The day she found out Caitlin had died, Emerson had cried so hard, and so long, she’d barely had the strength left to stand. She’d really thought it was over after that—how could she have anything more left inside her? But the pain kept striking, relentless. She’d see a blond girl in the bleachers at cheerleading practice, or hear an actress in a commercial who sounded just like Cait, and all at once, the tears would return.
She turned back. “You okay, Abby?”
Abby sat up. She was wearing an ugly ribbed sweater and an even uglier patterned skirt. Normally, Emerson would jump at the chance to mentally edit clothing like that, but Abby’s face was so red and blotchy that Emerson quickly forgot her atrocity of an outfit. “I just miss her so much.” A sob accompanied Abby’s words, and the sound stabbed at Emerson’s chest.
Abby pushed a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. “You know who I wanted to talk to about that ruined video? Delancey. She would have told me to take a deep chakra breath, probably. Or maybe she would have known who was behind it, because she always knew gossip like that. I’ll never know, though, because I can’t talk to her.” Abby’s shoulders heaved with another sob, and Emerson was taken by an urge to hug her, wrap her up in her arms the way her mom always did. But she and Abby weren’t friends; they barely even knew each other. So, instead, she took the seat next to her, tracing a heart that had been graffitied on the desk.
“I do that all the time,” she admitted. “Last night, I was halfway through dialing Caitlin’s number before I remembered.” The realization had been like a truck slamming into her chest at a hundred miles per hour. “Every time I start to think I’m okay, something happens that rips my heart open all over again.”
“Do you ever feel like your memories are warping?” Abby wiped a tear off her chin. “I keep thinking there must have been something I could have done to help her, something I could have said or asked.” Abby squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “Delancey was so jumpy the week before she died. I just figured she was worried about the homecoming race or college applications.…”
Fresh tears rolled down Abby’s cheeks. “Then, before the homecoming dance, I got an e-mail from Nina, a freshman in Purity Club, saying she was worried about Delancey. Something about Delancey saying she was going to lose her virginity in the bio lab before the dance. When I showed up to talk Delancey out of it, I ended up locked in a supply closet for half the night. The whole thing was some weird setup. I talked to Nina after, and she never even sent that e-mail.”
Emerson stared at a row of half-finished ceramic mugs. The truth burned a hole inside her. She, Tenley, and Sydney had sent that e-mail, and locked Abby in the closet. It was back when they thought Abby was the darer. The truth rose inside her now, begging for release. But she couldn’t tell Abby. Not with the darer still on the loose. No one else deserved to be dragged into this game.
“Did you ever figure out what happened?” she asked instead.
Abby shook her head. “I’ve gone through the whole thing a thousand times in my head. Maybe Delancey was secretly dating someone. Maybe he set it up, so he could have her to himself at the dance. Or maybe—maybe it was Delancey herself who did it.” She choked on the last sentence. “How could I have been so in the dark about my own best friend? How could I not have known she was planning her suicide?”
Guilt squeezed painfully at Emerson’s chest. Abby couldn’t have known—because Delancey hadn’t killed herself. If the darer’s taunts hadn’t been enough proof of that, Delancey’s suicide note would have been. Emerson had watched Delancey’s mom show it on the news earlier that morning, in a segment about suicide prevention. It was a short tearjerker of a note—typed up on the darer’s trademark typewriter. But once again she couldn’t tell Abby any of this. Not without telling her about the darer. “It’s not your fault, Abby.” She said it firmly, but the words hung limply between them, not nearly strong enough.
“It just makes me wonder if I even knew her at all,” Abby said sadly.
Emerson dug her nails into the soft wood of the desktop. She chose her words carefully. “Maybe it wasn’t planned. Maybe it just sort of… happened. A moment of terrible weakness.”
Abby shook her head. “She was planning it. She had to have been. Her mom told me she stopped at the Landing Spot diner the day before she died.”
Emerson scrunched her forehead up in confusion.
“Delancey’s cousin works there,” Abby explained. “But she hated that place. Said it gave her major creeps. She never went there, not even when her cousin was working. And then the day before she dies, she just walks in on her own? She must have gone to see him one last time, to say some kind of good-bye.”
