Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(61)

There were some tables available, with four seats around them. She sat at one of these with David by her side, and Izzy and Nate across from them. Vi and Janelle sat behind, in a set of two seats. Stevie could hear them speaking gently to each other behind her head.

Once they were on the train and the doors slid closed, they all settled in with their food. Izzy stared at her phone, preoccupied, hoping for updates that didn’t seem to be coming. Nate was reading something on his. David also pulled out his phone to watch something, slouching over and tilting his head in Stevie’s direction. The last views of London were the backs of houses—gray and brick—with neat rectangles of back gardens.

She had done this. She had led her friends on this trip. With a lie.

Lies, she noted, took energy. They weighed a lot. She had to think about everything she said and did now to support the lie. It sat there in her head, giving off vibes.

Lies were radioactive.

She had to try to do something. Figure something out. But she had so little to work with. She had Sooz’s photos. That would have to do. She pulled out her tablet to look at them and enlarge them, to take them in and make them part of her own memory.

Noel was a beanpole in massive glasses and 70s clothes. Sebastian’s character came through loud and clear. He almost always had a glass of something in his hand, and his posture was theatrical. Theo was often with him. Her hair was short, and she wore a multicolored sweater vest over a white T-shirt. Angela was often to the side in the pictures, smoking and watching. Peter and Yash tended to appear together. Yash looked like he was twelve, swamped in a massive T-shirt. He had no beard. He always appeared to be in the middle of explaining something or telling a joke, a smile cracking his face. Peter almost looked the same as he did now. His ginger-blond hair was floppier, but he looked much like the man Stevie had met. Rosie was small, with long blond hair she often wore in pigtails. She too was often laughing in the pictures. The camera loved Julian—his blue eyes with their long lashes. He was the 90s incarnate, from his shell necklace to his flannel shirts to his boy-band sweep of blond hair. Sooz took most of the pictures, so she wasn’t in many, but when she was, she was the star—in front, arms or legs spread, hugging, jumping, her massive brown eyes taking the focus.

These were the players.

The conversation from Sooz’s house began to play on a loose recording in her head, skipping and looping. One phrase was on repeat:

When you were with Julian, things always got messy. He wasn’t always faithful—and by that, I mean he was never faithful. Who is, at that age?

That last sentence had changed her day, made her feel twitchy and cold. Was that a 90s thing? Or was it true now? They were halfway through this trip to England. The journey had been a destination for so long, she had forgotten about the other side of it—the cliff edge, where she left, plummeted back to earth. Every evening was closer to the last evening. Just like the Nine and their doomed trip to Merryweather, counting down to the last moments of togetherness.

Behind her, Janelle and Vi were going through the schedule for the last full day of the trip. Tomorrow. Tea. Theater. After this, just one more full day.

“What is Richard III about?” Janelle asked Vi. “I’ve never read it, which I guess is embarrassing, but I don’t really like Shakespeare.”

Who is, at that age? College age is what Sooz meant. Which was around the age Stevie and her friends were now. David would remain here, in the warm air of pubs and the student house and the London Tube. This was his life now. Who knew what would happen next? And they were spending so much time with Izzy, or doing something for Izzy or related to Izzy. Izzy had done nothing wrong. She’d been complimentary, excessively so. She seemed to believe in Stevie more than anyone. But maybe that was something you did if you were covering for something. Because apparently no one was faithful. . . .

“Paranoia,” Vi said.

Stevie dribbled coffee down her chin and onto her tablet.

“It’s about paranoia,” Vi went on. “And wanting a horse really, really bad. I think. I just read the Wikipedia entry.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Janelle said. Anyone was invited to listen, but it was mostly directed at Vi. “Maybe I should do an engineering degree, and then a medical degree. To make medical devices. You can do that without being a doctor, but a doctor would really know how they’d be used. Right?”

“That’s so much school,” Vi said. “You’d be in school forever.”

“Well, the engineering degrees, those are four or five years, depending. I could get it done in four. And then probably one year to do the premed requirements. Then four years of medical school. Then the intern period, which is somewhere around three or five years . . .”

“That’s so much school,” Vi said again. “You’d be in your thirties before you were done.”

“Yes, but I could still make things all during that time. I could . . . I don’t know. It’s just a thought. But if we were going to school in Boston, we’d have so many options. Or New York . . .”

The conversation fizzled quietly. Nate squeezed the air in the bag of potato chips he was holding and it came open with a surprise pop.

Pop.

Something moved inside the dark corridors of Stevie’s brain. Something was alive in there. An idea. A pop. A noise. An unexpected noise. Like a firework. A leftover firework from Bonfire Night. The big celebration every year to mark the time Parliament didn’t explode.