Secrets and Lies(8)

Makeup in hand, she walked over to the mirror and faced it head-on. “Okay,” she said out loud. “Time to beautify.” She stared grimly at the circles under her eyes. “Status: ER.” Emerson had been talking herself through getting ready for as long as she could remember. She knew it was silly, but when your mom was not just a model but one of the first African American models to rise to supermodel stardom, sometimes you needed a pep talk to get through primping.

“Emmy?” Her dad’s voice floated up from downstairs. “You coming to breakfast?”

Emerson tensed at the sound of her old nickname. When she and her family had lived in Sarasota, Florida, everyone called her Emmy. Emmy, the too-tall, frizzy-haired, acne-faced daughter of a supermodel. When she moved to Echo Bay in ninth grade, having finally grown into her looks and out of her acne, she decided she was done with Emmy. She would be Em now, a new name for a new start. The modeling contract she scored with Neutrogena the summer after her sophomore year helped. The only part Emmy could have played in a Neutrogena commercial was the “before.” It was proof she was really, truly a new girl.

“Be down in a few!” she yelled back to her dad. He was probably already in the kitchen, waiting for her as he did every morning. Their us time, he called it. It used to be her favorite part of the day. No matter what else was going on in her life, she knew she could always count on those fifteen minutes with her dad each morning. But lately her dad’s concern had been almost suffocating, especially after her fling with Matt ended. If her dad ever found out who the “mystery boy” she’d been dating really was… her stomach flip-flopped. It wouldn’t be just Sydney’s family in ruins.

A good scrub with Neutrogena and half a dozen tubes of makeup later, Emerson looked more like herself. It helped that she’d straightened her hair yesterday. Otherwise, she’d be spending the next hour trying to tame it. Going into her closet, she quickly pulled together an outfit: a pair of stretchy black jeans with a black-and-white printed shirt and red flats lined with tiny gold studs. At the last minute she added a chunky gold necklace before returning to the mirror. Clothes, at least, were one thing she never had to think twice about. She might not have been born with a math or science gene, but there was no doubt she’d inherited the fashion gene.

Sometimes she found it hard to believe that this model-girl with glossy black hair and smooth, toffee-colored skin was really her. With her makeup on and all dressed up, Emmy was just a thing of the past. All except her eyes, of course. Emerson looked at the hazel eyes reflecting back at her from the mirror, eyes she’d inherited from her blond-haired, pale-skinned dad. They were the one thing about her that had never changed. Her mom claimed they gave her the “exotic look” the modeling scouts had pounced on.

Satisfied with her appearance, Emerson grabbed Big Foot off her dresser. She’d been so creeped out when she’d found it on her porch last night with the note. But she hadn’t been able to make herself throw it out. The pink rabbit’s foot had been her lucky charm for years. There wasn’t much in Emerson’s life she was sure about; she had no idea where she wanted to go to college, and she certainly couldn’t picture where she’d be five years from now. But she was sure about one thing: It was never good to tempt fate. Throwing out your rabbit’s foot was up there with black cats and walking under a ladder. She dropped Big Foot into her backpack. Maybe it would give her and Tenley the luck they needed to stop this new darer.

Emerson’s dad was waiting for her at the kitchen table, just as she knew he’d be. His light blond hair was long and uncombed, and he had a few days’ worth of blond stubble on his chin. It was his go-to look when he was in the middle of revisions for his latest novel. Emerson could hear her mom in the other room pounding away on the treadmill, running her daily five miles.

“Well, if it isn’t my nocturnal daughter,” her dad teased. “Back to her old ways. Mom and I tried to wait up for you last night, but it was a futile effort.”

“I was home before ten, Dad,” Emerson said, rolling her eyes as she grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge.

Her dad sighed dramatically. “I guess that means your mom and I have finally become old-timers. Or is the new terminology ‘parental dweebs’? I never can keep up.”

“I think both are accurate,” Emerson said, unable to keep from smiling.

“Victory!” Her dad pumped his fist into the air. “Guess what, Grace!” he shouted in the direction of the den, where her mom was working out. “Theodore Aurelius Cunningham has succeeded in making his daughter smile!”

