Tell Me No Lies by Andrea Contos

Author:Andrea Contos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

“I don’t want to be here.” Those were the words that came from Monica’s mouth, but considering it was also stuffed with a soft pretzel and a bit of popcorn, the statement rang false.

I raised a brow in her direction, for a half second, until yet another person shouldered me out of the way en route to the bleachers. “Yes. You seem traumatized. You have cheese on your face.”

She grinned and wiped it away with one of the five hundred scratchy brown napkins she’d pulled, one at a time, from the concession stand’s dispenser. “You look weird.”

I wanted to argue, but she was right. I’d “borrowed” yet another of Sophie’s outfits—mine wouldn’t have blended well at a sporting event.

The stadium’s lights blinked on, bathing the field in a wash of white that glinted off the band’s windwoods. The bleachers rattled beneath a million footsteps, the mesh of hundreds of voices a constant white noise to fill in the moments of pause from the instruments.

The salty scent of french fries and hot dogs warred with the sweetness of cotton candy and elephant ears, all of them overlaid by the subtle current of ocean air, and my stomach rumbled.

So I stole some of Monica’s pretzel even though I declined to order any food because I said I was too focused on tracking Amber Donahue so I could surprise her at halftime.

It wasn’t the most perfect of plans, but Amber was so caught up with the festivities at school there was no time to confront her. As Monica explained it, Amber and her fellow cheerleaders would perform at the halftime show, and then she’d be milling about while we waited for the second half to start.

I never understood the draw of football games. Or any sport for that matter. I certainly understood the desire to win, and even the feeling of hard work coming to fruition. But fans, I didn’t understand them. It wasn’t their victory on the field—it belonged to those who made it happen.

But then Adam had explained it to me. How the beginning of every game felt like those moments before a final. Your body filled with the buzz of possibility, of potential. It was the thrill of discovering, through the unforgiving truth of numbers—whether at the top of a page or the scoreboard—who was truly the best.

That I understood.

I shivered, not from the chill brought by the wind, but from the knowledge that Adam was close, that the investigator may be closer. My only hope was that the crowd would shield me, blend me into any number of faces, each less distinct than the next.

I still had plenty to fear from him. There was nowhere for him to drown me here, with Birmingdale far enough inland to make that impossible. But surely there were many ways to kill a person that did not require large bodies of water. Maybe he’d crush me with one of those enormous, padded metal things the football players tackled across the field in practice. Or he’d yell that there was a fire and have me trampled under the feet of my own fellow students.

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