Two Truths and a Lie (20 page)

Or maybe
, I thought,
they were tiptoeing around me to make sure I didn’t play a Lying Game prank on them
.

After watching a few more matches, Emma headed to the locker room. Coach Maggie caught Emma’s attention from the next court over and raised her fingers in a sympathetic wave. She tapped the base of her chin and mouthed
Keep your head up
.

The locker room was cool and smelled like freshly scoured tile. The brightly colored food-pyramid poster had come unpinned on one side and hung lopsided. A gaggle of girls in bathing suits pushed through the swinging doors that led into the locker room from the pool. The thick stench of chlorine filled the air as they made their way to the showers.

Emma turned in to a row of blue-gray lockers and found Laurel had made it there first. She had already changed out of her tennis gear into snug-fitting sweat shorts and a white tee and was sitting cross-legged on the long wooden bench, her back turned. Her iPhone was poised at her ear, and she was saying something in a hushed voice. It sounded like
If she’s truly loyal, she’ll go along with it.

“Excuse me,” she interrupted, resting Sutton’s racket against the bench.

Laurel jumped an inch and dropped her phone. “Oh. Hey.” Her face turned bright red, and Emma realized with a jolt that Laurel must have been talking about her. But what had the words meant?

Emma twirled the combination lock to Sutton’s sports locker between her fingers. The door popped open with a
clank
. She stuffed Sutton’s sneakers into the locker and checked her reflection in the small magnetic mirror.

“Nice effort today,” Laurel said sarcastically. “I guess you can’t win them all, huh?”

“Whatever,” Emma shot back. She was too tired to get into a bitchy fight with Laurel right now.

“Seriously, though,” Laurel said. “When was the last time you lost to me or Nisha? No offense, Sutton, but Clara was playing well. It was
you
who wasn’t.”

Nerves jumped in Emma’s stomach. Talk about an understatement. She hadn’t been playing well since she’d taken over Sutton’s life. “I guess I’m just off my game lately,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Laurel adjusted the strap of her gold sandal and rose from the bench. “I’ll say.” She gave Emma a knowing look. “Maybe someone’s just distracted because she has to prank her secret boyfriend.”

Emma bit her lip and stared into Sutton’s locker.

“Lili texted me. She set up the website our fake poet is going to post Ethan’s work to,” Laurel announced.

“She did?” Emma asked weakly.

“Yep! But you can still call it off. You know what you have to do to make that happen!” Laurel trilled. Then she jingled her car keys. “I’m taking Drake to the groomer’s at six. Don’t let Mom start dinner without me.” She turned and waltzed from the locker room.

Emma listened as the door slammed, then let out a sigh. Slowly, she kicked off her tennis sneakers and slid on Sutton’s espadrilles. A figure sidled up beside her, and when Emma turned, she saw Clara standing at the end of the aisle, an apologetic smile on her face.

“Is it okay if I grab my stuff?” she asked.

“Of course,” Emma said, laughing.

Clara scuttled to her locker. Emma glanced inside, noting how precisely her extra T-shirts were folded, and how she kept her deodorant, shampoo, and body wash in a line at the bottom. Then, her breath caught in her chest. The metal bottom of Clara’s locker was a full two inches lower than Sutton’s.

Clara noticed her looking and flinched. “Oh, God. I usually keep my locker much neater than this.”

Emma stared at her. Did Clara think she was going to punish her or something? “Don’t be silly. I was actually admiring how organized it was.”

“Really?” Clara’s eyes lit up. And then she bit her lip nervously. “Hey, Sutton, I heard there was going to be a top-secret party this Friday. Maybe at an abandoned house or something?”

“That’s right,” Emma said. Madeline had told her the details about the party, saying that it was in a house that had been foreclosed upon months ago. She took in Clara’s eager expression, then stepped forward. “Do you want to come? I can text you the details.”

“Really?” Clara looked like she was going to keel over with delight. “That would be amazing!”

Clara thanked Emma at least six more times before she finished up, grabbed her stuff, and disappeared. Emma looked around the locker room. It was full of kids on the tennis and swim teams. There was no way she could investigate Sutton’s locker right now. She’d have to wait in a quiet corner until the school emptied out … and then make her move.

By seven, the school was completely silent. The lights flickered off, shrouding Emma in darkness where she sat outside the library. A few teachers passed by on the way to their cars, but no one asked why she was there. Finally, she made her way back down the hallway and reentered the girls’ locker room. The door shut behind her, leaving her blind in the pitch-black darkness. The smell of bleach barely masked the dull stench of sweaty gym clothes. Water dripped in the showers, and a sighlike sound echoed in the air.

Emma groped for the light switch, and ugly fluorescent light filled the locker room. She made her way to Sutton’s locker, her fingers trembling as she turned the lock. She emptied out sneakers, pink-trimmed tennis socks, a box of Band-Aids, and spray-on sunscreen, tossing them all onto the bench. She stuck her fingers into the corner of the locker and pried open the base, flinching at the metal scraping noise that reverberated through the empty room.

