Two Truths and a Lie: A Lying Game Novel. Sara Shepard

muscles in Thayer’s arms flexed as he balled his fists. He glanced around at Laurel, Madeline, Emma, and the Mercer parents like he was a wounded animal wanting to flee his attackers. After a beat, he spun on his heel and bolted in the opposite direction. He shot across Sutton’s bedroom, hoisting himself out the window and shimmying down the oak tree that served as an escape hatch from Sutton’s room. Emma, Laurel, and Madeline flew to the window and watched Thayer scramble through the darkness. His gait was uneven—he favored his left leg with a pronounced limp as he moved across the grass.

      “Get back here!” Mr. Mercer screamed, racing from Sutton’s bedroom and banging down the stairs. Emma scampered after him, with Mrs. Mercer, Laurel, and Madeline following behind. Charlotte and the Twitter Twins staggered out from the den, looking sleepy and confused.

      Everyone gathered around the open doorway. Mr. Mercer had run halfway across the yard. “I’m calling the cops!” he shouted. “Get back here, damn it!”

      No answer came. Tires screeched around the corner. Just like that, Thayer was gone.

      Madeline whirled around to stare at Emma. Tears welled in her blue eyes and her face was red and blotchy. “Did you invite him here?”

      Emma gasped. “What? No!”

      But Madeline sprinted out the door. A few sharp bleeps pierced through the air, and Madeline’s SUV lights illuminated the darkness.

      Laurel shot Emma a pissed-off look. “Now look what you’ve done.”

      “I didn’t do anything,” Emma protested.

      Laurel looked at the other girls for support. Charlotte cleared her throat. The Twitter Twins fingered the iPhones in their hands, surely itching to post an update about this to their many social-networking sites. Laurel’s glare was icy and incredulous, and Emma could guess why. Laurel and Thayer had been best friends before his disappearance, and Laurel had a major crush on him. But Thayer had barely registered Laurel’s existence in Sutton’s bedroom. From what Emma had gathered over the past few weeks in Tucson, something big had gone on between Sutton and Thayer before he went missing.

      “Didn’t do anything?” Laurel whipped back to face Emma. “You got him in trouble! Again.”

      Mrs. Mercer ran her hands over her face. “Please, Laurel. Not now.” She stepped toward Emma, cinching the belt of the pink terry-cloth bathrobe she’d stopped to grab on her way downstairs. “Sutton, are you alright?”

      Laurel rolled her eyes. “Look at her. She’s fine.”

      Finally, Drake, the Great Dane, trotted down the stairs and nudged Mrs. Mercer’s hand with his slobbery nose. “Some guard dog you are,” Mrs. Mercer muttered. Then she turned back to Emma, Laurel, and the three remaining girls in the foyer. “I think you girls should go home now,” she said wearily.

      Without a word, Charlotte and the Twitter Twins turned back to the den, presumably to gather up their stuff. Emma’s head felt too foggy to follow them, so she trudged back upstairs and took refuge in Sutton’s bedroom to get her bearings. The room looked exactly as she’d left it: Old issues of Vogue lay neatly stacked on Sutton’s bookshelf, necklaces were twined together on her dresser, school notebooks were piled on her white oak desk, and the computer cycled through images of Madeline, Charlotte, Laurel, and Sutton with their arms wrapped around each other—probably celebrating some perfectly pulled-off Lying Game prank. Nothing was missing. Whatever reason Thayer had to break in, it wasn’t theft.

      Emma sank to the floor, Madeline’s hurt look flashing through her mind once more. One thing Thayer definitely had stolen was the tenuous peace she’d finally made with Sutton’s friends and Laurel. Sutton had ruffled a lot of feathers while she was alive, and it had taken a fair amount of work to repair her relationships.

      I bristled at Emma’s thoughts. These were my friends she was talking about. People I had known forever and loved, and who loved me back. But even I couldn’t deny that I’d made some questionable decisions. I’d stolen Charlotte’s boyfriend, Garrett. I’d clearly had some sort of rocky relationship with Madeline’s brother. I’d given Gabby a seizure during a Lying Game prank—and then told her sister that if she told anyone what I’d done, I’d make her life in high school a living hell. And I’d been dismissive of Laurel’s feelings in too many ways to count. One thing I’d learned being dead was that I’d made a lot of mistakes when I was alive. Mistakes I could never set right. But maybe Emma could.

      After a few minutes of deep breathing, Emma slipped out of Sutton’s room and slowly went down the stairs.

      The scent of roasted hazelnuts greeted her in the kitchen. Sutton’s father was staring into a cup of black coffee, his face still twisted into an angry, almost unrecognizable mask. Mrs. Mercer traced circles between his shoulder blades with the tips of her fingers and whispered something into his ear. Laurel stared listlessly out the window, spinning a pineapple suncatcher around.

      When Mrs. Mercer noticed Emma, she looked up and gave her a small smile. “The police will be here any minute, Sutton,” she said softly.

      Emma blinked, wondering how to react. Would Sutton’s parents expect her to be relieved by this detail . . . or start vehemently defending Thayer? She settled on an expressionless face, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at Sutton’s dad.

      “Do you understand how dangerous that boy is?” Mr. Mercer asked, shaking his head.

      Emma opened her mouth to speak, but Laurel was faster. She pushed past Emma and gripped the back of one of the wooden chairs that circled the round oak table. “That boy is one of my best friends, Dad,” she growled. “And did it ever enter your mind that Sutton—not Thayer—is the one causing all the trouble?”

      “Excuse me?” Emma squeaked indignantly. “How is this my fault?”

      They were interrupted by the distant wail of sirens. Mr. Mercer headed for the hall, and Mrs. Mercer followed. The sirens grew louder and louder until they were right outside of the house. Emma heard a car pull up the drive and saw red and blue lights flashing on the front porch. She was about to follow the Mercer parents into the foyer when Laurel caught her arm.

      “You’re going to throw Thayer under the bus, aren’t you?” Laurel hissed, her eyes blazing.

      Emma stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

      “I don’t know why he always comes to you first,” Laurel continued, as if she hadn’t heard Emma’s question. “You just make his life worse. And you’re never there to pick up the pieces. You leave that to me, don’t you?”

      Emma fiddled with Sutton’s locket that hung from her neck, silently begging Laurel to explain herself, but Laurel just glared accusingly. Clearly whatever she was talking about was something Sutton was supposed to know already.

      Except . . . I didn’t.

      “We’ve got coffee on,” Mrs. Mercer’s voice echoed from the foyer. Emma turned just in time to see Sutton’s parents leading two officers into the kitchen. One of them had red hair and freckles and didn’t look much older than Emma. The other was more weathered, with oversized ears and a woodsy cologne. Emma instantly recognized him.

      “Hello again, Miss Mercer,” the second cop said, shooting Emma a weary look. It was Detective Quinlan, the officer who hadn’t believed Emma when she had told him her real identity the day she’d arrived in Tucson. He’d assumed the long-lost-twin routine was another one of Sutton’s hoaxes—the Tucson police had an entire case file dedicated to Sutton’s wrongdoings as part of the Lying Game, a cruel club Sutton and her friends had invented over five years ago, which involved playing pranks on unwitting victims. One of the most horrific pranks involved Sutton pretending that her car had stalled on the train tracks as a commuter train barreled toward her and her friends. It had ended in Gabby’s hospitalization for a seizure. Emma had only learned about it last week, after she’d purposely gotten caught shoplifting to get a peek at Sutton’s rap sheet. She’d snooped, and she’d scored, but she wasn’t exactly looking for more