Never Have I Ever

Chapter 28 Walled In

Emma’s stomach lurched like she was about to throw up. “Oh my God.” She stared at her hands as though she didn’t recognize them. She hadn’t just pushed Gabby. It couldn’t have been her. She was a nice girl, Emma Paxton, not capable of violence, even if the person she’d hurt was about to hurt her.

“Jesus, Sutton!” Charlotte pressed her hands to her head. “What did you do?”

“Gabby?” Laurel’s voice echoed in the rocky ravine. “Gabby?”

“She isn’t dead.” Madeline’s voice shook. “She can’t be. She’s okay down there.”

Emma peered over the ravine. She couldn’t see the bottom. She looked at her hands again, and they began to tremble. All at once she felt horribly disgusted with herself. Who had she become? “I didn’t mean . . .” she sputtered. “I didn’t think . . .” Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“What the hell happened?” Charlotte demanded. “Did you push her?”

“No! She grabbed me, and I . . .” Emma cried, the words coming out in a combination of a moan and a sob. “I didn’t think she’d . . .” But she couldn’t say anything more. Had it been an accident, or had her fears and anger gotten the best of her? Had she pushed harder than she thought? Guilt sloshed through her veins. This had to be a mistake. A dream. A nightmare. But then she remembered grabbing Gabby’s taut shoulders and pushing her away. Fresh, terrified tears swarmed her eyes.

“Haven’t you put Gabby through enough, Sutton?” Charlotte screamed. “What if she’s hurt?”

“I told you, I didn’t mean to do it!” Emma shouted, her head spinning. She squinted through the darkness to the bottom of the ravine. Gabby had to be there, alive, fine. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to be the villain—Gabby and Lili were, for killing Sutton! She was just defending herself! But Sutton’s friends wouldn’t buy that. Neither would the cops—not without proof of what the twins did.

“Someone call nine-one-one,” Laurel yelled.

Emma looked helplessly down at Sutton’s phone. “There’s no service out here!”

“What are we going to do?” Madeline shrieked.

Laurel pointed to a dark, narrow path that led down the mountain, practically overgrown with cacti, brambles, and shrubs. “We have to get to her. We have to see if she’s okay.”

Laurel bushwhacked through the brush and started down the slope, using her cell phone as a dim flashlight. Emma leapt over the ravine and followed them. Cactus spines poked her arms, insinuating their way under her skin, but she felt impervious to the pain. It was an accident, Emma repeated over and over to herself, but a tiny voice inside her kept crying, Was it?

“Gabby?” Laurel called out.

“Gabs!” Madeline screamed.

No answer. A chilly wind gusted, piercing through Emma’s thin sweater.

“What if she’s unconscious when we get to her?” Laurel sobbed. “Does anyone know CPR?”

Charlotte clutched a tree branch that looked moments away from snapping with the weight of her grasp. “How will we be able to call an ambulance? What if she’s having a seizure?”

“The doctor said her medicine would prevent that, right?” Laurel said, sounding completely unconvinced.

“What if she forgot to take it today?” Madeline asked, her voice shaking.

Charlotte crept carefully down the path, avoiding a spear-shaped rock that jutted from a patch of dirt.

Again Emma tried an outgoing call on her cell phone. The other girls did, too, but no one could get a signal. Crack. Emma stopped short and looked around. “Gabby?” she called hopefully. No answer.

The girls kept going. After another ten minutes of stumble-walking down the steep slope, they finally arrived at the bottom of the ravine. It looked like a dried-out riverbed, the sides walled in by craggy black rock, the bottom smooth and sandy. The air was so calm that it felt like they were beneath a dome. Stars twinkled dimly in the sky. Muddy moonlight leached through gray clouds. They were absolutely hidden here. They could die and never be found.

Just like I had. In fact, this seemed like a perfect place to hide my body. I waited to feel a tingle of recognition, a cosmic message that it was here. . . .

“Gabs?” Madeline screamed. “Where are you?”

“She’s not here, guys.” Charlotte slumped to a rock on the other side of the riverbed. “We must be in the wrong spot.”

Emma blinked into the bluish darkness. As far as she could tell, there was nothing on the ground. Certainly not a body. A cold, clammy feeling overcame her, and she sank to her knees. All at once, she couldn’t breathe.

Madeline stood over her. “Are you okay?”

Emma nodded, then shook her head. “I . . .” But she couldn’t get the rest of the words out.

“She might be in shock,” Laurel said.

“Jesus,” Charlotte whispered, as if this was all they needed.

“We should split up to look for Gabby,” Laurel suggested. She gestured to her right. “I’ll go that way.”

“I’ll go left,” Charlotte said.

“I’m going back to the car,” Madeline said. “Or as far as I need to go to get cell service to call nine-one-one. Sutton, don’t move, all right? Just sit still. We’ll come back for you.”

Everyone headed off in opposite directions. Emma watched until their dim shapes disappeared in the distance. The air whipped quietly around her. Pebbles rained down the side of the mountain. Slowly, the crushing feeling on her chest began to abate. She gulped in air and rubbed her hands together. She couldn’t just sit here. She had to look for Gabby. “Hello?” she called out. Her voice echoed slightly.

Suddenly, Emma heard a thin, small sound to her right. She stood up straighter, alert. “Gabby?”

Next came a choppy inhalation of breath. And then, there it was again: a tiny moan.

“Gabby!” Emma’s body filled with hope. She spun around, trying to locate the direction of the noise.

Another moan. Emma walked toward a wall of rocks on the side of the ravine. “Gabby?” she called. “Is that you?”

“Help,” a hoarse, weak voice cried.

It was Gabby. Emma scanned the empty ground, shining Sutton’s phone on the rocks until she found a narrow opening a few feet up that she otherwise would’ve mistaken for an animal burrow. She peered inside the dim, black space and listened hard. Her heart simultaneously lifted and broke when she heard another faint, desperate cry from deep inside. “Help!”

Emma had found Gabby, all right. She was trapped.