Burned (6 page)

“It’s great to see you all groovin’, people!” Jeremy called from the stage as the DJ launched into “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” A bunch of girls screamed.

Emily watched them as they barreled toward the dance floor, keeping her eyes peeled for a tall girl with dark hair and haunting eyes—Ghost Girl, she’d begun to call her. She’d thought of little else since their interaction on the balcony. Had there been something magical between them, or was it just her imagination? And why had she let the girl go without asking who she was?

Spencer, whose eyes kept wandering all over the crowd, too, pointed at a table across the room. “How about some ice cream?”

She was looking at the make-your-own sundae bar in the corner. It was slightly less crowded than other parts of the party, so Emily and the others made a beeline for it.

As they chose their glasses and long silver spoons, Aria nudged Emily, her gaze on someone across the room. “Hey, is that your roommate over there?” she asked.

Emily looked through the dancing bodies. A tall girl with dip-dyed blond-to-brown hair in a tight black dress and black boots was holding court in a booth. Her chocolate-brown eyes were heavily lined and shadowed, and her lips were a vampy red, reminding Emily a little of Angelina Jolie. The silver cross around her neck made her seem both untouchable and irresistible. A few snooty-looking blond girls were sitting with her, and about eight guys flocked around them, flirting.

Emily rolled her eyes. “
Yes
.”

Hanna, who had just plopped a modest-sized scoop of vanilla into her bowl, gasped. “Your roommate is Erin Bang Bang?”

Emily gave her a crazy look. “
What?
”

“Erin Bang Bang. But just the guys call her that, not the girls. She’s from Villa Louisa, that Catholic school that’s obsessed with sex.”

“I heard a rumor about that girl today,” Spencer said as she deliberated over chocolate or rainbow sprinkles. “She’s the one who dumped Justin Bieber because he was too boring, right?”

“Noel told me she made out with the pastry chef minutes after the boat disembarked,” Aria piped up. “He created a dessert in her honor.”

Hanna made a face. “She’s not
that
great.”

Emily stared at the labels on the tubs of ice cream. They all had politically correct names like Free-Trade Vanilla, Sensitively Harvested Chocolate, Organic Strawberry, and Cruelty-Free Rocky Road (No Marshmallows). Then she eyed Erin again. “This afternoon, she walked into our room for about one minute, took one look at me, and walked out again,” she said stiffly. “I guess she thought I was a sucky choice for a roommate.”

“Aw, Em.” Hanna placed her hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure it wasn’t because of anything
you
did.”

“I’d love to be your roommate,” Aria added. “I’m stuck with this girl from Tate who’s obsessed with the talent show at the end of the trip. She’s already working on a song—and her voice is
awful
.”

Emily smiled at all of them, instantly feeling better. One good thing had come out of this A mess: She’d reunited with her friends for real.

They moved closer to Erin Bang Bang’s booth. Now she was sitting on the lap of a tall guy with surfer-dude blond hair. “What do you say to a
Titanic
moment later on?” she cooed to him loudly, sounding a little drunk.

Surfer Dude widened his eyes. “Which moment would that be? ‘I’m the king of the world’? The part where Leo sketches Kate in the nude?”

“Whatever moment you want,” Erin Bang Bang said, trailing her finger up the boy’s cheek. “Want to meet in your room in an hour?”

Emily turned away. So much for a heart-to-heart bonding session tonight. For some reason, she felt like Erin was rejecting
her
, not just being a slut.

Spencer grabbed a napkin from the stack. “Forget about her, Em—we’ll have a great time together.” She pointed at a talent show poster on the wall, which featured silhouettes of kids dancing à la the iPod ads. “Why don’t we do an act together?”

Hanna rolled her eyes. “Why is everyone so into this stupid talent show? Didn’t they go out in, like, fourth grade?”

“Come
on
.” Aria nudged her. “We could all make up a dance routine.”

“What about a hula dance?” Emily suggested, spooning up whipped cream from the top of her sundae. “We could wear bathing suits and make grass skirts.”

