One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1)

by Karen M. McManus

I’ve never seen Luis so red. “Why couldn’t it have been apple day?” he mutters, and Cooper gives him a tired smile. You find out who your real friends are when stuff like this happens. Turns out I didn’t have any, but I’m glad Cooper does.

Look, I support the notion of violently disrupting schools in theory, but this kid showed a depressing lack of imagination. I mean, it was fine, I guess. It got the job done. But it was so prosaic. Haven’t we seen this a hundred times now? Kid shoots up school, shoots up self, film at eleven. Raise the stakes, for God’s sake. Do something original. A grenade, maybe. Samurai swords? Surprise me when you take out a bunch of asshole lemmings. That’s all I’m asking.

I’m not sure you could call it journalism, but Mikhail Powers Investigates definitely has an impact over the next few days. Somebody starts a Change.org petition to drop the investigation that collects almost twenty thousand signatures. The MLB and local colleges get heat about whether they discriminate against gay players. The tone of the media coverage shifts, with more questions being raised about the police’s handling of the case than about us.

Being accused of murder is turning into a monumental drag. I mean, sure, the TV coverage is interesting. And it makes me feel good that the smoke screen I put in place is working—people still have no clue who’s responsible for killing Simon.

If I wanted to go. “Nate, I’ve been waiting to go on a date with you since fifth grade,” I tell him. I like that he wonders what we’ll be like outside this weird bubble. Maybe if we’re both thinking about it, there’s a possibility we’ll figure it out.

Where I see Nate in handcuffs, being led away from his house, with the words Arrest in the Simon Kelleher Murder Case scrolling on the bottom of the screen.

“Bayview Police refused to comment, other than to say that new evidence provides probable cause to charge Nate Macauley, the only one of the Bayview Four with a criminal record, with Simon Kelleher’s murder. We’ll continue to provide updates as the story unfolds. I’m Liz Rosen, reporting for Channel Seven News.”

This investigation is turning into such a cliché, the four of us even caught Detective Wheeler eating a pile of doughnuts in the interrogation room.

Someone planted phones in our backpacks Simon was poisoned during detention Bronwyn, Nate, Cooper, Addy & Mr. Avery were in the room The car accident distracted us Jake wrote at least one Tumblr post Jake and Simon were friends once Leah hates Simon Aiden Wu hates Simon Simon had a thing for Keely Simon had a violence-loving alter ego online

Simon was depressed Janae seems depressed Janae & Simon stopped being friends?

His brother called a buddy at a repair place in Eastland and they had a red Camaro come through with fender damage a few days after Simon died. I got you the license plate and a phone number.”

Sam blows out a sigh and leans against the headrest. He’s quiet for the longest seconds of my life until he says, “It was Simon Kelleher.”

These murder club meetings are becoming a regular thing. We need a new name, though.

Bronwyn’s got all her Post-it notes on a bunch of manila folders, including the newest one: Simon paid two kids to stage a car accident. She says Sam Barron promised to call Eli and let him know. How that’ll help Nate, I have no idea.

“You like sugar, huh?” It’s a dumb thing to say. What I mean is, I have no idea how you take your coffee because this is the first time we’ve been out in public together. Kris presses his lips together, which shouldn’t be attractive but is. I feel awkward and jittery and accidentally bump his knee under the table.

“So.” Kris removes two Post-its from one of the folders. “If the killer wasn’t Cooper, or Bronwyn, or Addy, or Nate—and nobody thinks the teacher who was there could have had anything to do with it—who does that leave?” He layers one Post-it on top of the other on the wall next to the table, then sits back and looks at us with polite attentiveness.

Simon was poisoned during detention Simon was depressed

“I’m the omniscient narrator,” she says. “What?” Addy asks. “That’s what Simon said before he died. I said there wasn’t any such thing in teen movies, and he said there was in life. Then he drained his drink in one gulp.”

“So you’re saying…” Ashton stares around the table until her eyes land on Kris. “You think Simon committed suicide?” Kris nods. “But why? Why like that?”

“Simon was one of those people who thought he should be at the center of everything, but wasn’t. And he was obsessed with the idea of making some kind of huge, violent splash at school. He fantasized about it all the time on those 4chan threads. What if this was his version of a school shooting? Kill himself and take a bunch of students down with him, but in an unexpected way. Like framing them for murder.” She turns to her sister. “What did Simon say on 4chan, Maeve? Do something original. Surprise me when you take out a bunch of lemming assholes.”

“I think he regretted it at the end,” I say, the weight of the words settling heavy on my heart. “He looked like he wanted help. If he could’ve gotten medication in time, maybe a close call like that would’ve jolted him into being a different kind of guy.”

Kris shrugs and taps the colored square closest to him. “Perhaps there’s one person remaining who knows something useful.”

Janae seems depressed

When you’ve been arrested for a capital offense and you’re four months away from your eighteenth birthday, days that crawl by are your friends.

You come up with new ways to answer your lawyer’s endless questions. Yeah, I leave my locker open sometimes. No, Simon’s never been to my house. Yeah, we saw each other outside of school sometimes. The last time? Probably when I was selling him weed. Sorry, we’re not supposed to talk about that, are we?

Except. A memory surfaces from the morning of Simon’s death, so seemingly insignificant that it hadn’t crossed my mind till now: Jake pulling my backpack off my shoulder with an easy grin as we walked down the hallway together. That’s too heavy for you, baby. I’ve got it. He’d never done that before, but I didn’t question him. Why would I? And a phone that wasn’t mine got pulled from my backpack a few hours later. I’m not sure what’s worse—that Jake might be part of something so awful, that I drove him to it, or that he’s been putting on an act for weeks.

