The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  “Childbirth,” Lottie replies. “It was Franny’s husband who drowned.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “The drowning? That was before my time. What I heard is that Franny and Douglas went for a late-night swim together like they did every day. Nothing strange about that. Only on that particular night, Franny came back alone. She was hysterical. Carrying on about how Douglas went under and never came back up. That she searched and searched but couldn’t find him. They all went out in boats to look for him. His body wasn’t found until the next morning. Washed up on shore. The poor man. This place certainly has seen its fair share of tragedy.”

  Lottie moves on to another black-and-white one showing a young girl leaning against a tree, a pair of binoculars around her neck. Clearly Franny. Below it is another photo of her, also taken at the lake, rendered in the garish colors of Kodachrome. She’s a few years older in this one, standing on the Lodge’s deck, her back turned to the water. Another girl stands beside her, smiling.

  “There she is,” Lottie says. “My mother.”

  I take a step closer to the photo, noticing the similarities between the woman posing with Franny and the one standing at my side. Same pale skin. Same Bette Davis eyebrows. Same heart-shaped faced that tapers to a pointed chin.

  “Your mother knew Franny?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lottie says. “They grew up together. My grandmother was the personal secretary to Franny’s mother. Before that, my great-grandfather was Buchanan Harris’s right-hand man. In fact, he helped create Lake Midnight. When Franny turned eighteen, my mother became her secretary. When she passed away, Franny offered the job to me.”

  “Is this what you wanted to do?”

  I’m aware of how rude the question sounds. Like I’m judging Lottie. In truth, I’m judging Franny for continuing the Harris tradition of using generations of the same family to make their own lives easier.

  “Not exactly,” Lottie says with unyielding tact. “I was going to be an actress. Which meant I was a waitress. When my mother died and Franny offered me the job, I almost turned it down. But then I came to my senses. I was in my thirties, barely scraping by. And the Harris-Whites have been so kind to me. I even think of them as family. I grew up with them. I’ve spent more time here at Lake Midnight than Theo and Chet combined. So I accepted Franny’s offer and have been with them ever since.”

  There’s so much more I want to ask. If she’s happy doing the same thing her mother did. If the family treats her well. And, most important, if she knows why Franny keeps photos of asylum patients in her desk.

  “I think I see Casey in this one,” Lottie says farther down the wall, at a spot of pictures of Camp Nightingale during its prime. Groups of girls posing on the tennis court and lined up at the archery range, bows pulled back. “Right here. With Theo.”

  She points to a photo of the two of them swimming in the lake. Theo stands waist-deep in the water, the telltale lifeguard whistle around his neck. Cradled in his arms—in the exact way he cradled me during my swimming lesson—is Casey. She’s slimmer in the picture, with a happy, youthful glow. I suspect it was taken when she was still a camper here.

  Just above that picture is one of two girls in polo shirts. The sun is in their eyes, making them squint. The photographer’s shadow stretches into the bottom of the frame, like an unnoticed ghost swooping down on them.

  One of the girls in the photograph is Vivian.

  The other is Rebecca Schoenfeld.

  The realization stops my heart cold. Just for a second or so. In that pulseless moment, I stare at the two of them and their easy familiarity. Wide, unforced smiles. Skinny arms tossed over shoulders. Keds touching.

  This isn’t a photo of two girls who barely know each other.

  It’s a picture of friends.

  “I should go,” I say as I quickly gather my phone and charger. “You won’t tell Franny about this, will you?”

  Lottie shakes her head. “Some things Franny’s better off not knowing.”

  She also starts to leave, skirting around the desk and giving me roughly two seconds to lift my phone and snap a picture of Vivian and Becca’s photo. I then hurry out of the room, exiting the Lodge the same the way I came. At the front door, I literally bump into Theo, Chet, and Mindy. I bounce between the brothers. First Theo, then Chet, who grabs my arm to steady me.

  “Whoa there,” he says.

  “Sorry,” I say, holding up my phone. “I needed a charge.”

  I push past them into the heart of camp. The morning lessons have ended, and girls drift among their cabins, the mess hall, and the arts and crafts building. When I reach Dogwood, I find the girls inside, indulging in some reading time. A comic book for Krystal and an Agatha Christie paperback for Miranda. Sasha flips through a battered copy of National Geographic.

  “Where did you go?” Krystal says. “You never came back.”

  “Sorry. I got tied up with something.”

  I kneel in front of my hickory trunk and run my hands over the lid, feeling the ridges of all the names that had been carved before mine.

  “What are you doing?” Miranda asks.

  “Looking for something.”

  “What?” Sasha says.

  I lean to my right, my fingers tripping down the side of the trunk. That’s where I find it. Five tiny letters scratched into the hickory, a mere inch from the floor.

  becca

  “A liar,” I say.

  FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

  Campfire. Fourth of July.

  There was a charge in the air that night. A combination of heat, freedom, and the holiday. The campfire seemed higher, hotter. The girls surrounding it were louder and, I noticed, happier. Even my group of girls.

