The Lying Game (7 page)

My
house, not that I could recall much of it. The creak of the porch swing I used to sit on and read magazines. The smell of the lavender room spray my mom drenched the place with. I could distinctly remember the sound of our doorbell, two high-pitched, tweet-like dings, and that the front door would sometimes stick a bit before opening. But other than that …

The foyer was cool and silent. Long shadows dripped down the wall, and the tall wooden grandfather clock ticked in the corner. The floorboards creaked beneath Emma’s feet as she took a tentative step onto the striped carpet runner that led straight to the staircase. She reached out to flip on a nearby light switch, then hesitated and pulled back. She kept expecting alarms to sound, a cage to drop over her head, and people to jump out and shout, “Intruder!”

Grasping the banister, Emma tiptoed up the stairs in the darkness. Maybe Sutton was upstairs. Maybe she just fell asleep, and this was all a big misunderstanding. This night could be salvaged. She could still have the fairy-tale reunion she’d imagined.

A brown wicker hamper stuffed with dirty towels sat just outside a white-tiled bathroom at the top of the landing. Two night-lights glowed near the baseboard, casting yellowish columns of light up the wall. Dog tags jingled from behind a closed door at the end of the hall.

Emma turned and gazed at a bedroom door. Pictures of supermodels on a Parisian catwalk and James Blake and Andy Roddick playing at Wimbledon hung at eye level, and a pink-glitter placard that said
SUTTON
swung from the knob.
Bingo.
Emma pushed gently at the door. It gave way easily and soundlessly.

The room was fragrant with notes of mint, lily of the valley, and fabric softener. Moonlight streamed through the window and spilled across a perfectly made four-poster bed. A giraffe-print rug sat to its left, and an egg chair in the corner was strewn with T-shirts, bikini tops, and a few balled-up pairs of sports socks. On the windowsills were candles in big glass jars, blue, green, and brown wine bottles with flowers protruding from their mouths, and a bunch of empty Valrhona French chocolate wrappers. Every available surface was covered with pillows—there were at least ten on the bed, three on the chair, and even a couple of others strewn around on the floor. A long, white-wood desk held a sleeping MacBook Air laptop and a printer. A single card that said
SUTTON’S EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY BASH! FABULOUSNESS REQUIRED!
was propped up next to the mouse. A filing cabinet beneath the desk had a big pink padlock on the handle and a sticker that said
THE L GAME
. Was that like
The L Word
?

But there was one crucial thing missing, Emma thought. Sutton.

Of
course
I was missing. I gazed around the quiet room along with Emma, hoping it might spark a memory—or a clue. Was there a reason the window that faced the backyard was halfway open? Had I deliberately left a copy of
Teen Vogue
open to an article about Fashion Week in London? I couldn’t remember reading that issue, let alone why I’d stopped at that page. I couldn’t remember any of the items in this room, all the things that used to be mine.

Emma checked her phone again.
No new messages.
She wanted to look around the house, but what if she bumped into something … or someone? She reached for her phone and composed a new text to Sutton’s number:
I’M IN YOUR
BEDROOM NOW. WHEREVER YOU ARE, TEXT ME BACK TO LET ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY. I’M WORRIED.

She pressed
SEND
. A split second later, a muffled dingdong emanated from across the room, which made Emma jump. She moved in the direction of the sound, a silver clutch bag next to the computer. She unzipped it. Inside was an iPhone in a pink case and a blue Kate Spade wallet. Emma pulled out the phone and gasped. The text she’d just written glowed on the screen.

She immediately began to scroll through the day’s texts. There was the last one Emma had sent. Above that, at 8:20, was a text from Laurel Mercer, Sutton’s sister:
THANKS FOR NOTHING, BITCH.

Emma dropped the phone and backed away from the desk, as if it was suddenly covered in toxic mold.
I can’t look through her phone,
she scolded herself silently. Sutton might walk in any minute and see. That wouldn’t be the greatest way to start off the sisterly relationship.

