Never Have I Ever

“Please?” Emma gave Mrs. Mercer puppy-dog eyes that matched Laurel’s. A week ago she wouldn’t have believed she’d want to go to something at Nisha’s house. But the truth was, being grounded kind of . . . sucked. It wasn’t that she was simply stuck in the house; Mrs. Mercer had taken away Emma’s Internet privileges, disconnected the cable box from Sutton’s room, and confiscated Sutton’s iPhone. After becoming accustomed to Sutton’s shiny, high-tech gear, the outdated, banged-up BlackBerry Emma had brought from Vegas wasn’t exactly cutting it. She had spent the evenings scouring Sutton’s room once more, searching for anything relevant to her murder, but there was nothing. The only thing left to do was homework. Sutton was probably rol ing over in her grave.

If I was somewhere as boring as a grave. Which I highly doubted.

Emma wasn’t supposed to be al owed out for Nisha’s tennis team dinner, but Coach Maggie had apparently cal ed Mrs. Mercer at work this afternoon and urged her to let Sutton attend. It would be good for team morale, Maggie had said, assuring Mrs. Mercer she would be there and would keep an eye on Sutton. But now Mrs. Mercer was hesitating.

“You’l watch her like a hawk, Laurel?” Mrs. Mercer asked.

“Yeh-hes,” Laurel groaned, fidgeting with the strap of her flowered camisole.

“And you two wil come straight home after the dinner is over?”

“Absolutely,” the two girls said in unison.

Mrs. Mercer put a finger to her lips. “Wel , it is Nisha.”

She uttered Nisha’s name in the same reverent way she might talk about the Dalai Lama. Mrs. Mercer was convinced Nisha was a model girl with straight As and irontight morals who could do no wrong.

“Okay, fine.” With a sigh, Mrs. Mercer lowered her shoulders and shooed them out the door.

Emma climbed into Laurel’s car, and Laurel swung into the driver’s seat and whooped. “How does freedom taste?”

“Amazing!” Emma cried.

Laurel drove one-handed through the neighborhood, using her other hand to run a paddle brush through her long blond hair. Despite her messy room, Sutton’s sister was permanently polished: constantly reapplying lip gloss, checking her teeth in mirrors to make sure nothing was caught between them, and dragging out the ironing board from the hal closet and smoothing her skirts and shirts. Emma liked that Laurel took care of her own clothes instead of asking Mrs. Mercer or a dry cleaner to do it. She was resourceful, like Emma was. She could take care of herself.

But that didn’t mean Emma trusted her.

Emma shifted in the passenger seat and mental y assumed her sleuth mode. “So apparently, Madeline has a secret,” she began, turning to Laurel and catching sight of the canine day care, Doggie Dude Ranch, that zoomed past her window. A turquoise and crystal shop was next, fol owed by a big outdoor pottery shop.

Laurel’s eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Oh yeah? What?”

“She won’t tel me. It has something to do with the night before Nisha’s back-to-school party.”

Laurel’s face clouded. “You mean the night before you ditched me?”

Emma bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Oops. Sutton was supposed to pick up Laurel for that party . . . but since she was dead, it didn’t happen. “Yeah. Wel , anyway, Mads cal ed Charlotte that night and told her what it was. I guess it was kind of a big deal.”

“Why weren’t you with them?”

The AC in the car suddenly felt ice-cold. You tell me, Emma wanted to say. “I guess that means you weren’t with them either?”

Laurel’s mouth formed a straight line. The Jetta veered over the line on the highway, and the driver next to them blew his horn, making both girls jump. “Uh, no,” she answered tightly after she’d steered the car back into its rightful lane. “I wasn’t.”

“So where were you?” Emma tried to sound like she was making casual conversation, even though her heart was rocketing inside her chest.

Laurel’s fingers clutched the steering wheel. She paused for a long moment, her eyes fixed on the horizon. “Sutton, are we seriously going to have this conversation right now?” she said final y in a steely voice. Emma stared at her, waiting, but she didn’t offer anything more. Laurel pul ed the car up to a familiar low-slung ranch house with a big front yard ful of desert succulents. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time Emma had come here, her very first day in Tucson, before she knew her twin was dead. Back before al of this craziness started. Several cars were parked in the driveway and at the curb, many of them pasted with bumper stickers that said TENNIS

IS THE GOOD LIFE or LOVE with a yel ow tennis bal as the O. Al the lights were on in the house, and a giggle exploded from somewhere inside.

“Come on.” Laurel hit the key fob to lock the Jetta and started up the driveway, but Emma hung back for a moment. She stared across the street at Ethan’s house. The front porch was dark. The telescope Ethan had peered through the first night Emma had met him had disappeared. She wondered what Ethan was doing tonight. Had he thought about their near kiss in the pool the other night?

They’d seen each other in the hal s, but they hadn’t real y spoken since.

Nisha’s front door flung open, and the tennis team greeted them with hugs and squeals. Emma poked her head into the room and nudged Laurel. “Where’s Maggie?”

Laurel started to laugh. “Maggie’s not actual y here.”

Charlotte emerged through the crowd wearing an off-theshoulder striped top and wide-leg jeans. She linked her elbow through Emma’s. “I see my little plan worked!” The freckles on her nose scrunched together as she grinned. Emma frowned. Little plan?

