The Lying Game (18 page)

Then Emma’s eyes widened, hitting on an even scarier idea. What if Sutton hadn’t received Emma’s note at all? What if the
killer
had been the one to lure Emma to Tucson, not Sutton? One of Sutton’s friends could have easily hacked into her Facebook account. She could have seen Emma’s note and sent one back immediately, knowing she had a naive girl to manipulate and put in Sutton’s place.

A tiny spider crawled along the upper corner of Sutton’s bedroom, pulling behind it a thin, gossamer thread. Emma stood, rolled back her shoulders, and marched over to the filing cabinet under her sister’s desk.
THE L GAME,
it said. Aka the
Lying Game.

She held the heavy padlock in her palm. There had to be a way to unlock it. Pulling open Sutton’s drawers, she searched once more for the missing key, feeling for secret compartments built into the back, looking in every single empty jewelry box and CD case, and even spilling a nearly full pack of Camel Lights onto the carpet. Tobacco flaked onto her hands.

“Get it open!” I shouted to her uselessly. Screw feeling protective of my stuff. I was dead, and we both needed to know why.

Then something came to Emma in a flash.
Travis.
That YouTube video he’d watched about how to open a padlock with a beer can. During the brief time they’d been friendly, Travis had made Emma watch it, too. It hadn’t looked hard.

She leapt up and found an empty Diet Coke can on Sutton’s windowsill. Grabbing a pair of scissors, she drew out the design for the shim that would be used to break the lock and started to cut. In moments, she’d made an M-shaped shim, just like the criminal-in-training had made in the YouTube video. As soon as she wiggled the shim down the left shackle, the ball released and the lock snapped open. Emma couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks, Travis,” she murmured. She never thought she’d say
that.

The lock clunked to the floor. The drawer made a grating
screech
as it opened. Emma peered inside. Sitting in the bottom was a thick spiral-bound notebook. That was all.

Emma pulled it out and held it in her lap. There was nothing written on the front cover—no names or doodles, just a shiny piece of blue card stock. The wire spirals were perfectly coiled and even, without a hint of bending or rust. She turned to the first page. There was Sutton’s handwriting, round and neat and eerily similar to Emma’s own.
January 10,
she’d written.

Emma sucked in her stomach. Did she really want to read her sister’s diary? When she lived in Carson City, she’d sneaked into a bedroom that belonged to Daria, a pretty, mysterious older foster sister who paid no attention to her. She’d read every page of Daria’s diary, which was mostly about boys and how she thought her legs and arms were too fat. Emma had also searched through the pockets of Daria’s jeans. She’d stolen a pair of headphones out of Daria’s room, purely because they were hers. She’d taken little things every time she went in after that: a rap CD, a black jelly bracelet, a departmentstore sample of Chanel No. 5. After she’d moved on to another home, Emma felt ashamed about what she’d done. She’d put all of Daria’s pilfered things in a manila envelope, wrote Daria’s name on the top, and sent them back to social services, vowing she’d never do something like that again.

It’s nice that she was being all moral, but I just wanted her to read the damn diary.

Sighing, as though she’d actually heard my thoughts, Emma looked down at the first page again and started to read.

Each entry was short and sweet, more like quick Twitter entries and scattered thoughts. Sometimes Sutton wrote things like
Elizabeth & James clogs
or
B-day party on Mount Lemmon?
Sometimes she wrote exclamations like

I hate history!
or
Mom can kiss my ass!
The entries that seemed like they might be about something deeper were even more baffling though.
C has been so bitchy lately,
Sutton had penned on February 10.
She just needs to get over it.
On March 1:
I had an unexpected visitor after school today. He’s such a cute little puppy dog, following me everywhere.
On March 9:
M outdid herself today. Sometimes I think C is right about her.

Emma leafed through the pages, trying to extrapolate meaning from the entries. There were a lot about
L,
who she could only assume was Laurel.
L came downstairs this morning in an identical outfit to mine.
And,
Playing an awesome prank on L this afternoon. Maybe she’ll be sorry she wanted in so badly!
And then on May 17,
L is still ruined over T. Pull yourself together, bitch. He’s just a guy.
Emma’s gaze landed on an entry from August 20, just a week and a half ago:
If L brings up that night one more time, I’m going to kill her.

