Friends and Lies Read online

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  Friends and Lies

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-765-4

  ©Copyright R.E. Whaley 2016

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright June 2016

  Edited by Jamie Rose

  Finch Books

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Finch Books.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Finch Books. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2016 by Finch Books, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Finch Books is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  FRIENDS AND LIES

  R.E. Whaley

  One night changes everything…

  Good girl Kat Crawford is in awe when popular bad girl Cameron Avery decides to take Kat under her wing for the summer, but when the new connection puts strain on Kat’s relationship with her lifelong best friend, Margot, Kat has to decide what means more to her—being well-liked by her peers or having true friendship.

  Just when Kat thinks life can’t get any more complicated, beloved athlete—and Cameron’s boyfriend—Dylan Hartley dies at her house under mysterious circumstances. Kat suspects she knows the truth behind what happened to Dylan, but, together with Margot, she goes along with Cameron’s idea to misrepresent certain details about the incident. Dylan’s death also threatens a potential romance with his cousin Ross, an up-and-coming writing prodigy, who is the secret love of Kat’s life.

  Kat goes to college in the fall, like her parents had planned, and her friends move on with their lives, too. When Kat’s dad passes away while she is just starting her freshman year, she returns home to her family and old friends. Kat reunites with Cameron and Margot, who both seem to have changed a lot since she last saw them. And Ross, the only guy Kat’s ever loved, is in town too.

  Kat ends up uncovering the truth about what really happened that fateful summer night. But sharing that secret, which would hurt those closest to Kat, is a lot harder than she thought.

  Dedication

  Growing up, I struggled with my identity. I never thought I’d write a book, let alone publish one. This story is for anyone who is unique. You rock!

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Tupperware: Tupperware Corporation

  Diet Coke: Coca-Cola Company

  Coke: Coca-Cola Company

  iPhone: Apple, Inc.

  Facebook: Facebook Inc.

  The Glass Menagerie: Tennessee Williams

  Twitter: Twitter Inc.

  Martini: Martini and Rossi Corporation

  iPad: Apple, Inc.

  The New Yorker: Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

  Twizzlers: Hershey Chocolate and Confectionary Corporation

  Chapter One

  My friend Cameron is supposed to have a licensed driver accompanying her at all times while she’s driving, and I don’t have my license. We drive into town in her mom’s black convertible all alone.

  The top is down and the wind makes tangles in my hair. I sit glued, clutching the sides of the passenger seat so hard my fingers ache as she slams down on the accelerator and swerves halfway into the other lane. Cameron ignores stop signs when she feels like it and speed limits altogether.

  I don’t know it now, but Cameron’s recklessness will cause my life and the lives of several others to swerve treacherously off course.

  When a phone Cameron’s mom has left behind in the car rings, she answers it. “Hello? Yes, this is Mrs. Avery. Ava, how are you? I’m doing very well, thank you. Yes, the appointment’s still set for tomorrow afternoon. Great. I’ll see you then.”

  Cameron hangs up, and I ask her, “Should you be doing that?”

  “What?”

  “Pretending to be your mom?”

  Cameron shrugs. “She’ll never find out. Anyway I helped her. I confirmed the appointment with the interior decorator for her.”

  We zip into Suttonville’s Main Street at fifty mph and I point out a sign that reads, Speed Limit 30. Cameron gives it the middle finger.

  “What if we get stopped by a cop?” I ask.

  “I’ll just show him some boob—or maybe slip him some money.”

  I can’t tell whether she’s serious. “You’re crazy.” I laugh.

  The car comes to a screeching halt. “What did you say?” she asks.

  “I was just joking.”

  Behind us, people beep their horns. Cameron leans across my lap and opens the passenger side door. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Kat. Get out.” The tone of her voice isn’t loud. It’s calm, low.

  “Look, I’m sorry, all right? Can we just get out of here?”

  She turns away from me, flicks on the air conditioning. The cold air shoots out. She reaches across my lap and shuts the door. Stepping on the gas, she rips around the corner, backing into a parking space. Across the street, Café is written on the coffee bar’s wide awning in flirty pink letters.

  We get out of the car and Cameron slaps the side of a parking meter. “Got any quarters?” She’s less vibrant than usual, probably figures I’m mad at her because of the stunt she’s just pulled.

  I reach into the pocket of my hoodie and remove my wallet.

  “You know, I’m really glad you decided to wear a skirt. You look beautiful, Kat, darling.”

  It’s her way of apologizing. I manage a smile. “Thanks.” I hand her a quarter.

  She places the quarter in the slot, turns the small handle. “Ready to go?”

