The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

“‘It’s natural to be afraid. Friends of yours died.’

‘Vanished,’ I say.

‘But they are dead, Emma. You know that, right? The worst thing that could happen has already taken place.’”

Emma’s reluctance to acknowledge the girls as dead foreshadows Vivian’s return at the end of the novel. Emma holds onto a shred of doubt concerning the girls’ fate, and she turns out to be partially correct. However, her doubt has nothing to do with actual evidence, instead stemming from her own trauma. This idea of being right for the wrong reasons recurs throughout the novel and relates to its exploration of The Blurred Lines Between Truth, Lies, and Deception.

“Although he knows the basics of what took place, there’s still plenty I haven’t told Marc. Things that happened at Camp Nightingale. Things that happened afterward. The real reason I always wear the charm bracelet, the birds clinking each time I move my left arm. To admit them out loud would mean that they’re true. And I don’t want to confront that truth.

Some would say I’ve been lying to Marc. To everyone, really. But after my time at Camp Nightingale, I vowed never to lie again.

Omission. That’s my tactic. A different sin entirely.”

Although Emma might not lie outright, she isn’t honest about her past, and much of what happened when she was a teenager remains a closely held secret. This illustrates the hazy distinctions between truth and lies that appear throughout the novel. Emma also lies to herself, trying to convince herself that “omission” is superior to lying.

“What happened to Vivian, Natalie, and Allison wasn’t an accident.

I know because I’m the one who caused it.

Although their eventual fate remains a mystery, I’m certain that what happened to those girls is all my fault.”

Throughout the first part of the novel, Sager builds tension by hinting at Emma’s role in her friends’ disappearance. Her unexplained guilt sets her up as an unreliable narrator, inviting readers to suspect her when Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal go missing.

“Lake Midnight.

It’s larger than I remember. In my memory, it had become similar to the Central Park Reservoir. Something contained. Something that could be controlled. In reality, it’s a vast, sparkling presence that dominates the landscape. The trees lining its bank lean slightly toward it, branches bending over the water.”

Emma’s arrival at Camp Nightingale immediately proves her memories inaccurate. Lake Midnight is much larger than she remembered. While this might seem an inconsequential detail, it increases Emma’s unreliability by suggesting that she could also misremember more important details. It also develops the theme of trauma by showcasing fear’s role in Emma’s mistaken memories: Without her realizing it, her mind transformed the lake into something smaller and therefore less threatening.

“‘Emma Davis,’ I say. ‘You probably don’t remember me.’ It’s wishful thinking. A hope that he remembers nothing about me. But the brow over Chet’s only visible eye lifts slightly. ‘Oh, I remember you well,’ he says, not elaborating.”

Emma reintroduces herself to Chet. His response that he remembers her “well” hints at the impact that Emma’s childhood accusation had on him, foreshadowing the revelation that Chet is seeking revenge.

“Vivian was different. I’d never met anyone so unfiltered. To a shy girl like me, her attention was as warm and welcome as the sun.”

From the moment Emma meets Vivian, she is captivated by the older girl. Although she has friends at school, no one like Vivian has ever paid attention to Emma. She idolizes her in a way that allows her to overlook Vivian’s faults, including her often blatant cruelty.

“The game was Vivian’s favorite. She said you could learn more about a person from their lies than their truths. At the time, I didn’t believe her. I do now.”

For Vivian, the value of Two Truths and a Lie doesn’t lie in learning facts about someone; it’s about learning how they construct their lies. As a girl, Emma doesn’t understand the significance of this, but as her own life becomes defined by the lies she has told, she comes to understand how lies are often more consequential than truths.

“I smile, pretending that they’re right. What none of them understand is that the point of the game isn’t to fool others with a lie.

The goal is to trick them by telling the truth.”

Here, Emma plays Two Truths and a Lie with Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal. She tells them the truth about doing something “terrible” when she was 13, but they assume it is a lie. This idea of deceiving by telling the truth is one of the novel’s guiding themes, as characters often tell the truth in a way that leads others to draw incorrect conclusions.

