True Lies: A Lying Game Novella
Sara Shepard
1
BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY
It’s a bright Saturday morning in June, and I’m lounging in my terry-cloth yoga pants in my family’s large kitchen. On the table sits a carafe of coffee, just-baked lemon-poppy muffins, and a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice from our orange tree in the front yard. Out the window, the Arizona sky is a postcard-perfect robin’s-egg blue, and a hummingbird flits to the feeder hanging over the back patio. It would be an idyllic, peaceful moment—if it wasn’t for my little sister, Laurel, being such a pain.
“Pleeeeease, Sutton?” Laurel flutters her long eyelashes at me. Her voice is grating. “You told me I could ride with you to the Vegas’. I’m failing Spanish, and Thayer is my only hope! You promised!”
I pour myself a glass of juice. “I never promised anything like that.”
“Yes, you did.” Laurel pouts. “You’re going over there anyway to see Mads. What’s the big deal?”
I stare at Laurel, taking in her long blonde hair, big blue eyes, and pink, pouty lips. We couldn’t look more different—I have dark hair and am tall and thin compared to her short, curvy frame. Then again, I’m adopted, while she’s our parents’ biological daughter. We’re not even in the same gene pool.
Laurel’s bottom lip trembles like she’s about to cry.
“You’re being overdramatic,” I snap.
“So are you,” Laurel shoots back, giving me a pointed look.
I stand up from the table and walk over to the fridge. I don’t need anything from it, but I want to hide my surprised expression. Something in Laurel’s voice puts me on high alert. Does she know?
It’s true that I’m going over to see my best friend, Madeline Vega, soon—she and I have plans to give each other mani-pedis. And yeah, it normally wouldn’t be a big deal to bring Laurel along so she could hang out with her best friend, Thayer, who is also Madeline’s little brother. And it’s annoying that I sometimes feel like Laurel’s personal chauffeur, but whatever.
The thing is, I just don’t want to take Laurel with me today. I don’t want my little sister staring at me the whole ride over. I don’t want her asking questions, getting in my business. I don’t want her guessing at what’s wrong. And I definitely, definitely don’t want to hear about “Thayer this, Thayer that.”
Like I said, Thayer’s her best friend. Their relationship is totally public—it’s Laurel-and-Thayer, bound at the hip. Everyone always asks if they’re dating, and even though the answer is no, it’s obvious Laurel has it bad for him. Thayer gave her this gold Kate Spade charm bracelet for her birthday, and she’s constantly touching it, staring at it, making sure it’s still on her wrist—and making sure that everyone knows it’s from him.
But to me, Thayer is something very different: my secret boyfriend. Or, at least, I hope he still is.
Laurel smirks. “I heard about your fight with Thayer yesterday, you know,” she says. “Everyone did. Not that I’m surprised or anything that you bit Thayer’s head off for no reason at all. That’s kind of your MO. Sutton Mercer, Queen Bee-yotch.”
I glare at my adoptive sister. Once upon a time, we were really close. I’m talking identical twins close—we’d sleep in the same bed every night to stay safe from monsters, wear the same outfits when the family went out to dinner, and spend hours making up synchronized swimming routines in the backyard pool. But then something happened. I became me, maybe, and Laurel became Laurel. And now we rarely speak.
“Watch who you call a bitch, Laurel,” I say evenly, my voice taut with warning.
Laurel places her hands on her hips. “Like you being a bitch is a huge secret?” She narrows her eyes. “Why were you so mean to Thayer, anyway? What did he ever do to you?”
I fiddle with my favorite locket around my neck, trying to remain impassive. A lot, I think.
Thayer and I have been secretly together since last summer. It’s hard to keep up a secret relationship, though, even more difficult than maintaining one everyone knows about.
But just because we’re covert boyfriend-and-girlfriend doesn’t mean the rules of a relationship don’t apply. So when Thayer started slacking off on texting me back, I got annoyed. I would have to wait whole class periods sometimes for a reply—and two days ago, Thayer didn’t respond to a text for six whole hours, going dark for a whole chunk of time after school. I am Sutton Mercer, resident queen bee, and no one, especially not the boy I love, gets to treat me like an afterthought.