The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,164

reading community who has reached out to me to help promote this new series. All of you know who you are, and all of you are awesome! And for all you readers, yet another reminder: Never Have I Ever is a work of fiction, and I dearly hope none of you emulate the club’s sinister and often dangerous pranks. I hope you enjoy reading about Sutton’s spooky coven, but please don’t try any of her tricks at home!

Finally, a huge, exciting thank-you to Andrew Wang and Gina Girolamo at Alloy LA for developing these books for TV, Chuck Pratt for writing an amazing Lying Game pilot, to Alexandra Chando for playing such a convincing and loveable Sutton and Emma, and to everyone else working on the show henceforth. You all are amazing for believing in the books, and I can’t wait to see the series when it airs!

Credits

COVER PHOTO © 2011 BY GUSTAVO MARX/

MERGELEFT REPS, INC.

COVER DESIGN BY LIZ DRESNER

Copyright

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

NEVER HAVE I EVER

Copyright © 2011 by Alloy Entertainment and Sara Shepard

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-186972-3 (trade bdg.)

ISBN 978-0-06-209155-0 (int. ed.)

EPub Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780062084132

11 12 13 14 15 LP/BV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

EPIGRAPH

A half-truth is a whole lie.

—YIDDISH PROVERB

CONTENTS

Epigraph

Prologue: An Unwanted Visitor

1 She’s Seen Him

2 A Boy Named Trouble

3 Everyone Loves a Poet

4 Homecoming Hangover

5 Game, Set, Outmatched

6 Little Emma in the Big Woods

7 Night Hiking

8 What Now?

9 Starstruck

10 Gonna Getcha

11 Party of Four

12 I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

13 Love, S.

14 If the Key Fits

15 Project: Run Away

16 The Makeup

17 The False Bottom

18 Visitor for Vega

19 Catch Me If You Can

20 Blood Doesn’t Lie

21 Mother Knows Best

22 Seek and Ye Shall Find

23 The Psychopath Test

24 Who Do You Think You Are?

25 Sound the Alarm

26 Foreclosed but Not Forgotten

27 One Flew the Coop

28 We All Fall Down

29 Like Poison

30 Cheese, Milk, and Ex-Cons

31 Meet the Mercers

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Credits

Copyright

PROLOGUE

AN UNWANTED VISITOR

If anyone had peeked through my window, they would have thought it was just a normal slumber party, a festive night that involved popcorn, manicures, and six gorgeous girls from the most exclusive clique at Hollier High giving each other makeovers, sharing juicy gossip, and plotting their next prank for the Lying Game. My iPhone had dozens of photos of past sleepovers that looked exactly like it: a shot of my best friend, Madeline, holding up a picture of a model with fringe bangs and asking if the look would flatter her heart-shaped face; one of my other besties, Charlotte, sucking in her cheeks to apply the new shade of blush she’d bought at Sephora; one of my adoptive sister, Laurel, snickering at a D-list celeb in Us Weekly; and plenty of photos of me, Sutton Mercer, looking like the glamorous, powerful “It girl” I was.

But on this particular night, something was different … and five out of the six girls didn’t even know it. The girl my best friends were laughing with, the girl they thought was me … wasn’t. Because I was dead. My BFFs were talking to my long-lost twin, Emma, who’d taken my place.

I’d died a month ago and was now perched somewhere between the land of the living and the great beyond, watching my life continue, but with Emma as the star. Everywhere she went, I went, like we were still sharing the same womb. Bizarre, right? I didn’t think the afterlife would be like this either.

That night, I watched as my twin sister sat among my friends. Her legs were curled beneath her on the plush white sofa in the exact same way I used to sit. Her heavy-lidded eyes sparkled with my favorite silver MAC shadow. She even laughed the same way I did—loud, staccato, and a bit sarcastic. Over the past month she had perfected my mannerisms, answered to my name, and worn my clothes, all with the aim of being me until my murderer was exposed.

The worst part? I didn’t even remember who killed me. There