Never Have I Ever

Chapter 5 Extreme Times Call for Extreme Measures

Hours later, Emma and Ethan sat in Ethan’s beat-up, dark red Honda in the back parking lot of a series of shops near the University of Arizona. The smell of brick-oven pizza filled the air, and tipsy college students walked past, singing Taylor Swift songs off-key. There was a head shop called Wonderland, a punk-rock beauty salon called Pink Pony, and a place called Wildcat Central, which sold University of Arizona sweatpants and shot glasses. On the very end was a boutique called Clique.

Ethan pulled down the brim of his red Arizona Diamondbacks ball cap. “Ready?”

Emma nodded, suppressing her nerves. She had to be ready.

As Ethan unlatched his seat belt, Emma felt a surge of gratitude rush through her. “Ethan?” She touched the soft spot behind his elbow, tiny pricks of heat shooting down her fingertips. “I just wanted to say thank you. Again.”

“Oh.” Ethan looked slightly embarrassed. “You don’t have to keep thanking me. I’m not Mother Teresa.” He pushed the car door open with his foot. “C’mon. It’s showtime.”

The mannequins in the Clique storefront wore avant-garde Halloween masks. Luxurious cashmere coats, silk dresses, and diaphanous scarves draped their bodies. Their hollow black eyes stared at Emma. Bells dinged when she and Ethan pushed through the front door.

I looked around the place, trying to get a tingle of recognition. A large table stuffed with skinny jeans, skinny chinos, skinny cargo pants, and even skinnier skinny leggings took up most of the real estate in the front of the store. Boots, flats, heels, and espadrilles were lined up on the windowsill like soldiers readying for battle. But nothing stood out; it just looked like the normal sort of boutique I used to frequent.

Emma walked to a rack and checked the price tag on a plain white cotton tee. Eighty dollars? Her entire junior year wardrobe cost less than that!

“Can I help you?”

Emma whirled around to see a tall brunette with a Megan Fox scowl and Heidi Montag boobs. When the girl saw Ethan, her face brightened. “Ethan? Hey!”

“Oh hey, Samantha.” Ethan ran his fingers along a garment on the table, then blushed and backed away when he realized it was a pair of lacy pink panties. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Only part-time.” The shopgirl glanced at Emma again. Her expression soured. “Are you two . . . friends?”

Ethan glanced at Emma, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Sutton, this is Samantha. She goes to St. Xavier. Samantha, this is Sutton Mercer.”

Samantha snatched the cotton tee from Emma and placed it back on the rack. “Sutton and I are already acquainted.”

Emma squared her shoulders, wary of Samantha’s tone. “Um, right,” she said. “Actually, I was wondering if you kept transaction records?” She held up her sister’s Amex bill. “I’m kind of in trouble for overspending on my credit card, and I want to return some stuff I bought on August thirty-first.” She let out an embarrassed giggle. “The problem is, I can’t remember what I bought where.”

Samantha pressed her hand to her chest, feigning surprise. “You don’t remember what you purchased?”

“Uh, no.” Emma wanted to roll her eyes. If she knew the answer, why would she be asking? But she needed Samantha’s help, so she’d have to bite her tongue and save her retort for her Comebacks I Should Have Said folder, a collection of nasty responses she’d thought of but hadn’t dared to say.

“Do you remember what you stole?” Samantha challenged.

“Excuse me?”

“The last time you were in,” Samantha said slowly, like she was speaking to a kindergartener, “you and your friends stole a pair of hammered gold earrings. Or have you conveniently forgotten that, too?”

Looks like I spent my last day on Earth as a shoplifter.

Emma clung to Samantha’s words. “My friends? Which ones?”

“Seriously, what are you on?” Samantha’s eyes were on fire. “Trust me, if I knew who they were or had solid proof of what you guys did, I’d press charges in a heartbeat.” With that, she whipped around, strode to the back of the store on her spike-heel booties, and began feverishly reorganizing a display of argyle sweaters.

For a moment, the only sounds in the store were the pounding beats of a Chemical Brothers dance mix. Then Emma ran her fingers over an itchy wool sweater dress and glanced at Ethan. “Which friends could Sutton have been with? Why wouldn’t they have just told me?”

Ethan picked up a ballet flat, turning it over in his hands before setting it next to its twin. “Maybe the shoplifting had them freaked out.”

“Freaked out about shoplifting? Are you serious?” Emma moved closer to Ethan and lowered her voice to a whisper. “These are the same girls who strangled Sutton for fun. And when the police escorted me to Hollier in a cop car on the first day of school, they were thrilled.”

Emma’s mind drifted back to her brief encounter at the police station. The cops had written her off so fast when she tried to explain who she was, not believing for a second she could’ve been anyone other than Sutton. Then again, Sutton had a long track record—the cop on duty, Detective Quinlan, had brought out an enormous manila file packed with Sutton’s past misdeeds. It probably contained countless Lying Game pranks.

Emma straightened up, a thought striking her hard. What if the file contained something about the train prank? Madeline had said something about the cops showing up. At the back of the store, Samantha glanced at Emma out of the corner of her eye.

Ethan touched Emma’s shoulder. “I don’t like that look on your face,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“You’ll see.” Emma casually picked up a teal Tori Burch clutch from the table. When she was sure Samantha was watching, she shoved it up her shirt. The leather was soft on her bare skin.

“What the hell?” Ethan made a frantic slashing motion across his throat. “Are you nuts?”

Emma ignored him.

Her pulse quickened. This felt so foreign, so wrong. Becky used to steal from convenience stores all the time—swiping a candy bar here, slipping a pack of gum into Emma’s pocket there, once even walking out with several two-liter bottles of Coke stuffed up her shirt like two freaky boobs. Emma had lived in fear that the cops would haul both of them off to jail—or, worse, take her mother away from her. But in the end, it hadn’t been the police who’d taken Becky away. Becky abandoned her daughter of her own volition.

“Stop right there!”

Emma froze, her hand on the doorknob. Samantha spun her around. Her eyebrows made a perfect V. “Nice try. Give it back.”

Sighing, she removed her hand from her midriff and shook out her shirt. The clutch clunked to the ground, the gold chain clanging on the tiled floor. A half-dressed girl poked her head out of the fitting room and gasped.

Samantha scooped up the clutch with a smug grin and pulled a BlackBerry from the pocket of her skintight jeans. She placed the call on speaker.

“Wait.” Ethan scuttled around a wine-colored velvet sofa. “This was a misunderstanding. I can explain.”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice squawked on the other line.

Samantha’s eyes narrowed on Emma. “I’d like to report a robbery in progress.”

Emma shoved her shaking hands in her pockets and tried to keep the saucy, entitled, I’m-Sutton-Mercer-and-I’m-thrilled-to-be-hauled-off-to-jail smirk glued to her lips.

In a way, it wasn’t hard—going to the police station was exactly what she’d wanted.