The Lying Game #5: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die by Sara Shepard

Author:Sara Shepard [Shepard, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Issues, Girls & Women, Juvenile Fiction, Dating & Sex, Mysteries & Detective Stories
ISBN: 9780062128218
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2013-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

19

MOMMIE DEAREST

The woman’s smile broadens as she reaches out her hand to help me to my feet. “Hello, Sutton. I’m your mother. Becky,” she singsongs again. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

I stare at her outstretched palm. Something tells me not to take it. I try to get up on my own, but I stumble again, my shirt snagging on a branch behind me. I immediately curse my decision to come back here to this pitch-black, end-of-the-earth place. Why didn’t I go to Nisha’s, or call a cab to take me home?

I sneak a peek at the woman who claims to be my mother and take in her tangled hair, her glowing eyes, her jittery mouth. My stomach tightens the way it does when Thayer and I watch horror movies. The air crackles with tension.

“It’s okay,” Becky croons softly, kneeling down to me. Sticks and leaves cling to her torn clothes, as if she’s been wandering in the desert for days. Then I see a shallow gash across her forehead and a smear of blood on her cheek.

“What happened to you?” I ask, pointing. My voice is pitched too high, like a scared little girl’s.

Becky’s hand flies to her wound. “Oh. Just an accident.” She giggles cagily. “A little stumble.” But it doesn’t look like a cut from a stumble to me. It looks like the type of gash a steering wheel might make if one’s head were to bash into it after ramming into a seventeen-year-old boy.

Down in the subdivision, the thumping party music stops abruptly. It’s suddenly so silent I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the quick and panicked sound of my breathing. The woman in front of me shuffles a little closer. “Sutton,” she whispers, and reaches out an arm to stroke my cheek. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful.”

I want to jerk away, but I feel paralyzed. Her hands are cold, sandpapery. I can smell her sour breath. “You’re so beautiful,” she says again, the woman who thinks she’s my mother. But she isn’t. She can’t be. My mother is someone else, someone beautiful and soft and tragic. Not this dirty mountain woman, this freak. For whatever reason, my father—or whoever he is—lied to me. Maybe he just wanted to mess with my mind.

Finally, my muscles cooperate, and I pull away. “I—I have to go,” I say, climbing to my feet. “My ride’s waiting.”

Becky chuckles. “You don’t have a ride.” She’s on her feet in an instant. She’s quicker than I would have expected. “I saw your grandfather drive away.”

I blink. “You’ve been watching me?”

She nods. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been watching you for years.” Her voice is soothing, as if she’s singing a lullaby, but her words are twisted. “I watched you when you were learning to swim, when you were a little girl. Wearing Mickey Mouse water wings for the longest time. I saw when you dyed your hair blond in junior high. I was at the regional tennis meet last year—I saw you play.

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