“They made me take a lie-detector test. They made Chet do it, too. A ten-year-old kid hooked up to a polygraph. He cried for an entire week after that. And all because of what you accused me of doing.”

Although Theo generally forgives Emma for accusing him, this passage reveals some of his residual resentment. It is also another indication of the trauma that Chet experienced in the aftermath of the girls’ disappearance, foreshadowing his plan to frame Emma.

“Everything is a game, Em. Whether you know it or not. Which means that sometimes a lie is more than just a lie. Sometimes it’s the only way to win.”

Vivian says this to Emma after revealing that she lied about being unable to swim, illustrating just how deep Vivian’s propensity for lying goes. That Vivian considers life a “game ” suggests that nothing about Vivian is genuine: She is constantly scheming and lying to serve her own purposes.

“‘Don’t beat yourself up over it,’ Chet says as he stands to leave. ‘That’s the last thing any of us want. It’s time to let go of the past. That’s why you’re here. It’s why we’re all here. And I hope it’ll do everyone some good.’”

This exemplifies the confusion between truth and lies. Chet visits Emma and confesses that he invited her to Camp Nightingale to clear Theo’s name and help him find closure. However, he means to do that by taunting and tricking Emma, subjecting her to the same suspicion she once cast on Theo. There is also deep irony in his claim that it’s “time to let go of the past,” as Chet’s inability to do so motivates his revenge scheme.

“But here’s the thing: some wrongs are so terrible that the people responsible must be held accountable. Call it justice. Call it revenge. Call it whatever. I don’t give a fuck.”

This passage comes from Vivian’s last diary entry. Emma mistakenly believes that Vivian is seeking justice for the hospital patients she assumes drowned when Lake Midnight was created. However, in reality, Vivian is talking about her sister and her plans to punish Natalie and Allison for their role in her death.

“I’d love nothing more than to erase much of what’s happened between then and now. To rewind back to a time when Vivian, Natalie, and Allison still existed; Theo was still the dreamiest boy I’d ever seen; and I was a knock-kneed innocent nervous about camp. But the past clings to the present. All those mistakes and humiliations following us as we march inevitably forward. There’s no ignoring them.”

Emma considers Theo’s offer to “start over” with their relationship. She wishes that she could let go of her trauma and the guilt from her mistakes. However, her past has formed and shaped her, so she cannot simply erase it.

“And although we don’t talk about those falcons, I’m certain that he’d say he regrets watching them closely. I think he’d say that he wished he hadn’t looked so much.”

Franny tells Emma a story about Chet’s childhood fascination with a nest of peregrine falcons. The violence of the mother falcon feeding her babies ruined the charm and wonder of the little chicks for him; it is a symbol of Hiding Dark Reality Behind Idyllic Appearances. Emma takes this as a warning that she might not like what she finds if she continues digging into the truth of the girls’ disappearance.

“‘Three: Right before they left, I said something. Something I regret. Something that’s haunted me ever since.’

I hope you never come back.

The memory of that moment arrives without warning. It feels like a sharpened sword swooping toward me, slicing me open, exposing my cold heart.

‘I told them I hoped they’d never come back,’ I say. ‘Right to Vivian’s face. It was the last thing I ever said to her.’”

Emma finally confesses the source of her guilt to Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal. She tells them how she banished the girls and refused to open the door when Vivian returned later in the night. Sager implies that the magnitude of Emma’s guilt doesn’t quite correspond to the reality of her action; however, lacking any evidence of the girls’ fates, she had no one to blame but herself.

“‘I was thirteen the first time it happened. What kind of violence do you think a thirteen-year-old girl is capable of?’

‘I have a daughter that age,’ Flynn says. ‘You’d be surprised.’”

Emma tries to defend herself to Detective Flynn, who suggests she could have had something to do with the disappearance of both sets of girls. His comment about teenage girls’ surprising capacity for violence foreshadows the reveal of Vivian’s crime.

