The Lying Game (10 page)

Quinlan tick-tocked the wallet back and forth in front of Emma’s face. “Says here you’re Sutton Mercer. Not some girl named Emma.”

“That’s not mine,” Emma said weakly. She felt like the bird that had gotten trapped in Clarice’s closed garage a few weeks earlier—frantic and helpless. How was she going to make anyone believe she wasn’t Sutton … when she looked
exactly
like her? A realization struck Emma: The killer was watching her while she waited for Sutton. Maybe it was the killer who had lured her here? How long had Sutton been dead? After all, if there was no missing girl, there was no crime.

She gestured to the note. “Can’t you at least dust it for fingerprints?”

He stood back, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave her an are-you-kidding-me? look. “I would think a girl who’s had her car impounded wouldn’t be making trouble for herself. We can add to those fines, you know.”

“But …” Emma trailed off helplessly. She had no idea how to reply. The blond cop’s phone rang, and he lunged to answer it. A cop wearing a brown cowboy hat burst through the front doors and marched to one of the interrogation rooms.

“Here.” Detective Quinlan tossed the note and Sutton’s wallet into Emma’s lap with a look of disgust. Then he brought his face close to Emma’s. “I’m taking you back to school now. If I catch you in here again, I’m going to lock you up for a night. See how you like it
then.
Got it?”

Emma nodded.

Quinlan guided Emma out the door and across the parking lot. To Emma’s horror, he unlocked the back of the squad car and gestured to the backseat. “In you go.”

Emma gaped at him. “Seriously?”

“uh-huh.”

She balled up her fists.
Unbelievable.
After a moment, she climbed into the back of the cop car, where the criminals sat. It smelled like a mix of puke and evergreen air freshener. Someone had written
ASSHOLE
on the faux-leather seat.Quinlan swung into the front seat and turned the key in the ignition. “I’m running over to Hollier,” he said into the CB radio attached to the center console. “Be back in a sec.” Emma slumped down in the seat. At least he didn’t turn on the siren.

As Quinlan made a left out of the lot, Emma’s new reality slowly began to take shape. It had been easy—even fun—playing Sutton at a party. But she wanted to
meet
Sutton, not take over her life. And although she’d always wanted to investigate a crime, she’d never imagined she’d be part of something like this. But if no one would believe her—and if Sutton’s family and the police didn’t, who would?—Emma didn’t have much of a choice. It was up to her alone to figure out what exactly was going on.

But she wasn’t actually alone. I considered once again why I was here with Emma, watching her every move, hovering behind her as she took over my life, hung out with my friends, and kissed my boyfriend. Old Mrs. Hunt, our spooky neighbor with too many cats, once told me that ghosts lingered in our world when they had unfinished business that prevented them from moving on to the next. Maybe that’s why I was here, too—to solve my own murder.

Ten minutes later, Emma stood in the girls’ bathroom on the first floor of Hollier High. The pink-tiled room smelled like Ajax and stale cigarettes. Thankfully, there were no feet underneath the stall doors or other girls crowded at the sink.

She stared at her tearstained face in the streaky mirror. There were circles under her eyes, worried wrinkles in her forehead, and red blotches on her cheeks and chin, which always appeared when she cried. She tried to smile, but her mouth just snapped right back into a frown. “Pull yourself together,” she scolded her reflection. “You can do this. You can be Sutton.”

She had to, at least until she figured out a way to get someone to believe her, anyway. She’d pulled it off the night before, sure, but that had been before she’d known what was going on.

Grief coursed through her again, sending a new flood of tears down her cheeks. She grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser. How many times had Sutton used this bathroom? How many times did she peer into this mirror? How would she feel about Emma taking her place?

I wasn’t sure, to be honest. How could Emma figure out who killed me …
as
me? It seemed impossible. And yet … Emma was the only one apart from my killer who knew I was dead. She was the only chance I had.

The bell rang. Emma dabbed a bit of concealer she’d found in the bottom of Sutton’s bag under her eyes, gave her dark hair a final fluff, and strode out the door as confidently as she could, even though her stomach was roiling. The hallway was packed with people at their lockers, girls hugging and squealing about their summer vacations, and guys in football and basketball jerseys shoving one another into the water fountains.

