Garrett opened his mouth, as though he was about to say more, when suddenly some kind of commotion started in the nave. He and Emma turned around to face the crowd, who all seemed to be looking up at the wall behind the altar. The guitar music jerked to a halt, and the lights flickered out.

A disembodied voice spoke over the intercom, echoing through the church.

“Sutton Mercer . . . we salute you!”

Emma barely had time to realize that it was Charlotte’s voice before the staccato drumbeat of Fun.’s “We Are Young” started blaring out of the speakers. At that exact moment, a projector hidden at the back of the church kicked into gear. Images flashed above the altar, videos of Sutton and her friends, edited to the music. One showed Sutton, Madeline, Charlotte, and Laurel toasting one another with flasks in the hot springs they used to sneak into. In another, someone held a shaky camera to Sutton’s face on a roller coaster. She screamed with laughter, her hair billowing around her face. There was footage of Sutton cannonballing into Charlotte’s pool, footage of her singing karaoke with Laurel and dancing with Thayer. In one she, Gabby, and Lili got into a food fight, the Twitter Twins overpowering her and squirting a crown of whipped cream into her hair, all of them giggling.

And finally, there was a cut of Sutton doing a pin-up pose in a slinky silver dress. She was on Charlotte’s patio, and behind her one of the Lying Game’s exclusive parties raged.

“You can’t keep a good diva down,” she said coyly, her voice amplified through the church. Then she blew a kiss at the camera, and the video went dark.

Emma realized that her cheeks were streaming with tears. As the lights came back up, a long and echoing silence descended. Mr. Mercer had broken down, his face hidden in his wife’s shoulder. Half the tennis team was sobbing—Clara wailed out loud, her cries cutting through the stillness.