“Perfect,” Spencer said. When she noticed Hanna’s sour face, she poked her arm. “You’re doing it with us whether you like it or not.”

“Fine,” Hanna said, rolling her eyes.

Sundaes in hand, they pushed through the crowd toward a booth that had just opened up. Emily slumped into the seat and gazed around the huge room once more. Kids hung on the railings and crammed against the bar. When she saw a flash of a white dress, her heart sped up a little.
Ghost Girl?

But then the girl stepped out from the crowd. She had a stubby blond ponytail and a big nose. Emily’s shoulders drooped in disappointment.

A new song came on, and Jeremy’s voice boomed through the speakers. “This is going to be the last song of the night. I hope everyone had a great time, but we gotta get our beauty sleep!”

Spencer snorted into her hand. “
Beauty sleep?
That dude is
so
weird.”

“Does anyone else think he’s sort of a lech?” Hanna whispered. “I swear I’ve felt someone watching me all day. And when I turn around, he’s always there.”

“Are you sure it’s not
A
?” Aria asked.

“A’s not on the ship,” Emily insisted. “Didn’t you see all that security checking IDs at the gate?”

Aria raised an eyebrow. “Who says A doesn’t have an ID? I’m with Hanna. Ever since I boarded the cruise, I’ve felt …
weird
. Like someone is watching, but then ducking away before I can see who it is.”

“But …” Emily trailed off. She didn’t even want to
consider
the idea of A being on the boat.

She glanced around. A shadow slipped behind a large potted plant, but when Emily turned to see who it was, no one was there. James Freed was grinding against a few girls from Pritchard. Phi Templeton carried a big dish of ice cream to her seat.

As Beyoncé launched into a new verse, Jeremy cleared his throat. “One other thing, guys. Not to be a buzzkill, but some items have gone missing from people’s rooms. Please know we don’t tolerate this behavior. Respect the earth, respect people’s stuff, you know?”

Zora-Jean Jaffrey, a bookish girl from Rosewood Day whom everyone called Z-J, banged her spoon against her sundae glass from the next table over. “That thief took my makeup bag!” she said to her group of friends. “My mom quilted it for me and everything!”

When the song ended, the lights came up. Kids started toward the exit. Spencer leaned forward. “So what’s our game plan, guys? What should we do about A?”

“We should try to put together all the clues as to who A might be,” Emily said, shrugging. “It’s someone who knows everything, who was in Jamaica
and
Rosewood. I feel like the answer is right in front of us, and we just don’t see it.”

“Watch what you say,” Aria said warily. “A
might
be right in front of us—literally. If anyone sees anything weird, send a text, okay?”

“And maybe we should just enjoy ourselves a little, too.” Spencer dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “We haven’t had a chance to breathe since Tabitha’s body was found. This might be a good opportunity.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Aria murmured. “I just hope I
can
relax.”

Then Hanna mumbled something about hanging out with Naomi Zeigler, her roommate. As Emily was tossing her napkin in the trash, Aria touched her arm. “Are you going to be okay alone?”

Emily shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
Lonely
, she thought,
but fine
.

“If you need to talk tonight, call me. Promise?”

“I promise.” Emily hugged her. “Same with you, okay?”

“Same for
all
of us,” Spencer said.

They parted ways. Emily boarded a stuffed elevator to the Sunshine Deck. When the car stopped on her floor, she got off and walked down the hall, looking at the marker boards the ship had affixed to everyone’s doors. Most of them had dirty drawings or scrawled messages making plans for when and where to meet. When she arrived at her own door, though, there were a bunch of hearts on the board and
eleven
notes for Erin, all signed with guys’ names. A guy wearing a Lacoste polo with longish blond-brown hair and a beaky nose was penning a note as she approached. He stepped back and watched Emily pull out her keycard, then shrugged.

“Do
you
want to do something tonight?” he asked after a moment.

“Ew,
no
,” Emily said, brushing past him and slamming the door.