“Hi, Sutton! “ a girl called as she passed. Emma forced the corners of her lips into a smile. “Can’t wait for your party next Friday!” a guy yelled to Emma from the other end of the hall. Inside a classroom, two dark-haired girls whispered and pointed right at her. The note flashed backto Emma’s mind again.
Anyone could’ve written it … even someone at school.

She pulled out the schedule Mrs. Mercer had given her at breakfast. Luckily, she was close to Sutton’s first class of the day, something simply abbreviated as G-103 in Room 114. As Emma crossed through the doorway, she saw a big black, red, and yellow flag hanging from the post by the blackboard. A placard that said
RESPECT THE MIGHTY UMLAUT!
stood on the teacher’s desk. Along the far wall was a poster of a pudgy-faced boy in lederhosen. A speech bubble by his mouth contained the words
EINS, ZWEI, DREI!

Emma scowled. The
G
on the schedule stood for
German. Eins, zwei,
and
drei
were the only German words she knew.
Perfect.
She willed herself not to start crying all over again.

More kids smiled at Emma as she walked down the aisle and fell into a seat at the back. Then she noticed a familiar dark-haired guy sitting by the window, staring out at the red running track: It was Ethan, the stargazing guy Emma had met last night. Mr. Rebel Without a Cause.

Ethan turned and looked over his shoulder, as if he sensed Emma was watching. His eyes seemed to come alive when he saw her. Emma lobbed him a tiny smile hello. He smiled back. But when another girl walked up the aisle and purred “Hey, Ethan,” Ethan only gave her a terse nod.

“Psst!”
a voice called from the other side of the room. Emma swiveled around and saw Garrett’s spiky blond head a few rows over. He waved at her and winked. Emma waved back, but she felt like such an impostor. What would Sutton’s boyfriend think if he knew she was really dead? And now she couldn’t even tell him.

The bell rang again, and everyone scrambled to find their desks. An Asian woman with man-short hair and wearing a long blue dress that looked way too stifling for the Arizona heat marched stiffly into the room.
Frau Fenstermacher,
she wrote on the board in spiky handwriting, drawing a sharp line underneath. Emma wondered if she’d changed her last name for authenticity.

Frau Fenstermacher pushed her clear, Lucite-framed glasses farther down her nose as she examined the class list. “Paul Anders?” she barked.

“Here,” a guy in dark-framed glasses and a Grizzly Bear band T-shirt mumbled.

“Answer in German!” The teacher was barely over five feet tall, but there was something solid and menacing about her that made it look like she could kick someone’s ass.

“Oh.” Paul blushed.
“Ja.”
It sounded like
yah.

“Garrett Austin?”

“Ja, ja.”
Garrett said it like the Swedish Chef. Everyone giggled.

Frau Fenstermacher called more names. Emma ran her fingers nervously over an anarchy symbol someone had carved into the top of the desk.
Say
ja
when she calls for Sutton Mercer,
she silently chanted over and over. She was sure she was going to forget.

Nine
ja
s later, Frau Fenstermacher blanched at the roll sheet. “Sutton Mercer?” she called in the angriest voice of all.

Emma’s mouth opened, but it was like someone had stuffed wiener schnitzel down her throat. Everyone turned to stare at her. The giggles started again.

Frau’s eyebrows came to a point. “I see you there,
Fraulein
Mercer. I know who you are, too. You’re a
Teufel Kind.
Devil Child. But not in my class,
ja
?” She spit as she spoke.

The whole class swiveled from Emma to Frau Fenstermacher to Emma again, as if they were watching a Ping-Pong match. Emma licked her dry lips.
“Ja,”
she said. Her voice cracked.

Everyone laughed again. “I heard she almost got arrested twice this summer,” a girl in a long sweater vest and skinny jeans whispered to a wavy-haired girl across the aisle. “And I heard her car was impounded, too. She had so many traffic violations that they finally towed the thing away.”

“The cops brought her to school this morning,” the wavy-haired friend whispered back.

Sweater Vest shrugged. “Not surprised.”

Emma sank down in her chair, thinking about the file at the police station with Sutton’s name on it. What kind of crazy girl
was
she? She reached into the pocket and touched the edge of the note, desperately wanting someone to see it, to believe it. But then she loosened her grip, pulled out Sutton’s iPad, and placed it on the desk. Now if only she could figure out how to turn it on.