She picked up her BlackBerry again and sent Sutton a private message on Facebook saying the same thing—maybe Sutton was just downstairs on a different computer and had forgotten her phone? Then she surveyed the rest of the room. Behind the desk was a bulletin board plastered with pictures of Sutton and her friends, the girls Emma had met just hours ago. Some of them looked recent: In a picture of Sutton, Charlotte, Madeline, and Laurel at the monkey house at the Tucson Zoo, Charlotte wore the same blue dress she’d had on at the party tonight. There was one of Sutton, Madeline, Laurel, and a familiar dark-haired boy standing at the edge of a canyon waterfall. Laurel and the guy splashed each other while Sutton and Madeline struck aloof, blasé poses. Other photos looked much older, maybe from junior high. There was a picture of the trio of friends standing over a bowl of cookie dough in someone’s kitchen, trying to shove goopy spoons in one another’s faces. Madeline wore a ballet leotard and was, er,
flatter
than she was now. Charlotte had braces and rounder cheeks. Emma stared at Sutton; it was her identical face, just four years younger.

Tiptoeing to Sutton’s closet in the corner, Emma wrapped her hand around the knob. Was snooping in Sutton’s closet just as bad as looking through her texts? Deciding it wasn’t, she pulled open the door to reveal a big square room filled with wooden hangers and organized shelves. Sighing wistfully, she reached out and touched all the dresses, blouses, blazers, sweaters, and skirts, pressing some of the soft fabrics to her cheek.

A couple of games were piled in the back of the closet: Clue and Scattergories and Monopoly. On top of that was a box that said
JUNIOR BIRDWATCHER’S KIT
. It included a bird book and a pair of binoculars. A tag on the front read:
TO SUTTON, LOVE DAD
. The box looked unopened; Emma figured Sutton hadn’t much liked the gift. She touched a file folder stuffed with what looked like old tests and papers. A spelling quiz from fifth grade had an A-plus on top of it, but a ninth-grade book report on
Fahrenheit 451
had earned a C, accompanied by a note in red pen that said
Clearly did not read the book.
Then she noticed a paper titled “My Family History.”
I don’t know my real family history,
Sutton had typed.
I was adopted when I was a baby. My parents told me when I was a little girl. I’ve never met my birth mother, and I know nothing about her.

Emma felt ashamed for smiling, but she couldn’t help it.

Emma spotted a jewelry case toward the back of the closet; she opened the lid and sifted through Sutton’s chunky bracelets, delicate gold necklaces, and dangling silver earrings. She didn’t see the locket Sutton had wornin the snuff video though. Maybe she was wearing it now?

I looked down at my shimmering body. I didn’t have it on. Perhaps it was with my
real
body. My dead body. Wherever
that
was.

In the three-way mirror at the back of Sutton’s closet, Emma blinked at multiple versions of her stupefied reflection.
Where are you, Sutton?
she implored in her head.
Why did you make me come all this way and then not show up?

She exited the closet. When she sat down on Sutton’s bed, exhaustion flattened her like a bullet train. Her head throbbed. Every muscle felt like a wrung-out sponge. She leaned back on the mattress. It was as soft as a cloud, way better than the Kmart blue light specials foster families always stuck her with. She kicked off her wedges and heard them thud to the floor. She might as well wait here for Sutton. Surely she’d show up sooner or later.

Her breathing slowed. Fake news items swirled through her mind.
Girl Impersonates Sister at Party. Sister Is Kind of a Flake.
Surely tomorrow would be a better day.
Twin Sisters Finally Meet,
maybe.

Emma turned over on her side and snuggled into the Tide-scented pillow. The shapes and shadows in the big bedroom became blurrier and blurrier.

And with another few breaths, everything faded away for both of us.

“Sutton.
Sutton.”

Emma awoke to someone shaking her shoulders. She was in a bright room. Green-and-white striped curtains fluttered at the window. The ceiling was smooth and unlined. A low bureau and a large LCD-screen TV sat in the place where Clarice’s ratty dresser used to be.

Wait a minute. She wasn’t
at
Clarice’s anymore. Emma sat up.

“Sutton,” the voice said again. A blond woman hovered over her. There were tiny streaks of gray at her temples and minute lines around her eyes. She wore a blue suit, high heels, and a lot of makeup. The photo of

Sutton’s family raising slushy drinks into the air flickered in Emma’s mind. This was Sutton’s
mom.

Emma leapt out of bed, staring crazily around the room. “What time is it?” she exclaimed.

“You have exactly ten minutes to get to school.” Mrs. Mercer shoved a dress on a hanger and pair of T-strap heels at her. She paused on Emma for a moment. “I hope you didn’t walk in front of the open window like that.”