Charlotte extended her thumb and pinkie to make the shape of a phone. “ ‘Hel o, Mrs. Mercer?’” she said in an adult voice. “ ‘This is Coach Maggie. I’d real y, real y like Sutton to attend the tennis team dinner tonight. It’s such a show of solidarity! Oh, I understand she’s grounded, but I’l watch her careful y, I promise. You can count on me!’”

Not even I saw that one coming. My friends were good. With a rush of relief, I tried to wrap my arms around Charlotte, thril ed once more that she wasn’t my kil er. But, as usual, my fingers just passed through her skin. Charlotte put her arm around Emma’s shoulders and squeezed. “No need to thank me. Now al we have to do is figure out how to spring you for Homecoming.”

She pul ed Emma into the dining room, where platters of roast chicken and panini sandwiches lay on a checkered tablecloth next to big bowls of pasta salad, crispy, foilwrapped garlic bread, and a tier of chocolate-iced cupcakes for dessert. Red plastic cups sat next to bottles of Gatorade, Smartwater, and Diet Coke. Everyone else on the team had already dug in, scooping food onto their plates with long-handled plastic spoons.

As Emma stepped toward the table, an icy hand circled her wrist. “Glad you could make it, Sutton,” Nisha said with a saccharine smile.

Emma flinched, jittery at the sight of Nisha. Something about the girl was too glossy, starting with the way she was styled to anal-retentive perfection: her cream-colored silk blouse perfectly tucked into a pair of dark-wash trouser jeans. The gold bangle bracelets on her wrist looked as though they’d been spit-polished. Her hair was a smooth, glassy sheet that hung down her back, and her makeup looked as though it had been professional y applied.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Nisha went on. “It was kind of hard work to put al this food together. Especial y because I had to do it alone.”

“Liar!” I wanted to cal out. In the kitchen, past al the girls, I spotted a bunch of AJ’s market grocery bags on the kitchen island. No doubt Nisha had bought al this stuff ready-made and just arranged it artful y on plates.

“So,” Nisha’s voice oozed with faux sweetness. “What’s it like for Sutton Mercer not to have a boyfriend? It must be the first time since, oh, I don’t know, kindergarten!”

Emma straightened. “I’m actual y real y enjoying myself,”

she said, reaching forward to pop a cracker into her mouth.

“It feels good to be free.”

The corners of Nisha’s mouth curled up into a sickly pink grin. “I heard you wouldn’t have sex with him,” she added, loudly enough to turn the heads of two sophomores lining up for pasta-salad seconds.

Emma’s hand froze over the crackers. “Where did you hear that?”

A tiny giggle escaped from Nisha’s mouth. The answer was obvious. Other than her friends, Garrett was the only person who knew what happened in Sutton’s bedroom. Ew. I suddenly was glad that Emma broke up with him.

“I had no idea you were such a prude!” Nisha tril ed, exposing her pearly teeth. Then, without al owing Emma to get another word in, she whipped around and sashayed into the den.

Emma stabbed at a piece of chicken on the platter, hating Nisha more with every second. Had Sutton hated her this much, too? But it was more than that. There was something about Nisha that unnerved her. The strange looks she gave Emma, the whispers. It was like she was toying with Emma. Like she knew something—something big.

Emma peered out of the dining room. A large, state-ofthe-art kitchen was to her right; on the other side of the foyer was a long, dark hal way, which most likely led to Nisha’s bedroom. Did she dare?

“Be careful,” I warned, even though Emma couldn’t hear me. There was no way Nisha would take kindly to snooping. Emma stared at the chicken leg she’d selected from the platter, the thin, yel owish flesh suddenly turning her stomach. Discarding her plate, she mumbled something about the bathroom to no one in particular and tiptoed down the hal .

Tiny night-lights il uminated the baseboards. The air smel ed like Febreze and Indian spices. Emma pressed open the first door with the very tips of her fingers and stared into a walk-in closet ful of towels and sheets. She moved to the next door. It was a hal bathroom, adorned with a paisley shower curtain and a mosaic-tiled mirror. The next door, which led to the master bedroom, stood ajar. The king-sized bed hadn’t been made, and men’s dress shirts, black socks, and shiny black shoes were strewn messily al over the carpet. I guess someone’s cleaning lady didn’t come this week, Emma thought, surprised at how accustomed to an immaculate home she’d become after just a few weeks. A twinge of guilt pinched her when she remembered that Mrs. Banerjee had died this summer. Emma pushed inside the final door to the right. A light glowed from a meticulous desk. A Compaq laptop sat closed, and a white iPod waited in a charging dock next to it. The rest of the surface was empty and sterile, like a hotel room. Nisha had smoothed the bedspread of al creases, organized eight fluffy pil ows just so, and lined up her stuffed animals—one of which was a large tennis racket with two googly eyes—along the headboard. She’d alphabetized al the books on her shelf—which seemed mostly of the stuffy, Victorian, Brontë-sisters variety. Even the slats of the venetian blinds tilted precisely at the same angle. A peal of laughter sounded from the den, and Emma froze. She peeked through the gap between the door and the wal and counted to three. No one appeared at the end of the hal .