Six more classes of circumspect teachers. Eight wrong turns. A lunch period with Madeline and Charlotte congratulating Emma on showing up to school in a police car—apparently, to them, it was a
good
thing. Finally, at the end of the day, Emma opened Sutton’s locker. She’d broken down and looked through Sutton’s wallet for money before lunch, realizing there was no way she could get through the day without eating something. Besides cash, Sutton’s
America’s Next Top Model–worthy
driver’s license, an Amex Blue, and a wallet-sized Virgo horoscope for the month of August, Emma had found a tiny slip of paper that listed Sutton’s locker number and combination. It was as though Sutton had put it there on purpose, hoping Emma would find it.

If only I’d put it there on purpose. If only I’d left Emma tons of clues about who’d done this to me—put a big bull’s-eye on the killer’s head, maybe. I admired her for carefullyexamining each scrap of paper in my wallet as though it held a vital clue, though. She’d compiled a list of kids in my classes, too, writing things like
Sienna, two desks up, history: smiled, seemed friendly, referenced “the egg-baby incident”
and
Geoff, catty-corner, trig: kept shooting me weird looks, made a joke(?) that I looked “different” today.
Would I have known to sleuth like this, had our roles been reversed? Would I have dove in to avenge a sister I didn’t even know? There was something else I noticed about Emma, too: how she walked down the halls with her lips clamped together, like she was holding her breath. How she popped into the girls’ room to stare at herself in the mirror, as if to work up the courage all over again. We were both keeping secrets. We were both so alone.

Emma opened the locker. It was empty, save for a moldy-looking notebook at the bottom and a couple of pictures of Sutton, Madeline, and Charlotte taped up on the inside door. Just as Emma was about to gather the books she’d received today and somehow wedge them into Sutton’s leather purse—
what kind of moron didn’t carry a real backpack to school?
—she felt a hand on her arm.

“Are you thinking about ditching tennis?”

Emma turned. Charlotte stood in front of a
WHY DRUGS AREN’T COOL
poster. She’d pulled her red hair into a high ponytail, and she’d changed into a white T-shirt, black Champion shorts, and a pair of gray Nike sneakers. A tennis bag similar to the one Sutton’s mom had packed for Emma this morning swung from her shoulder.

Tennis.
Right.
“I was thinking about it,” Emma mumbled.

“No, you’re not.” Charlotte looped her arm through Emma’s elbow and pulled her down the hall. “C’mon. Laurel put your gear in the team locker room after you attempted your jailbreak this morning. Maggie will kill us if we’re late.”

Emma gazed at Charlotte as they walked, surprised she was on the tennis team, too. Physique-wise, Charlotte looked more like a wrestler. Then Emma bit her lip guiltily.
Was that mean?

Not any meaner than I was, according to the one memory that had resurfaced. And I had a feeling, somehow, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Emma and Charlotte strode down the yearbook hallway, which was decorated with snapshots of students from previous years. Emma spotted a photo of Sutton laughing with her friends in what looked like the front courtyard at school. Next to that photo was a candid of Laurel and a familiar dark-haired guy on the gym bleachers, engaged in a thumb war. Emma did a double take. It was the same guy she’d seen on Sutton’s photo bulletin board the night before … and on the Missing poster in the police station this morning: Thayer, Madeline’s brother. Emmawondered what had happened to him. Where and why he’d run away. If, like Sutton, he hadn’t run away at all. “So how was your day?” Charlotte’s ponytail bounced against her back.

“Um, all right.” Emma darted around two girls walking in the other direction, both carrying
My Fair Lady
scripts. “All my teachers acted like they wanted to have my head, though.”

Charlotte sniffed. “Like that’s a surprise?”

Emma ran her fingers along the scratchy strap on Sutton’s tennis bag.
Yes,
she wished she could admit. It wasn’t every day a teacher called her a Devil Child, or made her sit in the very front row so she could “keep an eye on her,” or glared at her and said, “All the desks in this room are bolted down, Sutton. Just so you know.”
Uh,
okay.

But Charlotte had already moved on to whine about her gym teacher and something she called the Stink Vent. “And Mrs. Grady in history totally has it in for me,” she moaned. “She called me to her desk after the bell rang and went, ‘You’re a smart girl, Charlotte. Don’t hang around with that crowd I always see you with. Make something of your life!” She rolled her eyes.