  “Shouldn’t you put the top up?”

  Cameron peers at the sky. “It’ll never rain on a beautiful day like this.” She grabs hold of my hand. Her palm’s moist like she’s as nervous as I am. We cross the street in silence.

  Inside the café, Dylan Hartley’s seated between two guys around our age at a corner table. The place is swarming with people from Suttonville Prep, and there are college kids here, too, home for summer break, talking excitedly about keg parties and losses of virginity. Cameron doesn’t let go of my hand until we sit down.

  Dylan looks her over with a big grin on his tan face and just nods at me. He introduces us to his friends, Thomas and Ross. Thomas is a junior at our high school, a tall jock like Dylan. He tosses back his blond hair and shifts his lanky frame.

  “Awesome shoes,” I say, glancing down at his bright orange sneakers.

  Thomas moves his mouth like he’s going to talk, but then Dylan butts in. “Yeah, I’ve been giving him grief about those for months. I wouldn’t be caught in the morgue with those things.”

  Cameron leans over and playfully slaps Dylan on the shoulder. “You’re such a jerk.”

  Dylan grabs her wrist. “I’m not letting you go without a kiss.”

  With Cameron’s lips pressed tightly to Dylan’s, he sticks his tongue in her mouth, wiggling it around. Ross is an offbeat-looking guy. What is someone like him doing at our table? He holds himself with an air of maturity and his hair is slightly longer than the other boys’. He’s scruffy in a boyish way, not at all clean-cut. When Ross catches me looking at him, he winks, and I look away.

  “Can I help you?” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You look like you have a question.”

  “I don’t.” I glance over at Dylan, who is still kissing Cameron.

  Ross looks at them and shakes his head. “What’s your name?”

  “Katherine, but everyone calls me Kat.”

  “Okay, Kat, want to get a drink?”

  I can feel Thomas watching us as we leave the table together.

  At the counter, Ross insists that he pay for my coffee, and his hand meets mine as I reach for a sugar packet. He smiles as he gently takes hold of my hand. Turning it over, he traces the lines of my palm. “You’re going to have a great life.”

  “
Where did you learn to tell fortunes?” I ask.

  “One of my roommates is really into it.”

  “You have roommates?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m in college.”

  I try to mask my surprise with a smile. He retraces my palm lines and his touch tickles my skin. My face warms and I pull my hand away.

  “Dylan’s my cousin,” Ross explains to me on the way back to the table. “I’m home from college. So, how come you’re friends with Dylan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t seem like the type who’s usually hanging around him.”

  I look up at his pensive brown eyes. “You mean I’m not a cute blonde?”

  “No, I think you’re very cute.” He watches me closely.

  Under his scrutiny, my face burns. “The truth is, Cameron asked me to come along with her. I don’t really know Dylan. He’s kind of…”

  “You don’t even have to say it. I completely get it. Dylan can be a dick sometimes.”

  “No kidding. Then how come you’re here having coffee with him?”

  “I’m here having coffee with you.”

  Cameron sits on Dylan’s lap as he plays with the loose strands of her yellow hair. An older couple sipping drinks at a table nearby stares at them then looks away.

  Thomas leaves early. I will walk by him in the hall when school resumes, and when I say, “Hi,” he’ll look away as if we’d never met.

  Ross waves his fingers in front of Dylan’s face. “Who’s going to pick up the stuff?”

  Dylan moves out from under Cameron. “Not here. We’ll talk later.”

  “What stuff?” I ask Ross.

  “Just something I might be getting for Dylan.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  Ross winks at me. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those types.”

  “Type of?”

  “Girls. Girls who are only interested in a guy because he’s older. Anyway, I’m eighteen, and you’re?”

  “A little younger.” There’s a pause between us. “Is it drugs?” I ask. “The stuff you were talking about with Dylan?”

  Ross takes his eyes from mine.

  “It is, isn’t it?” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “I never would’ve thought Dylan’s into that stuff.”

  Ross focuses on me. “He’s not really. He just likes to relax sometimes. Don’t you?”

  I had smoked pot once, during Christmas break. My parents had held their annual holiday party, and I had been stuck passing out the hors d’oeuvres. Mom’s friend Renee, a hip contemporary artist with a show at Mom’s gallery that month, had sneaked out to our patio in the cold night and lit up a skinny joint. I’d noticed her from inside the kitchen and set my serving tray down. I’d pretended to be surprised to see her outside and had babbled about how I just felt like getting some fresh air. Renee hadn’t cared that I was a bad liar. She’d offered me a hit. We’d gotten high together as the first snow of the year fell down in heavy flakes, which gathered on the tips of our fingers.

