The Lying Game by Sara Shepard Page A

packed, then followed Charlotte through a rabbit warren of hallways to join the rest of the tennis team. All the girls lay on the floor with their butts in the air doing piriformis stretches. Emma noticed Laurel in the second row; when Laurel saw them, she quickly looked away. A girl at the very front of the room glowered at Emma.
Nisha.
    “Sutton?” another voice called. A twentysomething woman marching up the side of the room smiled in Emma’s direction. She had a strawberry-blond ponytail and wore a blue polo shirt with the words HOLLIER TENNIS COACH and the name MAGGIE stitched over one boob. “Go on up! Co-captains in the front!”
    Co-captain?
Emma almost burst out laughing. Most of her tennis experience was from playing Wii Tennis at Alex’s house. She glanced at Charlotte helplessly, but Charlotte just shrugged.
    “Chop-chop!” Coach Maggie said, making a rolling motion with her hands. Emma shifted her gaze to Nisha at the front once more. Nisha wore a heather-gray T-shirt that said HOLLIER VARSITY TENNIS CAPTAIN . Emma winced. The universe was definitely plotting against her.
    She slowly wove through the maze of butt-up girls until she reached the front of the room. She gave Nisha a co-captainly, let’s-be-friends smile, but Nisha shot her back a disgusted glare.
    Maggie blew her whistle, and the rest of the team sat up. “As you know, it’s tradition that on the first day of practice every year, we wear our Hollier uniforms as a show of team spirit.” A couple of girls let out
whoo
s and whistles. “Nisha Banerjee and Sutton Mercer, our two new co-captains, will do the honors of passing out your uniforms.”
    Maggie gestured to a stuffed blue plastic tub in front of Nisha. Emma peered inside and saw carefully folded tennis dresses in neat, even piles. She tried to pull one out, but Nisha slapped her away. ”
I’ve
got it.”
    Nisha turned to the team and began calling out names. One by one each girl marched up to the front of the room. Nisha handed them their uniforms, like a principal handing graduates their high school diplomas. After every girl had received an outfit, and after Maggie stepped into the coaches’ office, Nisha pulled the final dress from the bin and handed it to Emma. “And here’s yours, Sutton.”
    Emma unfolded the dress and held it in front of her. The sleeves were about an inch long. The shirt didn’t cover her stomach. Either someone had really shrunk it in the dryer, or it had been specially designed for a Smurf. Several girls snickered.
    Heat rose to Emma’s cheeks. “Um … do we have something a little bigger?”
    Nisha tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “I already assigned the rest, Sutton. That’s what you get for not helping me do uniforms yesterday afternoon!”
    “But … I wasn’t
here
yesterday!” Emma protested. Technically, she’d been on the smelly bus to Tucson.
    Nisha let out a sharp sniff. “So I suppose that wassomeone else who looked
exactly like you
at my party then?” She pointed at the Mini-Me uniform. “Hurry up and get dressed, co-captain! You want to show your team spirit, don’t you?” With a roll of her hips, she sauntered out of the gym toward the tennis courts, several younger players in her wake. The giggling grew louder and louder, bouncing off the gym’s high walls.
    Emma balled up the uniform in her hands. No one had ever been so blatantly mean to her before. Nisha really had it out for Sutton.
    I was thinking the same thing, too. And it actually kind of made me nervous.
    Charlotte approached Emma, her mouth a tight line. “We can’t let her do this to you,” she hissed in Emma’s ear. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
    Emma stared at her blankly.
    “Let’s get her,” Charlotte finished. “Soon.”
    Get her?
An uncertain shudder rumbled deep within Emma’s core. But before she could say a word, Charlotte pulled her toward the doorway, leading her into the punishing Arizona sunshine, and leaving us both to