The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,143

now.

“Sutton’s going stag, too,” Laurel piped up, clearly trying to smooth over the sudden mood shift.

“Really?” Lili’s beady eyes darted to Emma. “How interesting!”

“I guess we’ll be spending a lot of time together if we’re all going alone.” The words oozed from Gabby’s mouth like a threat. “One-on-one Sutton time. How lucky can we be?”

“How lucky,” Emma echoed, hollow dread settling over her.

Lili reached for her phone, her fingers typing furiously. There was a chime, and Gabby glanced at her own phone’s screen. The Twins’ gazes darted to Emma for a split second before looking away.

The few sips of alcohol Emma had drunk burned her stomach. Pulling out Sutton’s phone, she logged on to Gabby’s and Lili’s public Twitter sites. No new messages popped up. But their fingers were still dancing over their tiny keyboards. Occasionally they smiled, as if one had said something particularly funny.

Emma’s fingers started to fly, too, calling up their private accounts. But only an error message appeared. This page does not exist.

Emma retyped her search, thinking she’d misspelled something, but the same error message popped up. She’d seen the page ten minutes ago. . . .

She looked up at two pairs of blue eyes. “Looking for something?” Gabby teased.

“Did you think we wouldn’t notice your snooping?” Lili added.

“What are you freaks talking about?” Madeline murmured as Helene smeared gloss across her lips.

“No-thing,” Lili sing-songed.

But Emma knew exactly what they were talking about. The Twitter Twins had figured out Emma was onto them, meaning something huge was going to happen tonight.

I only hoped she could outsmart the Twitter Twins before they outsmarted her.

Chapter 23

The Awful Truth

Hollier’s parking lot was packed with stretch limos, town cars, SUVs, and even a couple of sports cars borrowed from parents. A banner that said HALLOWEEN HOMECOMING stretched over the front doors, and someone had placed a big lit jack-o’-lantern on the head of the statue of Edmund Hollier, the school’s founder. Couples dressed in elaborate costumes walked arm-in-arm toward the gym. Homecoming had begun.

Emma lagged behind the others and shot off a quick text to Ethan. THE TTS TOOK DOWN THEIR SECRET ACCOUNTS. THEY KNOW.

Her phone buzzed immediately with Ethan’s response. DO NOT GO ANYWHERE ALONE TONIGHT.

“Time to pose!” Charlotte pulled Emma toward a red carpet at the front of the gym. A line of photographers called their names, and the girls turned this way and that, flashing their sexiest smiles. Emma forced her shoulders to relax and pasted a grin on her face. The paparazzi red carpet had been her idea; she’d thought it was something Sutton would suggest. She stood next to Charlotte, who wore a glittering Egyptian headdress, a long silk toga, and gladiator-inspired heels; Madeline, who was dressed as the Queen of Hearts, in a red-and-white dress and a gleaming gold crown; and Laurel, who had donned the blood-spattered wedding dress she’d found at the Halloween store. The Twitter Twins wore costumes that accentuated their Homecoming Court sashes: Lili was the Statue of Liberty, wearing a Grecian-style dress, sandals, and a spiked crown, and carrying a LED torch that glowed red when she hit a button. Gabby was some sort of winged goddess in a similarly draped dress, nymphlike sandals, and a flower headdress. They were both in innocent white, but Emma knew better.

Emma had chosen to be a sexy version of Sherlock Holmes, complete with a checked tweed jacket, a tweed miniskirt, high Manolo heels, a detective’s cap, and an angular pipe. Back at Charlotte’s, the Twins had smirked pointedly and asked why she’d chosen that costume, clearly goading her. But Emma had just held their gaze and said, “Because Holmes always got his man.”

The girls’ dates got into the picture, too. Laurel’s crush, Caleb—who was very cute—wore a 1920s-style pin-striped gangster suit. Noah, the guy Charlotte had asked, wore Wolverine sideburns and kept spewing X-Men quotes. Madeline’s date, Davin, dressed as Freddy Krueger, complete with a mangled face and slasher nails. He somehow managed to look creepier than Freddy Krueger actually had. None of them wanted to go near him.

Gabby declined a paparazzi photo, too busy talking to Kevin Torres, a guy in Emma’s calc class who rolled his eyes whenever anyone got an answer wrong. She draped her arm around his skinny shoulders and giggled at everything that came out of his mouth. Lili stood next to them, looking like she’d swallowed a bitter lemon. She tried several times to get Kevin’s attention, but Kevin didn’t take his eyes off Gabby. Emma watched