  Cameron is standing behind me and I smell her perfume, a modern fragrance that would wear just as well on a guy. She touches my shoulder.

  “Where’s Thomas?” she says, to no one in particular.

  “He took off,” Ross replies.

  “Oh, right.” Cameron yawns. “Kat, let’s leave. I want to take a nap.”

  Ross doesn’t ask for my phone number. Cameron and I leave, and I turn back to look at him, still seated at the table with Dylan. He smiles at me. Dylan turns to see who he’s looking at and says something to him. They both laugh. At me? At Cameron? I never find out.

  Cameron takes my hand, holding it tightly all the way back to her mom’s car. When we first became friends she’d insisted, ‘We’ll be like sisters, Kat, darling.’

  Cameron looks both ways when we cross the street. “Dylan’s way too horny sometimes.”

  “He used to date this girl who lives near me, Minnie Rutherford. You know her?”

  “She just graduated, didn’t she?”

  A piece of paper is tucked neatly behind the car’s windshield wiper with its corners fluttering in the wind. Not a flyer for a store, but a parking ticket. Cameron grabs the ticket and rips it in half. The two pieces fall to the sidewalk.

  I reach down and pick them up, try to somehow put them back together. “Maybe we didn’t put in enough quarters?”

  Cameron crawls into the driver’s seat. “What are you doing with that thing?”

  “Don’t you have to pay it?”

  She snickers and steps out of the car, snatches the ticket from my hand and tears it even more, until it’s a handful of little scraps, like puzzle pieces. I get in the car, and she releases them. The pieces soar like confetti through the breezy afternoon.

  Cameron gets in and starts the car. She drums one hand on the dashboard, using her other to steer the wheel. “What do you think of Ross?”

  “He seems okay, I guess.”

  “Meaning you like him, right?” She nods as though she sees why that might be true. “He is good-looking. He pretends to be all badass when, actually, he’s a top student.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s really smart. Goes to Columbia.”

  “In the city?”

  “Yeah. He wants to be a writer.”

  “You know him well?”

  Cameron shrugs. “Just through Dylan.”

  The sky swells with gray. I feel a spray on my face then hammering pellets of rain. It’s the first time, but not the last, that I realize Cameron can be wrong.

  Chapter Two

  Margot Moretti, the strikingly fit co-captain of the Suttonville Prep swim team—and my best friend—bounces off the long, white diving board and glides into the cerulean blue of my back yard pool, before reappearing as naturally as a cormorant. Margot’s father is always running into some sort of financial trouble, so she’s stuck waiting tables at Captain Danny’s Surf ’n’ Turf restaurant for the whole summer.

  Margot stands up in the water and gives me a broad smile. Her family might be down on their luck financially but her straight teeth are always beautifully white. In the distance I hear the rumble of the landscapers’ lawnmowers and smell freshly cut grass. It’s officially summer.

  “How was that for a novice?” Margot asks.

  “Pretty good, but you’re hardly a novice, Captain,” I say.

  “Co-captain.” Margot looks away.

  “You were fantastic, all right? You’re amazing,” I say.

  “But do you think I’m good enough to get a college scholarship?”

  “I don’t know, probably. I don’t really know anything about competitive swimming, I’m just a pool bunny.” I duck my head under the water and flail my arms around like I’m drowning.

  “Cut it out, Kat. I’m serious.”

  Re-emerging, I splash water in her face.

  Margot’s posture stiffens. “I’m being very serious here, okay? Some of us are not as comfortable as you are, and we actually have to think about our futures.”

  “Well, excuse me.” I stick my tongue out.

  Margot laughs and splashes water in my face. I float on my back, watching her swim over to the edge of the pool. Small, firm muscles are obvious underneath Margot’s tan skin as she uses her arms to lift herself out of the water. She crosses her arms over her chest and heads toward a lounge chair, reaches for the towel draped over the back. She dries her short, black hair. “Aren’t you getting out?” she calls over to me.

  “In a while,” I sing back.

  Margot lets out a deep sigh and sits down on the lounge chair’s edge. “Hey, you want to order a pizza?”

  “Don’t you have to leave for work?” I say, still floating.

  “I don’t have to start until two today.” Her words sound warped as they travel through my ears. The water gets shallow under my back, and I don’t turn over until there’s just a few inches of water left between me and the pool’s cool cement bottom.

  We walk into the kitchen through the sliding glass door, leaving moist, glistening imprints from our bare, wet feet all over the tiled floor.