The Lying Game by Sara Shepard

a real backpack to school?
—she felt a hand on her arm.
    “Are you thinking about ditching tennis?”
    Emma turned. Charlotte stood in front of a WHY DRUGS AREN’T COOL poster. She’d pulled her red hair into a high ponytail, and she’d changed into a white T-shirt, black Champion shorts, and a pair of gray Nike sneakers. A tennis bag similar to the one Sutton’s mom had packed for Emma this morning swung from her shoulder.
    Tennis.
Right.
“I was thinking about it,” Emma mumbled.
    “No, you’re not.” Charlotte looped her arm through Emma’s elbow and pulled her down the hall. “C’mon. Laurel put your gear in the team locker room after you attempted your jailbreak this morning. Maggie will kill us if we’re late.”
    Emma gazed at Charlotte as they walked, surprised she was on the tennis team, too. Physique-wise, Charlotte looked more like a wrestler. Then Emma bit her lip guiltily.
Was that mean?
    Not any meaner than I was, according to the one memory that had resurfaced. And I had a feeling, somehow, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
    Emma and Charlotte strode down the yearbook hallway, which was decorated with snapshots of students from previous years. Emma spotted a photo of Sutton laughing with her friends in what looked like the front courtyard at school. Next to that photo was a candid of Laurel and a familiar dark-haired guy on the gym bleachers, engaged in a thumb war. Emma did a double take. It was the same guy she’d seen on Sutton’s photo bulletin board the night before … and on the Missing poster in the police station this morning: Thayer, Madeline’s brother. Emmawondered what had happened to him. Where and why he’d run away. If, like Sutton, he hadn’t run away at all. “So how was your day?” Charlotte’s ponytail bounced against her back.
    “Um, all right.” Emma darted around two girls walking in the other direction, both carrying
My Fair Lady
scripts. “All my teachers acted like they wanted to have my head, though.”
    Charlotte sniffed. “Like that’s a surprise?”
    Emma ran her fingers along the scratchy strap on Sutton’s tennis bag.
Yes,
she wished she could admit. It wasn’t every day a teacher called her a Devil Child, or made her sit in the very front row so she could “keep an eye on her,” or glared at her and said, “All the desks in this room are bolted down, Sutton. Just so you know.”
Uh,
okay.
    But Charlotte had already moved on to whine about her gym teacher and something she called the Stink Vent. “And Mrs. Grady in history totally has it in for me,” she moaned. “She called me to her desk after the bell rang and went, ‘You’re a smart girl, Charlotte. Don’t hang around with that crowd I always see you with. Make something of your life!” She rolled her eyes.
    They turned down the biology wing. A human skeleton stood outside one of the classrooms, which made Emma shudder.
Sutton could look like that,
she thought.
    Then Charlotte nudged Emma’s side. “So enough about me. How are you?” She squinted at Emma’s chest. “Where’s your necklace?”
    Emma felt her bare neck. “I don’t know.”
    Charlotte raised her eyebrows.
“That’s
a surprise.” She hiked her tennis bag higher on her shoulder. “So how are things with you and Garrett?”
    “Uh, he’s fine,” Emma answered slowly. She thought of the happy picture of Sutton and Garrett on Facebook. It was all she had to go by.
    Charlotte shot her a lukewarm, closemouthed smile. “I heard he’s getting you something pretty special for your birthday.”
    “Oh really?”
    “Mm-hmm. Lucky.” Charlotte’s voice was strained. Emma sneaked a wary peek at her, but Charlotte was busy fiddling with a strap on her tennis bag.
    A moment later, they entered the echoing locker room, which was abuzz with the sounds of slamming locker doors and cheerleaders warming up with a couple of
Be aggressives
and hand claps. Emma quickly changed into the shorts and tank top Sutton’s mom had