Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

I am pushed up a small hill. My toe hits a jutting rock, and cold pain streaks up my spine. I cry out, but then someone behind me pinches my arm. “What part of ‘Scream and you’re dead’ don’t you understand?” The blade digs deeper into my skin.

After a minute of walking, we halt abruptly. A sharp beep punctuates the air, a car door unlocking. I hear the hydraulic hiss of a trunk opening wide. “Get in.” Someone shoves me from behind, and I fall forward. My cheek hits what feels like the spare tire at the back. My legs bend awkwardly to fit the space. Thump. The trunk slams shut again, and all is quiet.

I smile to myself in the darkness. Let the next round of the Lying Game begin.

My friends had me going for a couple of minutes, but they can’t fool me for long. I can’t wait until they lift the trunk again, probably hoping to take a picture of me paralyzed with fright. Lame! I’ll scream, scaring them instead. Could you have been any more obvious? “Scream and you’re dead” was my line—I used it on Madeline when I sneaked into her bedroom last spring while pretending to be a burglar. Laurel probably said it, knockoff that she is. They’re going to pay for this though. Maybe in the form of a 150-minute massage at La Paloma tomorrow. I’ll need one to undo all the kinks in my back from squeezing into this tiny space.

Then the engine growls. The car backs up and pivots to the right, shifting me into an even more uncomfortable, Twister-like position. I frown. We’re going somewhere? What’s the point of that? I roll again when the car lurches into drive, banging my knee against the underside of the hood. “Mmmm,” I moan through the gag. Can’t they be a little gentler on me? Keep this up and I’ll be sidelined from tennis this year. I wriggle my hands to see if I can free them to remove the scarf from my eyes, but whoever bound them must have taken an advanced Boy Scout class in knot tying. Probably Laurel again. More than likely Thayer had taught her. The two of them always used to do queer Outward Bound shit like that.

Gravel crackles beneath the tires, then gives way to the smooth, even sound of freshly tarred pavement. The highway. Where are we going? I strain to listen for conversation inside the car, but it’s dead silent. No pounding radio. No high-pitched giggles. Not even a low murmur. I try to move my knee, but it’s wedged against the spare tire. “Mmm!” I call again, louder this time. “Mmm?” I kick the carpeted side of the trunk that borders the backseat. Hopefully I’m kicking someone’s back.

The car doesn’t stop. The tires buh-bump over the concrete highway. The gag around my mouth cuts into my skin. My back aches. My fingers begin to lose feeling from the tight bind. I thrash some more, but it makes no difference. The car keeps going.

And then a nervous thought sears my brain: Maybe this isn’t a prank at all. Maybe I’ve been kidnapped.

Amusement gives way to white-hot fear. I scream as loud as I can. I press my wrists against the rough rope, the scratchy fibers cutting my skin. My friends and I do crazy things to one another, but we know when to stop. We’ve never sent anyone to the hospital. No one ever gets hurt—not physically anyway. I think of that voice in my ear. It had sounded like Charlotte’s attempt at a gruff baritone . . . but maybe it wasn’t. I kick at the back of the trunk. I shift as best I can and kick at the ceiling above me, hoping the trunk will pop open. I kick again and again, the flip-flops sliding off my feet. It feels like we’ve driven far by now, maybe into the desert. No one will know where to find me. No one will even know where to look. “Mmm!” I scream, again and again.

The car finally lurches to a stop. I catapult forward and hit my chin against the interior wall. A door slams. Footsteps crunch in the dirt. I freeze, hot tears in my eyes. There’s another sharp bleep, and then the trunk latch pops. I roll onto my back, straining to see through the scarf over my eyes. I can just make out a corona of a streetlight above and a zigzagging blur of passing headlights to the left. A broad-shouldered shape looms above me, backlit by the streetlight. I can just make out what looks like deep reddish hair through my gauzy blindfold. “Mmm,” I cry out desperately.

But then, just like that, everything goes dark again.

Back in Charlotte’s bathroom, I watched Emma fumbling through the darkness. After the memory I’d just seen, I had to admit I felt a little relieved. Whatever had happened wasn’t a prank gone wrong that I’d orchestrated myself. I hadn’t lured Emma here. I hadn’t toyed with her emotions just to one-up my friends. It made me feel a little bit better about everything. I might have been a lot of things, but at least I didn’t use my long-lost twin as frivolously and expendably as a lipstick-blotting Kleenex at Sephora.

Emma finally managed to find the doorknob. Twisting it, she emerged into Charlotte’s bedroom. Five phones glowed in the middle of the carpet, throwing long shadows onto my friends’ faces.

“What happened?” Emma whispered.

“We lost power.” Charlotte sipped the last of her drink. She sounded annoyed.

There was a knock at the door, and everyone yelped. Charlotte quickly stuffed the vodka bottle and glasses under the bed. Moments later, Mrs. Chamberlain shone a flashlight into the room. “You girls okay?”

“Is the power out at the neighbors’, too?” Charlotte asked. Emma noticed she was trying to enunciate very precisely, which just made her sound even drunker.

Mrs. Chamberlain walked to the window and looked out. Golden light spilled from the windows of the house nearest to them. “Guess not. Spooky, huh?”

Emma shifted from foot to foot. Yes.

“Oh, don’t worry, girls,” Mrs. Chamberlain said. “It’s just a power outage. If you light candles, blow them out before you go to sleep.”

She shut the door again. Everyone turned back to the center of the circle and exchanged wide-eyed glances. Suddenly there was a whirring sound, and the lights snapped back on. The stereo, which had been playing an iPod mix before the power went out, blared, making everyone jump. Charlotte’s printer in the corner groaned, warming back up. All the girls rubbed their eyes. After a beat, the Twitter Twins simultaneously grabbed their phones and started typing.

Charlotte reached into the bowl of chips in the center of the room and took a greedy handful. “Okay, Sutton. Tell us how you did it.”

“Did what?” Emma blinked. The girls looked at her hard. “The power?” Emma squeaked, suddenly realizing what they meant. “I had nothing to do with that!”

“Yeah, right.” Madeline leaned on a large striped bolster pillow. “Good timing, though. Just when we were grilling you about losing your touch, you make the lights go out. I don’t know how you did it, Sutton.”

“She’s a regular enchantress,” Charlotte said wryly. “Broomstick and all.”

“I didn’t do it,” Emma protested. “I swear.”

“Cross your heart, hope to die?” Madeline demanded.

Emma paused, confused. Madeline had said it quickly, like a chant. “Yes,” she answered. “Absolutely.”

But then she remembered what she’d been thinking in the bathroom before the lights went out: it was possible her sister was close— really close. Which meant this craziness might come to an end very, very soon. The animosity that had soared through her veins instantly yielded to anticipation. Was she finally going to meet Sutton, the evil pranking genius, face-to-face? Would she be strong enough to stand up for herself and scold Sutton about how she’d sent her emotions on a wild roller-coaster ride, all for a prank . . . or would she buckle as soon as she saw her twin, filled with relief that Sutton wasn’t dead, brimming with gratitude that she finally had someone to call family?