Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

Charlotte waved the little stirring straw that had come with her latte at Emma. “Don’t you worry about a thing. It’s our turn, Sutton. This is for you.”

Charlotte turned out of Sutton’s neighborhood, passing the park where Emma and Ethan had played tennis. “It’s all timed perfectly,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve been watching Nisha since Monday.”

“And you set up everything last night?” Madeline was wearing her new Gucci sunglasses. The sunlight caught the gold frames and sent reflections around the inside of the car.

Charlotte nodded. “You girls are going to love it.” She wheeled around and peered at Laurel. “And you talked to . . . you know?”

“Yep.” Laurel giggled.

“Perfect.”

Within minutes, they were pulling into a space in the school parking lot. School didn’t start for another half hour, so the bus lanes were empty and the boys’ soccer team, who practiced both before and after school, were still galloping on the field. The girls grabbed Emma’s arms and pulled her through the courtyard and a side door. The hallways were deserted. Posters for student council elections flapped in the air-conditioned breeze. Big swirls from the janitor’s mop gleamed on the floor.

The locker room was deserted, too, smelling like a mix of powdery deodorant and bleach. Each sports team got its own wide aisle. Girls kept the same sports locker from year to year—Emma had opened Sutton’s designated tennis locker on the first day of practice and found a few things still inside, including a shiny nylon jacket that said HOLLIER TENNIS on the back.

As they rounded the corner to the tennis team’s bank of lockers, Madeline stopped short. “Whoa.” Laurel covered her mouth with her hand.

Emma peered around them and nearly cried out. Papers lay scattered over the floor and on the benches. Red liquid covered a couple of doors and lockers. There was a tape outline of a body on the floor, with a big splattering of red stuff— blood? —near the head. Yellow police tape strung around the outline said CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS.

Emma’s vision began to narrow. She took a big step back. Could it be ? She thought of the note again. Sutton’s dead. Maybe someone had found Sutton’s body . . . here. Maybe the snuff film had taken place in a field nearby. The killer had dragged Sutton into the locker room and deposited her here for someone to find. And if they’d found Sutton, what would that mean for Emma?

I tried to imagine my body lying on the cold locker room floor, blood seeping out of my head, my eyes fluttering closed. Had this been it? Had someone dumped me here? But the locker room setting didn’t match the flickers I’d already had about my death—the screams, the darkness, the knife at my throat. Something seemed off about the whole thing. Then I noticed Laurel’s small, nervous smile behind her hand.

“Psst.” Charlotte yanked them into the shower room. The floor was shiny and wet, and someone had left a big bottle of Aveda shampoo on a built-in shelf in one of the stalls. Charlotte peeked around the doorway and gestured for the girls to do the same. A few girls on various teams passed the tennis lockers, doing a triple take at the crime scene. An angular cross-country runner took a picture of it with her phone. An Asian girl saw it and immediately turned around and went the other direction. When Nisha appeared at the far end of the hall, Charlotte squeezed Emma’s hand. “Let the games begin.”

A cold, clammy feeling of understanding washed over Emma. But before she could say anything, Charlotte put her finger to her lips. Shhh.

Nisha’s dark hair cascaded down her back. She carried a green tennis bag on her shoulder. When she turned the corner and noticed the crime scene, she stopped hard. She took a few tentative steps toward it, staring at the locker surrounded by police tape. A helpless look washed over her face.

“Miss?” A woman in a police uniform burst into the room, making everyone, including Emma, Charlotte, and Madeline, jump. Nisha flinched and pressed her arm to her chest as if to say, Who me? “Can you tell me whose locker this is?”

Nisha’s tawny skin turned ashen. She glanced at the cop’s badge, then at her gun. “Um, that’s my locker.”

Laurel let out a tiny yelp of a laugh. Charlotte shot her a look.

The cop tapped the locker door with the antenna of her walkie-talkie. “Would you mind opening it for me? I need to search it.”

Nisha’s bag slipped from her shoulder to the floor. She didn’t pick it back up. “W-Why?”

“I have a warrant right here.” The cop unfolded a piece of paper and flashed it in Nisha’s face. “I need to search this locker.”

Charlotte covered her mouth with her hand. Madeline’s whole body shook, making tiny I-don’t-want-to-laugh squeaks. They both turned to Emma. Charlotte lifted her eyebrows in a silent look that seemed to ask, Don’t you love this? Emma looked away.

More girls gathered in the locker room, nudging and staring. The cop paced the aisle. Nisha opened and closed her mouth a few times without speaking. Tears welled in her eyes. “Am I in trouble? I didn’t do anything!”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the cop said. The handcuffs on her belt jingled.

Madeline nudged Laurel in the ribs. “ Where did you find her?”

“I put an ad on Craigslist.” Laurel beamed. “She’s a theater major at the U of A.”

The cop nodded at Nisha again, this time more forcefully. Nisha’s hands shook as she worked the combination. By now Charlotte was doubled over, her shoulders shaking. Madeline had her tongue wedged between her teeth to stave off giggles. When the locker opened, the cop plunged her hand inside and pulled out a kitchen knife. More red stuff smeared the pointed tip.

Nisha sank down to the bench in the middle of the aisle. “I-I don’t know how that got there!”

Emma picked nervously at dry skin on her palm. Sure, Nisha was a bitch, but was she this much of a bitch?

I watched uncertainly, too. Maybe I’d been a prankster when I was alive, but from the other side, a staged murder definitely turned the proverbial stomach of a girl who’d just been killed. In fact, it seemed almost eerily coincidental. . . .

“I need to search the top part of the locker, too,” the cop demanded. “And then you and I are going to take a little trip down to the station.”

“But this is a mistake!” Nisha’s eyes filled with tears.

Emma tugged Charlotte’s sleeve. “Guys. Come on. That’s enough.”

Charlotte shot up and whirled around. “What?”

“Nisha seems kind of freaked out.”

Madeline cocked her head. “That’s why it’s funny.”

“We don’t want her to have a heart attack,” Emma argued.

“Like you haven’t done worse, Sutton?” A water droplet from the shower nozzle plopped on Charlotte’s head, but she ignored it. “Don’t get all soft on us now. Anyway, we had to go big with her. She knows what we’re about. We couldn’t just fill her pool with frogs or put Nair in her shampoo or something dumb like that.”

“I think it was a genius idea,” Laurel whispered behind them.

“ Thank you.” Charlotte grinned. “I knew we needed something special to kick off a new year of the Lying Game!”

Emma chomped down on the inside of her cheek to keep from showing surprise. The Lying Game?

The words swirled in my head, too. Sensations bobbed to the surface. Screams and laughs, hands clapped over mouths, the hot stomach-pull of excitement. I strained to remember more, but it was just a cascade of feelings that rushed over me.