Never Have I Ever (18 page)

Chapter 27
A Shove in the Dark

As the car climbed higher up Mount Lemmon, the cacti gave way to deciduous pine trees, and the air thinned. The road curved up the rocky slope, offering stunning views of sparkling Tucson below.

“How much higher are we going?” Charlotte asked as they passed yet another camping spot. Several campers were parked in the lot, and a family was cooking burgers on one of the public barbecue grills.

“A little higher still,” Gabby said, leaning forward between the seats.

Finally, after they passed three more scenic lookouts and made two wrong turns that forced them to reverse back down the mountain, Gabby screeched, “There it is!”

Madeline pulled the car into a flat gravel lot. A tiny wooden sign read
CAMPING.
Another was marked
TRAILS
, and a third warned
WATCH FOR RATTLESNAKES.

The girls got out and unloaded the gear from the backseat. They’d climbed several thousand feet in elevation, and the air was sharp and cold. Goose bumps rose on Emma’s skin. Gabby slipped out of her toga and changed into jeans and a hoodie, and the other girls did the same.

“We should probably put on sneakers, too,” Gabby instructed, pulling a pair of Nikes from her bag. “The springs are about a mile hike from here.”

“We’re going to hike in the dark?” Emma blurted. She could barely see the scrubby trail that wound into the desert. A whistling, lonely wind blew tumbleweeds across the parking lot.

“That’s what flashlights are for.” Gabby pulled out a long, silver Maglite, heavy enough to bash someone’s head in. When she switched the knob to the on position, nothing happened. “Huh.”

Madeline and Charlotte had flashlights, too, but only one of them worked, spewing a weak, pale yellow beam onto the trail before them. “This seems like a bad idea,” Emma said, her heart beating furiously. “Maybe we should come back another time.”

Gabby hefted her backpack onto her shoulders. “Is Sutton Mercer . . .
afraid
?”

Emma gritted her teeth. Laurel looped her arm through Emma’s. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Promise.”

“Let’s go.” Gabby’s shoes made a crunching sound on the gravel as she marched toward the trailhead. Madeline pulled something out of her backpack. A flash of chrome glinted in the moonlight, and there was a sloshing sound of liquid hitting the sides of a bottle. “Here,” she whispered, handing the flask to Emma. “Liquid courage.”

Emma closed her fingers around the bottle and undid the top, but she only pretended to drink; she had to stay alert. The girls started down the trail, one after the other, dark shadows against a blue-black sky. Gabby’s white hoodie gave off a soft glow, making it easier to keep sight of her, but the trail was narrow, and prickly cacti jutted out from all angles. Behind Emma, Laurel stumbled on a root, and Madeline’s sleeve tangled in a tree branch. Gabby zigzagged the flashlight back and forth along the trail, but about five minutes after they’d started, the light died out, leaving them in complete darkness.

Everyone stopped. “Uh-oh,” Charlotte said.

Emma turned around and squinted at where they’d come from, but the trail snaked over rolling hills, and she could no longer see the parking lot. She pulled out Sutton’s iPhone and put it on flashlight mode, but it shed very little light. She also noticed she had no service. Her palms began to sweat. “What do we do?”

“Let’s keep going,” Gabby insisted. “It’s not much farther. I promise.”

Each of them pressed close to the girl in front of her, not wanting to get lost from the pack. “This is freaking me out,” Madeline said. “Someone tell a story or something. I need a distraction.”

“Two Truths and a Lie!” Laurel suggested with a nervous giggle. “We haven’t played in forever.”

“Fun!” Gabby said, pushing a tree branch out of the way. It snapped back and smacked Emma’s jaw.

Madeline snickered. “Do you even know how to play, Gabs?”

“Uh,
yeah.
” Gabby skirted around a boulder. “Just because I’m not a member of the Lying Game doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Charlotte muttered, and everyone giggled. Emma saw Gabby’s shoulders tense as she plunged forward on the trail.

Luckily, Emma knew the rules of Two Truths and a Lie; she and Alex and a couple of other girls had played it at a sleepover. Everyone took turns making three statements: one false, two true. Everyone else had to guess which was the lie. If they guessed correctly, the statement-teller had to drink. If they guessed incorrectly,
they
had to drink.

“I’ll go first,” Madeline volunteered, sounding out of breath as they climbed a slope. “One: When my family went to Miami last year, I crashed a party and met JLO. Two: I had a consultation for a boob job at Pima Plastic Surgery last year. And three: I think I know exactly why Thayer left. I think I know where he is, too, but I’m not telling.”

The words chilled Emma. When she swiveled around and looked at Madeline’s face, she couldn’t tell if she was smiling or frowning.

“The boob job has to be the lie,” Charlotte’s voice rang out in the darkness. “Mads has the best rack of all of us!”

“Wrong!” Madeline taunted. “The boob job is true—I made an appointment because I was flirting with the idea of double-Ds. I changed my mind, though, when I found out what the surgery was like. So drink up, Char!”

“So which one
was
the lie?” Gabby slowed down at the front of the line. “Thayer?”

Madeline shrugged. “I guess you’ll never know now.”

Emma fixed her gaze on Madeline.
Could
she know where Thayer was? Was she trying to protect him from someone—maybe their dad?

The liquid in the bottle made a swishing noise as Charlotte drank. “Okay. Statement one: I cheated on Garrett. Two: I think my dad’s cheating on my mom. And three: I kissed Freddy Krueger in the haunted house.”

“But your mom’s way too hot to cheat on, Char.” Madeline sounded torn. “I’m not guessing on this one.”

