Elizabeth sighed. "I wish there was some way of making it up to her. I know it sounds dumb, but I can't help feeling sort of responsible. After all, if Todd and I hadn't gone to the game that night, I would have been baby-sitting for Teddy and none of this would have happened."

Winston brightened. "I've got it! Why don't we use part of the money we collected for Lila's present to buy Suzy something really neat? You know, sort of a going-away present."

"Hey, that's not a bad idea," Ken chimed in. "Lila's so rich anyway, we don't need to get her anything very expensive."

"I love it!" Elizabeth cried. "I know exactly the thing to get her, too. We were out shopping yesterday, and she saw this blouse she really liked. It would be perfect for her."

Even those who still doubted that Mr. Collins had done anything wrong were enthusiastic about the idea. Driving home with Todd, Elizabeth felt better than she had the past two days. Maybe she could even manage to have a good time that night in spite of her depression over Mr. Collins.

On impulse, she decided she would also use the money she'd begun saving toward replacing her lost lavaliere on a pretty scarf she'd seen that would go with the blouse for Suzanne. After all, look at the time Suzanne had spent helping her search for her necklace! It was the very least she could do, Elizabeth thought.

Thirteen.

"How do I look?" Suzanne asked as she stood before the full-length mirror in Elizabeth's room.

"Too gorgeous for words," Elizabeth pronounced. "You'd better watch out, Suzy. You may start a riot in that dress."

Suzanne smiled. "Pete gave me this dress last Christmas. Wasn't that sweet? It's a Halston-it must have cost a fortune. I'm always telling him he shouldn't spend so much on me."

"Well, in my opinion it's worth every penny. On you, at least." Elizabeth wasn't so sure how she would look in something as elegant as the off-the-shoulder white satiny dress Suzanne was wearing. She'd probably look like a high school junior masquerading as Princess Diana. On Suzanne it was naturally chic.

Suzanne laughed, bending down to adjust the straps on her cream-colored high-heeled sandals. "Oh, Liz, you could probably make a hippo feel like Christie Brinkley."

It was good to see Suzanne in such a happy mood, Elizabeth thought. Ever since the night at Mr. Collins's, she had seemed so withdrawn. Now her eyes sparkled, and the paleness was gone from her cheeks. Dressing up for the party had done wonders for her.

As for herself, Elizabeth had chosen a slightly simpler outfit for the occasion. Looking in the mirror, though, she decided she didn't look too bad. She was wearing her favorite velvet skirt and a high-necked, lace Victorian blouse. Suzanne had helped her fix her hair in a fancy french braid, into which she'd tucked a sprig of fragrant honeysuckle.

"You look as if you belong on one of those old-fashioned Valentine's Day cards," Suzanne commented. "Todd's going to flip when he sees you."

"Thanks, Suzy. I just hope Dad doesn't insist on taking our picture out by the pool the way he did the last time we got all dressed up. Actually, it was sort of funny. Jessica was so busy hamming it up for the camera, she didn't watch where she was going and ended up falling into the water. It was her own fault, but boy, was she mad!"

Suzanne sighed. "It must be fun having a sister."

"You wouldn't say that if you knew Jessica. I mean, I love her dearly, but she can be a real pain in the neck sometimes."

Suzanne cast Elizabeth a shy look. "I know this is going to sound incredibly corny, but these past couple of weeks you've been so fantastic about everything, Liz-well, I can't help thinking of you as sort of a sister. I hope you don't mind."

"How could I mind?" Tears of emotion filled Elizabeth's eyes.

What a fool, thought Suzanne. Elizabeth was almost too easy to trick. The same with her whole family. Look at how they'd swallowed that story about Mr. Collins. All she had had to do was mess her hair up, rip her blouse a little, add a few tears-and presto. Oh, it was too juicy for words! It was all she could do to keep from laughing in their faces.

As far as Roger Collins went, well, he was only getting what he deserved. It would serve him right to get fired after the way he'd treated her.

I showed him, she gloated to herself. No one can ignore Suzanne Devlin and get away with it!

"You know, Suzy," Elizabeth continued, "I'm going to miss you like crazy when you leave."

"You're the sweetest girl in the whole world!" Suzanne gushed.

"The second sweetest," Elizabeth amended laughingly.

The doorbell chimed downstairs.

"That's got to be Aaron," Elizabeth said with a glance at her clock. It was exactly eight. "Todd is always at least fifteen minutes late. Lateness is like a religion with him."