Emma looked down at herself. At some point in the night, she’d sleep-stripped off the striped dress she’d worn to the party and now wore only a bra and a pair of boy shorts. She quickly crossed her arms over her chest.

Then she stared at the wedges she’d kicked to the floor last night. They lay in the exact same spot she’d left them. Sutton’s silver clutch and pink-cased iPhone still sat on her desk. Reality snapped into nauseating focus.
Sutton didn’t come back last night,
Emma realized.
She never found me.

“Wait a minute.” Emma grabbed Mrs. Mercer’s arm. This had gone too far. Something was really wrong. “This is a mistake.”

“Of course it’s a mistake.” Mrs. Mercer rushed across the room and threw a pair of Champion mesh shorts, a racer-back tank top, sneakers, and a Wilson tennis racket into a big red tennis bag with the name
SUTTON
stitched across the side. “Didn’t you set an alarm? “ Then she pausedand smacked herself lightly on the forehead. “What am I thinking? Of course you didn’t. It’s you.”

I watched my mom as she dropped the tennis bag on the bed and zipped it up tight. Even my own mother couldn’t tell that Emma wasn’t me.

Mrs. Mercer pointed Emma toward the dress she’d laid flat on the bed. When Emma didn’t move, she sighed, yanked the dress from the hanger, and dragged it over Emma’s head.

“I can trust you to put your shoes on by yourself, can’t I?” Mrs. Mercer said tightly, holding up a shoe by its T-strap. The label said
MARC BY MARC JACOBS
. “Be down for breakfast in two minutes.”

“Wait!” Emma protested, but Mrs. Mercer had already marched out of the room and slammed the door so hard that a snapshot of Sutton, Laurel, Charlotte, and Madeline fell from the bulletin board and landed facedown on the floor.

Emma stared around the silent room in panic. She darted to the ottoman where she’d left her cell phone.
No new messages,
said the screen. She raced to Sutton’s iPhone on the desk. There was one new text since she’d last checked, but it was only from Garrett:
YOU VANISHED
LAST NIGHT! SEE YOU IN FIRST PERIOD? XX!

“This is insane,” Emma whispered. The post she’d seen on Sutton’s Facebook Wall before she left Vegas poppedinto her head.
Ever think about running away? I do.
Could Sutton have run away thinking Emma could take her place long enough for her to get a head start? She strode barefoot out of Sutton’s bedroom and down the stairs.

The downstairs hallway was decorated with huge framed family photographs: school pictures, shots from family vacations to Paris and San Diego, and a portrait of the Mercer family at what looked like a fancy wedding in Palm Springs. Emma followed the sound of the morning news and the smell of coffee to the kitchen. It was a huge room with sparkling, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a brick patio and the mountains beyond. The counters were dark, the cabinets white, and there was a bunch of pineapple paraphernalia all over the room—wooden pineapples atop the cabinets, a ceramic pineapple cylinder that held spatulas and slotted spoons, a pineapple-shaped placard near the back door that said
WELCOME!

Mrs. Mercer poured coffee at the sink. Sutton’s sister, Laurel, dissected a croissant at the kitchen table, dressed in a flowing printed top that looked identical to a shirt Emma had seen in Sutton’s closet last night. Mr. Mercer stepped in through the door, carrying plastic-wrapped copies of the
Wall Street Journal
and the
Tucson Daily Star.
Emma noticed his doctor’s coat, which said
J MERCER, ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY
. Like Mrs. Mercer, he was also a little older than most of the foster parents Emma hadknown, possibly a well-preserved fiftysomething. Emma wondered if they’d tried to have kids on their own before adopting Sutton. And what about Laurel? She had the same square jaw as Mrs. Mercer and the same round blue eyes as Mr. Mercer. Perhaps she was their biological daughter. Maybe the Mercers had finally conceived as soon as the adoption had gone through—Emma had read about that phenomenon somewhere.

Everyone looked up when Emma appeared in the doorway, including an enormous Great Dane. He rose from a striped doggie bed by the door and trotted over. He sniffed her hand, his big jowls grazing her skin.
DRAKE,
glinted a bone-shaped tag on his collar. Emma stood absolutely still. In seconds, Drake would probably start barking his head off, knowing Emma wasn’t who everyone thought she was. But then Drake snorted, turned, and trotted back to his bed.