Emma kept her mouth shut, a thought suddenly swimming into her mind. While waiting for Sutton at Sabino Canyon, she’d seen a man she recognized from Sutton’s Facebook page as Charlotte’s father. He’d seemed flustered, and later, Emma found out Charlotte thought he was away on business.

But she didn’t dare say it, instead maneuvering quietly around two rocks.

“Freddy’s the lie!” Gabby whooped finally.

“Drink up, Gabby!” Charlotte crowed. “I was in the haunted house and felt these hands behind me. Someone spun me around and planted one right on my lips. It was totally Freddy—I saw his freaky nails. He wasn’t a bad kisser, Mads.”

Madeline snorted. “You can have him!”

No one asked Charlotte which one the lie was.

After Gabby drank her penalty shot, Madeline said, “Your turn, Sutton.”

Emma took a deep breath and racked her brain for what she could say about Sutton. But then she had another idea. “Okay. One: I worked at a roller coaster in Las Vegas one summer,” she started.

“Lie,” Charlotte said automatically, cutting her off. “You’ve never worked in Vegas.”

“You’re just trying to get drunk, aren’t you, Sutton?” Madeline passed her the bottle. Emma smiled to herself, but didn’t bother correcting them.

They walked on. A lone coyote howled in the distance. A cactus needle scraped Emma’s shin. Then Gabby turned around and looked at them from the front of the line. “Am I next? One: My sister and I cheated to get on the Halloween dance court. Two: Kevin and I made out in the haunted house right by the jar full of fake eyeballs. And three . . .” She paused for effect. Crickets chirped. “I once touched a dead body.”

The wind shrieked in Emma’s ears, and her heart leapt to her throat.

I shivered. Was it my body? More than ever before, I needed Emma—I needed her to nail Gabby and Lili and expose my murder. I needed them to go down for what they’d done.

Laurel sniffed. “A dead body? Yeah, right.”

Blood pulsed in Emma’s ears. It took everything she had to keep her feet moving forward, because if she tried to turn back, she might get lost . . . or worse.

“But if that’s the lie, that means you cheated to get on the court,” Madeline murmured. “You couldn’t do that, could you?”

“I don’t know, could I?” Gabby taunted. She twisted around and stared straight at Emma. Emma couldn’t see her features, but she could tell Gabby was smirking. “What do you think I’m capable of, Sutton?”

Suddenly, the trail hit an abrupt dead end, and the girls stopped short. Instead of a hot spring burbling before them, they stood at the edge of a cliff. Pebbles cascaded over the side. The faded light showed silhouettes of criss-crossing branches below. It was too dark to tell how far of a drop it was.

A gust of wind howled along the trail, rustling dead leaves at Emma’s feet, and she realized with a jolt how wrong she’d been to think she could handle Gabby. They were in the desert with no flashlights and no cell phone service. One wrong step, one stumble, and Emma would become the headline Gabby and Lili wanted:
Teen Dies in Tragic Desert Accident
. It was the perfect scenario, really. Because if Emma died out here, everyone would think Sutton Mercer met her end during an ill-fated drinking game. There would no longer be a murder to cover up, no reason for anyone to take Sutton’s place. It would all just be over.

“Uh, Gabby?” Madeline shuffled her feet. “Did we take a wrong turn?”

“Nope.” Gabby smacked the flashlight she was holding and tried the switch again, but it still didn’t work. “The path continues on the other side of this cliff. It’s a really easy jump, I swear.”

Gabby pointed a few feet in the distance. A ravine separated one side of the trail from the other.

“I’m not jumping,” Emma said in a shaking voice.

“Yes, you are.” Gabby sounded amused. “It’s the only way to get to the springs.”

A pair of eyes glowed from a tree branch above Emma’s head. She made out the shape of a great horned owl.

Madeline pushed around them. “Let’s just get there already, okay? I’m sick of hiking.” She held on to her backpack straps and did a graceful, ballet-dancer leap over the chasm, clearing it easily. “Piece of cake!” she yelled from the other side.

Gabby let Charlotte go next, then Laurel. But when Emma tried to edge past her, Gabby stuck out her arm to stop her. “Not so fast,” she said in a low voice.

Emma’s stomach dropped to her feet. This was it.

“Run, Emma!” I screamed at my sister. “Get out of there!”

Across the ravine, the other girls shifted, waiting. “C’mon, guys,” Madeline called out. “What’s the holdup?”

Slowly, Gabby reached out and grabbed Emma’s wrist. Emma flinched. What was going to happen next crystallized before her: Gabby was going to throw her over the side of the cliff. She was going to kill her swiftly and neatly in a matter of seconds, and then tell everyone that Sutton had tripped or stumbled. A new headline formed in Emma’s head:
Girl Gets Away With Murder—Twice.

All at once, something broke loose inside Emma’s body. She wasn’t going to die—not tonight. “Get away from me!” she cried, shoving Gabby backward.

Rocks cascaded beneath Gabby’s feet. Gabby’s mouth made a small
O
. There was a scrambling sound, and her arms wheeled in the air for balance. Time seemed to slow down. Gabby’s sneakers slipped beneath her as though she were skating on ice. She grappled for something to steady herself, but the only things around her were thin tree branches and razor-sharp cacti. A startled screech rang out in the darkness. There was a deafening
swoosh
of rocks, another shrill wail, and then Gabby was falling.

“Gabby!” Madeline cried, rushing to the edge of the cliff.

“Oh my God!” Charlotte screamed.

A single wail punctuated the air. A series of crashes sounded, a body smacking against tree branches, jutting rocks, sharp cacti. And then, agonizing moments later, there was a crash, a clear but distinct sound of a heavy falling object finally hitting bottom.

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.