Suzanne inspected her reflection one last time. Then she dabbed on some perfume and grabbed the lacy shawl that she'd dropped on Elizabeth's bed. As she was dashing out of the room, she stopped to give Elizabeth a peck on the cheek.

"Thanks, Liz."

"For what?"

"For being my friend. For helping me make sure that creep Mr. Collins got what he deserved."

Suzanne frowned, and for an instant she no longer seemed beautiful to Elizabeth. Her lovely eyes narrowed into mean slits. Hatred twisted her mouth into an ugly grimace. Then the moment passed, and Suzanne looked her old sweet, smiling self again. Elizabeth blinked. She must have imagined it. Suzanne could never be ugly.

As soon as Suzanne had left, Elizabeth fished the gift-wrapped box out from the back of her closet, where she'd placed it after she'd gotten home from shopping in the afternoon. Suzanne's suitcase lay partially open on Jessica's bed. On the spur of the moment, Elizabeth decided to put the present inside it. That way Suzanne would find it the next morning when she finished packing. She smiled to herself, imagining how surprised Suzanne would be.

She was rearranging some things inside the suitcase to make more room when something glinted up at her from the folds of a skirt. Elizabeth fished it out. Her lavaliere! What was it doing in Suzanne's suitcase?

Her stomach did a slow cartwheel of disbelief. There was no possible way her necklace could have gotten into this suitcase unless Suzanne had put it there.

But why? Why would Suzanne want to take her necklace? It didn't make any sense at all.

There had to be some other explanation, thought Elizabeth. A perfectly normal explanation. She would ask Suzanne about it when she got to the party. But right then she couldn't imagine what it might be. What if Suzanne really had meant to steal the necklace? What if ...

She heard Todd's car in the driveway. With trembling fingers, she hastily fastened the lavaliere about her neck and hurried down to meet him.

Fourteen.

"You seem so quiet," Todd remarked, reaching out and squeezing Elizabeth's hand. "Is anything wrong?"

"I'm not sure," she answered thoughtfully. "Remember I told you I'd lost my lavaliere?"

"Yeah, I remember. You were really upset about it."

"Well, I found it."

"That's great! Where was it?"

"In Suzy's suitcase."

Todd looked confused. "How did it get there?"

"That's the part I'm not sure about. Todd, how else could it have gotten in there unless she put it there?" She shook her head. "But it's absolutely crazy. Why would she do a thing like that unless she meant to-" She couldn't finish the sentence.

"Steal it?" Todd supplied. He frowned. "You're right. It's crazy. I can't imagine Suzy doing anything like that. But that's how we felt about Mr. Collins, remember?"

"How could I forget? Oh, Todd, I'm so mixed up! And I'm starting to get the funniest feeling...."

"Yeah, me too. Gives me goose bumps."

Absentmindedly Elizabeth fingered her lavaliere. "Suppose, just suppose Suzy did take my necklace. Would that mean she lied about Mr. Collins too?"

"I thought you said there was no way she could have lied."

"I thought so, but-well, now I'm not so sure." Elizabeth buried her face in her hands. "Oh, no, what am I saying? That Suzy ripped her own blouse to make us think Mr. Collins attacked her? Why would anyone do such a hideous thing?"

"Maybe," Todd said slowly, "we've been looking too hard for a reason. What if there was no reason? Remember that book we all had to read in tenth-grade English-East of Eden? There was that beautiful girl, Cathy, who everyone thought was so sweet and wonderful."

Elizabeth shivered as if caught in a sudden draft. She remembered the book well. It was one of her favorites.

"And underneath Cathy was really rotten to the core," she finished for Todd. She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to stop her shivering. "But that was just a book. If someone was really like that, you'd know, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe not. Some people can be pretty good fakers. What about the time before Bill Chase and DeeDee Gordon got together, when your sister pretended to be you so that Bill would fall in love with her? And she was so convincing that Bill actually bought her act?"

Elizabeth bit her lip. "But that was just Jessica. She's never done anything really bad."

"No comment," said Todd, staring straight ahead as he angled the car up the steep road leading to the country club, where Lila's party was being held.

Elizabeth knew how Todd felt about Jessica-and he certainly had enough reason to feel that way, she supposed. But Jessica's past wrongs had nothing to do with the problem at hand. And anyway, if what Elizabeth was thinking were true, then Jessica would look like a Goody-Two-Shoes in comparison to Suzanne.