Bronwyn coached me on what to say. I’m supposed to start with small, subtle questions about where Janae’s been all week and how she’s feeling. To follow up on the thread of Simon’s depression and encourage her to tell me more. As a last resort, I can maybe talk about what Nate’s facing as the DA’s office tries to send him to an honest-to-God prison.

I don’t do any of that. Instead I step forward and hug her, cradling her scrawny body as though she’s a little kid who needs comforting. She feels like one, all weightless bones and fragile limbs. She stiffens, then slumps against me and starts to cry. “Oh my God,” she says in a thick, raspy voice. “It’s all fucked up. Everything’s so massively fucked up.”

“Simon did this to himself, didn’t he?” I ask carefully. She pulls away and buries her head in her hands, rocking back and forth.

“Simon’s manifesto,” she says with a sour twist of her mouth. “It’s supposed to be sent to the police a year from now, after all your lives are completely screwed. So everyone would know he pulled it off.” The papers tremble in my hand as I read: Here’s the first thing you need to know: I hate my life and everything in it.

So I decided to get the hell out. But not go quietly. I thought a lot about how to do this. I could buy a gun, like pretty much any asshole in America. Bar the doors one morning and take out as many Bayview lemmings as I have bullets for before turning the last one on myself. And I’d have a lot of bullets. But that’s been done to death. It doesn’t have the same impact anymore. I want to be more creative. More unique. I want my suicide to be talked about for years. I want imposters to try to imitate me. And fail, because the planning this takes is beyond your average depressed loser with a death wish. You’ve been watching it unfold for a year now. If it’s gone the way I hope, you have no clue what actually happened.

But then Jake found out something Simon didn’t want anyone to know and it just—that was the final straw.”

“Simon rigged the votes so he’d be on the junior prom court.” My hand freezes at my ear and my eyes go wide. Janae huffs out a humorless little laugh. “I know. Stupid, right? Simon was weird like that. He’d make fun of people for being lemmings, but he still wanted the same things they did. And he wanted them to look up to him. So he did it, and he was gloating about it at the pool last summer, saying how easy it was and how he’d mess with homecoming too. And Jake overheard us.”

“He laughed his head off. Simon freaked. He couldn’t stand the thought of Jake telling people, and everyone at school knowing he’d done something so pathetic. Like, he’d spent years spilling everybody’s secrets, and now he was gonna get humiliated with one of his own.” She cringes. “Can you imagine? The creator of About That getting exposed as such a wannabe? It sent him over the edge.”

And Jake was totally on board. He even came up with the idea of sending you to the nurse’s office that day for Tylenol so you’d look more guilty.”

Yeah, I guess I would. But I could do without the reminder right now. “You could’ve stopped it, Janae,” I say, my voice rising as anger starts to overtake my shock. “You should’ve told somebody what was going on.” “I couldn’t,” Janae says, hunching her shoulders. “One time when we were meeting with Simon, Jake recorded us on his phone. I was trying to talk sense into Simon, but the way Jake edited things made it sound like it was practically my idea. He said he’d give the recording to the police and pin everything on me if I didn’t help.”

don’t know how to respond. And if I keep thinking about Jake, I’m going to lose it. My mind latches on to one small piece of this messed-up puzzle that doesn’t make sense. “What about Cooper’s entry? Why would Simon write the truth and then replace it with a lie?”

Nothing else registers, even when Eli shows me news stories about Jake’s arrest, until he tells me Addy’s in the hospital with a concussion and a fractured skull. “Good news is, it’s a hairline fracture with no underlying brain injury. She’ll make a full recovery.” Addy, that airhead homecoming princess turned badass ninja investigator, in the hospital with a cracked skull because she tried to help me. Possibly only alive because of Janae, who got a busted jaw for her trouble, and Cooper, who’s suddenly some kind of superhero the media’s fawning over. I’d be happy for him if the whole thing didn’t make me sick.

I want to throw my arms around him and kiss him until he stops talking like this. But his face is closed off, as though his mind’s already a thousand miles away, waiting for his body to catch up. Like he only let me come here out of a sense of obligation. And I can’t stand it.

“I know. But you should see this.” She hands me her phone and points to a post on my timeline from Yale University: To err is human @BronwynRojas. We look forward to receiving your application.

Now things are almost exactly how I thought they’d be when I first imagined dating Evan. We make a solid couple. I have an automatic date for the spring break dance, which is nice. But I’m planning my post-Bayview life on a parallel track that has nothing to do with him. We’re an until-graduation couple, at best.

think a lot about Simon and about what the media called his “aggrieved entitlement”—the belief he was owed something he didn’t get, and everyone should pay because of it. It’s almost impossible to understand, except by that corner of my

I’m looking at a website with a bad replica of the About That logo, and a big block of text beneath it. “Pay attention, Bayview High. I’m only going to explain the rules once,”I read. “Here’s how we play Truth or Dare. I’ll send a prompt to one person only—and you can’t tell ANYONE if it’s you. Don’t spoil the element of surprise. It makes me cranky, and I’m not nearly as nice when I’m cranky. You get 24 hours to text your choice back. Pick Truth, and I’ll reveal one of your secrets. Pick Dare, and I’ll give you a challenge. Either way, we’ll have a little fun and relieve the monotony of our tedious existence.”

“Come on Bayview, you know you’ve missed this.” I scowl

Phoebe Lawton, you’re up first! Text back your choice: Should I reveal a Truth, or will you take a Dare?