“No!” Mallory blurts out. “I’m the reason she ran away so it’s my problem. He’s got a bunch of important meetings today. I can’t tell him.”
She hasn’t been acting like herself lately, but this is a whole new level. If Emma has been missing all night, then something could be really wrong. What if she’s hurt somewhere?
“What do you want me to do?”
She rubs her temples, not looking at me, but instead focusing on her feet. “I need you to help me find her.”
“Why me?”
Mallory’s voice trembles as she says, “Because you know her better than anyone else.”
My mouth goes dry. How could she say that after all the time Emma and I have spent apart? It’s been three years. Three long years of being pushed away and ignored. “I don’t know her anymore.”
“Please,” Mallory begs. “I swear I won’t ask you to do anything else for me ever again.”
She knows my secret, and she’s been using it to her advantage way too often. What I thought would be tutoring turned into her just copying my homework.
I bite my lip because there’s something in the broken wayMallory’s looking at me that cuts my heart wide open. It makes me want to cry with her because she’s hurting, and I know I won’t be able to say no.
I should tell her to go ask someone else for help. I should go to school. Ishouldgo to baseball practice like I’d planned. But I know I won’t.
“If I do this, we’re even.”
Her lip wobbles as she tries to turn her lips into a smile. “Okay.”
“I’m done helping you with school.”
She nods.
I know better than to get involved, but I can’t turn her away. “What do you want me to do?”
Mallory paces in front of me. “Could you drive around town looking for her? Maybe check any of the old places you two used to go?”
I nod. “I can do that. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to Lancaster to see if she went there.”
She can’t be serious. That’s hours away and she doesn’t look like she should be driving. By the look of her bloodshot eyes I’d guess she didn’t sleep last night. There’s no way I’m letting her do that. “Why Lancaster?”
“We were fighting yesterday and that’s where she said she wanted to go.”
There’s no possible way Emma would do something that immature. I know she’s done outrageous things before, but going to Lancaster by herself without a phone? No. She wouldn’t have. But then again, Emma was never the one who thought about the repercussions of her actions. She’d always follow an idea on a whim. I was the one who always stopped her from going too far. I was the voice of reason.
“Do you really think she’d be there?”
“I don’t know.” Her face crumbles and she hides it with her hand. “She wanted to see Mom, and I wouldn’t take her. I couldn’t.”
The more I think about it, the more likely Mallory’s right. If that’s what was on Emma’s mind, she probably wasn’t thinking about how dangerous it was. She never seemed to think straight when it came to her mother. All her mother ever did was hurt her, and even though I want to be angry and upset, I’m worried.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You can’t drive to Lancaster because you’re exhausted—”
“I have to.”
“I’ll take you.”
36
EMMA
