It was Isaac. And he was smiling at her. “Hi.”

“Uh, hi,” Emily said, ignoring the fluttering in her chest. “I’m Emily.”

“Isaac.” Up close, he smelled a little like Body Shop orange shampoo—the very same stuff Emily had used for years.

“I loved your cover of ‘Nobody’s Home,’” Emily said before she could stop herself. “That song really helped me get through this trip I took to Iowa.”

“Iowa, huh? I guess it can be pretty rough there,” he joked. “I went with my youth group once. Why did you go?”

Emily hesitated, scratching the back of her neck. She could feel the Catholic school girls staring. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring up Iowa—or that she identified with such desperate, hopeless lyrics. “Oh, just visiting family,” she finally answered, fiddling with the plastic top to her coffee cup. “My aunt and uncle live outside of Des Moines.”

“Gotcha,” Isaac said. He stepped aside to let a bunch of kindergarten-age kids playing tag dart past. “I hear you about identifying with the song. I got made fun of when I first started singing about a girl, but I think the song applies to everyone. It’s like…all those feelings of ‘Where do I fit in?’ and ‘Why can’t I find anyone to talk to?’ I think everyone feels that from time to time.”

“Me too,” Emily agreed, feeling grateful that someone else felt the same way she did. She glanced over her shoulder at her mother. She was still deep in conversation with her friends by the coffee kiosk. Which was good—Emily wasn’t sure if she could handle her mother’s scrutiny right now.

Isaac drummed his fingers on the worn church pew next to them. “You don’t go to Holy Trinity.”

Emily shook her head. “Rosewood Day.”

“Ah.” Isaac lowered his eyes shyly. “Listen, I have to go back onstage in a minute, but maybe you’d want to talk about music and stuff some other time? Get dinner? Go for a walk? You know, like a date.”

Emily almost choked on a sip of coffee. Like a…date? She wanted to correct him—she didn’t date guys—but it was as if the muscles in her mouth didn’t know how to form those words. “A walk, in this weather?” she blurted out instead, gesturing to the piles of snow lining the stained-glass windows.

“Why not?” Isaac shrugged. “Maybe we could go sledding. I have a couple of snow tubes, and there’s a great hill behind Hollis.”

Emily widened her eyes. “You mean the big hill behind the chemistry building?”

Isaac pushed his hair off his forehead and nodded. “That’s the one.”

“I used to drag my friends there all the time.” Some of Emily’s fondest winter memories were of when she, Ali, and the others sledded down Hollis Hill. Ali had deemed sledding dorky after sixth grade, though, and Emily had never found anyone else who wanted to go with her.

After a deep breath, Emily said, “I’d love to go sledding with you.”

Isaac’s eyes gleamed. “Great!”

They exchanged phone numbers, the Holy Trinity girls gaping. As Isaac waved good-bye and Emily drifted over to her mother and her choir friends, she wondered what on earth she’d just agreed to. She couldn’t have just made a date with him. They were going sledding just as friends. She’d set him straight—so to speak—the next time she saw him.

Only, as Emily watched Isaac drift away through the crowd, stopping every so often to talk to other kids or members of the congregation, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to just be friends. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure what she wanted at all.

7

ONE BIG HAPPY HASTINGS FAMILY

Early Tuesday morning, Spencer followed her sister up the steps of the Rosewood courthouse, the wind whipping at her back. Her family and relatives were meeting Ernest Calloway, the Hastings family lawyer, for the reading of Nana’s will.

Melissa held the front door for her. The courthouse hallway was drafty and dim, lit only by a few yellow hallway lights—it was way too early for anyone who worked here to have arrived yet. Spencer shivered with dread—the last time she’d been here was for Ian’s arraignment. And the next time she’d be here would be at the end of this week, to testify at his trial.

Their footsteps echoed on the hard marble floors as they climbed the stairs. The conference room where Mr. Calloway had scheduled the reading was still locked tight; Spencer and Melissa were the first to arrive. Spencer slid down the hallway’s wall to the Oriental rug, staring at a large oil painting of a constipated-looking William W. Rosewood, who had founded the town in the seventeenth century with a bunch of other Quakers. For more than a hundred years, the town of Rosewood had belonged to only three farming families and had had more cows than people. The King James Mall had been built on top of an enormous old dairy pasture.

Melissa slumped against the wall next to her, pressing yet another pink Kleenex to her eyes. She’d been crying on and off since Nana had died. Both the sisters listened to the wind pressing against the windows, making the whole building creak. Melissa took a sip of the cappuccino she’d grabbed from Starbucks before they arrived. She caught Spencer’s eye. “Want some?”

