The Lying Game (4 page)

“Where’s Laurel?” Charlotte asked.

“A thousand bucks says she’s too scared,” Sutton murmured on the screen. Her voice was so familiar it made Emma’s throat catch.

Emma clicked on the other videos. There was one of Sutton and her friends skydiving, another of them bungee jumping. A whole bunch of videos showed one of the girls walking around the corner unaware, and the rest of them ambushing her and making her scream. The last video was titled “Cross my heart, hope to die.” It opened with Madeline pirouetting into a pool at night. As soon as she hit the water, she started to flail. “Help!” she screamed, her dark hair plastered against her face. “I think I broke my leg! I … can’t … move!”

The camera wobbled. “Mads?” Charlotte cried out.

“Shit,” someone else said.

“Help!” Madeline continued to flail.

“Wait a minute,” Sutton’s voice called haltingly. “Did she say it?”

The camera zinged to Charlotte, frozen midstep. She held a red-and-white life preserver in her hands. “What?” she asked dazedly.

“Did she say it?” Sutton said again.

“I-I don’t think so,” Charlotte squeaked. She clamped her lips together and dropped the life preserver on the deck. “Very funny. We know you’re faking, Mads,” she yelled, annoyed. ”
Such
a bad actress,” she said under her breath.

Madeline stopped splashing. ”
Fine
,” she panted, paddling for the ladder. “But I had you going for a minute. Char looked like she was going to pee her pants.” Everyone cackled.

Whoa,
Emma thought. So this was what they did for fun?

I was a little freaked, too.

Emma searched the rest of the Facebook profile for any references to the weird strangling video Travis had found, but there wasn’t a single mention. The only semi-spooky thing she found was a scan of a black-and-white flyer that said
MISSING SINCE JUNE 17,
a boy’s face grinning back at her.
THAYER VEGA
, it said in block letters under the photo. Emma clicked back to the names on Sutton’s profile picture. Madeline’s last name was vega, too.

Finally, she clicked on Sutton’s Wall. Sutton had written a post just a few hours before:
Ever wish you could runaway? Sometimes I do.
Emma frowned. Why would Sutton want to run away? It looked like she had everything.

I had no idea, but that post told me tons. If I’d written it only a few hours before, it meant I hadn’t been dead for long. Did anyone even know I’d been killed? I looked at the rest of my Wall that was visible on the screen. No
RIP, Sutton
notes or plans for a Sutton Mercer memorial. Maybe no one knew then. Maybe no one had found me? Was I lying in a field somewhere, my necklace still at my throat? I gazed down at my shimmering body. Even though no one else could see me, every so often I could just make out a tiny flicker of myself—a hand here, an elbow there, a pair of terry-cloth shorts and yellow FitFlops. I didn’t see any blood. My skin wasn’t blue.

Just as Emma was about to close up the computer, some more posts on Sutton’s Wall caught her eye.
Can’t wait for your b-day party!
Charlotte had written.
It’s going to be sick!
Emma’s birthday was coming up, too. She checked Sutton’s Info tab. The birthday listed was September 10, the same as Emma’s.

Her heart pounded. That was some coincidence.

I felt scared and hopeful and confused, too. Maybe it was real. Maybe we
were
twins.

After a moment, Emma opened a new window and logged into her own Facebook page. It looked paltry and pathetic next to Sutton’s—her profile picture was a blurryclose-up of herself and Socktopus, and she only had five friends: Alex, an old foster sister named Tracy, Ben & jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and two of the cast members from
CSI.
Then she found Sutton’s page again and clicked on the button that said
SEND SUTTON A MESSAGE
. When the window appeared, she typed:
This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. We look exactly the same, and we have the same birthday. I live in Nevada, not too far from you. You’re not by any chance adopted, are you? Write back or call if you want to talk.

MESSAGE SENT!
the screen announced. Emma stared around the quiet room, the small fan on the desk blowing warmish air in her face. After the possibly life-altering thing that had just happened, she expected the world to have miraculously and drastically transformed—a leprechaun to dance through the open window, Clarice’s kitschy terra-cotta patio sculptures to come to life and start a conga line,
something.
But there was still the long, jagged crack in the plaster in the ceiling and the blotchy, M-shaped stain on the carpet near the closet.

