The Lying Game (2 page)

It hadn’t started out that way, though. At first, Emma had tried to make nice with her new foster brother, hoping they could be friends. It wasn’t like every foster family sucked and she’d never made friends with the other kids; it just sometimes took a lot of effort on her part. She’d feigned interest in all of the YouTube videos Travis watched about how to be a small-time thug: how to unlock a car with a cell phone, how to hack soda machines, how to open apadlock with a beer can. She’d suffered through a couple of Ultimate Fighting Championship matches on TV, even attempting to learn the wrestling-move vocabulary. But the nicety had ended for Emma a week later, when Travis tried to feel her up while she was standing in front of the open fridge. “You’ve been so friendly,” he’d murmured in her ear, before Emma had “accidentally” kicked him in the crotch.

All Emma wanted to do was get through her senior year here. It was the end of August, and school started on Wednesday. She had the option of leaving Clarice’s when she turned eighteen in two weeks, but that would mean quitting school, finding an apartment, and getting a full-time job to pay rent. Clarice had told Emma’s social worker that Emma could stay here until she got her diploma.
Nine more months,
Emma chanted to herself like a mantra. She could hold on until then, couldn’t she?

Travis took another hit off the joint. “You want some?” he asked in a choked voice, holding the smoke in his lungs.

“No thanks,” Emma said stiffly.

Travis finally exhaled. “Sweet little Emma,” he said in a syrupy voice. “But you aren’t always this good, are you?”

Emma craned her neck up at the sky and paused on the Mom, Dad, and Emma stars again. Farther down the horizon was a star she’d recently named the Boyfriend Star. Itseemed to be hovering closer than usual to the Emma Star tonight—maybe it was a sign. Perhaps this would be the year she’d meet her perfect boyfriend, someone she was destined to be with.

“Shit,” Travis whispered suddenly, noticing something inside the house. He quickly stubbed out the joint and threw it under Emma’s chair just as Clarice appeared on the back deck. Emma scowled at the joint’s smoldering tip—nice of Travis to try to pin it on her—and covered it with her shoe.

Clarice still had on her work uniform: a tuxedo jacket, silky white shirt, and black bow tie. Her dyed blond hair was slicked into an impeccable French twist, and her mouth was smeared with bright fuchsia lipstick that didn’t flatter anyone’s skin tone. She held a white envelope in her hands.

“I’m missing two hundred and fifty dollars,” Clarice announced flatly. The empty envelope crinkled. “It was a personal tip from Bruce Willis. He signed one of the bills. I was going to put it in my scrapbook.”

Emma sighed sympathetically. The only thing she’d gleaned about Clarice was that she was absolutely obsessed with celebrities. She kept a scrapbook describing every celeb interaction she’d ever had, and glossy signed head shots lined the wall space in the breakfast nook. Occasionally, Clarice and Emma ran into each other in the kitchenaround noon, which was the crack of dawn for Clarice after a bar shift. The only thing Clarice ever wanted to talk about was how she’d had a long conversation with the latest winner of
American Idol
the night before, or how a certain action film starlet’s boobs were definitely fake, or how the host of a dating reality show was kind of a bitch. Emma was always intrigued. She didn’t care much about celebrity dirt but dreamed of someday being an investigative journalist. Not that she ever told Clarice that. Not that Clarice had ever asked anything personal about her.

“The money was in this envelope in my bedroom when I left for work this afternoon.” Clarice stared straight at Emma, her eyes squinting. “Now it’s not. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Emma sneaked a peek at Travis, but he was fiddling with his BlackBerry. As he scrolled through his photos, Emma noticed a blurry shot of her at the bathroom mirror. Her hair was wet, and she’d knotted a towel under her arms.

Cheeks burning, Emma turned to Clarice. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said in the most diplomatic voice she could muster. “But maybe you should ask Travis. He might know.”

“Excuse me?” Travis’s voice cracked. “I didn’t take any money.”

Emma made an incredulous noise at the back of her throat.

“You know I wouldn’t do that, Mom,” Travis went on. He stood and pulled up his shorts around his waist. “I know how hard you work. I
did
see Emma go into your room today though.”

“What?” Emma whirled around to face him. “I did not!”

