The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,365

he is—lied to me. Maybe he just wanted to mess with my mind.

Finally, my muscles cooperate, and I pull away. “I—I have to go,” I say, climbing to my feet. “My ride’s waiting.”

Becky chuckles. “You don’t have a ride.” She’s on her feet in an instant. She’s quicker than I would have expected. “I saw your grandfather drive away.”

I blink. “You’ve been watching me?”

She nods. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been watching you for years.” Her voice is soothing, as if she’s singing a lullaby, but her words are twisted. “I watched you when you were learning to swim, when you were a little girl. Wearing Mickey Mouse water wings for the longest time. I saw when you dyed your hair blond in junior high. I was at the regional tennis meet last year—I saw you play. You’re amazing. And I saw you run off with that boy tonight—Thayer? Is that his name?”

The world feels unsteady under my feet. She knows everything. All this time, this weirdo has been a face in the crowd, an unwelcome guest in my life. White anger surges through my whole body. “You had no right,” I hiss.

Becky recoils as if I’ve shoved her. “Of course I do. I gave you life.”

There’s something so matter-of-fact about the way she says it, that in that moment, I realize she’s telling me the truth. I let the idea wash over me. It just makes me even sicker. “That gives you even less of a right,” I growl. “You watched me instead of caring for me. And now you just show up randomly, in the desert, in the dark, alone, and drop this on me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Becky squares her shoulders defensively. “This isn’t how I planned it,” she pleads.

But I’m riled up. I want to hurt her. I want my words to burn. I’m furious at everyone who lied to me—my dad, my mom, and this woman most of all. “You’re no mother,” I spit, the words dropping into the silence with a sizzle, like acid. “You’re a liar, and I hate you.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispers.

“You’re damn right I don’t understand, and I don’t want to understand,” I say. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” she screams, grabbing my arm.

I freeze. No adult has ever screamed at me like that, from the depths of her soul. Now her chest is heaving. She clamps down hard on my wrist and brings her face close. “They only told me there was going to be one of you,” she growls, her mouth within biting distance. “Not two. You weren’t supposed to be here, Sutton. You weren’t supposed to come.”

I stare at her. “Who told you?”

But she doesn’t answer. “I was so afraid I’d break you. I break everything I touch.” She’s launched back into that chanting, lullaby voice. “But I guess it’s too late. You’re already broken.”

“Get off me,” I protest, straining against her, trying to push away. But she’s so much stronger than she looks. Her wiry arms tighten around me until I can’t breathe. “Stop it!” I scream. I can smell the sweat on her body and feel the hard bones under her skin. My gaze searches around me. I see the dark, open mouth of the canyon below.

She hugs me tight, but it feels as if I’m being embraced by a snake, squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and then swallowed whole. I wriggle some more. “Let. Go!”

But Becky doesn’t let up. “My little girl,” she says close to my ear. I open my mouth wide, trying to gulp some air, but all I get is a mouthful of T-shirt. As her arms clench tighter and tighter, I hear her words once more: You weren’t supposed to be here, Sutton. It’s too late. You’re already broken.

My mother is here to kill me, I think in terror.

And then the memory evaporates into darkness.

20

THE ESCAPE

Becky writhed in her hospital bed, her eyes rolling back and her limbs flailing. She let out a keening groan. Emma staggered backward into the hallway. She felt something wet on her arm. Her wrist was dotted with half-moons of blood where Becky’s nails had broken skin. Her cheeks were wet, too—not with blood, but with tears. Something had broken inside of her: The love, the hope, had withered away. Maybe Becky had killed Sutton. It didn’t seem so difficult anymore, to conceive of her mother as her sister’s killer.

I trembled from the memory I’d just recovered,