The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because it’s the truth. I’m not judging you for what you told Vivian that night. In fact, I wish I’d said some of it myself. She definitely had it coming.”

  I stand, feeling shockingly unbalanced. I look to the bottle still gripped in Becca’s hand. Only a third of the whiskey is left. I have no idea how much of that is my doing.

  “Just stay away from me for the rest of the summer.” I start to walk away, trying hard to stay upright as I call over my shoulder, “And as for what I said to Vivian that night, it wasn’t what it sounded like.”

  Only it was. Most of it. All that Becca’s missing is context.

  What she actually overheard that night.

  Why it happened.

  And how it was so much worse than she could ever imagine.

  FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

  “Where’s Viv?” I asked Natalie, who merely shrugged in response.

  Allison did the same. “I don’t know.”

  “She was just here.”

  “And now she’s not,” Natalie said. “She probably went back to the cabin.”

  But Vivian wasn’t in Dogwood, either, which we discovered when we returned a few minutes later.

  “I’m going to look for her,” I announced.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found,” Natalie said as she scratched at a new round of mosquito bites.

  I went anyway, heading to the latrine, which was the only logical place I thought she could be. When I tried the door, I found it locked. Strange. Especially at that late hour. I took a walk around the side of the building, pulled along by curiosity. When I reached the gap in the planks, I heard the sound of running water coming from inside.

  The shower.

  Humming just beneath it was another noise.

  Moaning.

  I should have left. I knew it even then. I should have simply turned around and gone back to Dogwood. Yet I couldn’t resist taking a peek. That was something else Vivian had taught me. When you get an opportunity to look, you’re a fool not to take it.

  I leaned toward the gap. I looked.

  What I saw was Vivian. Facing the shower wall, her palms flat against it, breasts pressing into the wood. Theo stood behind her. Hands over hers. Hips thrusting. Face buried against her neck and muffling his grunts.

  The sight of the two of them, doing something I’d only heard whispered about, cleaved my heart in two. It hurt so much I could hear it breaking. A sick, cracking sound. Like wood shattered by an ax.

  I wanted to run away, afraid that Vivian and Theo would be able to hear it, too. But when I turned around, there was Casey, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips.

  “Emma?” Smoke pushed from her mouth with each syllable. “Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head, even though tears had already started to leak from my eyes. The movement set them free, flinging them away from my face.

  “You’re upset,” Casey said.

  “I’m not,” I lied. “I just—I need to be alone.”

  I slipped past her, running not to the cabin but to the lake, where I stood so close that water lapped at my sneakers. Then I cried. I had no idea for how long. I just wept and wept, the tears falling directly from my eyes into the water, mixing with Lake Midnight.

  * * *

  —

  After crying so much that my tears ran dry, I returned to Dogwood, finding Vivian, Natalie, and Allison all there. They sat in a circle on the floor, smack in the middle of a game of Two Truths and a Lie. In Vivian’s hand was the flask she had told me about. Its existence truly wasn’t a lie. Now she took a slow drink from it, as if to prove how foolish I had been to doubt her.

  “There you are,” she said, holding out the flask. “Want a swig?”

  I stared at her damp ponytail, her pinkened skin, her stupid locket. And at that moment I despised her more than I had despised anyone in my life. I could feel the hatred boiling under my skin. It burned.

  “No,” I said.

  Allison continued with the turn I had interrupted. Her choices were, as usual, either self-aggrandizing or stupid. “One: I met Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Two: I haven’t consumed bread in a year. Three: I think Madonna’s version of ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ is better than Patti LuPone’s.”

  “The second one,” Vivian said, taking another hit of the flask. “Not that I care.”

  Allison flashed a chorus-girl smile, trying not to act hurt. “Correct. I had pancakes this morning, and my mother made me French toast the morning I left for camp.”

  “My turn,” I announced. “One: My name is Emma Davis. Two: I am spending the summer at Camp Nightingale.”

  I paused, ready for the lie.

  “Three: I didn’t just see Vivian and Theo fucking in the latrine showers.”

  Natalie slapped a hand over her gaping mouth. Allison shrieked, “Oh my God, Viv! Is that true?”

  Vivian remained calm, looking at me with a dark glint in her eyes. “Clearly that upsets you.”

  I turned away, unable to endure the hardness of her stare, and said nothing.

  Vivian kept talking. “I’m the one who should be upset by this situation. Knowing that you were spying on me. Watching me have sex like some pervert. Is that what you are, Emma? A pervert?”

  Her calmness was what ultimately got under my skin. The slow way she spoke. So deliberate, accented with just the right amount of disdain. I was sure she did it on purpose, lighting the fuse that would eventually make me explode.

  I gave her what she wanted.

  “You knew I liked him!” I screamed, the words raging forth, unstoppable. “You knew and couldn’t stand the thought of having someone pay more attention to me than to you. So you fucked him. Because you could.”

  “Theo?” Vivian laughed. A single short, disbelieving burst. It was the cruelest sound I’d ever heard. “You actually think Theo is interested in you? Jesus, Em, you’re just a baby.”