“Did too,” Travis shot back. As soon as he turned his back on his mom, his expression morphed from a fake smile to a wrinkled-nose, narrowed-eyes glower.

Emma gaped. It was amazing how calmly he lied. “I’ve seen you go through your mom’s purse,” she announced.

Clarice leaned against the table, twisting her mouth to the right.
“Travis
did that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Travis pointed accusingly at Emma. “Why would you believe her? You don’t even
know
this girl.”

“I don’t need money!” Emma pressed her hands to her chest. “I have a job! I’m fine!” She’d been working for years. Before the roller coaster, she’d had a job as Head Goat Girl at a local petting zoo, she’d dressed up as a toga-robed Statue of Liberty and stood on the street corner to advertise a local credit union, and she’d even sold knives door-to-door. She’d saved more than two grand and stashed it in a half-empty Tampax box in her bedroom. Travis hadn’t found the money yet, probably because the tampons were a better security system against creepy boys than a rabid pack of Rottweilers.

Clarice gazed at Travis, who was giving her a sickening, pouty smile. As she creased the empty envelope back and forth in her hands, a suspicious look crossed her face. It looked as if she momentarily saw through Travis’s facade.

“Look.” Travis walked over to his mom and put his arm on her shoulder. “I think you need to know what Emma’s really all about.” He pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket again and began to fiddle with the click wheel.

“What do you mean?” Emma walked over to them.

Travis gave her a sanctimonious look, hiding the BlackBerry screen from view. “I was going to talk to you about this in private. But it’s too late for that now.”

“Talk to me about
what?”
Emma lunged forward, making the citronella candle in the center of the table wobble.

“You
know what.” Travis tapped away on the keyboard with his thumbs. A mosquito buzzed around his head, but he didn’t bother to flick it away. “You’re a sick freak.”

“What do you mean, Travis?” Clarice’s fuchsia-lined lips pursed worriedly.

Finally, Travis lowered the BlackBerry so everyone could see. “This,” he announced.

A stiff, hot wind blew against Emma’s cheek, the dusty air irritating her eyes. The blue-black evening sky seemed to darken a few shades. Travis breathed heavily next to her, reeking of pot smoke, and pulled up a generic videouploading site. With a flourish, he typed in the keyword
SuttonInAZ
and hit
PLAY.

A video slowly loaded. A handheld camera panned over a clearing. No sound escaped from the speakers, as if the microphone had been muted. The camera whipped around to show a figure sitting in a chair with a black blindfold covering half her face. A round silver locket on a thick chain clung to a bony, feminine collarbone.

The girl thrashed her head frantically back and forth, the locket bouncing wildly. The picture went dark for a moment, and suddenly someone slipped behind her and pulled the necklace chain back so that it pressed up against the girl’s throat. The girl’s head arched back. She flailed her arms and kicked her legs.

“Oh my God.” Clarice’s hand flew to her mouth.

“What
is
this? “ Emma whispered.

The strangler pulled the chain harder and harder. Whoever it was had a mask over his head, so Emma couldn’t see his face. After about thirty seconds, the girl in the video stopped struggling and went limp.

Emma backed away from the screen. Had they just watched someone
die
? What the hell? And what did this have to do with her?

The camera remained fixed on the blindfolded girl. She wasn’t moving. Then the picture went momentarily dark again. When an image snapped back on the screen,the camera was tilted over, fallen on the ground. Emma could still see a sideways shot of the figure in the chair. Someone walked up to the girl and pulled the blindfold off her head. After a long pause, the girl coughed. Tears dotted her eyes. The corners of her mouth pulled down. She blinked slowly. For a split second before the screen went dark, she stared half consciously into the lens.

Emma’s jaw dropped to her worn Converse sneakers.

Clarice gasped loudly.

“Ha,” Travis said triumphantly. “I
told
you.”

Emma stared at the girl’s huge, blue eyes, slightly upturned nose, and round face. She looked
exactly
like her.

That was because the girl in the video was me.

Emma grabbed the phone from Travis’s hands and started the clip over, staring hard at the image. As the person reached out and began to choke the blindfolded girl, fear streaked through Emma’s stomach. When the anonymous hand pulled off the blindfold, Emma’s identical face appeared on the screen. Emma had the same thick, wavy, chestnut-brown hair as the girl in the movie. The same round chin. The same pink lips kids used to tease Emma about, saying they were puffy as though she’d had an allergic reaction. She shuddered.

