Seven Minutes in Heaven

22 EMMA NON GRATA

Emma and Ethan spent the weekend mostly in hiding. It seemed like Corcoran’s defensive driving had worked; none of the media showed up on the Landrys’ doorstep. Still, they didn’t want to tempt fate, so they drew the blinds and avoided the windows, curling up on the couch to watch a Star Trek marathon on cable. Every now and then they’d stop to sift through the details of the case or get a snack. The kitchen wasn’t very well stocked, but they had enough for stacks of sandwiches, and on Saturday Emma showed Ethan her secret recipe for making jarred pasta sauce taste homemade: olive oil, a sprinkle of sugar, and a tiny splash of vodka.

On Sunday, they disguised Emma in an old flowered shirtdress that belonged to Ethan’s mother so they could go to Goodwill incognito. Ethan even produced a blonde Farrah Fawcett–style wig from the back of Mrs. Landry’s closet. They both laughed at her reflection in the mirror—she looked like she’d been stuck in a bomb shelter since the late seventies. But when they went out she was glad for the disguise. For the first time in a long while, no one paid any attention to her at all, either as super-popular Sutton or as accused-murderer Emma.

But on Monday, Emma knew there would be no disguise that could get her through the day at Hollier. She stood at the mirror of the Landrys’ hallway bathroom, braiding her hair into a long side plait, a style she would never have worn as Sutton. For the first time in months she was dressed like herself, in a faded blue-and-white raglan T-shirt and a pair of perfectly distressed Rag & Bone jeans she’d scored for five bucks. As she looked at her reflection, she felt somehow vulnerable and exposed. She’d been hiding behind Sutton’s persona for months now, her real self a secret that she revealed only to Ethan. Now everyone would see the real her. The thought was strangely terrifying.

She hadn’t had the guts to reach out to any of Sutton’s friends. Her relationship with them was built on a lie—and now they knew it.

A soft knock came at the door. “Are you ready?” Ethan asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied, opening the door. He smiled at her, grabbing the end of her braid and tugging lightly.

“It’s kind of weird, seeing you like this. Like seeing Sutton in Emma-drag.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I feel like I’m still playing a role.”

Ethan shrugged. “We all play roles. You just have to find the one that you like best.”

She poked him in the ribs. “What role are you playing?”

He put on a mock-hurt expression. “Prince Charming, obviously.”

Laughing, Emma followed him down the hall to the entryway. Staying with Ethan was the silver lining to this whole nightmare. She’d never spent so much time with a boy before, but it just felt . . . right. A perfect fit.

On the way to school Ethan played an old Arcade Fire album, humming under his breath. Emma idly opened and closed the glove compartment. She tried to steel herself for whatever would come.

The area around the student parking lot was clotted with news vans. Emma had anticipated this. She put on her shades and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head.

“You look like the Unabomber,” Ethan said.

“At least they won’t be able to see my face,” she replied.

Dozens of students milled about among the reporters, trying to get on TV. Emma saw Celeste Echols speaking into a microphone that Tricia Melendez held under her chin, and she groaned aloud. Celeste had been saying something was wrong with her “aura” since they first met. She would be insufferable now.

Ethan parked the car, and they stepped out into the pallid winter morning. A crescent moon still hung low on the horizon. She met Ethan’s questioning glance with a determined, let’s-get-this-over-with nod.

The students loitering in the parking lot stared at her baldly. A crowd of muscular guys hanging out around a Ford F-250 stopped body-slamming each other to gawk as she walked past. Two twiggy freshman girls scuttled out of her way as if she’d menaced them. She caught sight of a half dozen girls from the tennis team clustered near the flagpole. They fell silent as she approached, their faces pale and eyes wide. Ethan took her hand, and she squeezed back, trying not to look right or left. She focused on walking slowly and deliberately, though a part of her just wanted to bolt toward the glass double doors to the school.

Then she saw who was waiting in the entryway. Principal Ambrose stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her legs planted wide. She wore a zebra-striped suit coat and a pair of purple trousers. Her skin was usually dull and sagging, but today she’d put on turquoise eye shadow up to her eyebrows.

I had the distinct impression that Ambrose had dressed up for the media attention. I could just hear her saying Sutton Mercer was such a special girl, with tears in her eyes. So effervescent! I’d like to think I was something of a mentor to her. Never mind that the only times Ambrose talked to me were the handful of times I’d been busted for a Lying Game stunt.

Emma stopped uncertainly a few feet in front of the principal. She glanced at Ethan, who’d gone strangely pale, then back to Ms. Ambrose. The principal’s lips were pressed into a single thin line.