Her room had a preppy, nautical theme, with navy-and-white-striped bedspreads, lots of wood trim, and light fixtures and drawer pulls in the shapes of anchors, swordfish, and manta rays. The bathroom light was on, the timer ticking away, and there was a sky-blue towel on the floor that Emily didn’t remember putting there. A type of perfume Emily had never smelled before lingered in the air, and a discarded T-shirt lay on Erin’s bed. But Erin was nowhere in sight.

She flopped back on the mattress, shut her eyes, and felt the almost imperceptible sensation of the boat cutting across the sea. She heard a slight rustling sound, but figured it was probably the water lapping against the side of the ship. But how was that possible? This room was eight flights up from ground level, nowhere close to the water.

There were more rustles. Emily looked around. The room seemed eerily still all of a sudden, as though all of the sound and air had been sucked out through a straw. The sound came from the little closet in the corner on Erin’s side of the room.

Bump
.

She swung her legs off the bed and stared at the small door. Something was scraping against the walls desperately, as if clawing to get out. Suddenly, the bathroom timer dinged, and the only light in the room clicked off, drowning the room in darkness. It was so black, in fact, that Emily couldn’t see an inch in front of her face. A horrible thought took shape in her mind. What if the others were right? What if A—Real Ali—
was
on the boat?

There was another bump, and then a scrape. It seemed like someone was inside, trying to break free. Emily shrieked and scuttled to the opposite wall, ducking behind one of the long curtains. And then, she smelled it: a slight whiff of vanilla, wafting out from across the room. It was the soap both Alis, Real and Theirs, had always used.

Emily’s fingers trembled as she reached for her cell phone, ready to dial Aria, but then the phone slipped from her fingers, banging to the floor and tumbling under the bed. Then there was a loud, long, nerve-rattling
creak
. She peered at the closet through a gap in the curtains and could just make out the door in the darkness. The little starfish-shaped doorknob began to turn, and the door began to open, revealing whoever it was inside.

She yelped, untangled herself from the curtains, and dove for the door that led to the hall, but her foot caught on one of Erin’s discarded boots and she went flying onto the carpet. She scrambled to her hands and knees, then glanced behind her and screamed. The closet door was wide open now, and a figure matching Ali’s height and weight was staring at her.

“Stay away!” she screamed, crawling toward the door. “I’ll call security!”

“Please don’t!” the figure cried.

“Then get out of my room!” Emily screamed. “Get out
now
!”

“I
can’t
!”

Emily paused with her hand on the knob. It was a plaintive, desperate cry, not a threatening one. The voice didn’t sound like Ali’s, either.

“W-why?” she stammered.

“Because I’m a stowaway!” the figure said. “I have nowhere else
to
go!”

Emily noticed a small, quilted makeup bag on the floor of the closet, illuminated by a thin strip of moonlight. Stitched on the side was the name
Zora-Jean
.

“My name is Jordan Richards,” the girl said. “I snuck on this boat because I had no money. I didn’t think it would actually work, but now I’m here, and I don’t have a room, and …”

Then she stepped into the moonlight. She had large green eyes, full lips, and thick, dark hair held back by a velvet headband. She wore a white eyelet dress and ballet flats with grosgrain trim.

Emily gasped. “
You?
”

“Me,” the girl answered, and then faintly smiled. Ghost Girl.

Emily sank down to her bed, trying to focus. “You snuck on the boat?” she repeated.

Ghost Girl—Jordan—nodded. “This morning. I wanted to come on the cruise, but my parents didn’t have the money.” She made a wry face. “Actually, they didn’t want to
spend
the money. We’re not exactly close.”

“Okay,” Emily said slowly. “How did you get
on
?”

Jordan leaned against the wall next to the closet. “There was so much confusion when everyone was checking in that I thought,
What if I just walked on? Would anyone notice?
So I did. But then the ship pulled away from the dock, and I panicked. I didn’t have my passport. I didn’t have any stuff. And I didn’t have a room to sleep in. I was screwed.”