“Have you identified the second person?” Jeremy asked.
Aria held her breath. But then the cop shifted his weight and said, “We still can’t get enough facial characteristics on the second person. We think it’s a male, though.”
Aria frowned, confused. She ran her fingers through her long hair, then stared at her sinewy, feminine fingers, each one painted a glittery coral color. She’d been mistaken for a lot of things over the years, but never, ever, a guy.
Suddenly, the two looked up and saw her. Jeremy’s eyes widened. The cop looked angry. “Yes?” he barked.
“Um, I’m looking for Graham?” she said, surprised at how weak and timid her voice sounded. “Do you know where he is?”
Something flickered across Jeremy’s face for a split second, then submerged. “You need to pack up now, okay?”
An alarm bell went off in her head. “Is Graham … okay?” she asked, her voice squeaking.
Jeremy frowned and stepped toward her. “Seriously. If you don’t get everything out of your room in the next half hour, we’re not letting you back on for it.”
The contours of his face had sharpened, making him look older and menacing. Aria turned and walked quickly back to the elevator, feeling that she’d just seen and heard something she shouldn’t. An uncomfortable feeling came over her, but before she could think too clearly about it, she sped up, wanting to be away from the room that had possibly been A’s once and for all.
33
EMILY GETS HER WISHES
The next day, the shuttle van pulled into Emily’s driveway, and the kind driver, who’d talked Emily’s ear off the whole drive about his sixteen-year-old son who would be just perfect for her, trotted to the back and grabbed Emily’s bags.
“Looks like no one’s home.” He squinted at the Fieldses’ blue colonial. The windows were dark, the shutters were drawn, and there were windswept weeds and branches all over the porch.
Emily shrugged. Her dad had sent her a terse text shortly before she landed at Newark Airport saying he couldn’t pick her up after all and had arranged for the shuttle. He didn’t offer an excuse, and Emily wondered if it was just because he didn’t want to be stuck in the car with her for two torturous hours. Apparently, he didn’t sympathize with the fact that she’d had to escape the ship on a lifeboat.
She gave the driver the last twenty-dollar bill in her wallet as a tip, then punched in the garage code and watched as the door slowly rose. Sure enough, both her parents’ cars sat quietly in the garage. She walked around them and opened the side door.
The familiar smell of her house, a mix of slightly stale potpourri, bleach, and the musky cologne her dad always wore, made her throat tighten. For a few hours, she had thought she’d never have to come back here. And after everything that had happened, she hadn’t had time to prepare to return to this life.
All of a sudden, her legs wouldn’t move. She couldn’t endure another sidelong glance from her parents, another heavy sigh. She couldn’t tolerate the heavy, disappointed silence, her mother’s closed bedroom door, those horrible dinners with her father where neither of them spoke. And it would only get worse once she and her friends confessed.
She stood in the laundry room, one hand on the top of the washer. Maybe she’d turn around, walk out the door, and stay at a hotel for the night. They were going to call the police tomorrow—she’d probably be in custody within twenty-four hours. Why not spend the remaining hours of freedom somewhere peaceful and relatively calm? Why torture herself by being around people who hated her?
Swallowing hard, she started to turn. But then she heard a thin, eggshell voice call out from the family room. “Emily? Is that you?”
She froze. It was her mom.
“Emily?” Mrs. Fields called again.
Then there were footsteps. Mrs. Fields appeared in the living room doorway, wearing a pink sweater and jeans. Her hair looked washed. Her face had makeup on it. And—even more bizarre—she was looking at Emily with a faint smile on her face.
Emily tentatively touched her cheeks, wondering if she might be dreaming. “Uh, hi?”
“Hi, honey.” Mrs. Fields looked at her bags. “You want help?”
Emily blinked. These were the first words her mom had said to her in more than two weeks. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me home,” she squeaked, surprising herself.
Mrs. Fields pressed her lips together. Her shoulders rose up and down, and for a brief second, Emily saw the disappointment gather in the lines on her mother’s face and the bags under her eyes. Here it comes, she thought. Her mother was going to burst into tears and disappear again.