On the other hand, Suzanne could be completely innocent. Elizabeth was aware of the fact that her writer's imagination did tend to get out of hand on occasion. Like the night she thought their house was being burglarized, and it was only Jessica trying to sneak in through the window after curfew. Elizabeth could still remember how furious her sister had been when the police arrived.

How would she feel accusing Suzanne of stealing-and worse-if it weren't true? Elizabeth wondered miserably. Awful, that's how. Suzanne had been so nice. The possibility that she'd been faking it was almost unimaginable.

Elizabeth groaned. This was turning into more and more of a nightmare. And the harder she tried to untangle it, the worse it got. If only she could talk to someone besides Todd about it. But her parents had gone out and wouldn't be home until much later. Steven had gone over to Tricia's to try and talk to her about his own tangled-up situation. In the past, she had always gone to Mr. Collins, but ...

"Todd," she said, "would you mind taking a short detour?"

"Where to?"

"Mr. Collins's house. I think it's about time we heard his side of the story firsthand."

Todd grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."

The man who opened the door in response to Elizabeth's knock was a pale shadow of the Roger Collins she knew. A stubble of beard darkened his jaw. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days. Elizabeth felt a sharp stab of sympathy, held in check by the memory of Suzanne's tearstained face.

"Uh-is it OK if we come in?" she asked hesitantly. "I really need to talk to you."

"Of course you can come in, Liz ... Todd." At least he sounded like the same old Mr. Collins.

Elizabeth sat down stiffly on the edge of a chair. Todd and Mr. Collins remained standing. They were both waiting for her to say something, but she felt as if a chunk of concrete were blocking her throat.

"H-how are you?" she finally stammered. The answer to that question was obvious, but she couldn't quite get herself to say anything else.

Mr. Collins shrugged noncommitally. "I've had better days."

"You're not sick, are you?" Elizabeth asked. "You don't look very good."

"I'm sick about what happened, if that's what you mean," he said wearily.

Was he admitting that he was guilty? she wondered. Then she remembered the necklace. If Suzanne had lied about that, she could lie about anything. Elizabeth felt hopelessly confused. She looked at Mr. Collins's blue eyes, and he met her gaze. She read sadness in his expression, and fatigue and hurt. "Mr. Collins," she finally blurted out, "is what Suzy said you did true?"

Her face was flaming with embarrassment. If a trapdoor had appeared magically at her feet at that moment, she would gladly have dropped through it.

"What do you think?" Mr. Collins asked quietly, his eyes still steady as they held hers.

Suddenly Elizabeth knew what the truth was. She knew in her heart that Mr. Collins hadn't tried to seduce Suzanne. How could she ever have thought so in the first place? Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she shook her head in answer to her own question.

"I guess I never really believed it. Not deep down. I just couldn't see why Suzanne would lie about a thing like that. I thought she was my friend. I should have known better."

"Suzanne is a very mixed-up young lady," Mr. Collins said. "I think maybe in her own twisted way she did want to be your friend."

Elizabeth shook her head in denial. "No friend of mine would have lied to me the way she did. And stolen from me. Not to mention what she's been doing to you! And to think I was actually sympathetic toward her! Oh, Mr. Collins, I'm so sorry about everything. Can you ever forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive, Liz. I'm not angry with you. If you want to know the truth, I'm not even angry with Suzanne anymore. Oh, I was plenty mad at first. But now I mostly feel sorry for her. She must have wanted attention very badly to do what she did."

Elizabeth rose abruptly. "Well, I don't feel one bit sorry for her! I feel like I've been stabbed in the back. How could I have been so blind?"

She could see it all so clearly now. She remembered the time Suzanne had almost drowned, or pretended to, forcing Mr. Collins to save her. Probably what she had really wanted was to be close to him, to make him notice her. The reason she was angry enough at Mr. Collins to make him lose his job was that he hadn't noticed her.

"You weren't being blind, Elizabeth, just trusting," Mr. Collins said. "There's a big difference. Don't stop trusting people, even if they do disappoint you once in a while. Believe me, Liz, in the end you won't be the loser."

Elizabeth went up to him and kissed his stubbled cheek. "Thanks for being so understanding," she said. "But you can be sure of one thing. Suzanne won't get away with this. I'll make certain of that."

"What are you going to do?" Todd asked.

Elizabeth sighed. "I don't know. But I'll think of something."

Fifteen.