The little clock in the corner of the laptop screen clicked from 10:12 to 10:13
P.M.
She refreshed her Facebook page. She peeked out a slit in the dusty blinds at the night sky and found the Mom, Dad, and Emma stars. Her heart rollicked in her chest. What had she
done?
She reached for her phone and dialed Alex’s number, but Alex didn’tpick up.
YOU THERE
? she texted Alex, but there was no response.

The traffic on the highway grew sparse and whispery. Emma let out a long sigh, thinking of what came next. Maybe she could move back to Henderson, live in Alex’s spare room, and pay rent to Alex’s mom. She’d work full-time—perhaps night shifts at the twenty-four-hour Target near Alex’s house—and somehow finish high school, too. Maybe she could even intern at the local newspaper on the weekends….

Bzzzzzzz.

Emma’s eyes popped open. Out the window, the moon had climbed high in the sky. The clock on the side table said 12:56
A.M
. She’d dozed off.

Bzzzzzzz.

Her phone was flashing. She stared at it for a long moment, as if she was afraid it might leap up and bite her.

There was an envelope icon on the screen. Her heart churned faster and faster. Trembling, she clicked
OPEN.
Emma had to read the Facebook message four times before the words really sunk in.

Of course, there was one problem with that note: I didn’t write it.

Late the following afternoon, Emma staggered off a Greyhound bus, her green duffel in tow. Heat radiated off the parking lot in waves; the air was so stifling that she felt like she’d just stepped into the barrel of a giant hair dryer. To her right were small adobe homes and a purple-stucco yoga studio for men called hOMbre. To her left was a large, crumbling building called the Hotel Congress, which looked haunted. Posters for upcoming concerts plastered the front windows. A couple of hipsters loitered on the street, smoking cigarettes. Beyond that was what looked like a shop for dominatrix hookers; whip-wielding mannequins in catsuits, fishnet stockings, and thigh-high boots filled the front windows.

Emma spun around again and faced the Greyhound bus station.
TUCSON DOWNTOWN
, said a low-slung sign out front. After hours of sitting on a bus next to a guy with a devil beard and a serious addiction to jalapeño-flavored Doritos, she was finally here. She was tempted to run up to the large Greyhound on the sign and give it a big, wet kiss, but then her phone vibrated in her pocket and she scrambled to answer it. Alex’s photo appeared on the screen.

“Hey!” Emma clutched the old BlackBerry to her ear. “Guess where I am?”

“You
didn’t,”
Alex gasped on the other end.

“I did.” Emma dragged her duffel to a bench under the awning and sat down to rest. Alex had finally written back to Emma’s
YOU THERE
? text last night. Emma had called her immediately, blurting out the whole story in one long, breathless sentence.

“I left Clarice a note,” Emma said, moving her long legs out of the way as an older couple pulling wheeled suitcases passed. “Social Services won’t check up on me, either—I’m too close to turning eighteen.”

“So what are you going to say to this Sutton girl? I mean, if she’s really your sister, do you think you’ll be able to move in with her? “ Alex sighed wistfully. “It’s like Cinderella, except without the lame prince!”

Emma leaned back on the bench and gazed at the purplish mountains in the distance. “I don’t want to get too far ahead of things,” she said. “Let’s just see if we even get along.”

It was all an act. The entire bus ride, Emma imagined how meeting Sutton might just change her life. Maybe she could move to Tucson and go to Sutton’s school. She could get to know Sutton’s adoptive parents, too.
Maybe they’ll even let me move in with them,
she dared to consider. Goose bumps rose on her arms. Okay, that was a long shot, but who knew? It
was
like a cooler version of Cinderella.

But first things first: the meeting today. Emma spotted a single neon-green cab on the other side of the bus station and waved it over. “Please don’t tell anyone, okay?” she said to Alex.

