Read Never Have I Ever for Free Online Page A

straightened up, a thought striking her hard. What if the file contained something about the train prank? Madeline had said something about the cops showing up. At the back of the store, Samantha glanced at Emma out of the corner of her eye.
    Ethan touched Emma’s shoulder. “I don’t like that look on your face,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
    “You’ll see.” Emma casually picked up a teal Tori Burch clutch from the table. When she was sure Samantha was watching, she shoved it up her shirt. The leather was soft on her bare skin.
    “What the hell?” Ethan made a frantic slashing motion across his throat. “Are you nuts?”
    Emma ignored him.
    Her pulse quickened. This felt so foreign, so wrong . Becky used to steal from convenience stores all the time—swiping a candy bar here, slipping a pack of gum into Emma’s pocket there, once even walking out with several two-liter bottles of Coke stuffed up her shirt like two freaky boobs. Emma had lived in fear that the cops would haul both of them off to jail—or, worse, take her mother away from her. But in the end, it hadn’t been the police who’d taken Becky away. Becky abandoned her daughter of her own volition.
    “Stop right there!”
    Emma froze, her hand on the doorknob. Samantha spun her around. Her eyebrows made a perfect V . “Nice try. Give it back.”
    Sighing, she removed her hand from her midriff and shook out her shirt. The clutch clunked to the ground, the gold chain clanging on the tiled floor. A half-dressed girl poked her head out of the fitting room and gasped.
    Samantha scooped up the clutch with a smug grin and pulled a BlackBerry from the pocket of her skintight jeans. She placed the call on speaker.
    “Wait.” Ethan scuttled around a wine-colored velvet sofa. “This was a misunderstanding. I can explain.”
    “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice squawked on the other line.
    Samantha’s eyes narrowed on Emma. “I’d like to report a robbery in progress.”
    Emma shoved her shaking hands in her pockets and tried to keep the saucy, entitled, I’m-Sutton-Mercer-and-I’m-thrilled-to-be-hauled-off-to-jail smirk glued to her lips.
    In a way, it wasn’t hard—going to the police station was exactly what she’d wanted.

Chapter 6
A Criminal History
    Emma sat on a plastic yellow chair in a cinder-block room inside the police station. The room was no bigger than a chicken coop, smelled like rotting vegetables, and, inexplicably, had two pictures of serene-looking Japanese geishas hanging on the far wall. It would be a great setting for a news story . . . if she were the writer, not the subject.
    The door creaked open, and Detective Quinlan stepped inside, the same cop who had refused to believe Emma when she said she was Emma Paxton and her long-lost twin, Sutton, was missing. There, hooked under his arm, was a file bearing the name SUTTON MERCER . Emma bit back a grin.
    Quinlan plunked himself down across from her and laced his fingers atop the folder. Boots thundered down the hall, shaking the whole shoddily built complex. “Shoplifting, Sutton? Honestly?”
    “I didn’t mean to,” Emma squeaked, shrinking down in her seat.
    Long ago, Emma had sat in a police station with Becky in the middle of the night after the cops had brought her in for reckless driving. At one point, a cop lifted the big black telephone and handed it to Becky, but Becky pushed it away, imploring, “Please don’t call them. Please ,” she said. At dawn, after Becky was released with a warning, Emma asked whom the policewoman had tried to call. But Becky just lit a cigarette and pretended she had no idea what Emma was talking about.
    “You didn’t mean to get caught ?” Quinlan held up Sutton’s file. “Have you forgotten you already got busted for shoplifting?” He pulled a sheet of paper from the folder. “A pair of boots from Banana Republic, January sixth. So you’re a repeat offender. That’s serious, Sutton.”
    Emma