A chill came over me and Emma. The Twitter Twins had killed me. I could feel it.

“Greetings, Hollier High!” Madeline boomed into the microphone, so loudly it made Emma jump. “Everyone ready for Homecoming?”

A cheer rose up, and Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” blasted out of the speakers. The noise was so thunderous that Emma barely heard the snaps of cords breaking above her head. By the time she looked up, the heavy light fixture in the rafters was hurtling swiftly toward her. She screamed and jumped away just as it crashed to the ground with an earsplitting crack.

Amber glass spewed everywhere. Someone yelled—maybe Emma herself. She felt her body go limp and fall to the ground, the court sashes slipping from her grasp and landing on the hard floor. Just before her eyes fluttered closed, she saw Lili join Gabby in the wings. Emma tried to call out, to maintain consciousness, but she felt herself slipping away. Gabby shook the pill bottle up and down, up and down. It sounded like chattering teeth.

The noise reminded me of something else entirely. A tiny pinhole opened in my mind, slowly widening. The world began to whirl like I was on an out-of-control carousel. I didn’t hear pills shaking in a bottle anymore. I heard, distinctly and most definitely, a commuter train clacking noisily over the tracks. . . .

Chapter 18 - The Writing on the Wall

Chapter 18
Tremors and Treachery and Threats, Oh My!

“Where is Gabby?” Lili shrieks as the train whooshes past.

I whirl around, frantically checking the tracks. I planned it all so carefully. There’s no way Gabby could have rolled under the train . . . right?

Then Laurel steps a few feet away and points a trembling finger at a crumpled figure by the curved walls of the underpass. It’s Gabby. Her blonde hair covers most of her face. Her pale hand splays open, her crystal-studded iPhone turned over on a patch of gravel.

“What the hell?” Madeline cries.

“Gabby!” Lili screams, running to her.

“Gabby?” I stand over her limp body. “Gabs?”

A sudden tremor travels from Gabby’s fingertips to her shoulders. Tiny pricks of spit dot her lips, and then her entire body starts convulsing. The train barrels on, rattling my teeth and blowing my hair. Gabby shakes harder and faster. Her arms and legs have minds of their own, jolting in random directions. Her eyes roll to the back of her head like she’s some kind of zombie.

“Gabby?” I scream. “Gabs? Come on! This isn’t funny!”

Suddenly, a black man with a carefully trimmed goatee and an earring in one ear nudges me out of the way. I catch sight of a blue jumpsuit with a glow-in-the-dark badge. pima county emt. I hadn’t even realized the ambulance had roared up, but there it is, a big white vehicle with whirling red lights on the top.

“What happened?” the medic asks, crouching next to Gabby.