The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Emma struggles to decipher the diary. Cleary Vivian was searching for something that frightened her, but Emma has no idea what that could have been. She also struggles to imagine Vivian being afraid of anything. The page about mental illness “shakes [Emma] to her core” (177), and she wonders why that information was important to Vivian. Emma is taking a picture of the puzzling numbers when she is surprised by Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal. She doesn’t manage to hide the book before they see it, and Miranda accuses her of looking at porn. To prove she wasn’t, she asks them about the numbers. Miranda immediately recognizes them as a call number from the Dewey Decimal System.

That night, Emma dreams of Vivian and wakes in the morning with a start. She looks out the window and is alarmed to see a shadowy figure that hurries away. Not wanting to frighten the girls, Emma races to see if she can catch the culprit. However, many campers are already leaving for the morning, and Emma notices them looking at her strangely. She turns around and sees that someone has written “LIAR” in red paint on the cabin door.

At breakfast, Franny addresses the campers and urges the vandal to come forward. No one responds, so Franny cancels morning classes and sends the girls back to their cabins. Then she asks Emma to come with her, Lottie, Chet, Theo, and Mindy to the arts and crafts building.

Emma thinks that one of the Harris-Whites is the most likely culprit but can’t imagine why they would have done it. Chet informs the group that the camera didn’t pick up anything, which suggests that it malfunctioned or that someone tampered with it. Theo suggests they focus on the paint, and Mindy reminds everyone that Emma is a painter. Emma argues that she only works with oil paint and leads the group to Casey’s craft station, where the red acrylic paint is almost empty, and a stained paintbrush sits in the nearby trashcan. Lottie reminds everyone that the door to the building is locked at night. Mindy remembers she saw Emma near the building the previous day. Theo speaks up in Emma’s defense, but Emma is sure someone knows “what [she] did to the girls” (186).

This realization shocks and frightens Emma. When everyone else leaves, Theo asks if she is okay, and Emma tells him she needs to leave for a while and go to town.

Vivian needs to go into town for menstrual products. Theo drives her, and she invites Emma to go along. When they get to town, she tells them to get lunch while she does her errands. Theo and Emma order burgers at a nearby diner. He tells her that he is studying to become a doctor, and Emma tells him she wants to be a painter. Theo suggests he might go to her gallery opening one day, and Emma immediately sees their “entire future mapped out” (190). Even though she is much younger than Theo, she imagines them staying in touch, falling in love, and becoming “the kind of couple other people envied” (190).

Thinking about what Vivian might do, Emma leans across the table and kisses Theo. Gently, Theo tells her that he is flattered, and Emma says it was a joke before he can continue. Looking out the window, Emma sees Vivian watching them.

Emma lies and tells Theo she needs to fill an allergy prescription in town. They ride in tense silence until Theo finally asks if they can “start over.” He reintroduces himself to Emma as if they were meeting for the first time. Emma is “amazed by his forgiveness” but doesn’t play along (193), though she feels she is disappointing Theo. He drops her off at the pharmacy, and, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, Emma mentions stopping by the library as well to catch up on some work emails.

She makes a small purchase at the drugstore and then hurries to the library. The call number in Vivian’s diary directs Emma to a book called Dark Ages: Women and Mental Illness in the 1800s by Amanda West. In it, she finds a photograph of a man standing before a brick building with a rooster-shaped weathervane. The caption, dated 1898, identifies him as Dr. Charles Cutler of Peaceful Valley Asylum. Emma immediately recognizes the name from the box of scissors that Vivian showed her when they were teenagers. Next to the photo, two paragraphs have been underlined in pencil. They describe how doctors began opening private clinics for wealthy patients; these “retreats” allowed such clients to escape the “deplorable conditions” of city psychiatric hospitals. Some doctors tried to create similar facilities for poorer patients. One such doctor was Charles Cutler, who chose women, became their legal guardian, and brought them to Peaceful Valley in upstate New York.

Emma isn’t sure what this information has to do with Franny and Camp Nightingale. She calls Marc, who used to date a reference librarian, and he agrees to ask his ex for help researching Peaceful Valley Asylum. She ends the conversation abruptly when she notices Theo behind her, his face “placid” and “unreadable.” She leaves the book on the table and hurries out with Theo.

Just before they pull into Camp Nightingale, Theo tells Emma he needs to ask her something about “that summer.” To her surprise, he asks about the day they went to town with Vivian; he wonders if she was lying about the kiss being a joke. Embarrassed but tired of lying, Emma doesn’t answer. Theo tells her he might have kissed her back if she had been older. Overcome by a sudden boldness, Emma asks if he would kiss her now. With a grin, he tells her she’ll have to find out. Although Emma is attracted to Theo, she worries that the thought of kissing him is a distraction.