I watched the video again in horror, too. The locket glinting in the light caused a tiny shard of a memory tosurface: I remembered lifting the lid of my baby box, pulling out the locket from under a half-chewed teething giraffe, a lacy receiving blanket, and a pair of knit booties, and putting it around my neck. The video itself brought back nothing though. I didn’t know if it had happened in my backyard … or three states away. I wished I could slap my post-death memory across the face.

But the video had to be how I died, right? Especially from that quick flashback I’d had when I’d awakened in Emma’s bathroom: that face close to mine, my heart beating hard, my murderer standing above me. But I had no idea how this whole death thing worked: Had I popped into Emma’s world the moment after I’d taken my last breath, or was it days—
months
—later? And how did the video get posted online? Had my family seen it? My friends? Was this some kind of twisted ransom note?

Emma finally glanced up from the screen. “Where did you find this? “ she asked Travis.

“Guess someone didn’t know she was a star on the Internet, huh?” Travis snatched the phone from her hands.

Clarice raked her fingers through her hair. She kept glancing from the video screen to Emma’s face. “Is this what you do for fun?” she asked Emma in a hoarse voice.

“She probably does it to get high.” Travis paced around the patio like a prowling lion. “I knew some girls at schoollast year who were, like, obsessed with it. One of them almost died.”

Clarice clapped her hand over her mouth. “What’s wrong with you?”

Emma’s eyes darted from Travis to Clarice. “Wait, no. That’s not
me.
The girl in this video is someone else.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “Someone who looks exactly like you?” he deadpanned. “Let me guess. A long-lost sister? An evil twin?”

There was a low rumbling of thunder in the distance. The breeze smelled like wet pavement, a telltale sign that a storm was close.
A long-lost sister.
The idea ignited in Emma’s mind like a Fourth of July sparkler. It was possible. She’d asked Social Services once if Becky had had any other kids she’d abandoned along the way, but they said they didn’t know.

A thought burned in my mind, too: I was adopted. That much I remembered. It was common knowledge in my family; my parents had never tried to hide it. They’d told me my adoption had been a last-minute scramble and they’d never met my birth mother.
Could
it be possible? It explained why I was literally stuck to this girl who looked just like me, following her around as if our souls had been tethered together.

Clarice tapped her long nails on the table. “I don’t tolerate lying or stealing in this house, Emma.”

Emma felt like she’d just been kicked in the stomach. “That’s not me in the video,” she protested. “And I didn’t steal from you. I swear.”

Emma reached for her canvas bag on the patio table. All she had to do was call Eddie, her manager at the roller coaster. He’d vouch for her hours today. But Travis got to her bag first, knocking it over so all of its contents spilled out onto the pavement.

“Oops!” he cried gleefully.

Emma watched helplessly as her tattered copy of
The Sun Also Rises
landed on a dusty anthill. A crumpled ticket for a free all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet at MGM Grand got caught in the breeze and drifted toward Travis’s free weights. Her BlackBerry and a tube of cherry-flavored ChapStick skittered to a stop next to a terra-cotta turtle. Last but not least, there was a suspicious-looking wad of bills held together with a thick purple rubber band. The wad thudded to the patio, bounced once, and landed in front of Clarice’s chunky heels.

Emma was too stunned to speak. Clarice snatched the money and licked her pointer finger to count it. “Two hundred,” she said when she was finished. She held up a twenty with blue scribble in the upper left-hand corner. Even in the fading light, Emma could see a big looped
B,
presumably for
Bruce Willis.
“What did you do with the other fifty?”

A neighbor’s wind chimes tinkled in the distance. Emma’s insides were frozen. “I-I have no idea how that got in my bag.”

Behind her, Travis snickered.
“Busted.”
He was leaning casually against the stucco wall, just to the left of the big round thermometer. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his top lip was curled in a sneer.

The hair on the back of Emma’s neck rose. All at once, she understood what was going on. Her lips started to twitch, just like they always did when she was about to lose it.
“You
did this!” She pointed a finger at Travis. “You set me up!”