  Whatever had caused the earlier drama in Dogwood was resolved by dinner. Vivian, Natalie, and Allison laughed and joked through the entire meal. Vivian said nothing when Natalie had an extra helping. Allison, astonishingly, cleaned her plate. I simply felt relieved that Franny was right. The storm had passed. Now they surrounded me beside the fire, basking in the orange warmth of the leaping flames.

  “We’re sorry about earlier,” Vivian told me. “It was nothing.”

  “Nothing,” echoed Allison.

  “Nothing at all,” added Natalie.

  I nodded, not because I believed them but because I didn’t care. All that mattered was that they were with me now, at the end of my lonely day.

  “You’re best friends,” I said. “I understand.”

  The counselors handed out sparklers, which we lowered into the campfire until they ignited into starbursts. Sizzling. White-hot.

  Allison climbed to her feet and sliced the sparkler through the air, forming letters, spelling her name. Vivian did the same, the letters massive, hovering there in streaks of sparks.

  A distant boom drew our attention to the sky, where golden tendrils of fireworks trickled to nothingness. More replaced them, painting the night red then yellow then green. The fireworks promised in the nearby town, only we at Camp Nightingale could also see them. Allison stood on one of the benches to improve her view. I stayed on the ground, pleasantly surprised when Vivian embraced me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Awesome, right?”

  Although it seemed as though she was talking about the fireworks, I knew she was actually referring to something else. Us. This place. This moment.

  “I want you to always remember this,” she said as another bloom of color streaked through the sky. “Promise me you will.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You’ve got to promise, Em. Promise me you’ll never forget.”

  “I promise.”

  “That’s my little sister.”

  She kissed the top of my head and let me go. I kept my eyes on the sky, enthralled by the colors, how they shimmered and blended before fading away. I tried coun
ting the colors, losing track as explosion after explosion erupted in the distance. The big finish. All the colors commingling until the sky grew so bright I was forced to squint.

  Then it was over. The colors vanished, replaced by black sky and pinpoint stars.

  “So pretty,” I said, turning around to see if Vivian agreed.

  But there was no one behind me. Just a campfire slowly reducing itself to glowing embers.

  Vivian was gone.

  25

  I skip the campfire again, using tiredness as an excuse. It’s not entirely a lie. All this being watched and sneaking around have left me exhausted. So I slip into comfortable clothes—a T-shirt and a pair of plaid boxers worn as shorts—and sprawl out in my bottom bunk. I tell the girls to go have fun without me. When they leave Dogwood, I check my newly charged phone for an email from Marc regarding his research assignment. All I get is a text reading, Mr. Library is still adorbs! Why did I ever break up with him? xoxo

  I text back, Stay focused.

  A few minutes later, I’m back outside and heading to another cabin. Golden Oak. I wait by the door until a trio of campers scurry out, on their way to the campfire. Becca is the last to emerge. Her body goes rigid when she sees me. Already she knows something is amiss.

  “Don’t wait up. I’m right behind you,” she tells her campers before turning to me and, in a far less friendly voice, says, “Need something, Emma?”

  “The truth would be nice.” I hold up my phone, revealing a photo of a photo. Her and Vivian, their arms entangled, inseparable. “You feel like sharing this time?”

  Becca nods, her lips pursed, and retreats back into the cabin. When a minute passes and she doesn’t emerge, I start to think that she simply intends to ignore me. But she comes out eventually with a leather satchel slung over her shoulder.

  “Supplies,” she says. “I think we’re going to need them.”

  We cut through the cabins and head to the lake. It’s the thick of twilight, the sky tilting ever closer from day to night. A few stars spark to life overhead, and the moon sits low in the sky on the other side of the lake, still on the rise.

  Becca and I each take a seat on rocks near the water’s edge, so close our knees practically touch. She opens the satchel, removing a bottle of whiskey and a large folder. She opens the bottle and takes a deep gulp before passing it to me. I do the same, wincing at the whiskey’s sharp burn in the back of my throat. Becca takes the bottle from my hands and replaces it with the folder.

  “What’s this?”

  “Memories,” she says.

  I open the folder, and a stack of photographs spills onto my lap. “You took these?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  I sort through the photos, marveling at how talented she was even at such a young age. The pictures are in black and white. Stark. Each one a spontaneous moment caught on the sly and preserved forever. Two girls hugging in front of the campfire, silhouetted by the soft-focus flames. The bare legs of someone playing tennis, white skirt flaring, exposing pale thighs. A girl swimming in Lake Midnight, the water up to her freckled shoulders, her hair as slick as a sea lion. Allison, I realize with a jolt. She’s turned away from the camera, focused on something or someone just out of frame. Beads of water cling to her eyelashes.

  The last photograph is of Vivian, a lit sparkler in her blurred hand, spelling her name in large slashes. Becca had set the exposure so the letters could be seen. Thin white streaks hanging in midair.

  VIV

  Fourth of July. Fifteen years ago. The night they vanished.

  “My God,” I say. “This could be—”

  “The last picture ever taken of her? I think it is.”

  The realization makes me reach for the whiskey. The long gulp that follows creates a soft, numbing sensation that helps me ask, “What happened between you and Vivian? I know you stayed with them in Dogwood the year before I came to camp.”