That night Emma and the other girls from Dogwood eat outside, away from the other campers, and then go to the after-dinner campfire. As they roast marshmallows, the girls ask Emma about her time at Camp Nightingale. She tells them she liked the camp but that something bad happened while she was there. Sasha asks if Emma saw ghosts. She tells the others that many people think Lake Midnight is haunted, especially after “those girls” disappeared.

That night, Emma cannot sleep. Heat lightning flashes outside, and as it does, she sees the unmistakable outline of Vivian; her hallucinations are returning. Emma clutches her bracelet so hard that the clasp breaks and tells herself she is strong until she falls asleep.

On the Fourth of July, Vivian doesn’t come to breakfast, and without her judgmental gaze, Emma and Natalie eat a generous helping of pancakes while Allison picks at her food. Emma reminds Allison that Vivian isn’t there and that she can eat more if she wants, but Allison snaps that she doesn’t “do everything [Vivian] tells [her] to” like Emma does (208). Ashamed, Emma apologizes. Allison then apologizes as well. She and Natalie tell Emma that Vivian is their best friend but can be “a bitch.” Emma thinks of Vivian’s face when she saw Emma kissing Theo and worries Vivian will weaponize the moment against her.

Emma is the only camper from Dogwood in the mess hall at lunch, so she goes to the cabin to search for the other girls. Before she reaches the cabin, she can hear them shouting at one another. As Emma opens the door, Vivian yells that the girls have lied to her. Allison and Natalie pretend nothing is happening, but Vivian tells Emma to return later. As she walks back toward the camp center, Emma runs into Lottie, who tells Emma there are always fights when girls live together. She leads Emma to the back deck of the Lodge to wait out the argument. Franny is there, gazing out at Lake Midnight. She asks Emma if she is enjoying camp, and when Emma answers in the affirmative, Franny tells her not to “let anything spoil this place for [her]” (212).

Emma wakes at dawn clutching her broken bracelet. She dons her robe and bathing suit and slips into the lake, trying to forget about Vivian. She hasn’t seen her in years but thinks that she shouldn’t be surprised by the sudden reappearance of the hallucinations. She dives under the water, and when she resurfaces, she sees Franny sitting on the bank. Emma feels mistrustful of Franny but sits beside her anyway. She thinks about Vivian’s diary and wonders if the story about Franny’s secret was fabricated.

Franny tells Emma that she stopped swimming in the lake after her husband drowned. Instead, she observes everything around the lake. Pointing out an osprey circling the lake, she tells Emma that when Chet was a young boy, two peregrine falcons made a nest outside their living room window. Chet was “fascinated” and watched eagerly, waiting for the birds’ eggs to hatch. Emma interrupts the story to ask why Franny decided to reopen the camp. She confesses that she is dying of ovarian cancer. She tells Emma that though she has lived a good life, the girls’ disappearance all those years ago has weighed on her. She wants “one last glorious summer” at Camp Nightingale to “ease the pain” of the past (217). She tells Emma it would be “a shame if something happened to spoil it” (217), and Emma feels a sudden chill.

Franny insists on finishing the story about Chet’s falcons. She tells Emma that when the baby falcons got hungry, their mother caught a pigeon. She brought the bird back to the nest and tore it apart to feed her babies while Chet watched, horrified. Franny says that Chet “watched those [birds] too closely, and they showed their true natures” (219). She is sure he regrets it. After Franny leaves, Emma sits alone on the beach, wondering if the story was “a threat.”

In the afternoon painting class, Emma is nervous and distracted. She keeps fidgeting with her bracelet, which she repaired with a piece of string. One by one, she watches the members of the Harris-White family leaving the Lodge until she knows the place is empty. Emma excuses herself from class, snatches her phone charger from Dogwood, and slips into the Lodge. In the study, she plugs in her phone and then begins scanning the bookshelves and looking in drawers. In the bottom drawer of the desk, Emma finds a box just like the one Vivian showed her with the scissors: It has “CC” carved in the lid, and the bottom declares it the property of Peaceful Valley. Inside the box are dozens of photographs like the one Emma found in Vivian’s trunk. The women are all dressed in gray and have long hair. Their names are written on the backs of the photographs, but there is something strange about them.

Emma reads the words “auburn,” “golden,” “tawny,” and “flaxen,” and she realizes that they are not the women’s names but their hair colors: Charles Cutler must have been selling their hair to wigmakers. Emma is so shocked by this realization that she doesn’t hear the Lodge door open and is surprised when she hears Lottie’s voice calling out. She puts the photographs away and shuts the door just before Lottie enters the study. Lottie is surprised to see Emma but accepts her excuse of needing to charge her phone.

Together, they look at the photographs lining the walls. There is one of Lottie’s mother with Franny, and Lottie explains that generations of her family have worked for the Harris-Whites. There are also old pictures of campers. Emma spots one of Vivian smiling; her arms are around a girl Emma recognizes as Rebecca Schoenfeld—i.e., Becca. Shocked, Emma snaps a quick picture with her phone and hurries back to Dogwood, where she searches her trunk until she finds Becca’s name carved into the wood. She mutters that Becca is “a liar.”

