Emma closed her fingers around the bottle and undid the top, but she only pretended to drink; she had to stay alert. The girls started down the trail, one after the other, dark shadows against a blue-black sky. Gabby’s white hoodie gave off a soft glow, making it easier to keep sight of her, but the trail was narrow, and prickly cacti jutted out from all angles. Behind Emma, Laurel stumbled on a root, and Madeline’s sleeve tangled in a tree branch. Gabby zigzagged the flashlight back and forth along the trail, but about five minutes after they’d started, the light died out, leaving them in complete darkness.

Everyone stopped. “Uh-oh,” Charlotte said.

Emma turned around and squinted at where they’d come from, but the trail snaked over rolling hills, and she could no longer see the parking lot. She pulled out Sutton’s iPhone and put it on flashlight mode, but it shed very little light. She also noticed she had no service. Her palms began to sweat. “What do we do?”

“Let’s keep going,” Gabby insisted. “It’s not much farther. I promise.”

Each of them pressed close to the girl in front of her, not wanting to get lost from the pack. “This is freaking me out,” Madeline said. “Someone tell a story or something. I need a distraction.”

“Two Truths and a Lie!” Laurel suggested with a nervous giggle. “We haven’t played in forever.”

“Fun!” Gabby said, pushing a tree branch out of the way. It snapped back and smacked Emma’s jaw.

Madeline snickered. “Do you even know how to play, Gabs?”

“Uh, yeah.” Gabby skirted around a boulder. “Just because I’m not a member of the Lying Game doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Charlotte muttered, and everyone giggled. Emma saw Gabby’s shoulders tense as she plunged forward on the trail.

Luckily, Emma knew the rules of Two Truths and a Lie; she and Alex and a couple of other girls had played it at a sleepover. Everyone took turns making three statements: one false, two true. Everyone else had to guess which was the lie. If they guessed correctly, the statement-teller had to drink. If they guessed incorrectly, they had to drink.

“I’ll go first,” Madeline volunteered, sounding out of breath as they climbed a slope. “One: When my family went to Miami last year, I crashed a party and met JLO. Two: I had a consultation for a boob job at Pima Plastic Surgery last year. And three: I think I know exactly why Thayer left. I think I know where he is, too, but I’m not telling.”

The words chilled Emma. When she swiveled around and looked at Madeline’s face, she couldn’t tell if she was smiling or frowning.

“The boob job has to be the lie,” Charlotte’s voice rang out in the darkness. “Mads has the best rack of all of us!”