Emma plunged her index finger inside the pouch and touched cold metal. It was a tiny, tarnished silver key. She held it up to the light. It looked like the kind of key that could open a journal or a jewelry box.
A knock sounded and Sutton’s door swung open.
Laurel stood in the doorway in a cloud of tuberose perfume, her hands on her hips. There was a sour look on her face.
“Mom wants you downstairs for breakfast.” Then she glanced around at the clutter strewn across the floor. “What in the world are you doing in here?”
Emma looked around at the mess. “Um, nothing. Just looking for an earring.” She held up a silver star stud she’d just found under the bed. “Found it.”
“What’s that?” Laurel pointed accusingly at the key in Emma’s palm.
Emma stared at it, too, cursing herself. If only she’d thought to hide it before Laurel saw it. “Oh, just some old thing,” she said vaguely, dropping the key on Sutton’s bedside table like she didn’t have a care in the world. Only when Laurel turned away did she scoop it back up again and shove it into the pocket of Sutton’s jeans. If the key had been important enough to hide, maybe it led to some huge secret. And Emma wasn’t going to rest until she found out what it was.
Which meant, no doubt, that I wouldn’t rest either.
15
PROJECT: RUN AWAY
Thursday afternoon, Emma sat in Fashion Design, Sutton’s last class of the day. Headless mannequins covered in draped muslin bordered the room. A makeshift runway shot through the center. Students sat at worktables, fabric, scissors, buttons, zippers, and thread strewn around them.
Holl ier’s one and only fashion design teacher, Mr. Salinas, paced the room, wearing slim-cut trousers and a pale blue scarf tied around his neck. He looked like Tim Gunn’s younger brother.
“Today’s presentation will push the boundaries of form versus function,” he announced in a pinched voice. He tapped a long, skinny finger on the glossy cover of French Vogue, which he had more than once called his “Bible.” “It’s the question on the tip of every editor’s tongue,” he mused.
“How does fashion translate from the runway to real life?” Emma glanced at her mannequin. Her creation wasn’t exactly translating, per se. Plaid flannel crossed the midsection, pinned awkwardly at the waist where Emma had attempted to make the outfit A-line. A black chiffon top hung crookedly with ruffles that sagged at the collar. The worst part was the pin: Emma had tried to make a flower-shaped brooch out of the excess plaid fabric. Add that to the red pen marks that dotted the mannequin’s bare arms, and the whole thing looked like a drunken schoolgirl-gone-goth with a bad case of the chicken pox. Although Emma loved fashion—she scoured thrift stores and made a lot of on-the-cheap outfits look expensive—sewing clothes wasn’t really her thing. She suspected Sutton took this class for the same reason she took a lot of the electives in her schedule—because they were fairly easy As and didn’t require much reading.
“What does the artist within have to say?” Mr. Salinas blathered on. “This is what we must ask ourselves.” Emma ducked down, hoping Mr. Salinas didn’t call on her—she hadn’t exactly been trying to say anything. She had bigger things to worry about than pushing the boundaries of form versus function, like figuring out if Thayer had killed her sister before he got out of jail and came after her again.
“Ma deline?” Mr. Salinas called out, dramatically emphasizing the first syllable of her name. “Tell us what you’ve created here with your avant-garde ball erina.” Madeline stood and smoothed down her black leather miniskirt. She was the best in the class and she knew it.
“Well, Edgar,” she started. She was also the only student who called Mr. Salinas by his first name. “The look I’ve created is called the Dark Dance. It’s sort of ball et-meets-street. It’s the dancer after hours. Where does she go?
What does she do?” She gestured toward her mannequin, which wore a blazer over a black dress and tights. “It’s the dark, deviant part of all of us that lies under the façade of perfection.”
Mr. Salinas clapped his hands together. “brilliant!
Absolutely divine. Everyone, this is the kind of work I expect you all to be doing.”
Madeline sat back down, looking satisfied with herself.
Emma tapped her knee. “Your dress looks amazing. I’m super-impressed.”
Madeline nodded curtly, but Emma could tell by the way her features softened that Madeline was touched.
Emma’s—or, rather, Sutton’s—opinion really mattered to her.
While Mr. Salinas called on a few more students—their responses clearly boring him compared to Madeline’s—
Emma’s thoughts wandered. She’d practically memorized her sister’s notes to Thayer, and phrases like Someday we can be together when the time is right and We’ll sort out all our problems flitted through her mind. Even though Sutton had written almost thirty pages to Thayer, she hadn’t been particularly specific. Why couldn’t they be together? Why wasn’t the time right? What were the problems that needed sorting out?
I tried my hardest to think about what I might have meant. But nothing came.
Then Emma thought about the key tucked safely into her pocket. She’d tried it in every possible place today—a jewelry box in Sutton’s closet, a toolbox in the Mercers’
garage, and a little door to a room on the second floor of the house that she’d never been in before. She’d even run to the nearby post office at lunch in case the key was to a PO Box there, but the proprietor said Emma’s key was much too small for any mailbox. Maybe it, too, was a dead end.