One of Us Is Next(95)
She darts a guilty look at me, and I try to keep my expression neutral. It stings that Emma did that, but it’s like Jules said earlier: so not the main issue right now.
“I unloaded about everything to him,” Emma says. “He was a good listener.” She makes a face, as though it pains her to admit that. “Jared said Brandon sounded like the kind of person who’d never had to face a consequence in his life. And that he could help me figure out a way to get even, if I’d help him do the same.”
“But he didn’t tell you his story?” Martin asks. “You weren’t aware of his connection to Eli Kleinfelter?”
“No,” Emma says emphatically. “I didn’t know anything about that until Detective Mendoza told me. He said Jared figured out Mom was Eli’s wedding coordinator and decided to…use me.” She swallows hard. “All Jared told me was that someone had ruined his brother’s life, and his mom killed herself because of it. I felt horrible for him.” Emma flushes and looks down at the table. “Jared said we could start with me. He thought we should do something to…hurt Brandon. So he wouldn’t be able to play football anymore, and then he’d know what it’s like to lose something important.”
“Did you agree to that?” Martin asks evenly.
Emma licks her lips. “Yes,” she says quietly, briefly closing her eyes at the shocked noise my mother can’t hold back. “At the time it seemed…fair.”
My heart is in my throat, threatening to choke me, but Martin’s calm tone doesn’t change. “And who came up with the Truth or Dare game?”
“Jared,” Emma says. “He liked the idea of using Simon’s…legacy, he called it, to create a gossip-based game that Bayview High students wouldn’t be able to resist. The idea was to build the game slowly, until it got to the point that Brandon would take a Dare without question.”
Emma tenses, and I hear her foot start tapping rhythmically on the floor. “Jared said people are easy to figure out. If you’ve ever played Truth or Dare, you know most people will take the Dare. Because they want to seem…daring, I guess. Plus nobody wants to deal with the truth. But first, we had to make sure people paid attention. We needed to launch the game with a real piece of gossip that nobody knew, something juicy and true and ugly. After that, Jared said, we just had to target people who would play along, and the game would be off and running.”
“Okay,” Martin says. “So you needed somebody to not engage in order to kick things off, and you needed a big secret about them. Did you provide that to Jared?”
Emma stills her tapping foot, and the only sound in our kitchen is the faint ticking of the clock above my head. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “Yes.” Mom swallows another strangled sound as Emma continues, “I was pretending to be Phoebe so I said, ‘Well, I slept with my sister’s ex, is that an ugly enough secret for you?’?” I flinch as though she slapped me as Emma continues. “And Jared was like, ‘You seriously want to use that?’ And I said…” Emma’s voice gets so low that I have to strain my ears to hear her. “I said, ‘Sure, why not? It’s not like I care about my sister. If I did, I wouldn’t’ve done it in the first place.’?”
I’m going to cry. Or throw up. Probably both. I want Emma to stop talking, but unfortunately Martin doesn’t feel the same way. “Okay,” he says. “And did you provide other names to Jared? People you thought would play along and take Dares?”
Emma nods. “Yes. I tutor Sean and I used to drive Jules to school, so I was pretty sure they’d love the attention.”
“What about Maeve Rojas?” Martin asks.
“That was Jared’s idea,” Emma says. “He wanted Maeve involved, because she was part of everything that happened with Simon. That was a thing with Jared—he thought about Simon a lot. He wanted to be smarter than him, and fool somebody who Simon couldn’t.” Her cheeks redden as she looks down. “Maeve was supposed to take the Dare, like everybody else, but she didn’t play along. And I have no idea how Jared found out about her and Knox. I wouldn’t—I would never have told him that, even if I knew. I like them both.”
It hurts more than I would’ve thought at this point, when I should be getting numb, to hear Emma say that after admitting she’d tossed me under the Jared bus.
“And what happened when the game launched?” Martin asks.
“It was horrible.” Emma’s voice breaks on the word. “People were so awful. All I could think about was this quote—I can’t remember where I read it, but it goes something like Holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. That’s exactly how I felt. I didn’t want revenge anymore. I just wanted it to stop.” She shoots me an imploring look. “I’m sorry, Phoebe. For all of it.”
I curl my hands into fists on my lap so I won’t say the first thing that springs into my mind, which is: You can shove your apology right up your ass, Emma. Because I know what it’s like when your sister refuses to forgive your worst mistake. “I…it’s okay,” I grit out.
“In your statement to the police, you said you’d asked Jared to end the game and he agreed,” Martin says. “Is that accurate?”