The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Emma doesn’t sleep well in Dogwood cabin without air conditioning or the familiar city noises. She awakes in the predawn darkness with an uncomfortable dampness between her legs and is alarmed to discover that she has her first period. Unsure what else to do, Emma wakes Vivian, who is annoyed but leads the younger girl to the latrine, where she explains how to use a tampon. Overcome with the realization that “[w]omanhood [has] officially arrived” (96), Emma begins to cry. Vivian comes into the stall with her and promises to be her “big sister” for the summer.

As the girls talk in the stall, someone enters the latrine and turns on the shower. Peeking through the door, Vivian sees Theo. The girls try to escape as he showers, but he hears them leaving. Vivian flirts with him through the shower curtain before the girls both run out laughing.

Emma struggles to sleep and goes to the latrine in the predawn light. Someone else enters; Emma sees a flash of blond hair and cries out Vivian’s name. However, she quickly realizes it is Miranda. She notices Miranda has been crying, and the girl confesses that her boyfriend just dumped her. Emma comforts her, telling Miranda to think of her as a big sister, and sends her back to the cabin. Emma leaves a few minutes later, remembering the morning with Vivian in the latrine 15 years ago. After they left, Vivian led Emma around to the back of the building, where there was a crack in the wall. She encouraged Emma to peer in and spy on the showering Theo. Even though she was ashamed, Emma did it because she wanted Vivian to be pleased with her.

Returning to her cabin, Emma notices a red light glowing from the cabin opposite Dogwood. Looking closer, she sees a motion-activated surveillance camera.

When Emma cannot go back to sleep, she puts on her bathing suit and goes to the lake. When she swims back to shore, Becca is there, and the two sit down to talk. Becca has become a famous photographer and tells Emma that returning to Camp Nightingale comes as a welcome reprieve after living out of a suitcase for the past three years.

After briefly updating each other on their lives, Emma asks if Becca remembers “anything out of the ordinary” from the summer the girls disappeared (109). Becca insists that she doesn’t and tells Emma that she wasn’t close with any of the girls. She says Vivian was “kind of a bitch” who “doesn’t automatically become a good person” just because she vanished (110). Emma agrees but also thinks Becca is not sharing everything she remembers.

Emma sits on the shore of Lake Midnight with Vivian while Allison and Natalie swim with the other girls. Vivian compliments Emma, telling her how pretty she is. When Theo, who is lifeguarding, comes over to ask why the girls aren’t in the water, Emma admits she cannot swim. He insists on leading her into the lake, taking her in his arms, and teaching her to float. However, their lesson is interrupted by shouts and splashing from the other girls. Emma sees Vivian’s arms flail franticly; then she vanishes under the water. Theo rushes over and drags her out of the water while Emma paddles clumsily back to shore. Crying, Vivian tells an angry Theo that she wanted to try floating after seeing how easy he made it look with Emma.

From a few yards away, Becca makes eye contact with Emma and mouths, “I told you so” (114).

It’s still early when Emma finishes her swim. She eats breakfast alone in the mostly empty mess hall. One of the only people there is a male employee who openly eyes her wet robe and flip-flops. She eats a banana and a donut, finishing both even though she can imagine Vivian’s disapproving eyes.

As most of the girls head up to breakfast, Emma goes to shower. Walking through the crowd of girls, she catches a sudden whiff of Vivian’s signature perfume. Unsettled, Emma holds her charm bracelet as she slips into the last shower stall, where she sees a spot of white light filtering in. At first, Emma is alarmed, fearing another camera. However, she soon realizes the light is from the same crack she used to spy on Theo all those years ago. She showers quickly but becomes alarmed again when she notices the spot of light is gone: Something or someone is covering the crack. Emma immediately thinks someone is watching her. She covers herself and rushes outside, trying to catch the culprit, but there is no one. Emma returns to Dogwood, trying to tell herself that what she saw was her imagination or a trick of the light.