  “The four of us have a complicated history.” Becca stops to correct herself. “Had a complicated history. Even outside of this place. We all went to school together. Which wasn’t unusual. Sometimes it felt like half our class came here in the summer.”

  “Camp Rich Bitch,” I say. “That’s what it was called at my school.”

  “Mean,” Becca says. “But accurate. Because most of them were indeed bitches. Vivian especially. She was the ruler. The queen bee. People loved her. People hated her. Vivian didn’t care as long as she was the center of attention. But I got to see a different side of her.”

  “So you were friends.”

  “We were best friends. For a time, anyway. I like to think of Vivian as my rebellious phase. We were fourteen, pissed off at the world, sick of being girls and wanting so badly to be women. Viv especially. She was perfect at finding trouble. Rich boys who’d get her anything she wanted. Beer. Weed. Fake IDs she’d use to get us into all the clubs. Then it suddenly stopped.”

  “Why?”

  “The short answer? Because Vivian wanted it to.”

  “And the long answer?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Becca says. “I think it was because she went through some fucked-up identity crisis after her sister died. She ever tell you about it?”

  “Once,” I say. “I got the sense she didn’t like to talk about it.”

  “Probably because it was such a stupid death.”

  “She drowned, right?”

  “She did.” Becca takes another swig from the bottle before pressing it into my hands. “One night in the dead of winter, Katherine—that was her name, in case Viv never told you—decided to get shit-faced and go to Central Park. The reservoir was frozen over. Katherine walked out onto it. The ice broke, she fell in, never came back up.”

  I’m struck by the memory of Vivian pretending to be drowning. Her sister had to have crossed her mind as she flailed in the water and gurgled for help. All to get a boy’s attention. What kind of person does that?

  “Katherine’s death absolutely crushed her,” Becca says. “I remember running to her apartment right after it happened. She was crazed, Emma. Wailing, pounding the walls, shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t look away. It was ugly and beautiful at the same time. I wanted to take a picture of it, just so I’d never forget. Yeah, I know that’s weird.”

  But it’s not. At least not as weird as making the same three girls continually vanish beneath layers of paint.

  “That was the beginning of the end of us,” Becca continues. “I did the best-friend thing and went to the wake and the funeral and was by her side when she came back to school. But even then I knew she was pulling away from me and being drawn to them.”

  “Them?”

  “Allison and Natalie. They were Katherine’s best friends. All three were in the same class.”

  “I always thought they were the same age as Vivian,” I say.

  “She was a year younger. Although you couldn’t tell from the way she acted.”

  Becca reaches over and takes the bottle from my lap. Choosing the particular poison she needs to get through the conversation. She takes a long gulp and swallows hard.

  “They found comfort in one another. I assume that was the appeal. Honestly, before Katherine died, Viv wanted nothing to do with them. You should have heard the way she made fun of them whenever all five of us were at her apartment. We were like warring factions, even when playing something as innocuous as Truth or Dare.”

  “Two Truths and a Lie,” I say. “That was Vivian’s game of choice.”

  “Not when we were friends,” Becca says. “I think she joined in because Katherine liked to play it. She idolized her sister. And when she died, I think she transferred those same feelings to Natalie and Allison. I wasn’t surprised when I found out we’d all be bunking here together in the summer. I had already assumed it would happen. What I wasn’t ready for was how mu
ch I’d be left out. Around them, Vivian acted like she hardly knew me. Natalie and Allison had consumed her attention. By the time camp was over, we were barely speaking to each other. It was the same way back at school. She had them, so there was no need for me. When summer came around again, I knew I wasn’t going to be bunking with them. I’m sure Vivian saw to that. I was banished from Dogwood and shuffled to the cabin next door.”

  It’s fully dark now. Night settles over us, as does a prolonged silence in which Becca and I simply pass the bottle back and forth. The whiskey’s starting to hit me hard. When I look up at the stars, they’re brighter than they should be. I hear the sound of girls coming back from the campfire. Footsteps, voices, a few peals of laughter echoing off the cabin walls.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this the other morning?” I say. “Why lie?”

  “Because I didn’t want to go into it. And I was surprised you did. I mean, Vivian treated you the same way, right?”

  I don’t answer, choosing instead to take another gulp of whiskey.

  “It wasn’t that hard of a question,” Becca says.

  Oh, but it is. It doesn’t take into account the way I had treated Vivian.

  “No,” I say. “It wasn’t the same.”

  “I think we’re past lying to each other, Em,” Becca says. “I know what happened right before the three of them disappeared. I was in the cabin next to Dogwood, remember? The windows were open. I heard every word.”

  My heart falters in my chest, skipping like a scratched record.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You painted the cabin door. And put the birds inside. And you’ve been watching me.”

  Becca jerks the bottle from my hands. I’ve been officially cut off.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Someone’s been toying with me ever since I got here,” I say. “At first, I thought it was all in my head. But it’s not. It’s really happening. And you’ve been doing it.”

  “I didn’t write on your door,” Becca replies with a huff. “I have absolutely zero reason to mess with your head.”