Spencer nodded. Melissa had been especially nice lately, a bizarre shift from the sisters’ usual pattern of cat-fighting and one-upmanship—with Melissa generally winning. It was probably because their parents were peeved at Melissa, too. She’d lied to the police for years, saying that she and Ian, who was her boyfriend at the time, had been together the whole night Ali went missing. Truthfully, Melissa had woken up at one point and found Ian gone. She’d been too afraid to say anything because she and Ian had been smashed, and Little Miss Perfect Valedictorian didn’t do such tawdry things as get drunk and share a bed with her boyfriend. Still, Melissa seemed extra charitable this morning, which was setting off little warning bells in Spencer’s head.

Melissa took a long sip of her coffee and eyed Spencer carefully. “Have you heard some of the news stories? They’re saying there’s not enough evidence for Ian to be convicted.”

Spencer tensed. “I heard a report about that this morning.” But she’d also heard a rebuttal from Jackson Hughes, the Rosewood D.A., saying there was plenty of evidence, and that the people of Rosewood deserved to have this horrible crime put to rest. Spencer and her old friends had met with Mr. Hughes countless times to discuss the trial. Spencer had met with Jackson a few more sessions than the others because, according to Mr. Hughes, her testimony—that she remembered seeing Ali and Ian together the split second before Ali vanished—was the most important piece of evidence of all. He’d gone through what questions she was going to be asked, how she should respond, and how she should and shouldn’t act. To Spencer, it didn’t seem that different from performing a part in a play, except instead of everyone clapping at the end, someone was going to go to prison for the rest of his life.

Melissa let out a small sniffle, and Spencer looked over. Her sister’s eyes were lowered and her lips were pressed together in worry. “What?” Spencer asked suspiciously. The alarm in her head was getting louder and louder.

“You know why they’re saying there’s insufficient evidence, right?” Melissa asked quietly.

Spencer shook her head.

“It’s because of the Golden Orchid thing.” Melissa glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “You lied about the essay. So they aren’t sure you’re exactly…trustworthy.”

Spencer’s throat felt tight. “But this is different!”

Melissa pressed her lips together and pointedly stared out the window.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Spencer asked urgently. For a long time, she hadn’t remembered anything about the night Ali vanished. Then little pieces began coming back to her, one by one. Her final suppressed memory was of two shadowy figures in the woods—one was Ali, and the other was definitely Ian. “I know what I saw,” Spencer went on. “Ian was there.”

“It’s just talk,” Melissa mumbled. Then she glanced at Spencer, biting hard on her top lip. “There’s something else.” She swallowed. “Ian sort of…called me last night.”

“From jail?” Spencer felt the same sensation she had the time Melissa pushed her out of the big oak in their backyard—first shock, and then, when she hit the ground, searing pain. “W-what did he say?”

It was so quiet in the hall, Spencer could hear her sister’s gulping swallow. “Well, his mom is really sick, for one.”

“Sick…like how?”

“Cancer, but I don’t know what kind. He’s devastated. Ian was so close to his mom, and he’s afraid that his conviction and the trial brought it on.”

Spencer flicked a piece of lint off her cashmere coat, apathetic. Ian had brought the trial on himself.

Melissa cleared her throat, her red-rimmed eyes round. “He doesn’t understand why we did this to him, Spence. He begged us not to testify against him in the trial—he kept saying it was all a misunderstanding. He didn’t kill her. He sounded so…desperate.”

Spencer’s mouth dropped open. “Are you saying you’re not going to testify against him?”

A vein in Melissa’s swanlike neck fluttered. She fiddled with her Tiffany key chain. “I just can’t get over it, that’s all. If Ian did do it, we would have been dating at the time. How could I not have suspected anything?”

Spencer nodded, suddenly exhausted. Despite everything, she understood Melissa’s perspective. Melissa and Ian had been the model couple in high school, and Spencer remembered how upset Melissa had been when Ian broke up with her halfway into their college freshman year. When Ian blew back into Rosewood this fall to coach Spencer’s hockey team—creepy!—he and Melissa quickly got back together. Outwardly, Ian had seemed like the ideal boyfriend: attentive, sweet, honest, and genuine. He was the kind of guy who’d help old ladies cross the street. It would be like if Spencer and Andrew Campbell were dating and he got arrested for dealing meth out of his Mini Cooper.

A snowplow grumbled outside, and Spencer looked up sharply. Not that she and Andrew would ever be a couple. It was merely an example. Because she didn’t like Andrew. He was simply another example of a Rosewood Day Golden Boy, that was all.

Melissa started to say something else, but the main doors downstairs opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Hastings strode into the vestibule. Spencer’s uncle Daniel, her aunt Genevieve, and her cousins Jonathan and Smith followed behind. Daniel, Genevieve, Jonathan, and Smith all looked weary, as if they’d driven across the country to get here, when in fact they lived in Haverford, only fifteen minutes away.

Mr. Calloway was the last person through the door. He bounded up the stairs, unlocked the boardroom, and ushered everyone inside. Mrs. Hastings swept past Spencer, tugging off her suede Hermès gloves with her teeth, Chanel No. 5 wafting behind her.

*** Copyright: Novel12.Com