Sara Shepard - The Lying Game

Finally, Emma lifted the battered Polaroid camera and a large stack of Polaroid photos from the corner of the drawer. The camera had been Becky’s, but Emma had brought it with her to Sasha’s house the night her mom had taken off. Not long after that, Emma had begun to write fake news captions to match the photos about her life and the goings-on of her foster families: “Foster Mom Gets Sick of Kids, Locks Self in Bedroom to Watch Leave It to Beaver. ” “Hippies Leave for Florida Unannounced.” “Semi-decent Foster Mom Gets Job in Hong Kong; Foster Kid Not Invited.” She was the one and only reporter on the Emma beat. If she were in the right mind-set, she’d craft a new top story for today: “Evil Foster Brother Ruins Girl’s Life.” Or maybe “Girl Discovers Doppelgänger on Internet. Perhaps a Long-Lost Sister?”

Emma paused at the thought. She glanced at the tattered Dell laptop on the floor, which she’d bought from a pawn shop. Taking a deep breath, she set it on the bed and opened the lid. The screen glowed to life, and Emma quickly called up the video site where Travis had found the fake strangling film. The familiar video was the very first item on the list. It had been posted earlier that evening.

Emma pressed PLAY, and the grainy image appeared. The blindfolded girl bucked and scratched. The dark figure pulled the necklace taut around her neck. Then the camera fell, and someone emerged and whipped off the blindfold. The girl’s face was ashen and dazed. She looked around frantically, her eyes rolling around in her head like loose marbles. Then she looked at the camera. Her blue-green eyes were glassy and her pink lips glowed. It was Emma’s exact face. Everything about it was the same.

“Who are you?” Emma whispered, a shiver running up her spine.

I wished I could answer her. I wished I could do something useful instead of just dangling over her silently like a creepy ghost-stalker. It was like watching a movie, except I couldn’t even call out or throw popcorn at the screen.

The clip ended, and the site asked Emma if she wanted to replay it. The bed springs squeaked as she shifted her weight, thinking. After a moment, she typed SuttonInAz into a Google search. A few sites popped up instantly, including a Facebook page by the same name. SUTTON MERCER, it said. TUCSON, ARIZONA.

Screeching tires out the window sounded like a cackle. The Facebook page loaded, and Emma gasped. There was Sutton Mercer, standing in a foyer of a house with a bunch of girls by her side. She wore a black halter-style dress, a sparkly headband, and silver high heels. Emma blinked at her face, feeling queasy. She leaned in closer, certain she would see a difference that would set Sutton apart from herself, but everything, down to Sutton’s petite ears and the same perfectly square, perfectly straight teeth, was identical.

The more Emma thought about it, the more she could believe she had a long-lost twin. For one thing, there were certain times in life where she felt accompanied, as if someone was watching her. Sometimes she woke up in the morning after having crazy dreams about a girl who looked like her . . . but she knew it wasn’t her. The dreams were always vivid: riding on a sun-dappled Appaloosa at someone’s farm, dragging a dark-haired doll across a patio. Besides, if Becky was irresponsible enough to forget Emma at the Circle K, maybe she’d done the same thing with another baby. Perhaps all those duplicate pairs of shoes Manic Becky bought weren’t for Emma at all, but for Emma’s twin sister, a girl Becky had already abandoned.

Perhaps Emma was right, I thought. Perhaps they’d been for me.

Emma moved the mouse over the girls standing next to Sutton in the photo. MADELINE VEGA, said a small pop-up tag. Madeline had sleek black hair, huge brown eyes, a willowy build, and a gap between her front teeth, just like Madonna. Her head tilted suggestively to one side. There was a fake—or perhaps real?—tattoo of a rose on the inside of her wrist, and her bloodred dress plunged provocatively to her breast bone.

The girl next to Madeline was a redhead named Charlotte Chamberlain. She had pink, pale skin and pretty green eyes, and wore a black silk dress that tugged over her broad shoulders. Two blondes with similar wide eyes and upturned noses stood on either end of the group. Their names were Lilianna and Gabriella Fiorello; in the caption Sutton had nicknamed them THE TWITTER TWINS.

I looked over Emma’s shoulder. I recognized the girls in the photos. I understood we used to be close. But they were like books I’d read two summers ago; I knew I’d liked them, but I couldn’t tell you now what they’d been about.

Emma scrolled down the page. Most of the Facebook profile was public. Sutton Mercer was going to be a senior this year, just like Emma. She attended a school called Hollier High. Her interests were tennis, shopping at La Encantada Mall, and the Papaya Quench full body wrap at Canyon Ranch. Under LIKES AND DISLIKES, she’d written, I love Gucci more than Pucci, but not as much as Juicy. Emma frowned at the line.

Yeah, I had no idea what it meant, either.

Next, Emma clicked on the photo page and peered at a picture of a bunch of girls in tennis polos, skirts, and sneakers. A plaque that said HOLLIER TENNIS TEAM rested at their feet. Emma rolled the mouse over the girls’ names until she found Sutton’s. She stood third from the left, her hair pulled back tautly into a smooth ponytail. Emma moved the mouse to the dark-haired Indian girl to the right. A tag over her head said NISHA BANERJEE. There was a saccharine, kiss-ass smile on her face.

I stared hard at her, a spotty, snapping sensation coursing through my weightless body. I knew I didn’t like Nisha, but I didn’t know why.

Next Emma looked at a shot of Sutton and Charlotte standing on the tennis courts next to a tall, handsome, graying man. There was no tag over his face, but the caption said, Me, C, and Mr. Chamberlain at Arizona Tennis Classic. After that was a shot of Sutton with her arms around a handsome, sweet-looking, blond-haired guy wearing a Hollier soccer jersey. Love ya, G! she’d written. Someone named Garrett had replied in the comments window: I love u too, Sutton.

Aw , Emma thought.

My heart warmed, too.

The last picture Emma clicked on was a shot of Sutton sitting around a patio table with two attractive, older adults and a dirty-blond, square-jawed girl named Laurel Mercer. Sutton’s adoptive sister, presumably. Everyone was grinning and holding slushy drinks in a toast. I heart the fam , the caption proclaimed.

Emma lingered on the photo for a long time, her chest aching. All of her daydreams about a Mom Star, Dad Star, and Emma Star family looked pretty much like this: an attractive, happy family, a nice house, a good life. If she cut her own head out of a snapshot and pasted it on Sutton’s body, the picture would look no different. Yet her story was as opposite from this as could be.

There were a few YouTube clips on the Facebook page, and Emma clicked on the first one. Sutton stood on what looked like a lush green golf course with Madeline and Charlotte. Everyone knelt down and vigorously shook canisters in their hands. Slowly, silently, they spray-painted designs on a large rock. WE MISS YOU, T, Madeline’s message said. Sutton’s message said NISHA WAS HERE.

“Where’s Laurel?” Charlotte asked.

“A thousand bucks says she’s too scared,” Sutton murmured on the screen. Her voice was so familiar it made Emma’s throat catch.

Emma clicked on the other videos. There was one of Sutton and her friends skydiving, another of them bungee jumping. A whole bunch of videos showed one of the girls walking around the corner unaware, and the rest of them ambushing her and making her scream. The last video was titled “Cross my heart, hope to die.” It opened with Madeline pirouetting into a pool at night. As soon as she hit the water, she started to flail. “Help!” she screamed, her dark hair plastered against her face. “I think I broke my leg! I . . . can’t . . . move!”