“A grim understanding settles over me. I now know the reason no one seems to be searching for the girls. Why Detective Flynn keeps focusing on my relationships with all of them. I should have seen it coming. I should have realized it the moment I woke up and Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal were gone. I’m a suspect. The only suspect.”

Chet has set Emma up as the perfect suspect. She is nervous, erratic, and prone to hallucinations, which plays into stereotypes about people with mental health conditions being more likely to commit crimes. Further, groups of girls have now twice gone missing from her cabin, and she has no one to confirm any of the stories she tries to tell the detective.

“But I also knew I’d be in trouble, too, if I admitted my accusation was a lie. And that I’d locked Vivian, Natalie, and Allison out of the cabin. And that we’d fought right before they left. So many lies. Each one felt like a rock on my chest, holding me down, so heavy I could barely breathe. I could either admit them and set myself free or add another one and hope I’d eventually get accustomed to the weight.”

At 13, Emma feels she cannot retract her accusation against Theo because it entails so many other lies. If she is honest about not suspecting Theo, she will have to confess what she perceives as her own role in the girls’ disappearance, and the entire web of deception will unravel. She resigns herself to hold on to her secrets forever, explaining how she came to be the character readers meet in Chapter 1.

“And it’s why she was so scared.

Because she learned that there’s a ring of truth to the stories surrounding Lake Midnight. Only it wasn’t a deaf village or a leper colony that got buried beneath the water.

It was an insane asylum.”

When Emma discovers the truth about the history of Peaceful Valley Asylum and Lake Midnight, she misinterprets the information. Because she doesn’t understand the context and purpose behind Vivian’s search, she assumes that Vivian’s thirst for justice corresponds to the destruction of the asylum. Led by her suspicion of the Harris-Whites and her trust in Vivian, Emma assumes the worst of Peaceful Valley.

“‘Then why did you keep it a secret?’

‘We didn’t,’ Lottie says. ‘It’s no secret. Just ancient history, which has been warped over the years.’

‘We know the stories campers tell about Lake Midnight,’ Franny adds. ‘All that hokum about curses, drowned villagers, and ghosts. People always prefer drama over the truth. If Vivian had wanted to know more about it, all she needed to do was ask.’”

Here, Franny and Lottie explain to Emma that the story of Peaceful Valley was never a secret. For all the characters’ fixation on lies and deception, the truth sometimes becomes unintentionally hidden or twisted simply through the passage of time. Characters who are less than honest themselves then assume others are hiding something and look for sinister intentions where there are none.

“She’s not real. She has no power over me. I’m stronger than everyone realizes. Strong enough to understand that Vivian isn’t a ghost haunting me. Nor is she a hallucination. She’s me. A fragment of my distressed brain trying to help me figure out what’s happening.”

Emma contemplates her hallucination of Vivian, with whom she is conversing. She realizes that the hallucination is not something to be afraid of. Rather, it is an opportunity for her to understand what happened to her friends. Vivian cannot tell Emma anything she doesn’t already know, but she can help Emma remember what she has forgotten and see what she might have overlooked or misinterpreted.

“Your problem is that you’re blinded by the past. Everything you need to know is right there in front of you. All you need to do is look.”

Emma’s hallucination of Vivian tells her she has everything she needs to solve the mystery, but Emma cannot see it. More than anything, Emma’s perspective is skewed by her admiration of Vivian. She continues to idolize the girl, blinding herself to Vivian’s cruel, sinister nature and causing her to misinterpret the clues she finds.

“‘Because I thought it would be fun,’ Chet says. ‘I knew you were crazy. Theo told me all about that. And I wanted to see just how crazy you’d get. You know, trap a few birds and put them in the cabin. A little paint on the door and an appearance at the window. A little peek in the shower.’”

Chet confesses to tricking Emma throughout her time at camp. After learning about her mental illness, he enacted a number of pranks to put Emma on edge and make her (and others) question her reliability. This set her up to be the prime suspect when he kidnaped Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal.