Sara Shepard: 4.5 The First Lie

It’s a typical Saturday afternoon, and my best friends Charlotte Chamberlain and Madeline Vega and I are sitting outside La Paloma Country Club in Tucson, Arizona, where we all live. It’s the last few weeks of summer before we start our junior year and we’re not losing a second of tanning time. We’re all wearing our brand-new Missoni bikinis that are sort of matchy-matchy but not quite, the air smells like Banana Boat sunscreen and freshly cut limes in the neighboring moms’ cocktails, and the high-pitched squeals from the kiddie pool off to the left carry across the neatly landscaped stone patios. As we sip Perrier through skinny red straws—this place is super-strict about underage drinkers—Char takes a breath. “So I have an idea for the next prank for the Lying Game, Sutton,” she says, turning to me. “We go on Facebook, and—”

“No, no, no,” I cut her off, lowering my copy of Us Weekly to my chest. “We’ve done the Facebook thing to death, Char. It’s too easy. The Lying Game is about originality , remember?”

Charlotte flushes, which just makes her freckles stand out more. “It was a variation on a theme, obviously.” She pushes her Chloe aviators to the top of her head and offers a very well-practiced careless shrug that almost has me convinced she doesn’t care about my opinion. The thing is, though, she does. She and Madeline both … as well as everyone else at Hollier High. Not that I’m trying to boast or anything. That’s just the way it is.

“Variation on a theme … how?” I prompt.

“Such as … changing Nisha Banerjee’s profile picture to Lindsay Lohan’s latest mug shot?” Char suggests, snickering.

From my left, Madeline, whose dark hair is gathered back into a messy knot, adjusts the ties on her crocheted bikini’s halter top. “It’d be an improvement on that tennis team group shot she’s got now. She looks totally deranged in it.”

I cross and uncross my long legs, which are more muscular than Mads’s lithe ballerina ones. “She can’t help it. Nisha is deranged.” Nisha Banerjee is a tightly wound, quasi-popular girl who’s also my biggest tennis rival. I sit up. “It’s too small-time, though. The first Lying Game prank of the year has to be big. No exceptions.”

My best friends reflect on this for a moment, knowing I’m right. Mads, Char, and I started the Lying Game back in sixth grade during a sleepover, wanting to prank all of the cute guys in our class. We were the most popular girls in school and we could do something like that, knowing they’d just fall over us even more. After that first prank—water-ballooning them from the school roof—we pulled other small-time pranks, like gluing Lori Sanchez’s locker shut or slipping a love letter from Darien Holbrook, the biggest heartthrob from that year, into the desk of Miranda Foos, a hopeless dork. The pranks have escalated since then, some of them downright scary and illegal. Still, we get away with most of it. And everyone at school expects us to push the boundaries. Which means we can’t do something lame like switch a Facebook profile picture.

“That reminds me,” Charlotte says, changing the subject. “The Twitter Twins want to know if we’re going to Nisha’s back-to-school party on Thursday.”

I roll my eyes. “Not if they are.” Gabriella and Lilianna Fiorello, and their constant addiction to their phones and all forms of social networking, are annoyance personified. Their desperation to get in on the Lying Game reeks worse than the latest Viktor and Rolf Flowerbomb perfume, which, fittingly, is their signature scent this summer.

Not that I blame them for trying so hard to get in, of course. Everyone wants to be in our clique. But I told the Twitter Twins the same thing I tell everyone: Membership is strictly limited to three, Madeline, Charlotte, and me. No exceptions for anyone .

Now Charlotte sits up to face Madeline and me, adjusting the strap of her one-shoulder swimsuit. I haven’t said anything yet, but since Char started dating Garrett Austin, she’s put on a few happy pounds around her middle, surely from all the ice-cream outings and fancy dinner dates they’ve gone on. Char eats when she’s in love; that I know for sure.

“We kind of have to go to Nisha’s,” Charlotte insists, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. “She’s invited the whole tennis team, including the seniors. You know how the team eats that stuff up. If you want to be captain over her, you should at least put in an appearance.”

I sniff. “I don’t have to do anything.” But then I shrug. “Oh, whatever. I’ll go. She’ll definitely have a way better turnout if people know we’re going, and Laurel’s been whining about wanting me there.”

At that, I glance toward the snack bar. Laurel, my adoptive sister, is leaning against the window, repeating the order we gave her, her brow furrowed in concentration. We’d given her a ton of stuff to remember—the bread had to be the club’s signature gluten-free variety and the fruit salad could contain only grapes, pineapple, and star fruit—no melon or strawberries. I’m sure she sees it as a test, but I just wanted a few extra minutes of privacy so we could talk Lying Game pranks. Laurel practically invented the phrase hanger-on . She was so thrilled that I’d begrudgingly said she could join us at the pool today that she immediately posted it as her status on Facebook. I suppose a lot of girls would be thrilled that their little sisters admired them so much, but for me, it’s a little suffocating.

Madeline’s cheery voice interrupts my thoughts. “So it’s settled. We’ll go. Nisha’s lame, but we’ll make it fun.”

“Fine, great.” I wave my hand in front of my face. “We’ll go to Nisha’s. It’ll be like community service. But way more important than that is the inaugural Lying Game prank.” I drum my watermelon-tipped fingernails against the iron arm of my chaise. “Who should the target be?” I grin wickedly in Charlotte’s direction. “Garrett?”

Charlotte sets her mouth in a line, her cheeks turning as red as her hair. “Don’t you dare, Sutton.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, deciding to go easy on her. Garrett is, after all, Char’s first Big Boyfriend.

“What about boys of the non-boyfriend variety?” Madeline suggests. “Boys of the dirty, evil-scumbag-douche-lord variety?”

I raise my eyebrow. “Are we talking about a certain lifeguard, Mads?” I glance over at Finn Hadley, the tanned, muscled, blond-from-the-sun boy who sits atop the lifeguard stand near the diving well. Finn was Mads’s intended summer fling, and he seemed to be into her, too, texting her regularly, putting his arm around her whenever he saw her, even bringing her treats from the snack bar. But then we caught him in a … private lesson with an off-duty au pair on the tennis courts after hours a week ago. Enough said.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say, narrowing my eyes on Finn. I can’t let guys go around thinking they can screw with my friends. Especially not for nannies whose idea of personal style is faux-hipster Keds.

“But I still don’t think he’s a big enough target,” I say after a moment. I pat Mads’s leg. “How about this—we report him to the management for smoking pot on duty?”