The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,63

off the table, sending a few crayons to the floor. As Nisha walked down the tennis aisle, Emma noticed that tiny specks of red fake blood from last week’s prank still covered the walls, lockers, and floor. Nisha stood squarely on top of one patch as she pinned her own name tag—drawn out of interlocking tennis rackets—on her locker door.

Emma bit her lip. “I’m sorry about what we did last week.”

Nisha moved calmly to the next locker and hung up Bethany Howard’s name tag. “Whatever,” she said airily.

“You didn’t deserve it,” Emma went on. She wanted to add that perhaps she didn’t deserve Nisha sticking her with a child-sized tennis uniform last week, but maybe that was pushing it.

Nisha ripped off a new piece of masking tape, then whipped around to face Emma again. Her eyes were wild. “Your stupid fake blood ruined my favorite tennis fleece.” She pointed hard at Emma’s chest. “It was my mom’s fleece. I had to throw it away because of you.”

Emma took a step away, flattening someone’s mouth guard with her shoe. But as Nisha stood there, seething, Emma realized there wasn’t just anger in her voice. There was pain.

With her shoulders hunched and her mouth puckered, Nisha looked small and young. Emma wondered how Nisha’s mom had died. It was the kind of question Old Emma would have asked. So many foster kids had lost parents. And even though she could never be sure what had become of Becky, sometimes Emma felt as though she was one of those kids. Sometimes, although it made her feel guilty to admit it even to herself, she wished Becky had died, because that would have meant she hadn’t chosen to leave Emma.

I felt my own guilty pang, for all that I obviously had in my life but seemed to have taken for granted. There had been loss all around, but death hadn’t seemed like something that could touch a girl like me. How wrong I was.

Sighing, Emma picked up Sutton’s drab name tag and taped it to her outer locker door. It looked pathetic next to the other bright, cheery name tags on either side. After a moment, she pulled the handle and looked at the contents of Sutton’s tennis locker again. The shiny varsity jacket hung from a hook. An empty bottle of Propel water lay crumpled at the bottom. There was a balled-up pair of gym socks on the upper shelf, crusted over with sweat. Emma wished she could tell Nisha she’d lost her mom, too.

Nisha ripped off more tape and silently hung up more signs. Emma went to shut the locker, but then she paused. Something bulged in the front pocket of the varsity jacket. After a moment, she reached in and pulled out a large folded paper napkin. On the inside was a note written in sloppy, boyish handwriting: Hi Laurel! And then there was a drawing of a smiley face with googly drunk eyes and a lolling tongue holding a frothy mug of beer. It was signed Thayer.

“What’s that?”

Emma whirled around. Nisha stood right beside her, her Altoid breath icy on Emma’s neck. Emma moved to fold up the napkin before Nisha could see it, but Nisha’s eyes had already narrowed, reading the words. “So you steal your sister’s mail, too?”

Emma blinked hard. “I . . .”

Nisha shook her finger at Emma. “I heard Laurel was ready to kill you for what you did.”

“Kill me?” Emma repeated. She thought of the picture of Laurel wearing Sutton’s necklace on Madeline’s iPhone.

Nisha watched her carefully. A tiny sparkle stuck to her cheek glinted in the overhead light. “Don’t play dumb, Sutton. You knew Laurel had a thing for him.”

Emma blinked. But before she could say anything more, Nisha spun on her heel and walked back to the office, leaving a trail of red glitter in her wake.

And leaving Emma and me reeling, desperate to know more.

Chapter 24

DOESN’T EVERY GIRL THINK HER SISTER WANTS TO KILL HER?

On Thursday, after yet another terrible tennis practice, Emma sat on Sutton’s bed with a notebook and pencil on her lap. Top story, she wrote. Sister Tries to Track Down Twin’s Murderer. Too Intense for Words.

She dropped the pencil on the mattress and shut her eyes. She’d hoped writing this out like a news headline might put it in perspective, make it seem more normal. Nothing about this was normal though. Instead she wrote another list about Sutton’s friends and the potential motives each of them had to