Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

The Lying Game #2:
NEVER HAVE I EVER

A LYING GAME NOVEL

BY

Sara Shepard

Epigraph

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

OSCAR WILDE

Contents

Prologue
Life After Death

Its the little things you miss when you die. The feel of sliding into bed when youre exhausted, the clean scent in the Arizona air after a storm during monsoon season, the flutter in your stomach when you see your crush walking down the hall. My killer took all those things away from me just before my eighteenth birthday.

And because of fateand a threat from my murderermy long-lost twin sister, Emma Paxton, stepped into my life.

When I died two weeks ago, I popped into Emmas world, a world that was about as different from mine as you could get. From that very first moment I saw what Emma saw, went where she went... and watched. I watched as Emma reached out to me on Facebook and as someone posing as me told her to visit. I watched as Emma traveled to Tucson, cautiously hopeful about our reunion. I watched as my friends tackled Emma, thinking she was me, and brought her to a party. I stood beside her when she got the note that said I was dead, warning her that if she didnt continue to pretend to be me, that if she told anyone who she really was, shed be dead, too.

I watch today as Emma pulls on my favorite thin white tee and swipes my shimmery NARS blush onto her high cheekbones. I can say nothing as she slides into the skinny jeans I used to live in on weekends and sorts through my cherrywood jewelry box for my favorite silver locket, the one that sends rainbow prisms around the room when it catches the light. And I sit silently by as Emma sends a text confirming brunch plans with my best friends, Charlotte and Madeline, even though I wouldve worded it differently. Still, Emma has the basics of me down coldalmost no one has noticed she isnt me.

Emma puts my phone down, an uneasy look on her face. Where are you, Sutton? she asks aloud in a nervous whisper, as if she knows Im close.

I wish I could send her a message from beyond the grave: Im here. And this is how I died. Only when I died, my memory died, too. I have glimpses here and there of who I used to be, but only a few solid, fleshed-out moments have bobbed to the surface. My death is as much a mystery to me as it is to Emma. All I know in my heart, in my bones , is that someone killed me. And that same someone is watching Emma as closely as I am.

Does this scare me? Yes. But through Emma, Ive been given a chance to uncover what happened in those final moments before I took my last breath. And the more I discover about who I was and the secrets I kept, the more I realize how much danger surrounds my long-lost twin.

My enemies are everywhere. And sometimes, those we least suspect turn out to be our biggest threats.

Chapter 1
Charmed Life

This way to the terrace. A tanned, button-nosed hostess grabbed four leather-bound menus and marched through the dining room of La Paloma Country Club in Tucson, Arizona. Emma Paxton, Madeline Vega, Laurel Mercer, and Charlotte Chamberlain followed her, snaking around tables full of men in tan blazers and cowboy hats, women in tennis whites, and children munching on organic turkey sausage.

Emma dropped into a booth on the stucco veranda, staring at the tattoo on the back of the hostesss neck as she glided awaya Chinese character that probably meant something lame, like faith or harmony . The terrace had a view of the Catalina Mountains, and every cactus and boulder was in sharp relief in the late-morning sun. A few feet away, golfers stood around a tee, contemplating their drives or checking their BlackBerrys. Before Emma had arrived in Tucson and assumed her twin sisters life, the closest shed gotten to setting foot in a country club was working as an attendant at a mini-golf course outside Las Vegas.

I, however, knew this place like the back of my hand. As I sat, invisible, next to my twin, tethered to her always like a balloon tied to a little kids wrist, I felt a tingle of memory. The last time I ate at this restaurant, my parents had brought me to celebrate getting straight Bs on my report carda rarity for me. A whiff of peppers and eggs brought back my favorite mealhuevos rancheros, made with the best chorizo in all of Tucson. What I wouldnt give for just one bite.

Four tomato juices with lime wedges, Madeline chirped to the waitress whod appeared. When the waitress sauntered off, Madeline straightened her spine into her signature ballet-diva posture, whipped her obsidian black hair over her shoulder, and produced a silver flask from her fringed purse. Liquid sloshed as she shook the container back and forth. We can make Bloody Marys, she said with a wink.

Charlotte tucked a piece of red-gold hair behind her freckled ear and grinned.

A Bloody Mary might knock me out. Laurel pinched her thumb and forefinger on the bridge of her sun-kissed nose. Im still exhausted from last night.

The party was definitely a success. Charlotte inspected her reflection in the back of a spoon. What do you think, Sutton? Did we properly usher you into adulthood?

Like shed know. Madeline nudged Emma. You werent even there half the time.

Emma swallowed. She still wasnt used to the taunting banter between Suttons friends, the kind that grew out of years of friendship. Just sixteen and a half days ago, shed been living as a foster child in Las Vegas, suffering silently with Travis, her vile foster brother, and Clarice, her celeb-obsessed foster mom. But then she discovered an online strangulation video of a girl who looked exactly like her, down to the oval shape of her face, high cheekbones, and blue-green eyes that changed colors depending on the light. After contacting Sutton, the mystery doppelganger, and discovering that they were long-lost identical twins, Emma took a road trip to Tucson, giddy and excited to meet her.

Fast-forward to the very next day when Emma learned that Sutton had been murderedand that Emma would be next unless she took Suttons place. Even though she felt anxious about living a lie, even though her skin prickled every time someone called her Sutton, Emma didnt see any other option. But it didnt mean she was going to sit silently by and let her sisters body languish somewhere. She had to find out who killed Suttonno matter what. Not only was it justice for her twin, but it was the only way for Emma to get her own life back and stand a chance of keeping her new family.

The waitress returned with four glasses of tomato juice, and as soon as her back was turned, Madeline unscrewed the cap of the stainless-steel flask and dumped clear liquid into each cup. Emma ran her tongue over her teeth, her journalism-obsessed mind producing a headline: Underage Girls Caught Boozing at Local Country Club . Suttons friends... well, they lived on the edge. In more ways than one.

Well, Sutton? Madeline slid a glass of spiked tomato juice toward Emma. Are you going to explain why you bailed on your own birthday party?

Charlotte leaned in. Or if you told us, would you have to kill us?

Emma flinched at the word kill . Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel were her number-one suspects in Suttons murder. Someone had tried to strangle Emma with Suttons locket during a sleepover at Charlottes house last week, and whoever had done it was either capable of hacking the houses many alarms... or already inside. And last night, at Suttons birthday party, Emma had discovered that her friends were behind Suttons strangulation video. It was only a prank; Suttons friends were part of a secret club called the Lying Game that prided itself on scaring the crap out of its members and the other kids at school. But what if Suttons friends had meant to take things much, much further? Theyd been interrupted by Ethan Landry, Emmas only real friend in Tucson, but maybe theyd finished Sutton off later.