Just below where the locker bottom used to be was a narrow, dirty space. Nestled among dust bunnies and rusted bobby pins was a long, thin silver lockbox. Heart pounding, Emma rifled through her wallet and found the small key she’d uncovered in Sutton’s room. Slowly, she inserted it into the lock.

It fit.

Emma turned the key and opened the box. Inside was a mess of papers. She pulled out the paper on top and looked at the tight, neat handwriting. It was a letter, signed with Charlotte’s name at the bottom.
I’m so sorry about everything, Sutton,
Charlotte wrote. She’d underlined
everything
three times.
Not only about Garrett, but about how unsupportive I’ve been while you’re having a hard time with you-know-who.

I stared at the note. What did it mean? What kind of hard time was I having, and with whom? A moment slipped through my mind as I remembered Charlotte and me standing outside Hollier with bags slung over our shoulders, hunching toward each other and speaking in whispers.
She knows, Sutton, she does
, Charlotte whispered.
She’s not a fool.
And then she added,
You need to think about where your loyalties lie
. I tried hard to hold onto the memory for longer, but it slipped away faster than it came.

Emma refolded Charlotte’s message and dug deeper into the box. There was a list from Gabby and Lili of reasons why they should be allowed in the Lying Game, most having to do with their “awesome style and flair for drama.” Next was a German test; all of the answers were filled in and it read
TEACHER’S COPY
in the top right corner. Emma dropped it as though it were on fire, paranoid Frau Fenstermacher might barge into the locker room and catch her red-handed.

The dripping noise from the shower slowed to a trickle. A vent clicked on, and a cough echoed somewhere in the distance. Emma shook off her nerves and kept digging through the notes. She flipped through an old detention slip, a pop quiz with a fat red
F
on it, and then she came across a dog-eared note written in a slanted, boyish scrawl:

Dear Sutton, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be this way with you—this angry. It’s like something inside me is making me. But I’m worried that unless things with us change, I’m going to snap. —T

A chill ran down Emma’s spine. This was from Thayer. It had to be.

She didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but the letter sounded like a threat and showed just how unstable Thayer was. A lump formed in Emma’s throat as she reread Thayer’s note. She was tired of wondering and guessing. There was only one way to know exactly what the hell was going on.

She had to see Thayer.

18

The lockup was connected to the police station, though the entrance to the jail was through a separate door, with a different set of guards. Emma hesitated in front of the steel gate, taking heaving breaths. Finally, an overweight, bald guard in a navy uniform and carrying a paperback book strutted up to the door and peered at her. “Help you?” he asked, jingling a set of long, silver keys on his belt. “Visiting hours are almost over,” he continued gruffly.

Emma checked the Cartier watch she’d found in Sutton’s jewelry box. 7:42 P.M. “I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said, forcing her face into the sweetest smile she could muster.

The guard glowered at her. Emma got a glimpse of his book. The cover showed an overly muscled man with a sword strapped to his back, kissing a lithe blonde woman. When Emma was little, she’d read Harlequin romances like that—they were usually the only types of books on her foster mothers’ shelves. For a while, she’d pretended that a brunette dressed as a pirate on the cover of
Shipwrecked and Heartbroken
was Becky.

Finally, the guard buzzed her in. He pulled out a clipboard with a sign-in sheet attached. Emma tried to keep her hand steady as she signed
SUTTON MERCER
under the column marked
VISITOR
and
THAYER VEGA
under
INMATE
. She knew what she was doing was risky, but she had found out as much as she was going to on her own. Now she needed to hear it from Thayer. And face-to-face in a jail, where they’d be separated by bulletproof glass, was about as safe as this conversation was going to get.

The guard glanced at the name Emma had written, then nodded. “Come with me.” He led her through a heavy steel door and down a long hallway.

A second guard, this one wearing a matching navy uniform with
STANBRIDGE
printed on a nameplate on his burly chest, waited for Emma in a small, square room separated in the middle by a sheet of thick glass. Emma was happy to see it wasn’t Quinlan—she didn’t feel like dealing with him today. “You’ll sit here,” Stanbridge said, gesturing to a cubicle that faced the glass and was lined up evenly with a cubicle on the other side.

Emma sat on a hard, orange, plastic chair. The two wooden panels that squared her off must have been for privacy, not that Emma needed it in the empty room. Graffiti splashed across the panels in colored marker and ink:
CP LUVS SN. HEARTS 4 EVER
. Dates as far back as 5/4/82 were carved into the wood.

A door swung open on the other side of the glass, and Emma flinched, her heart leaping to her throat. There, sweeping through the door, escorted by a pudgy guard with a bowl cut, was Thayer. His skin looked pale and taut against his bones. When he saw Emma, he stopped short. His mouth tightened at the edges. For a moment, Emma felt sure he’d turn back and retreat through the door. But then the guard put a hand between Thayer’s shoulder blades and gave him a small shove toward her.

Thayer reluctantly stepped forward and settled in the seat opposite Emma. When he picked up the phone receiver on the opposite side of the glass, the orange sleeve of his jumpsuit fell back to reveal a tattoo Emma hadn’t noticed at the precinct. An eagle emblem was inked on the underside of his wrist with the initials
SPH
printed in tiny letters beneath it. Was this the strange tattoo Madeline had spoken about?