That afternoon is the camp’s first painting lesson. Still nervous from the morning, Emma leads the girls outside to paint the lake. They work until lunchtime and then hurry to the mess hall while Emma cleans up. After carrying the canvases inside, she returns to find the maintenance man picking up the easels. Emma thanks him and introduces herself, but the man isn’t interested in talking. He confirms that he worked at the camp before and says he remained employed by the Harris-White family while the camp was closed. When he sees some paint spilled on the grass, he scowls, saying, “Mrs. Harris-White doesn’t like messes” (120).

Before heading to lunch, Emma goes to the arts and crafts building to look for something to plug the hole in the latrine wall. She is pinching off a bit of clay when Mindy surprises her, asking with “[p]retend friendliness” why she isn’t at lunch. Emma explains that she is admiring the improved space, and Mindy relaxes. She apologizes for acting suspiciously, claiming she has been anxious since camp started. She tells Emma to go to lunch so the campers don’t think they can skip meals. Emma takes this as a “warning” to “tread lightly and not make any messes” (123). She assures Mindy she will eat, but she first slips down to the latrine, where she stuffs the clay into the crack in an “act of atonement” (123).

At the mess hall, Emma is surprised to see Theo waiting for her with a picnic basket. He leads her into the woods, where Franny waits at a table. Emma is surprised to see her and a little embarrassed that she thought the picnic might indicate romantic interest from Theo. Theo sets the table, and Franny explains that they want to discuss the camera outside Emma’s cabin. She tells Emma they did background checks on everyone at Camp Nightingale. They know what happened to Emma after the tragic loss of her friends, and they think the camera is needed to protect Emma from herself.

Emma’s friends from school started “pulling away” after the tragedy at Camp Nightingale. In her isolation, she began hallucinating Vivian, Allison, and Natalie. The first time it happened, she saw the three of them wearing white and studying a painting at the Met. A few days later, she saw Vivian at a matinee of Jersey Boys. Emma told no one until she woke to find Vivian sitting on her bed one night. The girl asked if Emma thought she “could get away with it” (131), and Emma began screaming and woke her parents. She confessed the visions, but her parents wrote them off as a nightmare. For three days, Emma refused to leave her room, and her parents finally took her to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with schizophreniform disorder. Emma’s illness wasn’t caused by her trauma; the “chemical imbalance had always been there” in her brain (132), and the loss of her friends just activated the disorder.

The disorder also wasn’t permanent, and after a six-month stay in a mental hospital, Emma recovered. She learned to paint as a form of therapy, and her therapist gifted her the charm bracelet she continues to wear as a “talisman” to remind her that her hallucinations aren’t real.

Back in the clearing, Franny insists they don’t want Emma to feel “ostracized” and apologizes for not telling her about the camera from the start. Emma understands but curtly excuses herself from the table and marches into the woods. Theo follows her. He apologizes again and reiterates that the camera was only for safety. Emma is still angry, asking what they think she would do to the girls in her cabin. Theo brings up the accusations she made against him 15 years ago. He tells her about the hardships those accusations posed for their family; Chet had to take a polygraph. Then Theo reminds Emma that they were friends and asks why she thought he had anything to do with the girls’ disappearances. Emma is “dumbfounded” by the question. Like her, Theo is “not completely innocent” (136).

She takes off again and doesn’t stop until she reaches Dogwood. When she opens the door to the cabin, she is shocked to find three crows inside. They fly at her and flap desperately around the cabin, their wings beating against the closed windows. Emma crawls inside and shoos them out the open door. She sits on the floor, wondering how they got into the cabin. She assumes she left the window open but then remembers the noise of the birds hitting the glass as they tried to escape.

As Emma cleans up the birds’ feathers, she wonders how they got into the room. She decides one of the girls must have left the door open; the birds came in, and some passersby closed the door without noticing. However, Emma still wonders if someone put the birds there on purpose. To calm her nerves, she decides to go for a hike. She opens her trunk to retrieve her boots and finds Vivian’s map. Drawn to the strange X on the other side of the lake, Emma decides to investigate.