At the Fourth of July campfire, Vivian, Allison, and Natalie seem to have resolved their argument. They apologize to Emma for fighting in front of her, but Emma is just glad they are all back together. The fireworks from the nearby town’s display explode over them, and Vivian hugs Emma, asking her to promise to “always remember this” (230). Emma agrees, but Vivian is gone when the fireworks end.

When the girls go to the evening campfire, Emma waits outside Becca’s cabin until the other woman emerges. She shows her the photograph and demands to know the truth. Becca goes back inside, returns with a bag of “supplies,” and walks with Emma to the lake.

As they pass a bottle of whiskey back and forth, Becca shows Emma a folder of old camp photos and tells her about her friendship with Vivian. They went to the same school as girls and were best friends until Vivian’s sister, Katherine, died. Katherine got drunk one night and went to Central Park, where she walked onto the frozen reservoir and fell through the ice. Vivian was devastated, and Becca tried to support her; however, Vivian began to pull away. She started spending time with Katherine’s best friends: Allison and Natalie, who were a year older than Vivian. That summer at camp, Becca, Vivian, Allison, and Natalie all roomed together, but Becca was constantly left out. The next year, the other girls forced her out of Dogwood.

Becca tells Emma she lied because the situation was too difficult to explain. She figured that Vivian treated Emma similarly and was surprised that Emma wanted to discuss it. Emma won’t admit that Vivian treated her poorly, thinking that it leaves out “the way [she] had treated Vivian” (235). Becca tells Emma not to lie to her. She reminds her that she stayed in the cabin next to Dogwood and heard what happened the night the girls disappeared. This makes Emma suspect that Becca is the one who has been watching her and who vandalized the door.

Offended, Becca denies the accusation. Emma stands, surprised by how drunk she feels, and tells Becca to stay away from her. As she stumbles back to the cabin, she thinks that Becca is missing the context for what she overheard all those years ago, which was “so much worse than [Becca] could ever imagine” (236).

Vivian isn’t in Dogwood when Emma returns from the campfire, so she looks for her. Strangely, the door to the latrine is locked. Emma walks around to the back of the building to the crack in the planks. She can hear the shower running, almost masking the sound of moans. Unable to resist, Emma peeks through the crack. She sees Vivian naked with Theo behind her, his face hidden in her neck. Emma is shocked and heartbroken; she runs to the lake, where she sobs uncontrollably.

When her tears have run out, Emma returns to Dogwood. The other girls are in the middle of Two Truths and a Lie, and Emma interrupts to take her turn. She tells them her name, says she is staying at Camp Nightingale, and announces that she “didn’t just see Vivian and Theo fucking in the latrine showers” (239). Vivian doesn’t deny it. Emma screams at her, accusing her of having sex with Theo because she knew Emma liked him. Vivian reminds Emma that Theo would never be interested in someone so young. Emma pushes past her and crawls into her bunk.

When she wakes in the middle of the night, she sees Allison, Natalie, and Vivian sneaking out of the room. When Vivian sees her awake, she tells Emma she is “too young for this” and holds a finger up to her lips (240). However, Emma feels compelled to respond, and her words leave a “sour echo” in the cabin as Vivian closes the door behind her.

Emma stumbles back to the cabins. Instead of going inside, she leans against the latrine, trying to sober up. She is surprised by Casey, who is “part horrified, part amused” by her intoxication (243). Casey leaves, but Emma soon feels other eyes on her and looks up to see Vivian. She reaches for her bracelet to ward off the hallucination and finds it gone; the string she repaired the clasp with must have broken. Reassuring herself that she is fine, Emma runs back to Dogwood, where she finds Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal huddled around Vivian’s diary.

They admit to googling Emma, and she answers their questions about the missing girls. Then she suggests a game of Two Truths and a Lie. On her turn, she confesses that she told Vivian, “I hope you never come back” when she left the cabin (245). The girls did come back later that night, but Emma had locked the door and refused to let them in even when Vivian called Emma’s name. Crying, she tells Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal about her paintings—how she covers the girls over and over. She says that she hopes she can forgive herself if she finds out what happened to her missing friends. The girls watch her nervously. She apologizes, tells them to keep playing, and crawls into bed. As she falls asleep, she hears Miranda suggesting one more round of the game. She tells her lie and her two truths, ending, “Three: I’m worried about Emma” (248).

Emma’s narration from the opening interlude continues. She stands in Lake Midnight, screaming. The sound wakes the rest of the camp, who gather on the shore. Becca is in the crowd, snapping pictures. Franny marches into the water, calling to Emma. Emma tells her, “They’re gone.” The camp quickly forms search parties that turn up nothing. By lunch, Franny calls the police. The detective treats Emma with skepticism but finally asks for the missing girls’ names. She replies: “Their names are Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda” (252).