—and the only person who knew who she real y was and why she was here.
“So what exactly happened with Garrett?” Charlotte pursed her glossy, blackberry-tinted lips. From what Emma had gleaned in the past two weeks, Charlotte was the bossiest of their four-girl clique—and also the most insecure about her looks. She wore way too much makeup and talked too loudly, as though no one would listen to what she had to say otherwise.
Emma jabbed the ice at the bottom of her Bloody Mary with her straw. Garrett. Right. Garrett Austin was Sutton’s boyfriend—or, more accurately, ex-boyfriend. Last night, his birthday gift to Sutton had been his naked, wil ing body and a pack of Trojans.
It had been painful to see the shattered look on my boyfriend’s face when Emma rejected him. I could only guess at what our time together had been like, but I knew our relationship hadn’t been a joke. Although now he probably thought that’s what it had been to me. Laurel’s crystal-clear blue eyes narrowed as she took a sip of her drink. “Why did you run out on him? Does he look freaky naked? Does he have a third nipple?”
Emma shook her head. “None of that. It’s my deal, not his.”
Madeline pul ed the wrapper off her straw and blew it in Emma’s direction. “Wel , you’d better find a rebound. Homecoming’s in two weeks, and you need to snag a date before al the decent guys are spoken for.”
Charlotte snorted. “As if that’s ever stopped her?”
Emma flinched. Sutton had stolen Garrett from Charlotte last year.
It didn’t make me the nicest friend, I admit. And from the doodles of Garrett’s name on Charlotte’s notebook and the pictures of him hidden under her bed, she was clearly stil pining for him—which gave her a pretty solid reason to want me dead.
A shadow fel over the round table. A man with slickedback hair and hazel eyes stood above Emma and the others. His blue polo was starched to a crisp and his khakis were perfectly pressed.
“Daddy!” Madeline exclaimed in a shaky voice, her control ed, cool-girl disposition instantly melting away. “I-I didn’t know you were going to be here today!”