Page 79 of The Last Time I Lied

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 ofNational 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 theair, 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.

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