Emerson’s smile widened. “You’re such a parental dweeb, Dad.”

“A parental what, now?” Emerson’s mom wiped a line of sweat off her brow as she jogged into the kitchen to fill up her water bottle.

“Dweeb,” her dad replied. “It’s our new classification, honey. Better get used to it.”

Her mom arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. She was puffing and sweat-drenched, her curly hair pulled back by a scarf, and, still, she looked beautiful. That was Grace Cunningham for you. She didn’t have a bad side, or a bad morning. Sometimes it made Emerson hate her—which then, of course, made her feel awful. “I suppose it’s better than ‘geek,’ ” her mom mused. She took a swig of water as she turned to Emerson. “Did you have fun last night, honey?”

Emerson tried not to flinch. Fun was the last thing she’d call it. She spooned up some yogurt. “It was a nice party,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

The doorbell rang, making her mom tense. “If that’s another reporter, I might need to be restrained,” her mom said with a snarl. In the weeks after Caitlin’s and Tricia’s deaths, reporter after reporter had come knocking on the Cunninghams’ door, angling for an interview with the girls’ heartbroken best friend. A best friend who just so happened to have famous parents.

“Now, honey, remember what we said about strangling reporters with your bare hands,” Emerson’s dad joked. He scraped his chair back, but Emerson waved him back down.

“I can handle this one,” she told him. “I’ve got my ‘no comment’ down pat.”

She squared her shoulders as she threw open the front door. “No comm—” she began. But when she saw who was standing on the porch, the rest of the word tangled in her throat.

Josh.

She opened her mouth again, but no sound came out. He looked exactly the same as he had her summer in New York, taller than her by a good four inches, with broad shoulders and wiry muscles from all the pickup games of basketball he played. He was wearing a beat-up, army-green jacket, and he had the same half Mohawk he used to have, which he’d always claimed was completely different from a fauxhawk.

He gave her a tentative smile. He had a tiny gap between his teeth and a crook in his nose, but instead of looking bad, they just made him look more him. “I take it you were expecting someone else.” It was his voice: low and teasing, edged in gravel. She had hoped a year and two new relationships would have desensitized her to it, toughened her skin into a protective hide, but instantly it set her pulse racing.

“You could say that,” Emerson managed. She shifted nervously. He was watching her with his green-brown eyes, which were like a mood ring, changing colors so fast it was hard to look away. The sight of him still gave her that fizzy feeling: electricity running through her veins. “I—I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your texts.”

A month ago Josh had texted her out of nowhere, asking if they could talk. The very next night, Caitlin died, and talking with anyone became the last thing Em wanted to do. He texted her a few more times after that, all variations on the same question. Instead of responding, she’d deleted them one by one.

“I didn’t know you were in Echo Bay,” she added.

“That was what I wanted to talk to you about.…” He topped off the sentence with a shrug. “But since you never responded, I figured it was time for more drastic measures. So I brought you something.” His hands had been clasped behind his back, but now he slowly stretched one out in front of him.

Sitting atop his palm was a fuzzy yellow duckling. It had orange webbed paws; a tiny, pale beak; and round black eyes, which locked onto Emerson. Chirp, it went.

“Meet my bribe,” Josh said with a grin. “Holden.”

The name brought on a hot rush of memories. Emerson took a deep breath, barring their entrance. “You brought me a duckling?” she asked dumbly.

“I brought you a duckling,” Josh confirmed. He was wearing his you-amuse-me smirk, the one Emerson used to love to elicit. “You might be able to ignore me, but how can you say no to this face?” He lifted his palm so Emerson was nose to beak with the duck. Its wide black eyes blinked sleepily. Emerson stretched out a finger and stroked its fuzzy yellow back. The duckling twisted around and nipped at her finger with a cheerful chirp. A laugh slipped out of her.

“Just as I thought,” Josh said smugly.

Before Emerson could muster up a response, her mom called out from the kitchen. “Everything okay, Em? You’re going to be late for school!”