“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Nisha went on. “It was kind of hard work to put al this food together. Especial y because I had to do it alone.”
“Liar!” I wanted to cal out. In the kitchen, past al the girls, I spotted a bunch of AJ’s market grocery bags on the kitchen island. No doubt Nisha had bought al this stuff ready-made and just arranged it artful y on plates.
“So,” Nisha’s voice oozed with faux sweetness. “What’s it like for Sutton Mercer not to have a boyfriend? It must be the first time since, oh, I don’t know, kindergarten!”
Emma straightened. “I’m actual y real y enjoying myself,”
she said, reaching forward to pop a cracker into her mouth.
“It feels good to be free.”
The corners of Nisha’s mouth curled up into a sickly pink grin. “I heard you wouldn’t have sex with him,” she added, loudly enough to turn the heads of two sophomores lining up for pasta-salad seconds.
Emma’s hand froze over the crackers. “Where did you hear that?”
A tiny giggle escaped from Nisha’s mouth. The answer was obvious. Other than her friends, Garrett was the only person who knew what happened in Sutton’s bedroom. Ew. I suddenly was glad that Emma broke up with him.
“I had no idea you were such a prude!” Nisha tril ed, exposing her pearly teeth. Then, without al owing Emma to get another word in, she whipped around and sashayed into the den.
Emma stabbed at a piece of chicken on the platter, hating Nisha more with every second. Had Sutton hated her this much, too? But it was more than that. There was something about Nisha that unnerved her. The strange looks she gave Emma, the whispers. It was like she was toying with Emma. Like she knew something—something big.
Emma peered out of the dining room. A large, state-ofthe-art kitchen was to her right; on the other side of the foyer was a long, dark hal way, which most likely led to Nisha’s bedroom. Did she dare?
“Be careful,” I warned, even though Emma couldn’t hear me. There was no way Nisha would take kindly to snooping. Emma stared at the chicken leg she’d selected from the platter, the thin, yel owish flesh suddenly turning her stomach. Discarding her plate, she mumbled something about the bathroom to no one in particular and tiptoed down the hal .
Tiny night-lights il uminated the baseboards. The air smel ed like Febreze and Indian spices. Emma pressed open the first door with the very tips of her fingers and stared into a walk-in closet ful of towels and sheets. She moved to the next door. It was a hal bathroom, adorned with a paisley shower curtain and a mosaic-tiled mirror. The next door, which led to the master bedroom, stood ajar. The king-sized bed hadn’t been made, and men’s dress shirts, black socks, and shiny black shoes were strewn messily al over the carpet. I guess someone’s cleaning lady didn’t come this week, Emma thought, surprised at how accustomed to an immaculate home she’d become after just a few weeks. A twinge of guilt pinched her when she remembered that Mrs. Banerjee had died this summer. Emma pushed inside the final door to the right. A light glowed from a meticulous desk. A Compaq laptop sat closed, and a white iPod waited in a charging dock next to it. The rest of the surface was empty and sterile, like a hotel room. Nisha had smoothed the bedspread of al creases, organized eight fluffy pil ows just so, and lined up her stuffed animals—one of which was a large tennis racket with two googly eyes—along the headboard. She’d alphabetized al the books on her shelf—which seemed mostly of the stuffy, Victorian, Brontë-sisters variety. Even the slats of the venetian blinds tilted precisely at the same angle. A peal of laughter sounded from the den, and Emma froze. She peeked through the gap between the door and the wal and counted to three. No one appeared at the end of the hal .
She tiptoed farther into the room to take a closer look at the col age of photos housed under a glass pane near Nisha’s bed. Most of the photos showed Nisha in action: hitting a backhand shot, a drop shot, serving, raising her hands above her head when she’d won a match. In the center of the col age, Nisha stood in the first-place spot on a podium, a shiny gold medal around her neck. Sutton stood in the third-place spot, scowling. There was a tancolored brace on her knee. Tacked along the border were several group shots of the tennis team: the girls holding a team tournament cup, Sutton standing as far away from Nisha as she could. Charlotte had darker hair in the photo, and Laurel’s hair was cut in a sleek blonde bob. Another photo showed the girls standing at an airport gate. Sutton posed off to the side, jutting her leg up on one of the benches and giving the camera a sexy pout. Emma noticed blinking slot machines in the background. Was that Vegas? Had she and Sutton been in the same city at the same time? For a fleeting moment, she pictured the two of them running into each other at the New York-New York casino where she had worked. Would Sutton have noticed her? Would they have smiled at each other?
A final team shot was pinned in the corner of the bul etin board, overlapping other photos as if it had been hastily stuck there. The tennis team gathered around Nisha’s dining table. Sutton and Charlotte were missing, but Laurel smiled broadly, her hair as long as it was today. BACK TO
SCHOOL TEAM SLEEPOVER was scrawled at the bottom of the photo. Emma’s finger traced over the date written in Nisha’s cal igraphic handwriting: 8/31. She had to stare at it for a few long beats before she believed it was real.
“What are you doing?”
Emma flinched. Nisha stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. She stalked over and pushed Emma’s shoulder. “I didn’t say you could come in here!”