What
night?
Emma wanted to yell. Why was Sutton so ridiculously vague? It was like she was keeping a journal for the CIA.

I was just as frustrated as she was.

Then a small construction-paper square fell out of the notebook and fluttered to the floor. Emma picked it up, gazed at the bold writing on the front, and gasped:
THE LYING GAME MEMBERSHIP CARD.
Below that was Sutton’sname, the title
EXECUTIVE PRESIDENT AND DIVA,
and then a date in May more than five years ago.

On the other side of the card was a list of rules:

Beneath that was a sub-list of pranks that were off-limits. It mostly contained things like hurting animals or little children, damaging stuff that was irreplaceable or really expensive (Charlotte’s dad’s Porsche was the example), or doing something that would have the government after them (someone had written a
ha!
after that). In different-colored blue ink at the very bottom, someone had added
No more sexting,
underlining it three times.

I stared at the membership card, too, my brain buzzing. I had a flash of Madeline, Charlotte, and me cutting out the cards and presenting them to one another ceremoniously, like we were receiving Oscar statuettes. But then, just like that, the memory was yanked away.

Emma read and reread the membership card several times over, feeling affirmed. At least she had a clear picture of what the Lying Game was now: Girl Scouts for psychopaths. She thought again about the snuff film. Perhaps it had started out as a prank, too. But maybe one of Sutton’s friends took it too far….

She placed the membership card aside and went back to the journal. On the very next page, she noticed an entry from August 22:
Sometimes I think all my friends hate me. Every last one.
Nothing more, nothing less. Below it Sutton had written down what looked like a Jamba Juice order:
bananas, blueberries, Splenda, wheatgrass detox shot.

Okaaay,
Emma thought.

The next page was full of drawings of girls in dresses and skirts, titled “ideal summer outfits.” Sutton’s last entry was on August 29, two days before Travis showed Emma the video.
I feel like someone is watching me,
she’d written in shaky, hurried handwriting.
And I think I know who it is.
Emma read the entry again and again, feeling like someone had reached into her heart and squeezed.

I concentrated hard, but nothing came to me.

Emma placed the journal on Sutton’s desk next to her computer. She moved the mouse on the sky blue pad, and the screen flickered to life. She opened Safari and clicked on Facebook. Sutton’s page loaded automatically. As Emma scrolled through the posts and notes, patterns began to emerge. In August, Sutton had written,
I see you
on Laurel’s Wall. In July, she’d told Madeline,
You’re such a naughty spy.
She wrote Charlotte a private message in June:
You’re after me, aren’t you?
She’d even written something similar on the Twitter Twins’ pages:
Will you two stop plotting against me?

“What’re you doing?”

Emma jumped and whirled around. Laurel leaned against the doorway, iPhone in her hand. Her blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and she’d changed into a pink terry beach cover-up and black flip-flops. Ray-Ban sunglasses obscured her eyes, but there was a broad smile on her face.

“Just checking email,” Emma said in the airiest voice she could muster.

The iPhone in Laurel’s hand bleeped, but she didn’t look at the screen. She kept her eyes fixed on Emma, turning a silver ring around her finger. Then her gaze fell to the open padlock on the bed. The journal in Emma’s lap. The Lying Game membership card on the desk. Emma’s heartbeat pulsed in her fingertips.

Finally Laurel shrugged. “I’m going out to the pool if you want to join me.” She shut the door behind her as she left.

Emma opened to a page in Sutton’s journal again:
Sometimes I think my friends hate me. Every last one.
Emma gritted her teeth. Emma had never known her father. She’d been abandoned by her mother. And now her sister had been taken from her, too, before she’d ever had the chance to meet her. Emma wasn’t even sure she would have liked Sutton, but now she’d never know. And Sutton’s friends—or sister—weren’t going to get away with it. Not if she had anything to do with it. She was going to find out what they did to Sutton. She’d do whatever it took to prove they’d hurt her sister. She just had to get close enough to find out more.

