Crushed (27 page)

Emily frowned. “Did you get this from Hanna?” She’d only seen Hanna for a second, and then she’d lost her. But she was probably having alone time with Mike.

“It was from that girl over there.” Iris pointed to Chassey Bledsoe.

Emily blinked hard. “Maybe you should give that back to her. Or find Hanna.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Please. Everyone deserves a chance to be queen. Didn’t we all dream of this when we were little?” Then she positioned the crown on her head and skipped onto the dance floor again. She even grabbed the royal scepter and waved it in front of her face like an oversized glow stick. A couple of kids stopped and grinned at her. Iris did a twirling dance around Dominique Helprin and Max McGarry, one of those couples who would probably never break up. Then, when the song ended, she removed the crown from her head and placed it on Emily’s head.

“Now
you’re
queen for a song!” she proclaimed.

The crown’s teeth dug into Emily’s scalp. Iris handed her the scepter. “Come on, girl! Work it!”

At first, Emily refused, but then the beat infected her body. She moved one foot, then the other. She wiggled her fingers. After a moment, she waved the specter around like it was a baton at a parade. Dancers followed behind her around the floor. Halfway through the song, Emily broke into a line dance the whole school had learned in seventh grade—and everyone
still
remembered.

“Go, Emily! Go, Emily!” Iris chanted.

Emily grinned. She’d never dreamed of being prom queen, but it was fun for a song.

When a new song came on, Emily removed the crown from her head and passed it to Kirsten Cullen. A cheer went up, and a couple of boys on the soccer team tossed Kirsten into the air, crown, scepter, and all.

Emily grinned at Iris. “That was a good idea to share the crown with everyone.”

Iris shrugged. “Just trying to make prom fun.”

“I’m glad you came,” Emily said, really meaning it.

“Me, too, you crazy bitch.” Iris threw her head back to laugh, but suddenly she pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and gazed out the window. “My last hurrah in Rosewood, right?”

Emily touched her arm. “Are you okay about going back?” Iris had scheduled for a cab to pick her up at the Four Seasons and transport her back to The Preserve. She wanted to show up looking fabulous in a prom dress, she said, to prove to the other patients that she’d had a blast on the outside. This time, she was going to work hard to actually get better . . . so they’d release her for real.

Iris made a brave face. “Who knows? But I guess I have to try.” She peeked at Emily. “You’ll really visit me?”

“Of course,” Emily said, then nudged her. “I’ll even take you shopping, as long as you promise not to steal anything.”

“Deal.” Then Iris glanced at the clock over the grand, scalloped doors that led to the lobby. “Hey, it’s almost ten.”

“Oh, is it?” Emily said nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t been obsessively watching the clock all night.

Iris frowned. “How are you going to know what your surprise from Jordan will be? It could be anything . . . anywhere.”

“I’ll just know,” Emily said as they walked off the dance floor. Only . . .
would
she? Jordan could have hidden a secret message in one of the four Van Gogh–decorated cakes around the room. She could have stitched it into a hand towel in the bathrooms. She could have subliminally recorded something on one of the DJ’s tracks. It was like looking for a needle in one of Van Gogh’s
Haystacks.

She looked around the room for the fifty-millionth time. Jordan would know what a daunting task it was and try to make the surprise something Emily would gravitate toward anyway, right? Then again, everything in the room was interesting and worthy of another look. The bouquets of flowers on the tables. The animal ice sculptures. The teenager-height, papier-mâché stars. The henna tattoo artist in the corner, the fortune-teller by the stairs.

“It’s conga line time, everyone!” the DJ called out, breaking Emily from her thoughts. A large easel was wheeled to the front of his booth. “Where are our prom king and queen?”

“I is prom queen!” called Klaudia Huusko, the exchange student, her words slurred. She staggered toward the stage, the prom queen crown askew atop her golden locks. When she was almost at the DJ booth, she tripped over the hem of her dress and the crown went flying. Everyone giggled. Klaudia’s dress slipped down her body, showing off a push-up bra and—horrors—a
girdle.
Everyone guffawed.

