“I like to keep everyone guessing,” Emma mumbled, ducking her head. While she didn’t want Laurel to give her the third-degree about her odd behavior, it was kind of nice that Laurel had noticed that her sister wasn’t exactly acting like herself.
The girls walked up a shiny path that led to the front door and rang the bell. Two deep strikes of a gong sounded, and a woman with a bright smile greeted them. She wore gray ultra-skinny jeans that left nothing to the imagination, a long striped shirt Emma had seen in the window of Urban Outfitters, and silver heels with cutouts at the toes. A pair of white Ray-Ban Wayfarers perched on her head and diamonds the size of chickpeas glittered in her ears. She had golden, lineless skin, rich blond hair, and bright eyes the color of the Caribbean. Emma looked at Laurel, wondering who this person was. An older sister home from college?
“Hi, Sutton,” the girl said. “Hey, Laurel.” She nodded appreciatively at Laurel’s striped Madewell duffel. “Love the bag.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Chamberlain,” Laurel chirped.
Emma almost swallowed her gum. Mrs. Chamberlain?
I was pretty astonished, too. I couldn’t remember her at all.
“Guys!” Charlotte called from the top of the stairs. Laurel and Emma gave Mrs. Chamberlain parting smiles—she had an expectant look on her face, almost like she wanted to be invited up to hang out with them—and climbed the winding double-staircase lined with splashy, Jackson Pollock–style paintings.
Charlotte pushed through two double doors to a bedroom twice the size of Sutton’s—and a gazillion times the size of anything Emma had ever lived in. Madeline and the Twitter Twins already sat on a striped rug in the center of the room, munching from a bowl of pretzels and sipping Coke Zeroes.
“We were just telling Lili and Gabby about the Nisha prank.” Madeline pulled up her off-the-shoulder blouse so that it wasn’t showing half her bra.
“Not that we hadn’t already heard, of course,” Lili piped up, flicking a piece of lint off one of her Avril Lavigne–like fingerless gloves.
“Maybe one of these days you’ll let us help you with one of your pranks,” Gabby added, readjusting the grosgrain-lined headband that held back her long blond hair. “We have tons of killer ideas.”
Charlotte sat down and grabbed a handful of pretzels. “Sorry. The Lying Game is limited to only four members. Isn’t that right, Sutton?” Again she looked to Emma, as though Emma made the final decisions.
A shiver danced up Emma’s spine. The Lying Game. Just the name turned her blood vessels to icicles. “Right,” she said after a pause.
Gabby made a face. “So it’s okay for us to be part of the club when the joke’s on us, but not the other way around?” She nudged Lili, and she nodded, too. Their eyes blazed.
There was a long pause. Madeline exchanged a look with Charlotte. “That was different.”
“Yeah, really different.” Charlotte turned and stared pointedly at Emma. Emma fiddled with the ankle strap on her shoe, wishing she knew what they meant.
Charlotte cleared her throat, breaking the awkward tension. “Well. There’s one game we can all play. . . .” She flung open the double doors of a large wooden wardrobe at the far end of the room. “Since we’re all here, we can start.” She unveiled a bottle of Absolut Citron from behind her back. “It’s not a new school season without a round of Never Have I Ever.”
She poured the clear liquid into round glasses and passed them around. “Just to review, you name something you’ve never done before. For instance, never have I ever French-kissed Mr. Howe.”
“Ew!” Lili squealed.
“And then anyone who has kissed Mr. Howe has to drink,” Charlotte concluded.
“Except they have to be real things,” Madeline said, rolling her eyes. “Not stuff none of us would do.”
“Sutton might kiss Mr. Howe.” Charlotte shot Emma a coy look. “You never know.”
Everyone giggled nervously. “I’ll go first,” Madeline volunteered. She looked around at all of them. “Never have I ever . . . skipped four days of school in a row.”
She sat back on her haunches, not drinking. Gabriella and Lilianna also held their glasses in their laps. Emma didn’t move either. Madeline flicked Emma’s knee with her thumb and forefinger. “Hello? What about that time you ran off to San Diego for the long weekend?”
“The really long weekend,” Charlotte giggled. “I thought you were dead!” Then she nudged her chin at Emma’s glass. “Bottoms up, buttercup!”
Emma didn’t know what else to do but take a sip. She nearly gagged. It tasted like sucking on the nozzle at the gas pump and eating a slightly rotten lemon at the same time.
Charlotte was next. She drummed her nails on the edge of the glass, thinking. “Let’s see. Never have I ever . . . stolen someone’s boyfriend.”
Everyone sat very still once more. Madeline glanced at Laurel. Charlotte turned and stared at Emma, making a little ahem under her breath. Emma suddenly realized what Charlotte was getting at. Tentatively she lifted her glass to her mouth again. “Good,” Charlotte said quietly. Emma bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Who knew a drinking game would lead to such a gold mine of information about her sister?
Watching them, I was transfixed. Already I had learned two things about my past. I wanted them to play all night.
“Never have I ever gone skinny-dipping in the hot springs,” Laurel said next. Everyone drank except for Laurel and Charlotte. Figuring Sutton was probably ballsy enough to do something like that, Emma swallowed another sip.