  “That’s still better than being a bitch like you.”

  “I’m a bitch, but you’re delusional. Truly fucking delusional.”

  Had any tears been left in my body, I’m certain I would have started crying on the spot. But I’d used them all up. All I could do was push past her and crawl into bed. I laid on my side, my back turned to them, knees pulled to my chest. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to ignore the horrible hollow feeling in my chest.

  The three of them didn’t say anything else after that. They went to the latrine to do their gossiping, sparing me the humiliation of having to listen. I fell asleep not long after they left, my brain and body deciding together that unconsciousness was the best remedy for my misery.

  When I woke, it was the middle of the night. The creak of the floorboard was what roused me. The sound jolted me awake and propelled me upright. Light from the full moon outside slanted through the window in a gray-white beam. Each girl passed through it, shimmering a moment on their way out the door.

  First Allison.

  Then Natalie.

  And finally Vivian, who froze when she saw me awake and watching.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Vivian smiled, although no amusement could be found in that slight upturn of her lips. Instead, I sensed sadness, regret, the hint of an apology.

  “You’re too young for this, Em,” she said.

  She raised an index finger and pressed it to her lips. Shushing me. Conspiring with me. Requesting my silence.

  I refused. I needed to have the last word.

  Only after it was uttered, its sour echo lingering in the air, did Vivian leave the cabin, closing the door behind her, vanishing forever.

  26

  I’m drunk by the time I’m again walking among the cabins. Or, more accurately, stumbling. With each step, the mulch path se
ems to shift under my feet. I overcompensate by stomping, trying to pin it into place, which makes me lose my balance more often than not. The end result is dizziness. Or maybe that’s just from the whiskey.

  I try to sober up as I stumble along. Years of observing my mother has taught me a few tricks, and I utilize them all. I slap my cheeks. I shake my arms and take deep breaths. I widen my eyes, pretending there are invisible toothpicks holding up the lids.

  Rather than head straight to Dogwood, I keep walking, pulled subconsciously in another direction. Past the cabins. To the latrine. But I don’t go inside. Instead, I lean against it, momentarily lost. I close my eyes and wonder why I’ve come here in the first place.

  I open them only when I feel a nearby presence, alarmingly close and getting closer. On the edge of my vision, I see someone round the corner of the latrine. A shape. Dark and swift. My body tenses. I almost scream, somehow managing to stop it when the shape comes into focus.

  Casey.

  Checking to see who’s there while sneaking a cigarette like a high school sophomore.

  “You startled me,” she says before a deep drag and a languid puff. “I thought you were Mindy.”

  I say nothing.

  Casey drops the cigarette, stubs it out. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, stifling a giggle even though my talk with Becca has left me feeling unbearably sad. “Just fine.”

  “My God, are you drunk?”

  “I’m not,” I say, sounding just like my mother, the words slurred into one. Imnot.

  Casey shakes her head, part horrified, part amused. “You better not let Mindy see you like this. She’ll totally freak out.”

  She leaves. I stay, roaming the perimeter of the building, an index finger sliding along the cedar shingles. Then I see the crack. That gap between planks now stuffed with clay. And I remember why I’m here—I’m retracing my steps. Going to the same spot I went after Vivian disappeared from the campfire. Fifteen years later, I can still see her and Theo together in the shower stall. I can still feel the heartache that caused. A muted memory pain.

  I also feel something else. A shiver of awareness jumping along the skin of my arms, the back of my neck.

  I look up, expecting to see Casey again. Or, worse, Mindy.

  Instead, I see Vivian.

  Not all of her. Just a glimpse as she rounds the corner of the latrine. A spray of blond hair. A slip of white dress scraping the cedar wall. Before disappearing completely, she turns and peers at me from around the edge of the building. I see her smooth forehead, her dark eyes, her tiny nose. It’s the same Vivian I remember from camp. The same one who later haunted me.

  I instinctively reach for my bracelet, finding instead only a patch of skin where it should have been wound around my wrist.

  It’s not there.

  I check my left arm, just to be sure. It’s bare. That bit of string keeping the bracelet together had given way. Now it’s lying somewhere on the grounds of Camp Nightingale.

  Which means it could be anywhere.

  Which means it’s gone.

  I flick my gaze to the corner of the latrine. Vivian is still there, peering at me.

  I’m not going crazy, I think. I’m not.

  I rub the skin of my left wrist, as if that will somehow work the same magic as the bracelet. It doesn’t help. Vivian remains where she’s at. Staring. Not speaking. Yet I keep rubbing, the friction heating my flesh.

  I’m not going crazy.

  I want to tell her that she’s not real, that she has no power over me, that I’m stronger than everyone realizes. But I can’t. Not with my bracelet God knows where and Vivian right there and fear shooting like a bottle rocket up my spine.

  So I run.

  I’m not going crazy.

  Away from the latrine.

  I’m not going crazy.

  Back to Dogwood.

  I’m not.