“You will not be allowed on the premises,” she said in a smug voice. “Emma Paxton is not registered at Hollier.”

Emma blinked, stunned. “But . . . what about school?”

Ms. Ambrose shrugged. “I expect they’ll let you get your GED in prison. Now please leave, before I report you for trespassing.”

The crowd surrounding Emma went absolutely quiet, a hundred pairs of ears straining so that they could later report everything they’d seen and heard.

“Can I at least clean out my locker?” she asked quietly. Her palms were suddenly moist with sweat. She let go of Ethan and grabbed her backpack straps in each hand.

“Those aren’t your things,” Ms. Ambrose said simply. “The police have confiscated the contents of Miss Mercer’s locker.”

Emma took two steps back, tears stinging her eyes. How could she be so stupid? She should have expected this. She turned to run when Ethan caught her hand.

“Here,” he said, pressing his car keys into her palm. “Go home. Call me if you need anything.” With that, he planted a firm, ostentatious kiss on her lips. Then he pulled away, giving the principal a defiant smirk, and shouldered past her into the school.

Bolstered by Ethan’s kiss, Emma turned and walked with as much dignity as she could back toward Ethan’s Civic. She was so focused on getting out of there that when Madeline and Charlotte stepped in front of her, it took her a moment to process. She stopped in her tracks.

Madeline looked as unkempt as Emma had ever seen her. Her hair was loose and unstyled, and while her balletic frame normally seemed willowy and graceful, the shadows under her eyes gave her a skeletal look. Charlotte stood next to her, her face pale beneath her freckles. She hadn’t put on makeup at all.

“Tell us it’s a prank,” Madeline said, her voice tremulous. “Please. Tell us it’s the best one yet.”

Emma stared at Sutton’s best friends, wishing desperately that she could tell them what they wanted to hear. Even though their friendship was built on a lie, she’d grown to genuinely care about the girls. Underneath the petty jealousies and pranks, the Lying Game girls were fiercely loyal to one another. Emma wasn’t quite sure when she’d stopped thinking of them as Sutton’s friends and started thinking of them as her own—but like everything else of Sutton’s, they weren’t hers at all.

Emma looked down at her shoes, avoiding Madeline’s gaze. “It’s not a prank,” she said softly.

A sharp pain cut across her cheek as Madeline slapped her. “You bitch!” she shrieked, her voice a full octave above its normal range. “What did you do to my best friend?”

Emma reached a hand to her stinging cheek, blinking back tears. The two girls swam in her vision for a moment before a tear finally fell.

“You guys have to believe me,” Emma pleaded. “I didn’t do what they say I did. I didn’t mean for this to happen—I never wanted to lie to you.”

Charlotte had gone even paler under her freckles. Her eyebrows were bright reddish-gold without her makeup, and they made her look wild-eyed.

“We trusted you,” she hissed. “We told you all kinds of secrets, let you ride in our cars, let you in our houses . . . after you killed our best friend!”

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Emma’s voice came out louder than she’d intended, reverberating around the parking lot. A few feet away a little conference of pigeons took wing at the sudden noise. She took a deep breath and said more softly, “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Sutton since I got here. If you help me, we might be able to figure it out together.”

Madeline gave a bitter bark of laughter. “Help you? You’ve got some nerve. What makes you think we’d help someone who’s been lying to us for months?”

“Madeline, we created an entire game about lying,” I shouted, annoyed. “And you have to help her! She’s my only hope!” But obviously I didn’t get a vote this time.

“I hope you rot in jail,” Charlotte said, her lip curling upward. “And I hope you dream of Sutton every night for the rest of your life. I hope she haunts you until you die.” Then she headed back toward the school entrance without glancing back.

Madeline gave Emma one last look of loathing, and then turned to follow Char.

Emma stood frozen, watching them go, until she realized that the entire parking lot full of students was staring at her. With a nervous glance around, she quickly let herself into Ethan’s car and locked the doors.

In the rearview mirror she could see the entrance to the school. Principal Ambrose still stood there, staring daggers at her. Most of the students started streaming toward the door now that the show was over. The clock on the dash read 7:58. The bell was about to ring.

Suddenly, Emma picked one face out of the crowd as if a spotlight shone over him. Garrett stood alone in the shadow of a ten-foot saguaro cactus growing in the desert-scaped bed separating the school from the parking lot.

His eyes were honed onto my sister like a laser beam. He stared at her for a long moment, his face motionless.

I stared at him right back, wishing I could unleash the full force of my anger on him. I might have been taken in by those eyes when I was alive, but now that I was dead I knew the truth: They were the windows to a soul that was as dead and rotten as my body.