She swiveled to the computer, clicked the mouse on Sutton’s Facebook status update window, and began to type:
Game on, bitches.

Three responses to the status pinged onto the screen almost immediately. The first comment was from Charlotte:
A game? Do tell. I’m in!
Then Madeline:
Me too!
And Laurel added:
Me three! It’s a secret, right?

Kind of,
Emma typed in answer. Except now the prank was on them. And this time it was a matter of life and death.

“So where do you want to go for dinner?” Garrett asked Emma, guiding his Jeep Wrangler down a hill.

“Um, I don’t know.” Emma bit her pinkie. “Why don’t you pick somewhere?”

Garrett looked shocked.
“Me?”

“Why not?”

A glassy, indecisive look swept across Garrett’s face. He reminded Emma of the malfunctioning Tickle Me Elmo doll she had inherited from an older girl her first year in foster care; sometimes the Elmo stared into space and didn’t know what to do next. “But we always go somewhere
you
like,” Garrett said.

Emma pressed her nails into her palm. If only she could just tell him she couldn’t pick a damn restaurant because she didn’t
know
any around here. Then she spotted a Trader Joe’s out the Jeep window. “Why don’t we buy some cheese and stuff and have a picnic on the mountain?”

“Great.” Garrett swerved across three lanes of traffic to get to the grocery store parking lot.

It was Saturday night just past 7
P.M.,
and the sun hung on the horizon. Garrett had shown up at the Mercers’ door a half hour earlier with a bouquet of flowers in his hands and a bouquet of different fragrances on his body—colognes, body sprays, hair gel, the works. There was such a hopeful, eager expression on his face that Emma couldn’t bring herself to call off the date, even though every cell in her body was dying to. She didn’t want to deal with Garrett right now; she wanted to be searching for Sutton’s killer.

After standing in line behind an old lady who insisted on paying with a check, Emma and Garrett finally arrived at Catalina State Park, a shopping bag full of sparkling cider, black olives, crackers, grapes, trail mix, fancy Australian licorice, and a wedge of Brie swinging from the crook of Garrett’s elbow. The air was cool and crisp and smelled like sunscreen. Other hikers bounded up the path. After another few twists and switchbacks, they reached the vista and settled on a big boulder. Emma could see all the way down the mountain. Garrett’s car looked like a toy from up here.

“It’s so nice out tonight,” Garrett murmured, running his hand through his blond hair. He removed his long-sleeved shirt and spread it on the ground as a picnic blanket. His tanned biceps bulged. He twisted the cider bottle open with a satisfying
psst.

“Uh-huh,” Emma replied. She stared blankly ahead. There were tumbleweeds in her mind where conversation topics should have been. What did Garrett and Sutton used to talk about? Did they have inside jokes? What brought them together? If only Sutton’s journal had been normal, Emma might’ve actually learned something useful like this.

Sighing, she pulled the crackers, olives, trail mix, and licorice out of the bag. She absentmindedly placed a cracker on the napkin and added two olives for eyes, a trail-mix peanut for a nose, and a piece of licorice for a smile. Thinking of Ethan, she poked Garrett. “Like my new friend?”

Garrett glanced at it for a moment and nodded. “Cute.”

“You want to make a face, too?”

Garrett shrugged. “I can hardly draw a circle in art class.”

Emma popped one of the olive eyes into her mouth.
So much for common ground.

But I was kind of glad she didn’t like Garrett. I couldn’t

remember exactly why I loved him. I couldn’t recall what it was that made me think of him as damaged, I just knew that I did. And even in death, I wanted him all to myself.

Emma sat back and stared at the horizon, absently touching the scratches on her throat from last night. Tiny red marks lacerated her skin. Her windpipe still ached from the pull of the necklace. She’d taken a bunch of Advils and covered up the scrapes with the Dior foundation she’d found in Sutton’s bathroom, hoping Garrett wouldn’t notice anything amiss. She could still feel the assailant’s hot, stale breath on her neck. She shut her eyes and winced.