Charlotte put her arm around Emma’s shoulders and squeezed. “No need to thank me. Now all we have to do is figure out how to spring you for Homecoming.”

She pulled Emma into the dining room, where platters of roast chicken and panini sandwiches lay on a checkered tablecloth next to big bowls of pasta salad, crispy, foil-wrapped garlic bread, and a tier of chocolate-iced cupcakes for dessert. Red plastic cups sat next to bottles of Gatorade, Smartwater, and Diet Coke. Everyone else on the team had already dug in, scooping food onto their plates with long-handled plastic spoons.

As Emma stepped toward the table, an icy hand circled her wrist. “Glad you could make it, Sutton,” Nisha said with a saccharine smile.

Emma flinched, jittery at the sight of Nisha. Something about the girl was too glossy, starting with the way she was styled to anal-retentive perfection: her cream-colored silk blouse perfectly tucked into a pair of dark-wash trouser jeans. The gold bangle bracelets on her wrist looked as though they’d been spit-polished. Her hair was a smooth, glassy sheet that hung down her back, and her makeup looked as though it had been professionally applied.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Nisha went on. “It was kind of hard work to put all this food together. Especially because I had to do it alone.”

“Liar!” I wanted to call out. In the kitchen, past all the girls, I spotted a bunch of AJ’s market grocery bags on the kitchen island. No doubt Nisha had bought all this stuff ready-made and just arranged it artfully on plates.

“So,” Nisha’s voice oozed with faux sweetness. “What’s it like for Sutton Mercer not to have a boyfriend? It must be the first time since, oh, I don’t know, kindergarten!”

Emma straightened. “I’m actually really enjoying myself,” she said, reaching forward to pop a cracker into her mouth. “It feels good to be free.”

The corners of Nisha’s mouth curled up into a sickly pink grin. “I heard you wouldn’t have sex with him,” she added, loudly enough to turn the heads of two sophomores lining up for pasta-salad seconds.

Emma’s hand froze over the crackers. “Where did you hear that?”

A tiny giggle escaped from Nisha’s mouth. The answer was obvious. Other than her friends, Garrett was the only person who knew what happened in Sutton’s bedroom.

Ew. I suddenly was glad that Emma broke up with him.

“I had no idea you were such a prude!” Nisha trilled, exposing her pearly teeth. Then, without allowing Emma to get another word in, she whipped around and sashayed into the den.