Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

Tiptoeing to Sutton’s closet in the corner, Emma wrapped her hand around the knob. Was snooping in Sutton’s closet just as bad as looking through her texts? Deciding it wasn’t, she pulled open the door to reveal a big square room filled with wooden hangers and organized shelves. Sighing wistfully, she reached out and touched all the dresses, blouses, blazers, sweaters, and skirts, pressing some of the soft fabrics to her cheek.

A couple of games were piled in the back of the closet: Clue and Scattergories and Monopoly. On top of that was a box that said JUNIOR BIRDWATCHER’S KIT. It included a bird book and a pair of binoculars. A tag on the front read: TO SUTTON, LOVE DAD. The box looked unopened; Emma figured Sutton hadn’t much liked the gift. She touched a file folder stuffed with what looked like old tests and papers. A spelling quiz from fifth grade had an A-plus on top of it, but a ninth-grade book report on Fahrenheit 451 had earned a C, accompanied by a note in red pen that said Clearly did not read the book . Then she noticed a paper titled “My Family History.” I don’t know my real family history , Sutton had typed. I was adopted when I was a baby. My parents told me when I was a little girl. I’ve never met my birth mother, and I know nothing about her.

Emma felt ashamed for smiling, but she couldn’t help it.

Emma spotted a jewelry case toward the back of the closet; she opened the lid and sifted through Sutton’s chunky bracelets, delicate gold necklaces, and dangling silver earrings. She didn’t see the locket Sutton had worn in the snuff video though. Maybe she was wearing it now?

I looked down at my shimmering body. I didn’t have it on. Perhaps it was with my real body. My dead body. Wherever that was.

In the three-way mirror at the back of Sutton’s closet, Emma blinked at multiple versions of her stupefied reflection. Where are you, Sutton? she implored in her head. Why did you make me come all this way and then not show up?

She exited the closet. When she sat down on Sutton’s bed, exhaustion flattened her like a bullet train. Her head throbbed. Every muscle felt like a wrung-out sponge. She leaned back on the mattress. It was as soft as a cloud, way better than the Kmart blue light specials foster families always stuck her with. She kicked off her wedges and heard them thud to the floor. She might as well wait here for Sutton. Surely she’d show up sooner or later.

Her breathing slowed. Fake news items swirled through her mind. Girl Impersonates Sister at Party . Sister Is Kind of a Flake. Surely tomorrow would be a better day. Twin Sisters Finally Meet , maybe.

Emma turned over on her side and snuggled into the Tide-scented pillow. The shapes and shadows in the big bedroom became blurrier and blurrier.

And with another few breaths, everything faded away for both of us.

“Sutton. Sutton .”

Emma awoke to someone shaking her shoulders. She was in a bright room. Green-and-white striped curtains fluttered at the window. The ceiling was smooth and unlined. A low bureau and a large LCD-screen TV sat in the place where Clarice’s ratty dresser used to be.

Wait a minute. She wasn’t at Clarice’s anymore. Emma sat up.

“Sutton,” the voice said again. A blond woman hovered over her. There were tiny streaks of gray at her temples and minute lines around her eyes. She wore a blue suit, high heels, and a lot of makeup. The photo of Sutton’s family raising slushy drinks into the air flickered in Emma’s mind. This was Sutton’s mom.

Emma leapt out of bed, staring crazily around the room. “What time is it?” she exclaimed.

“You have exactly ten minutes to get to school.” Mrs. Mercer shoved a dress on a hanger and pair of T-strap heels at her. She paused on Emma for a moment. “I hope you didn’t walk in front of the open window like that.”

Emma looked down at herself. At some point in the night, she’d sleep-stripped off the striped dress she’d worn to the party and now wore only a bra and a pair of boy shorts. She quickly crossed her arms over her chest.

Then she stared at the wedges she’d kicked to the floor last night. They lay in the exact same spot she’d left them. Sutton’s silver clutch and pink-cased iPhone still sat on her desk. Reality snapped into nauseating focus. Sutton didn’t come back last night , Emma realized. She never found me.

“Wait a minute.” Emma grabbed Mrs. Mercer’s arm. This had gone too far. Something was really wrong. “This is a mistake.”

“Of course it’s a mistake.” Mrs. Mercer rushed across the room and threw a pair of Champion mesh shorts, a racer-back tank top, sneakers, and a Wilson tennis racket into a big red tennis bag with the name SUTTON stitched across the side. “Didn’t you set an alarm?” Then she paused and smacked herself lightly on the forehead. “What am I thinking? Of course you didn’t. It’s you .”

I watched my mom as she dropped the tennis bag on the bed and zipped it up tight. Even my own mother couldn’t tell that Emma wasn’t me.

Mrs. Mercer pointed Emma toward the dress she’d laid flat on the bed. When Emma didn’t move, she sighed, yanked the dress from the hanger, and dragged it over Emma’s head.

“I can trust you to put your shoes on by yourself, can’t I?” Mrs. Mercer said tightly, holding up a shoe by its T-strap. The label said MARC BY MARC JACOBS. “Be down for breakfast in two minutes.”

“Wait!” Emma protested, but Mrs. Mercer had already marched out of the room and slammed the door so hard that a snapshot of Sutton, Laurel, Charlotte, and Madeline fell from the bulletin board and landed facedown on the floor.

Emma stared around the silent room in panic. She darted to the ottoman where she’d left her cell phone. No new messages, said the screen. She raced to Sutton’s iPhone on the desk. There was one new text since she’d last checked, but it was only from Garrett: YOU VANISHED LAST NIGHT! SEE YOU IN FIRST PERIOD? XX!

“This is insane,” Emma whispered. The post she’d seen on Sutton’s Facebook Wall before she left Vegas popped into her head. Ever think about running away? I do. Could Sutton have run away thinking Emma could take her place long enough for her to get a head start? She strode barefoot out of Sutton’s bedroom and down the stairs.

The downstairs hallway was decorated with huge framed family photographs: school pictures, shots from family vacations to Paris and San Diego, and a portrait of the Mercer family at what looked like a fancy wedding in Palm Springs. Emma followed the sound of the morning news and the smell of coffee to the kitchen. It was a huge room with sparkling, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a brick patio and the mountains beyond. The counters were dark, the cabinets white, and there was a bunch of pineapple paraphernalia all over the room—wooden pineapples atop the cabinets, a ceramic pineapple cylinder that held spatulas and slotted spoons, a pineapple-shaped placard near the back door that said WELCOME!

Mrs. Mercer poured coffee at the sink. Sutton’s sister, Laurel, dissected a croissant at the kitchen table, dressed in a flowing printed top that looked identical to a shirt Emma had seen in Sutton’s closet last night. Mr. Mercer stepped in through the door, carrying plastic-wrapped copies of the Wall Street Journal and the Tucson Daily Star . Emma noticed his doctor’s coat, which said J MERCER, ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY. Like Mrs. Mercer, he was also a little older than most of the foster parents Emma had known, possibly a well-preserved fiftysomething. Emma wondered if they’d tried to have kids on their own before adopting Sutton. And what about Laurel? She had the same square jaw as Mrs. Mercer and the same round blue eyes as Mr. Mercer. Perhaps she was their biological daughter. Maybe the Mercers had finally conceived as soon as the adoption had gone through—Emma had read about that phenomenon somewhere.