Emily’s gaze returned to the fortune teller. Their second day at sea, Emily had used the ship’s slow Internet to log onto an astrology site to get her daily horoscope. When she told Jordan that she did it every day to see if things were going to be good or bad, Jordan had looked at her like she was crazy. “What if the horoscope tells you not to leave the house?”

“Then I don’t,” Emily joked. She gave Jordan a playful shove. “But they never say that. Even if you’re going to have a bad day, they say it’ll be
challenging
. Or
a learning experience
.”

“And you really buy all that stuff?” Jordan asked.

“I do,” Emily had said.

Jordan had touched the tip of her nose. “I love finding out things about you.”

Now, Emily checked the clock on her cell phone: 9:53. As most of the kids on the dance floor were forming a long conga line, she drifted toward the fortune-teller’s table. The woman had long, scraggly, gray-streaked brown hair, a mole on her nose, and oblong-shaped glasses with purple lenses. She eyed Emily calmly and steadily, like she was drinking Emily in slowly, all the way to the last sip.

Finally, she smiled, grabbed Emily’s hand, and kneaded her palm. “You have smooth fingers, which means you’re artistic,” she started out. “Your thumb is strong, which means you’re logical. And you’re in good shape and able to overcome obstacles, aren’t you?”

Duh
, Emily thought.
That
was an understatement.

The woman went on to say that Emily would have a love affair but never marry and that she’d live a long, happy life. Emily kept waiting for some sort of reference to Jordan, but the woman didn’t mention her. After about five minutes of kneading, she patted Emily’s hand. “There you go. Go forth and be happy.”

Emily cocked her head. “So . . . you don’t have anything else to tell me?”

The woman frowned. “No, that’s all.” She pulled out a rubber stamp from under the table, pressed it on an ink pad, and stamped Emily’s hand. “It marks that you’ve been here already. I don’t do repeats.”

Emily stood, unable to hide the disappointment on her face. This challenge suddenly felt like the
I Spy
books she used to look at in the school library. She would drive herself crazy trying to find the hidden snowman or tiny lamb charm or pink apostrophe in the cluttered photos, feeling unobservant and unintelligent when she failed. Or maybe Jordan just didn’t know her that well. Maybe Emily didn’t know
Jordan
that well.

She trudged over to Iris, who was marching in the conga line. Iris let Emily cut in, then looked at her strangely. “What’s on your hand?”

Emily peered at the stamp the fortune-teller had given her. “No repeats,” she mumbled. But when the strobe light flashed on it, she noticed the stamp was a large black circle with the initials
JR
in the center. She stopped short. Could that stand for
Jordan Richards
?

She broke out of the conga line, held her hand directly under a recessed light by the buffet, and squinted hard. The mark looked like a stamp on an envelope. Around the initials was the word
Bonaire.
Could that be some kind of clue as to where Jordan was? Was Bonaire a post office? A town?

Emily darted out of the ballroom and into the hall, where the light was much brighter, and fished out her old cell phone. The clock at the top said ten
PM
exactly. Luckily, the WiFi signal in the hotel was strong, so when she typed
BONAIRE
into the browser, quite a few results immediately popped up. Bonaire was a little island in the Caribbean. Emily clicked on a Chamber of Commerce page. According to the site, Bonaire was a popular spot for snorkeling. The site showed a slideshow of images: tropical fish, people playing in a turquoise ocean. Then, a photo of an old-timey movie theater flashed on the screen. On the marquee, instead of the coming attractions, were the words
I MISS YOU, EMILY
.

Emily’s heart almost stopped. She stared, unblinking, at the website, worried she was seeing things. But then the image appeared on the slideshow again.
I MISS YOU, EMILY
. She gasped. “I miss you, too, Jordan,” she whispered.

She watched it scroll through six more times. Then, at 10:01, it disappeared. Emily felt dizzy. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. If only she could book a flight to the Caribbean tonight and find Jordan. But she was sure Jordan was much too smart for that. Even if she had been in Bonaire, she was most likely long gone by now.

“
There
you are, Miss Fields!”

A cold, slender hand landed on her bare shoulder. Emily jumped and looked up. Agent Fuji’s smile was unfriendly. Her conservative gray suit looked out of place among all the tulle and silk. “Have you been avoiding me?”

Emily’s mouth immediately felt dry. “Um . . .”

