Emily twisted the dial on the Fresh Fields' gumball machine. It was Wednesday after swim practice, and she was picking up stuff for dinner for her mom. She hit the gumball machine every time she came into Fresh Fields, and had made a game out of it: if she got a yellow gumball, something good would happen to her. She looked at the gumball in her palm. It was green.
"Hey." Someone stood over her.
Emily looked up. "Aria. Hey."
As usual, Aria clearly wasn't afraid to stand out with her outfit. She wore a neon blue puffy vest that accentuated her arresting, ice-blue eyes. And although she wore the school's standard-issue uniform skirt, she'd hiked it up well above her knees and paired it with black leggings and funky royal blue ballet flats. Her black hair was up in a high, cheerleader-style ponytail. It completely worked, and most of the guys in the Fresh Fields parking lot under seventy-five were staring at her.
Aria leaned closer. "You holding up okay?"
"Yeah. You?"
Aria shrugged. She gave a surreptitious glance around the parking lot, which was full of eager cart boys pushing stray carts into the corral. "You haven't gotten any—"
"Nope." Emily avoided Aria's eyes. She'd deleted Monday's text from A—the one about her new love—so it was almost as if it hadn't happened. "You?"
"Nada." Aria shrugged. "Maybe we're in the clear."
We're not, Emily wanted to say. She chewed on the inside of her cheek.
"Well, you can call me anytime." Aria took a step toward the soda cases.
Emily left the store, a cold sweat covering her body. Why was she the only one who'd heard from A, anyway? Was A singling her out?
She put the grocery bag into her backpack, unlocked her bike, and pedaled out of the parking lot. As she turned onto a side street that was nothing but miles of white-picket farm fencing, she felt the teensiest hint of fall in the air. Fall in Rosewood always reminded Emily that it was the start of swimming season. That was usually a good thing, but this year, Emily felt uneasy. Coach Lauren had made the captain announcement yesterday after the Rosewood Tank ended. All the girls had mobbed Emily to congratulate her, and when she'd told her parents, her mom had gotten teary-eyed. Emily knew she should feel happy—things were back to normal. Except she felt like she'd already irrevocably changed.
"Emily!" someone called behind her.
She twisted around to see who was calling her, and her bike's front wheel skidded on a wet patch of leaves. All of a sudden, she found herself on the ground.
"Oh my God, are you?" a voice called.
Emily opened her eyes. Standing over her was Toby Cavanaugh. He had the hood of his parka up, so his face looked shadowed and hollow.
She yelped. Yesterday's incident in the locker room hallway kept coming back to her. Toby's face, his frustrated expression. How he'd just looked at Ben, and Ben had backed off. And was it a coincidence that he'd been coming through the hall at that moment, or had he been following her? She thought of A's note. Although most of us have totally changed... Well, Toby certainly had.
Toby crouched down. "Let me help you."
Emily pushed the bike off herself, cautiously moved her legs, then pulled up her pant leg to inspect the long, harsh scrape on her shin. "I'm fine."
"You dropped this back there." Toby handed Emily her lucky change purse. It was made of pink patent leather and had a monogrammed E on the front; Ali had given it to Emily a month before she went missing.
"Um, thanks." Emily took it from him, feeling uneasy.
Toby frowned at the scrape. "That looks kind of bad. You want to get into my car? I think I have some Band-Aids..."
Emily's heart pounded. First she'd gotten that note from A, then Toby had rescued her in the locker room, now this. Why was he at Tate, anyway? Wasn't he supposed to be in Maine? And she'd always wondered if Toby knew about The Jenna Thing and why he'd confessed. "Really. I'm okay," she said, her voice rising.
"Can I at least drive you somewhere?"
"No!" Emily yelped. Then she noticed how much blood was gushing out of her leg. She despised seeing blood. Her arms started to feel limp.
"Emily?" Toby asked her. "Are you...?"
Emily's vision warped. She couldn't faint right no. She had to get away from Toby. Although most of us have totally changed... And then everything went black.
When she woke up, she was lying in the backseat of a small car. A bunch of mini Band-Aids crisscrossed the scrape on her leg. She looked around woozily, trying to get her bearings, when she noticed who was driving.
Toby twisted around. "Boo."
Emily screamed.
"Whoa!" Toby paused at a stoplight and held his hands in the air, a gesture that said, Don't shoot! "Sorry. I was just playing."
Emily sat up. The backseat was filled with stuff: empty Gatorade bottles, spiral-bound notebooks, textbooks, beat-up sneakers, and a pair of gray sweats. Toby's seat cushion had worn off in places, revealing a core of ratty blue foam. A Grateful Dead dancing bear air freshener hung from the rearview mirror. The car didn't smell fresh, though. It smelled sharp and acrid. "What are you doing?" Emily screeched. "Where are we going?"
"You passed out," Toby said calmly. "From the blood, maybe. I didn't know what to do, so I lifted you up and put you in my car. I stuck your bike in my trunk."
