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

by Karen M. McManus

I almost laughed in detention on Monday when Bronwyn said nobody has two cell phones. I have three: one for people I know, one for suppliers, and one for customers. Plus extras so I can switch them out. But I wouldn’t be stupid enough to take any of them into Avery’s class.

He’s doing a decent job of pretending I wouldn’t be his worst nightmare even if I weren’t involved in a murder investigation with his daughter.

I’m disoriented, like I just got yanked into some shiny video-game version of the world where everything’s too bright and I don’t understand the rules.

His office is next to the gym and smells like twenty years’ worth of student athletes passing through. In other words, not good.

People always say that but it doesn’t feel true. About anything.

“I don’t understand you kids. So obsessed with your screens and your gossip.”

LOL

I say it like it’s a joke, and it mostly is. Unless she says yes.

You can meet my lizard.” It takes a few seconds of silence for me to realize how that might be interpreted.

That’s right. My entire family is watching Mikhail Powers Investigates together. Which is a circle of hell even Dante never imagined.

I used to think about that, sometimes, when I wondered what parts of her might still be alive.

Great. Even my unsuitable friends don’t want to hang out with me.

You can learn a lot about a person when you have his license plate and phone number. His address, for example. And his name, and where he goes to school. So if you wanted to, you could hang out in the parking lot of his school before it started and wait for his red Camaro to arrive. Theoretically. Or actually.

Bronwyn looks almost as embarrassed as she should be,

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.