The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,533

since we got here. Still, traces of him permeate the Vegas’ media room: a battered copy of Spin sitting on the sleek, mid-century modern coffee table, a row of slightly tarnished soccer trophies locked in a tall glass cabinet, a key chain tossed in a decorative bowl with the Hollier High logo. Thayer is all around me.

Too bad he wants nothing to do with me now.

Then Madeline shoots up. “Charlotte, be careful with the Diet Coke! If you spill on the leather sofa, my dad is going to kill me.” Something in her tone suggests that it’s not an exaggeration.

“God, sorry.” Charlotte sets her glass on a coaster on the coffee table. “We shouldn’t be drinking soda, anyway—we should have champagne to celebrate the smashing success of the first Lying Game prank of the season!”

“Done and done,” Madeline says. “And maybe it’ll give us some inspiration for the back-to-school prank. As long as we’re on a roll.” Then she rises and pads to the Mad Men–style hutch that stands adjacent to the oversized flat-screen TV on the far side of the room. She slides the cabinet doors open and pokes around inside it, her bun bobbing up and down lightly as she hunts.

After a moment, she emerges, triumphantly brandishing a half-full bottle of Absolut. “Will vodka do?”

“Absolut-ly,” Charlotte trills, but I can’t even muster the energy to roll my eyes at her nerdiness.

Madeline dips into the kitchen, returning with three clean glasses stacked in the crook of her arm and a carton of orange juice tucked under her chin, somehow managing to make the awkward juggling act look graceful.

“We’ll save the champagne for after the back-to-school prank. Like a grand finale. This is just a warm-up.” She winks, heavy lashes fluttering against her alabaster cheek.

She pours three generous cocktails, vodka sloshing over the sides of the glasses, which she hastily wipes with the hem of her gray Calvin Klein ribbed tank top. She passes two of the drinks to Charlotte and me. We each take one and raise our arms, clinking glasses.

I will the corners of my mouth into the most convincing smile I can manage. My face feels stiff, like a carnival mask. “Cheers,” I mumble.

“To the Lying Game!” Madeline toasts, brimming with enthusiasm. She fixes her sparkling blue eyes on me. “Seriously, Sutton, your work was inspired. Thank you so much for putting Thayer in his place for me.” She sounds intensely sincere. Almost alarmingly so.

“Don’t mention it,” I say, waving a hand at her dismissively.

My stomach flips over just thinking about the look on Thayer’s face before he darted off.

“Honestly, you’re the master. The queen of the Lying Game,” Charlotte praises. She sounds more than a little bit awestruck, and that lump rises in the back of my throat again. I choke down a swallow of my drink, the acidic tang of the vodka burning on the way down.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, ladies,” I say, as breezily as I can. “But please—the queen is tired from a hard night’s work. Can we just watch the movie and not talk?”

“Yes! Of course,” Madeline agrees. She scrambles for the Titanic Blu-ray she pulled from her overstocked media shelf and slides it into the DVD player. The machine blinks and whirs as it powers on and clicks into gear.

“Just as long as you don’t expect us to feed you grapes and fan you,” Charlotte grumbles, smiling good-naturedly. She takes another healthy gulp of her drink, sighing contentedly.

“You know you would if I asked you to,” I quip.

I’m acting like my old self, but my heart’s not in it. In fact, I think I left it somewhere back on Nisha’s front lawn, or buried deep in the crags of Sabino Canyon. Even as the movie cues up and Leo’s boyish face fills the enormous screen, I can’t stop thinking about Thayer. The look in his eyes as his expression crumbled. The disgust on his face as he realized he’d been a Lying Game target.

And … that kiss.

More than anything, that kiss.

It was incredible; toe-curling, earth-shattering, monumental. It was like no other kiss I’d experienced in my life. And I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to kissing boys.

Why couldn’t I date a younger guy? What would really be so bad about that? I weigh the idea in my mind, considering all of the angles.

Okay, so maybe my friends would make fun of me. Maybe definitely, fine. But probably not for long, right? They’d tease me in the beginning, of