Emily glanced at her feet, there was her backpack. Toby picked her up? Like, in his arms? She felt so freaked, she felt like she was going to faint again. Looking around, she didn't recognize the woodsy road they were on. They could be anywhere.
"Let me out," Emily cried. "I can bike from here."
"But there isn't a shoulder..."
"Seriously. Pull over."
Toby pulled over to the grassy hump and faced her. The corners of his mouth drooped down and his eyes widened in concern. "I didn't mean..." He ran his hand over his chin. "What was I supposed to do? Leave you there?"
"Yes," Emily said.
"Well, um, I'm sorry then." Toby got out of the car, walked to her side, and opened her door. A lock of dark hair fell over his eyes. "At school, I volunteered for the EMS unit. I kind of want to rescue everything now. Even, like, roadkill."
Emily looked down the country road and noticed the giant Applegate Horse Farm waterwheel. They weren't in the middle of nowhere. They were a mile from her house.
"C'mon," Toby said. "I'll help you out."
Maybe she was overreacting. There were a lot of people who'd really changed—take any of Emily's old friends, for instance. It didn't mean Toby was definitely A. She unclenched her grip on the seat cushion. "Um, you can drive me. If you want."
He stared at her for a minute. One side of her mouth curled up into an almost-smile. The expression on his face said, Um, crazy girl, but he didn't say it.
He got back in the driver's seat, and Emily quietly inspected him. Toby really had transformed. His formerly creepy-looking dark eyes now just looked deep and brooding. And he actually spoke. Coherently. The summer after sixth grade, Emily and Toby went to the same swim camp, and Toby would stare at Emily unashamedly, then pull his cap over his eyes and hum. Even then, Emily wished she could ask him the billion-dollar question: Why had he taken the blame for blinding his stepsister, when he hadn't?
The night it happened, Ali came inside the house and told them that everything was fine, that no one had seen her. Everyone was too scared to sleep at first, but Ali scratched everyone's backs, calming them down. The next day, when Toby confessed, Aria asked Ali if she'd known he was going to do that all along—how else could she have been so chill? "I just had this vibe we'd be okay," Ali explained.
Over time, Toby's confession had just become one of those life mysteries they'd never understand—like why Brad and Jen really got divorced, what was on the Rosewood Day girls' bathroom floor the day the janitorial worker screamed, why Imogen Smith missed so much school in sixth grade (because it definitely wasn't mono), or like...who killed Ali. Maybe Toby felt guilty about something else, or wanted to get out of Rosewood? Or maybe he did have a firework in the tree house and shot it by mistake.
Toby steered into Emily's street. A rambling bluesy song played on his stereo, and he drummed the steering wheel with his palms. She thought of how he'd saved her from Ben yesterday. She wanted to thank him, but what i he asked more about it? What would Emily say? Oh, he was pissed because I was French-kissing a girl.
Emily finally thought of a safe question. "So, you're at Tate now?"
"Yep," he answered. "My parents said if I got in, I could go. And I did. It's nice being close to home. I get to see my sister—she's at school in Philadelphia."
Jenna. Emily's whole body, including her toes, tensed. She tried not to show any reaction, and Toby stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware that she was nervous. "And, um, where were you before? Maine?" Emma asked, making it sound like she didn't know he's been at the Manning Academy for Boys, which, according to her Google research, was on Fryeburg Road in Portland.
"Yup." Toby slowed down to let little kids on Rollerblades cross the street. "Maine was pretty cool. The best thing about it was EMS."
"Did you...did you see anyone die?"
Toby met her eyes in the rearview mirror again. Emily had never noticed they were actually dark blue. "Nope. But this old lady willed me her dog."
"Her dog?" Emily couldn't but laugh.
"Yep. I was with her in the ambulance and visited her in the ICU. We talked about her dog, and I said I loved dogs. When she died, her lawyer found me."
"So...did you keep the dog?"
"She's at my house now. She's really sweet, but about as old as the lady was."
Emily giggled, and something inside her began to thaw. Toby seemed sort of...normal. And nice. Before she could say anything else, they were at her house.
Toby parked the car and pulled Emily's bike out of the trunk. As she took the handlebars from him, their fingers touched. A little spark went through her. Toby looked at Emily for a moment, and she looked down at the sidewalk. Eons ago, she'd pressed her hand into the freshly poured concrete. Now, the handprint looked way too small ever to have been hers.
Toby climbed into the driver's seat. "So I'll see you tomorrow?"
Emily's head shot up. "W-Why?"
Toby turned the ignition. "It's the Rosewood-Tate meet. Remember?"
"Oh," Emily answered. "Of course."
As Toby pulled away, she felt her heart slow down. For some crazy reason, she'd thought Toby wanted to ask her out on a date. But c'mon, she told herself as she walked up the front steps to her house. This was Toby. The two of them together was about as likely as...as, well, Ali still being alive. And for the first time since she'd disappeared, Emily had finally given up hoping for that.