“Can I help you?” Emma said acidly, suddenly on the defensive. She wasn’t ready for another baffling Celeste confrontation.
“I just wish I could help you,” Celeste breathed. Madeline and Charlotte exchanged glances, arching their eyebrows. “Laugh all you will,” Celeste said to them, “but Sutton’s aura is in dire need of healing energy. Somewhere along the way, maybe in a past life, her spirit has been fractured. That’s why it’s so hard for you to be emotionally generous,” she said to Emma in a sickly sweet tone.
“I hear you’re getting pretty emotionally generous with Sutton’s ex,” Charlotte spat. “Hope your birthday’s coming up. He gives pretty good presents.”
Madeline and Laurel both snorted with laughter.
Celeste just smiled knowingly, her gaze still on Emma. “Secrets will out, Sutton Mercer. You’ve been warned.” With that, she drifted past them in a wave of patchouli.
The words hit Emma like a brick. Secrets were the only thing keeping her alive.
“What’s her problem?” Charlotte whispered.
“Yeah, did you hurt her in a past life or something, Sutton?” Madeline joked.
“I don’t know,” Emma said, feeling uneasy. “But she definitely has it in for me.”
They stared at Celeste, who’d found a spot at a table full of boys, all of whom were now surreptitiously ogling her. One of them, a junior who wore his hair in an emo shag over his left eye, leaned over to inspect the bowl she was painting, using the opportunity to look down her shirt.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Madeline said, her voice dropping low. “I think we’re overdue for a Lying Game prank. And I think our next victim may have just fallen right in our lap.”
The other three girls all leaned imperceptibly toward Madeline, eyes flashing in breathless excitement. But Emma still felt torn. The Lying Game’s pranks sometimes made her uncomfortable—she’d been on the receiving end of popular kids’ cruelty too many times back in Nevada. She couldn’t shake a feeling of guilt whenever she participated.
“This school’s cafeteria is totally disappointing,” Celeste was saying to an athletic boy across the room. “In Taos, my school only sold organic produce, and all of the entrées were farm-to-table.”
“Cool,” the boy said. As if he really cared.
“And there are so many snack machines in this place,” Celeste went on. “It’s disgusting. You know those things are full of toxins—plus, they make you overweight.” Her gaze slid to Beth Franklin, a sweet but slightly heavy girl who was munching on a bag of vending machine pretzels at the next table. Beth turned purple and shoved the pretzels back into her bag.
Then again, Emma wasn’t sure she would feel guilty about this prank. Maybe Celeste deserved it.
I was thinking the same thing.
“So what should we do?” asked Laurel. “Write some love letters from ‘Garrett’ and send her on an embarrassing fake date? Like, with a mime or a clown or something?”
“We’ve done stuff like that already.” Charlotte shook her head. “We need something special for this girl.”
They all fell silent, brainstorming. A low, cool voice came from behind Emma. “Hold a séance.”
They all turned at once to see Nisha, who hadn’t even looked up from the clay cat she was painting. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail that spilled down over one shoulder. As she carefully lined whiskers onto the cat’s face, she continued. “Fake a bunch of ghosts. You know she believes in all that crap. She’ll totally fall for it.”
The girls exchanged a glance. Emma could tell they were impressed. Finally, Madeline spoke up, an indignant huff in her voice. “We don’t accept suggestions from people outside the Lying Game.”
Nisha shrugged. “You don’t usually have such good ideas.”
“Have you forgotten about the locker room murder?” Madeline shot back, referring to a prank they’d played on Nisha several months earlier, creating a mock crime scene at Nisha’s locker. “You were ready to pee your pants.”
Nisha opened her mouth to argue, but Emma jumped in before she could. “Nisha’s right,” she said. “A fake séance would be an amazing trick.” It also seemed more harmless than some of the other Lying Game ideas, which had included things like nearly choking Sutton into unconsciousness or parking Sutton’s Volvo on the train tracks.
Emma looked around at the others. “C’mon, guys, this idea rocks. And Nisha, since you thought of it, do you want to help?”
Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel whipped their heads around to stare at her. “Are you crazy?” hissed Madeline, leaning close. “She’s not an official member.”
“Gabby and Lili will be so pissed,” Charlotte added. “It took them years to get in.”
“Since when do we make decisions based on what Gabby and Lili think?” Emma asked.