Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

Out in the aisle, the cop pressed the latch to open the top compartment of Nisha’s locker. Charlotte grabbed Emma’s hand. “Get ready.” As the door opened, something shot out of the space. Nisha screamed and covered her eyes. Emma braced herself, too . . . and then she saw a shiny Mylar balloon float lazily into the aisle and bob to the ceiling. It was in the shape of a banana with bug eyes and a deranged smile. “That’s bananas!” a robotic voice rang out from the balloon as it bounced off the ceiling. “That’s bananas! That’s bananas!” A note dangled from the end of the string that said GOTCHA!

Emma couldn’t help but explode with laughter. Now that was funny.

Nisha wiped her eyes, a tiny wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. She looked over her shoulder for the cop, but the University of Arizona drama student had run off, bloody knife and all. Nisha ripped the GOTCHA! note off the string, crumpled it up, and tossed it to the floor. “That’s bananas!” the balloon bleated again and again in a robotic voice.

Charlotte emerged from their hiding place in the showers, her high-heeled boots clicking on the tile. Nisha turned and glared at her, her face puce. “You better not tell on us,” Charlotte said in a chillingly even voice. She wagged her finger back and forth. “Or else we’ll get you worse.”

Madeline and Laurel formed a convoy behind Charlotte, shooting Nisha the same don’t-mess-with-us looks, too. Emma ran past Nisha as fast as she could. Out in the hall, the girls leaned against the wall and laughed long and hard. Madeline grabbed Charlotte’s hand. Tears rolled down Laurel’s cheeks.

“Her face!” Charlotte said between breaths.

“Priceless!” Madeline cried.

Laurel poked Emma’s side. “C’mon. You can admit it now. You loved it, right?”

They were all staring at Emma like she was the be-all and end-all, the final thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Emma stared blankly out the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the hallway. A mini yellow school bus pulled away from the curb. A group of girls in field hockey uniforms passed, all giggling. Then Emma turned back and regarded each of Sutton’s friends. Whatever this was, Sutton had clearly been the ringleader.

Charlotte waved her hand in front of Emma’s face. “Well? A-plus or F-minus?”

Emma hefted her purse higher on her shoulder and mustered a devious smile. “A-plus,” she managed to say, trying to channel her sister. “It was awesome.”

The girls smiled with relief. “I knew it.” Charlotte gave Emma a high five. The bell rang, and they linked elbows and started down the hall. Emma was pulled along with them, but all her body parts, down to the individual cells, were quivering.

The Lying Game. If this was something Sutton and her friends did often, if this was something they’d done to a lot of people at school, they might’ve pushed someone too far. She thought of what Charlotte had said. Like you haven’t done worse, Sutton? What if that was just it? What if Sutton had done worse—much worse—and someone had killed her for it?

I concentrated hard, but I still couldn’t see what that horrible thing could have been. But even so, I had a sinking feeling Emma might be right.

Emma pushed through the congested halls to her locker. Her nose still stung with the smell of the fake blood. Over her shoulder, she noticed two girls glance at her with a mix of fear and reverence. She distinctly heard them whisper the words “Nisha” and “crime scene.” A guy in a soccer jersey stood in the doorway of the student council room and chanted, “That’s bananas! That’s bananas!” Had the details of the prank gotten out already? How could they all laugh about it?

“Hi, Sutton!” a girl called to Emma as she passed, but her smile looked twisted and sinister. “What up, Sutton?” a tall guy in baggy pants and skate shoes called from inside a science classroom, but was it Emma’s imagination or did his voice have a steely, hateful edge? Sutton could’ve pranked these people— all of them. Anyone could be her killer.

She whipped around the corner and nearly collided into a tall figure carrying a large cup of coffee. “Whoa,” he said, protectively placing a hand on the lid. Emma backed up. Ethan stood before her, wearing a gray hoodie, long army-green surfer shorts, and faded Converse shoes. His unapproachable, surly expression softened when he saw it was her. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey,” Emma answered, grateful to see a friendly face. She started down the hall. “H-How are you?” She tried to sound cheerful, but her voice trembled.

“I’m cool.” Ethan kept pace with her. “You? You’ve got that the-bogeyman’s-after-me look again.”

Emma ran her hand over the back of her neck. It was suddenly sweaty. Her heart was pounding really fast, too. “I’m just a little freaked out,” she admitted.

“Why?”

They turned another corner and walked through the lobby, sidestepping a group of kids break-dancing by the ceramics display case. “Let’s just say I’m tempted to blow off school for the rest of the year and hide in a cave somewhere.”

“Is this about the Nisha prank?” Ethan asked. “Two girls ahead of me in the coffee line were talking about it,” he went on. One of his shoulders rose in a sheepish shrug. “It sounded . . . crazy.”

Emma sank down on a lobby bench. “Yeah. My friends kind of went . . . too far.”

Ethan sat down next to her, picking up a flyer that said FALL HARVEST DANCE! GET YOUR TICKETS NOW! and twisting it in his hands. One corner of his mouth pulled up into a sarcastic smile. “Isn’t that kind of how it works? Don’t you guys always go too far?”

A knot formed in Emma’s stomach. Charlotte’s words spun in her head like clothes in a dryer: Like you haven’t done worse? Was that how it worked?

She swallowed hard, staring blankly across the room at a large display case next to the auditorium. A gold-lettered poster said IN MEMORIAM. Black-and-white yearbook portraits of dead students marched up and down the page, along with their names and death dates. Sutton should be on that board , Emma thought. She wondered if whoever had killed her passed this lobby all the time.

Two guys played tag down the hall, their footsteps ringing out on the hard floor. Emma blinked hard. Before she could say anything more, the bell rang. Ethan gave Emma a parting smile. “If you’re sick of the pranks, you should tell your friends you want to stop. Just walk away from it, y’know? Everyone would thank you for it.” He tossed the coffee cup in the trash. “See you around.”

Emma watched him disappear down the hall. Her palms felt sweaty. She knew she needed to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t work. The dead faces on the IN MEMORIAM poster watched her with eerie, knowing smiles. And then what she needed to do zinged through her body like a dart. “I have to get out of here,” she whispered.

She’d never felt so sure of something in her life. Whatever Sutton was involved in, whatever the Lying Game was, it was scary and dangerous and way too intense. Just sitting here in the school hall made her feel like a target in a rifle range.

And maybe, I thought with a shudder, someone was already taking aim.

Laurel’s Jetta made a screeching noise as Emma wheeled it into the parking lot of the downtown Tucson Greyhound station. She hit the brake just before ramming into a cinderblock parking divider. Turning off the ignition, she looked cautiously around.

The air was oven-hot and the blacktop shimmered. Two old men outside the station gave Emma a squinty look. Across the street, three scruffy college kids shuffling into Hotel Congress turned and stared right at her, too. Even the sex kittens in the S&M window seemed to be watching. Emma slipped on Sutton’s big D&G sunglasses, but she still felt exposed.