Emerson looked up sharply. Delancey couldn’t have gone to the Landing Spot to say good-bye, because Delancey didn’t kill herself. So why had she been there?
She stood up, giving Abby a shaky smile. “I should go find Tenley.” She started toward the door but paused halfway there. “Abby?” She turned around for a second time. Abby’s eyes were wet and rimmed in red. “If you ever need to talk more, I’m here. I—I know what it’s like.”
Abby gave her a small smile. “Thanks, Emerson.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Emerson finally found Tenley in a janitor’s closet and managed to talk her out. She took a math test after that and ate lunch with Tenley in her car, and waited outside the principal’s office while Tenley’s stepdad pulled strings to keep her from being suspended. But she was so consumed by thoughts of the darer that she barely remembered any of it. Now, as Emerson headed to cheer practice, she braced herself. Cheer practice meant seeing Jessie.
She couldn’t help but cringe when she saw the group gathered around Jessie on the field. They were standing in a circle, and from a distance they looked like a flock of birds, pecking and chirping at its leader. “Hey, Em,” Jessie called out as Emerson rounded the bleachers. “We were just talking about Psycho-Ten.”
“We’re taking bets on how much Stepdaddy Reed is going to have to cough up to make this one disappear,” Marisa Henley said with a giggle. “Apparently he’s already donating a new auditorium just so she won’t get suspended.”
Emerson shifted uncomfortably. “Have you even talked to Tenley, Jessie?”
Jessie gave Emerson a weird look. “You want me to talk to the girl who almost killed me as a prank?”
“I really don’t think she meant—”
“I don’t care what she meant,” Jessie said, cutting her off. “She drugged me and nearly ruined my life in the process. That’s all I need to know.”
Emerson opened her mouth. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, but everyone was watching her, their eyes like laser beams, and not a single word came out.
“Girls!” Coach’s voice cut across the field. “Why aren’t you warming up?”
“Just about to, Coach!” Jessie replied. Her voice was high and sugary again. She brushed past Emerson, knocking into her arm.
“Cunningham?” Coach called out. “You planning on joining the team?”
Emerson’s stomach turned as she watched Jessie whisper something to Marisa. “I’m not feeling so great all of a sudden.”
Emerson waited for Coach’s okay before hurrying off the field. She headed straight to the locker room and dropped down on a bench, burying her head in her hands. This was all her fault. If she’d never sent that note to Tenley, then Tenley would never have slipped the pill into Jessie’s water bottle, and the darer would never have found a way to film it. The guilt was like thorns, pricking at her insides.
She grabbed her bag out of her locker and rooted around for her phone. There was only one voice she wanted to hear right now: Josh’s. But when she pulled out her phone, she paused.
She had seven missed calls and four texts. Three of the texts were from Marta.
Call me ASAP!!!
Check ur phone Em!
Have you seen Facebook??
A cold sense of dread crept into her chest. Her fingers moved clumsily as she jabbed at her phone to open Facebook. There was a new video up on her wall. It had been posted by someone named Jane Doe, whose profile picture was a bright red question mark. The dread slithered into Emerson’s limbs, making it hard to move.
It took a few seconds for the video to sharpen into focus.
In it, Emerson was standing in front of a mirror at the Seagull Inn, wearing her cheerleading skirt and a red bra. She looked nervous, but at the sound of footsteps behind her, she brightened. A man walked into the camera frame. He was shirtless, and you could see his defined muscles as he walked toward Emerson. His face was blacked out, but the camera caught a clear shot of his salt-and-pepper hair. There was no doubt he was older.
It was a video of her and Matt Morgan—town fire chief and Sydney’s father—from their night at the Seagull Inn.
In the video, the faceless man stopped in front of Emerson and ran his hands—big, rugged man hands—down her bare arms. And then they were kissing, tangling together, Emerson’s skirt riding up and Matt’s pants riding down and no music, no background noise, only the sound of their breathing growing heavier and heavier. Just as the man went to unclip her bra, the video went black.