“Not at all. If you’re brave enough to enter that mess, you have my blessings.” Vanessa opened the front door with another laugh. Emma followed her into an entryway with cherry-wood parquet flooring and antique bronze light fixtures. The window over the door was a stained-glass image of the sun coming up over the mountains, and the light filtering through it cast an orange glow over the room. She stared around for a moment. This wasn’t what she’d expected Garrett’s house to look like at all. The decorations were luxurious and eccentric. Garrett had always seemed so bland to her.

Then again, she clearly didn’t know anything about Garrett at all.

Emma turned and gave Vanessa her best impress-the-adults smile. “Thank you so much. I’ll just be a minute.”

“Take your time, sweetie.” Garrett’s mother enclosed her in a quick hug that smelled like jasmine perfume and potting soil. Emma’s heart ached a little. Vanessa reminded her of her best friend Alex’s mom, who’d always treated her like family.

She gave Garrett’s mom another little wave and took the steps two at a time, her heart picking up speed. The stairs opened onto a landing that looked over the living room. The high, slanting ceiling was made of red tin, stamped with an elaborate vine pattern. Creepy ambient music seeped out from under one of the closed bedroom doors. A large collage hung on the door at eye level—it looked like the artist had ripped up pictures of fashion models and then pieced them back together into surreal, alien forms, some with animal bodies, others with machine parts replacing arms or eyes. Emma thought it was safe to assume that was Louisa’s room. The room after that was a blue-and-yellow tiled bathroom—and the one after that, she guessed, would be Garrett’s. She tentatively cracked the door and peered inside.

Bingo.

Vanessa hadn’t been exaggerating. Garrett’s room looked like a bomb had gone off in it. His dark green bedspread slumped half on the bed, half on the floor. Dirty clothes were strewn around on every square inch of the floor, and a pervasive smell of sweaty socks filled the air. PowerBar wrappers and empty Gatorade bottles collected on every surface. Pictures of soccer players and Italian race cars were tacked all over the walls, and a jock strap dangled from the little gold figurine topping an MVP trophy on his desk.