“Never have I ever cheated on a test,” Charlotte announced. Madeline and Lili glanced at her and drank a shot. “What would we do without you, Char?” Madeline said. Emma supposed she should drink, too.
“Never have I ever written a fake love note to Principal Larson,” Gabriella said next. Charlotte and Madeline glanced at Emma and giggled, so again, down the hatch. Emma no longer gagged with each swallow; she was starting to get used to the taste. Her limbs relaxed. Her jaw softened from its clenched position.
Laurel volunteered next. “Never have I ever made out with a college guy.” She leaned back and surveyed the crowd.
Madeline pointed at Emma and grinned. “Remember that guy at Plush? You thought he was our age but he was actually twenty-two?”
“Whoa!” the Twitter Twins squealed in unison, impressed.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “When was this?”
Madeline frowned. “July?”
The tip of Charlotte’s nose turned red. “What did Garrett think about that?”
Madeline pressed her hand over her mouth. Gabriella coughed. Emma rolled the cup between her palms. Great, so Sutton’s a boyfriend-stealer and a boyfriend-cheater, too.
I groped for a memory to explain it, but my mind was static fuzz. I’d cheated on Garrett? Why would I do that?
“Maybe I have my dates mixed up,” Madeline blurted. “It was before Sutton started dating Garrett.”
“Yeah, it was,” Emma agreed, hoping it was true, but somehow doubting it. Charlotte fiddled with something on her iPhone and didn’t answer.
Then it was Emma’s turn. She looked around at Sutton’s friends. All of them listed a little to the side. There was a goofy smile on Madeline’s face. The room had begun to smell strongly of booze. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, trying to think how to phrase the question she most wanted to ask. “Never have I ever . . . pulled a prank for the Lying Game.”
The Twitter Twins exchanged a bitter glance, but Charlotte, Laurel, and Madeline rolled their eyes. “Duh,” Charlotte groaned, tilting the glass at her mouth. “Hello, Nisha? Today?”
“No, something other than Nisha,” Emma revised. “A really . . . awful prank. Something you felt terrible about when it was over.” Something that would prompt someone to get revenge, she wished she could add. Something that would drive someone to drag Sutton out into a field and choke her.
The Lying Game members paused, looking a little caught off guard. Gabriella and Lilianna obviously refrained, but Laurel grabbed her drink, glanced nervously at Emma, and took a guilty sip. And then at the same moment, Charlotte and Madeline did, too. Charlotte nudged her chin toward Emma’s glass. “I think you should be drinking too, sweetie.”
Emma swallowed the rest of the vodka, the liquid searing the lining of her stomach. If she swallowed a match right now, she’d probably explode.
“Honestly, I thought you were going to pull the first prank of the year.” Charlotte poured more Absolut into everyone’s glasses. “What happened to that great thing you bragged about all summer? The ultimate Gotcha?”
“Yeah!” Madeline raised her glass into the air. Some of the liquid sloshed over the sides. “You said it was going to be huge. I’ve been on edge for weeks.”
A bitter taste filled Emma’s mouth. So the Lying Game wasn’t just about tricking other people around school . . . it was about pranking people within the group, too. All of a sudden, the snuff film crackled in her mind. She thought of how Sutton had gone limp after the necklace had cut off her breathing. How she’d remained motionless until someone pulled the blindfold off her head and checked on her. What if she hadn’t been as hurt as she seemed? How far would she go for a good joke?
Suddenly, like a row of dominos, the synapses of Emma’s brain began making connections one after another. She thought of the note Laurel had found on her windshield. She pictured Sutton’s phone and wallet sitting on her desk; there was practically an X-marks-the-spot over them for Emma to find. Then there was the matter of Emma’s own ID going missing so that she had no way of proving who she was.
Her heart started to race. Oh my God, she thought. What if the ultimate prank was happening right now? What if Emma was the main attraction?
The alcohol burned in her stomach. She leapt to her feet, ran toward the nearest doorway, and flung it open. Inside was a whole wall of shoes and bags. She slammed the door again and fumbled in the opposite direction.
Charlotte stood and ratcheted Emma’s shoulders to the left. “Bathroom’s that way, sweetie.” She gave Emma a gentle nudge toward a white door on the other side of the room. “Don’t vomit in the tub like last time!”
“I’m totally tweeting this,” Gabriella giggled.
“No, I am,” Lilianna whined.
Emma staggered into the bathroom and slammed the door. She leaned over the enormous marble sink, the full weight of what was happening taking hold of her and squeezing hard. Sutton wasn’t dead at all. She’d orchestrated the whole thing. She’d found out about Emma somehow and posted that snuff film online so her long-lost twin would find her. She summoned Emma to Sabino Canyon knowing full well that Madeline would see her on their way to Nisha’s. Sutton had tricked all of them into thinking Emma was her . . . and she’d tricked Emma, too.
Emma’s suspicions crashed into my own. Did I know about her before I died? Had I somehow lured her here, and then fallen victim to my own prank? The girl I’d learned about tonight, the Sutton everyone here knew so well, definitely seemed capable of it. But as I searched my faint memories and watched Emma, unable to help her at all, it didn’t feel true. I didn’t want it to be true.
