Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

“I guess,” Emma lied. More RSVP cards had been waiting in Sutton’s bedroom when she came home from tennis today. All of them said things like Can’t wait! and The party of the year!

“You’d better be.” Laurel nudged her in the ribs. “You’ve been planning it for long enough! So has Garrett told you what he’s getting you yet?”

Emma shook her head. “Why? Has he told you?”

Laurel’s smile broadened knowingly. “Nah. But I’ve heard rumors. . . .”

Emma pinched a handful of fabric on the couch. What was the big deal with Garrett’s present?

Nail dryers hummed across the room. The smell of polish remover and aloe hand lotion filled the air. Emma reached into her bag and touched the napkin from Thayer. Her stomach streaked with nerves. She’d intended to bring it up at the end of the manicures, but she couldn’t wait any longer. “Laurel?”

Laurel looked up and smiled. Emma placed the napkin on the empty cushion between them. “I found this in my tennis locker.”

A wrinkle formed between Laurel’s eyes as she gazed at Thayer’s drunk smiley face. Her fingers worked a tiny hole in her jeans. There was a sharp rip, and the hole suddenly, forcefully, split open. “Oh,” she whispered.

“I’m really sorry.” Emma’s voice shook. “I don’t know how it got there.” It wasn’t technically a lie.

Laurel balled the note in her hands and stared blankly at the rainbow-colored bottles of nail polish on the shelf. Emma gripped the arm of the couch hard. Would Laurel explode? Scream? Come after her with nail scissors?

“No biggie,” Laurel finally said. “It’s not like I don’t have a million notes exactly like that from Thayer in my room.”

Then she calmly pulled out her iPhone and checked her email.

“Do you miss him?” Emma blurted.

Laurel continued to tap her iPhone. “Of course.” Her voice didn’t rise or dip. It was as though they were talking about the differences between creamy peanut butter and crunchy. Then she nodded at the Snapple bottle Emma had taken from the Mercer fridge. “Mind if I have some?”

Emma shrugged, and Laurel took a long sip. As soon as she set the bottle back on the coffee table, her shoulders began to convulse. Her head jerked back, and she tipped over on the couch. She clutched her throat and stared at Emma with frightened, bulging eyes. “I . . . can’t . . .”

Emma shot to her feet. “Laurel?” Laurel made a choking sound, flopped once, and went limp. Her blond hair fanned out on the couch cushion. Her right hand spasmed.

“Laurel?” Emma shouted. “Laurel?” She shook her shoulders.

Laurel’s eyes were glued closed. Her mouth hung open limply. The iPhone she’d been holding slowly released from her grip and clonked to the carpet.

“Help!” Emma called out. She bent down and listened for breathing. No sounds escaped from Laurel’s lips. She pressed her fingers to Laurel’s wrist. It felt like there was a pulse. “Wake up,” she urged, shaking her. Laurel’s head bobbed like a rag doll. Her chunky silver bracelets jangled together.

Emma leapt to her feet and looked around. A black girl stared at them from a pedicure chair across the room, Vogue in her lap. A small Spanish woman rushed over. “What’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said frantically.

“Is she pregnant?” the woman suggested.

“I don’t think so. . . .”

“Hey.” The Spanish woman jostled Laurel’s arm. “ Hey! ” she yelled in her face, slapping her cheek. Emma put her ear to Laurel’s mouth again. The mouth-to-mouth unit of the babysitter training class she’d taken in sixth grade rushed to her mind. Did you pinch the nose then breathe into the mouth, or the other way around?

Then something cold and wet touched her earlobe. Emma pulled back in alarm. Was that . . . a tongue ? She stared at Laurel’s face. And then, suddenly, Laurel’s eyes popped open. “Boo!”

Emma screamed. Laurel exploded with giggles. “I totally had you! You thought I was dead!”

The lady made a tsk sound with her tongue. “You had all of us! What’s wrong with you?” She stormed away, shaking her head.

Emma sat back up. Her heart felt like a flag flapping crazily in the wind.

Laurel adjusted her T-shirt, color rising to her cheeks. “You’ve taught me well, sis. But I never thought I’d get you with something so easy!” And then she stood, slid her purse over her shoulder, and cruised to the wall of nail polishes to choose the color for her manicure.

Emma stared at Laurel’s straight, slender back, her head spinning. That certainly was an innovative way to change the subject from Thayer. But something unsettled her, too. A girl whose older sister did something to ruin her chances with her crush didn’t just shrug it off with a laugh and a prank. If someone had done that to Emma, she’d tell them off. Fight back. Retaliate.

And then Emma raised her head. The hot lights above scorched her scalp. She could think of one reason Laurel might not be angry anymore.

I thought it at the exact same time, too: Maybe Laurel had already gotten her revenge.

“I’d like to solve the puzzle, Pat,” a constantly smiling soccer mom said on TV. The screen switched to a shot of the Wheel of Fortune board. All of the letters of THING had been filled in except for one. “Picking fresh flowers?”

Triumphant music played as Vanna turned the final letter. Soccer mom jumped up and down, ecstatic that she’d won nine hundred dollars. It was late Thursday evening, and Emma was watching a Wheel rerun on the Game Show Network from Sutton’s bed. Wheel of Fortune usually calmed her down. It reminded her of watching it with Becky on the tattered La-Z-Boy—she could almost smell the Burger King takeout and hear Becky calling out the answers and critiquing Vanna’s sequined ball gown.

But now all Emma could think of when she saw that wheel on the screen was how it seemed like a metaphor for her life—a wheel of chance. Risk or reward. One twin getting the good life, one twin getting the bad. One twin dying, the other twin living. The living twin choosing either to go after the person she was almost certain had killed her sister . . . or slip quietly away.

Laurel killed Sutton.

The thought flashed into her mind every couple of seconds, giving her a fresh scare each and every time. She felt positive it was true. All signs had pointed to Charlotte before, but now Laurel seemed like the only answer. When she got home from the nail salon, she’d searched for more clues, and too much connected: Sutton’s Facebook account was on Autofill, which meant Laurel could’ve sneaked into Sutton’s room, logged in, found the message from Emma, and written an eager note back, summoning Emma here. And then there was the SUTTON’S DEAD note Laurel had found on her car. Besides the bit of pollen on the corner, the paper didn’t have any creases, folds, or dirt marks like it should have if Laurel had really dug it out from under a windshield wiper. And Emma hadn’t actually seen the note on Laurel’s car—who was to say Laurel hadn’t lied about someone leaving it there? She just as easily could have pulled it out of her bag.

Laurel had been at Charlotte’s sleepover, too. She’d slept next to Emma in Charlotte’s cavernous bedroom, which would’ve made it easiest for her to see when Emma had gotten up for a drink. She could’ve crept downstairs and strangled Emma with Sutton’s locket. And speaking of that locket, there was the photo of Laurel wearing the locket on Madeline’s phone. It looked identical to the one that now hung around Emma’s neck.