  My run is really an uneasy combination of swaying, tripping, and lurching that ultimately lands me at the cabin door. I fling it open, push inside, slam it shut. I collapse against the door, breathless and frightened and sad about the lost bracelet.

  Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda sit on the floor, hunched over a book. My presence makes them look up in surprise. Miranda slams the book shut and tries to slide it under my bunk. But she’s too slow, the gesture too obvious. I can clearly see what they were reading.

  Vivian’s diary.

  “So all of you know,” I say, still out of breath from my awkward trip.

  It’s not a question. The guilt burning in their eyes already tells me that they do.

  “We googled you,” Sasha says, a finger pointed Miranda’s way. “It was her idea.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda says. “You were acting so weird the past two days that we had to find out why.”

  “It’s okay. Really, it’s fine. I’m glad you know. You deserve to be aware of what happened in this cabin.”

  Exhaustion, whiskey, and sadness get the best of me, and I find myself listing to the side. Like a sailor on a rocking ship. Or my mother on Christmas Eve. I try to right myself, fail, plop down onto the lid of my hickory trunk.

  “You probably have questions,” I say.

  Sasha’s the first to ask one. Of course. Insatiably curious Sasha.

  “What were they like?”

  “Like the three of you but also very, very different.”

  “Where did they go?” Krystal asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Yet I would have gone with them. It’s one of the few things I’m certain of. That, despite Vivian’s hurtful betrayal with Theo, I still wanted her approval. And had she asked, I would have willingly followed, marching behind them into the darkness.

  “But that’s not the whole story,” I say. “There’s more. Things no one but me knows.”

  Seeing Vivian again has messed with my emotions. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to confess. Instead, I say, “Two Truths and a Lie. Let’s play.”

  I slip off the trunk, joining them. It’s a sudden, ungainly slump that makes the three of them recoil when I hit the floor. Even Miranda, who I thought was the bravest of the group.

  “One: I have been to the Louvre. Twice. Two: Fifteen years ago, three of my friends left this cabin. No one saw them again.”

  I pause, hesitant to speak aloud something I’ve avoided saying for fifteen years. But no matter how much I want to stay silent, guilt compels me to keep talking.

  “Three: Right before they left, I said something. Something I regret. Something that’s haunted me ever since.”

  I hope you never come back.

  The memory of that moment arrives without warning. It feels like a sharpened sword swooping toward me, slicing me open, exposing my cold heart.

  “I told them I hoped they’d never come back,” I say. “Right to Vivian’s face. It was the last thing I ever said to her.”

  Tears burn the corners of my eyes—grief and guilt bubbling out of me.

  “That doesn’t mean what happened to them is your fault,” Miranda says. “Those were words, Emma. You didn’t make them disappear.”

  Sasha nods. “It’s not your fault they didn’t come back.”

  I stare at the floor, avoiding their sympathy. I don’t deserve it. Not when there’s still more to confess. Still more I’ve kept hidden from everyone.

  “But they did come back.” A tear slips out, rolls down my cheek. “Later that night. Only they couldn’t get back into the cabin.”

  “Why?” Miranda asks.

  I know I should stop. I’ve already said too much. But there’s no turning back now. I’m tired of omitting things, which is practically the same as lying. I want to speak the truth. Maybe that’s what might finally heal me.

  “Because I locked the doo
r behind them.”

  Miranda sucks in air. A muted gasp. Trying to hide her shock.

  “You locked them out?”

  I nod, another tear falling. It traces the path of the first, deviating only when it reaches my mouth. I taste it on my lips. Salty. Bitter.

  “And I refused to let them back in. Even after they knocked. And jiggled the doorknob. And pleaded with me to let them in.”

  I look to the cabin door, picturing it the way it appeared that night. Pale in the darkness, dusted with moonlight, doorknob rattling back and forth. I hear the sharp rapping on the wood and someone calling my name on the other side.

  Emma.

  It was Vivian.

  Come on, Em. Let me in.

  I shrank into my bottom bunk, squeezing myself into the corner. I pulled the covers to my chin and huddled beneath them, trying to will away the sound coming from the other side of the door.

  Emma, please.

  I slid under the covers, lost in the darkness within, staying there until the knocking, the rattling, Vivian herself faded away.

  “I could have let them in,” I say. “I should have. But I didn’t. Because I was young and stupid and angry. But if I had let them in, all three would still be here. And I wouldn’t be carrying around this awful feeling that I killed them.”

  Two more tears follow the designated path. I wipe them away with the back of my hand.

  “I paint them. All three of them. Every painting I’ve finished for years has included them. Only no one knows they’re there. I cover them up. And I don’t know why. I can’t help myself. But I can’t keep on painting them. It’s crazy. I’m crazy. But now I think that if I can somehow find out what happened, then maybe I’ll be able to stop painting them. Which means that maybe I’ve finally forgiven myself.”

  I stop talking and look up from the floor. Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda stare at me, silent and motionless. They look at me the same way children eye a stranger. Curious and skittish.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not feeling well. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  I stand, woozy, swaying like a storm-battered tree. The girls slide out of my way and start to climb to their feet. I gesture for them to stay where they are.