“I promise,” Alex agreed. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Emma hung up, climbed into the backseat of the cab, and gave Sabino Canyon as her destination, barely able to temper the giddiness in her voice. The cabbie pulled away and wove through Tucson’s streets. Emma stared out the grimy window, grinning at the various college buildings of the University of Arizona, including one that had
PHOTOGRAPHY INSTITUTE
on a big sign out front. Emma couldn’t wait to go inside and check out the exhibit. Next they passed the college green. Students loitered in the sun. A running group pranced by like a herd of deer. There was a girl dressed up as a marijuana plant in the middle of the courtyard holding a sign that said
HONK 4 WEED!
The cabbie honked.

Next they pulled onto Highway 10 and drove north. The houses grew larger and the streets were speckled with fancy gyms, cute bistros, gourmet markets, and upscale boutiques. Emma passed the entrance to La Encantada Mall, and then the lush Elizabeth Arden Red Door spa.
Maybe Sutton and I can have a pedicure day,
she thought.

Actually, that made her a little nervous. She’d never gotten a professional pedicure before. Whenever someone touched her feet, she let out a hitchy laugh like Ernie on
Sesame Street.

As for me, all I felt was numbness as the car whipped past these landmarks. Certain emotions and senses flashed deep beneath the surface—vague blips of elation and thrill as we passed a restaurant called NoRTH, the smell of jasmine perfume as the cab swept past the shops at La Encantada—but nothing solid emerged. Questions buzzed in my head like a swarm of bees. Who had written back to Emma? Had anyone else discovered I was dead? I was desperate to get another look at my Facebook page, but Emma hadn’t clicked on it again. A whole day had passed since my death—maybe more; where did everyone think I was? And why hadn’t someone found my body? Then again, if someone had murdered me, I could be chopped up in a zillion pieces by now.

I wanted to cry out. I wanted to wail. But all I could do was follow Emma in a state of mute shock and panic. It was like those terrible dreams where I was falling down, down, down from the top of a tall building. I always tried to call out for someone to catch me, but no one ever answered.

The cab took a left, and a mountain rose up before Emma’s eyes. A pitted, wooden sign said
SABINO CANYON.
“Here you are,” the driver said, pulling to the curb.

This was it.
Emma handed the cabbie a twenty and crunched across the gravel to a bench. She inhaled the jumbled scents of sunscreen, dust, and sun-baked rock. Evening hikers stretched their calves against a parking barrier a few feet away. The shimmering mountain range interrupted the blue sky. Little pinpricks of pink, yellow, and purple wildflowers dotted the trail.

It’s perfect,
Emma thought. On instinct, she pulled her old Polaroid camera from the duffel. She hadn’t brought that much with her to Tucson—just her wallet, Socktopus, a change of clothes, the camera, and her journal, because she was afraid to go anywhere without it. She’d left most everything else, including her savings, in a storage locker at the vegas bus station. The device made a churning noise as she snapped a photo. Emma watched the picture
slowly develop.
Long-Lost Sisters Meet for the First Time,
she mentally captioned.

It was six on the dot. She sat down on a bench, pulled out a Maybelline compact, and took stock of her reflection. She wore a striped jersey Gap dress that she’d found at Cinnamon’s, a secondhand shop near Clarice’s house, and she’d smeared a lot of shiny gloss over her lips. She covertly sniffed her skin, hoping she didn’t smell like bus exhaust or jalapeño Doritos. Meeting Sutton reminded her of walking into a new foster home for the first time. The parents always gave her a long, discerning look, instantly deciding whether she passed or failed.
Please like me,
she always thought as she stood in countless kitchens or on interchangeable front porches.
Please make this bearable. Please don’t let me have a booger hanging out of my nose.

More people emerged from the canyon trail. Emma checked the clock on her phone. It was 6:10. What if Sutton was late to everything? People like that drove Emma crazy. And what were they going to say to each other, anyway? “Hi, Sutton,” Emma mouthed, practicing a smile. “So Becky lost you, too?” She pantomimed reaching out her hand, and then shook her head and pulled back. They’d hug, wouldn’t they? What if they just stood there awkwardly, staring into space?