“I wanted to give you a chance to explain something,” Fuji cut in. “Maybe we could talk right now.”

Emily’s mouth fell open. Explain . . .
what
?

Without waiting for Emily’s consent, Fuji guided Emily to the end of the hall, where it was quieter. “I received an anonymous tip that you are harboring priceless art in your house,” she said sternly. She leaned closer. “Do I need to get a search warrant, Miss Fields?”

Harboring priceless art?
“There’s no art at
my
house!” Emily blurted out.

Fuji raised an eyebrow. “Is it in someone
else’s
house you know? I was told
one
of you girls had something we should know about. If it’s not you, who is it?”

The music pounded in Emily’s ears. She’d spoken before thinking. A had told . . . but A hadn’t told everything. It was a brilliant scheme: She was relying on Emily to spill the rest.

She looked at Fuji again. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh really?” Fuji placed her hands on her hips. “Are you sure about that?”

Emily shook her head faintly, trying her hardest to stand her ground. After a moment, Fuji pulled at the strap of her briefcase and spun on her heel. “You better not be lying,” she warned.

She strode away, her phone glued to her ear before she’d even left the building. Emily felt hot, then cold. What had she just done? Where was Fuji going? As soon as the cops found that painting, they were done.

She ran back into the ballroom and looked around for her friends, but she didn’t see any of them anywhere. Her burner phone was at the bottom of her clutch; she whipped it out and dialed Aria’s number. “Not it!” she screamed after the voicemail beep. She tried Spencer next, then Hanna. Nothing. “Not it, not it!” she yelled at both of them.

“Are you okay?”

Iris was behind her, breathless from the conga line. Emily dropped her phone back into her clutch, feeling scattered. “Um . . .”

“Did you get your surprise? You ran out of here so quickly, and . . .” Iris trailed off abruptly, her eyes widening at something across the room.

“What is it?” Emily followed her gaze. Was Fuji back? Was there a SWAT team here? The only people on the dance floor were kids in gowns and tuxes. The DJ was now heading the conga line, bopping his head back and forth.

Iris started to tremble. “I can’t believe it. That’s the guy who visited Ali at The Preserve.”

Emily frowned at the DJ. He had a scruffy goatee, beady eyes, and a fireplug of a body. “
Really?
”

Iris nodded, her gaze fixed. “I would recognize his picture anywhere.”

Suddenly, Emily realized she was looking at a picture on the easel.
ROSEWOOD DAY MAY DAY PROM KING AND QUEEN!
read swirly lettering at the top. Beneath it was the picture of the king and queen in their crowns.
This
year’s king and queen. A king Emily knew very, very well. Her gaze fell to the gold watch on his wrist. It was the same gold watch she’d seen in that photo from Tripp’s house. The one that had been taken of Ali at The Preserve.

She stared at Iris, all feeling leaving her extremities. “Noel Kahn? Are you
sure
?”

Iris nodded gravely and with authority. “I’d bet my life on it.”

29
Before It’s Too Late

It took Spencer forty-five minutes, several hiding spots to avoid the dicey-looking locals, and a fifteen-block walk in the direction of the city before she found a cab that would take her to the Four Seasons. She’d brought some emergency cash and her credit card—A hadn’t found a way to shut
that
down. She’d tried to power on her phone again and again during the ride, but it was useless. A had jammed her in-box.

Something hit her, too: A
knew
of her in-box. Which meant A knew this phone number. Of course A did: A was Chase. He’d probably peeked at her phone when she was hanging out with him. She’d stepped right into his trap, and her friends were going to die because of it.

She glanced out the window as the Art Museum swept past. Couldn’t the driver get to the hotel any
faster
? She needed to find Aria, Hanna, and Emily before Chase found them first.

Finally, the Four Seasons appeared on the right. “This is fine!” Spencer shouted on the corner, shoving some money at the driver and launching out of the backseat. She ran haltingly down the block in her narrow-fitting maxi gown. Several cabs and limos were parked at the hotel entrance. A familiar black car screamed past Spencer, lifting the ends of her dress. Was that . . . Fuji?

Spencer peered into the tinted windows but couldn’t see the driver or any passengers. Were Hanna, Emily, and Aria already in there? Had Fuji already gotten them?