At the lake, she is stopped by Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda, who ask to join her. Emma hesitates. She doesn’t want the girls to slow her down, but she also feels obligated to “give the campers new experiences” (142), so the foursome sets off in two canoes. As they reach the far shore, they see the ruins of a gazebo and dock the canoes. Emma contemplates Vivian’s map, trying to orient herself, and then grabs some wildflowers and leads the girls into the woods.

Vivian interrupts Emma’s reading to tell her they are going on an adventure. They canoe across the lake, and Vivian marches into the forest. She picks a bunch of flowers and drops petals as they walk, telling Emma to “always leave a trail of breadcrumbs” (147). She begins a game of Two Truths and a Lie, telling Emma that a man flashed her on the subway, that she has a secret bottle of whiskey under her mattress, and that she cannot swim. Having seen Vivian almost drown, Emma chooses the second one as the lie.

Eventually, the two arrive at a large oak tree marked with an X. Vivian digs through the leaves at the tree’s base and uncovers an old wooden box that washed up on the shores of the lake the summer before. The initials “CC” are etched on the lid. Inside are several pairs of antique scissors, and a stamp on the bottom of the box indicates that the contents belong to something called “Peaceful Valley.” Vivian thinks Peaceful Valley was a hospital and tells Emma she wanted to share the secret with her because that’s “what big sisters do” (149).

Emma leads the way through the woods, checking a compass app on her phone as Miranda leaves a trail of flower petals to mark their trail. Suddenly, they find themselves on a bluff overlooking Lake Midnight. There are several flowers off to one side, and Emma finds the rocks on Vivian’s map. One is a monolith much larger than the rest. Emma sees Sasha and Krystal exploring it and calls for Miranda, who crawls out of a crack in the boulder’s base. Worried, Emma tells them to stop exploring as she spots some ruins farther past the boulders. It seems to be the remains of an old farmhouse. There is also an old root cellar, discernible only by a mounded patch of earth and a door into the hillside. The place reminds Emma of Casey’s story about the flooded village in the valley and the survivors’ “thirst for revenge” (155). She is about to tell the girls they should leave when she sees a large tree with a distinctive X carved in its bark. Emma quickly searches around the tree and finds a book buried and wrapped tightly in plastic. She peeks inside the bag and sees Vivian’s handwriting.

Returning to camp, Vivian tells Emma to take her turn playing Two Truths and a Lie. When Emma does, Vivian complains that none of Emma’s answers are false; however, she says she’ll allow it since Emma guessed wrong on Vivian’s turn. Emma reminds Vivian that she knows the older girl can’t swim. In response, Vivian strips down to her underwear and dives into the lake. Shocked, Emma watches her swim away with perfect strokes. When she comes up for air, Vivian tells Emma to be less trusting. She tells the younger girl that “[e]verything is a game” and that sometimes lying is “the only way to win” (159).

After a hurried dinner, Emma returns to the cabin to investigate her findings. She opens the book and discovers a diary with the first entry dated to the first day of camp 15 years ago.

Vivian writes that she isn’t pleased to return to “Camp Nightmare” but notes that she has “unfinished business” that she must attend to. The first few entries describe Vivian looking for something, and nearly a week into camp, she writes that she finally sneaked into the Lodge. There she found something that Franny was hiding. Lottie caught her, but Vivian “managed to steal one” before Lottie saw (166).

Before Emma can read any further, there is a knock on her door, and Chet enters. He confesses that it was his idea to invite Emma back to Camp Nightingale and to install the camera outside her cabin. He apologizes and tells her that Ben, the maintenance man, will remove it in the morning. Emma says the camera can stay but asks why Chet wanted her to return. He tells her it was because of the accusations she made against Theo. Emma’s presence is akin to retracting that accusation and affirming Theo’s innocence. He shares that Theo struggled after the girls disappeared. He dropped out of school and started drinking and taking drugs. On the Fourth of July, a year after the disappearances, he crashed a car returning from a party and nearly died. Chet tells Emma he thinks that Theo intended to die by suicide. After the accident, Theo spent some time in rehab, returned to college, and became a doctor. Chet says Emma shouldn’t feel bad about what happened, but the information makes her feel “truly villainous.”