The Safest Lies by Megan Miranda Read Free Book Online Page A

clothes, unmatching: bright tights under plaid skirts, or the other way around, boho tops and jewelry that chimed like music when she walked, and long, wavy hair she’d coil around ribbons or push back from her face with a scarf or bandanna.
    She also had this vaguely unplaceable accent, not quite European, but something deliberate and alluring.
    “It’s from all the travel,” she’d told me once. A year of school in France as a child, another in England, before her mom divorced her State Department husband and settled here with Annika and her older brother, who was off at college now.
    “I cannot believe,” she was saying as I hauled myself up beside her, “that I had to hear about this from my mother, of all people. Normal people tend to call their friends when they nearly die, you know.” Annika looked at me the way I imagined I must look at her: like she was caught between being captivated and confused. I thought it was probably why we remained good friends, despite the long stretches of silence, the distance, and the differences. She was foreign, and interesting, and unplaceable, like her accent. And I was the same to her. Our worlds were so far from each other that they circled back around and almost touched again.

    “I didn’t nearly die,” I said. I felt her gaze on the side of my face, wondered if she could read the lie in my expression. Wondered what normal people tended to say, or not say, to their friends. “I had a car crash. And I wasn’t really in the mood to relive it.”
    “That’s not what the papers say,” she said, the corners of her lips tipping down. They were shiny, covered in a pink gloss that might’ve even had sparkles, and it was hard to take anything she said too seriously.
    “The papers?”
    “Mm,” she said, turning sideways, her hands on the stone between us, her nails painted electric blue. “According to Thursday’s paper,” she began, using some faux-official voice, “thanks to classmate and volunteer firefighter Ryan Something-or-other, Kelsey Thomas, the young woman miraculously pulled from the car over Benjamin’s Cliff, walks away without a scratch.” Her fingers circled my wrist, warm in the autumn chill. “Someone took a picture of your car after it fell. Quite the sight, Kels.” She paused, and in that gap, I pictured it—the car, falling. Me, still clinging to the edge. “So don’t tell me you didn’t nearly die. A reporter showed up last night, hoping us neighbors might have a status update for them. Nosy bastards.”

    I felt my shoulders deflate, my back slumping. “Ugh,” I said. My name. In the newspaper. My mom was going to flip. She was big on privacy—so big, in fact, that I was probably the only student not on one of the vast assortment of social networking sites. I only had an email account because it was required from school so teachers could send us assignments. I was sure she wouldn’t have gotten me a phone if it didn’t also double as a GPS. “Isn’t that illegal to print my name? I’m a minor.”
    “Apparently not,” she said. “Or else someone missed that memo.” I decided this was something best kept from my mother, for her own peace of mind.
    “You home for a while?” I asked, itching to change the subject.
    “Fall break. Just the week.” Annika’s newest boarding school worked on some nontraditional schedule, not really adhering to typical holidays, and I could never remember when she was supposed to be home. “I emailed you when I got home last night, when I couldn’t reach you.”
    “Oh, sorry,” I said. I’d never made it to Mom’s office and the computer. I was used to using my phone for email, and I wasn’t working on any school projects. I had barely made it out of my room at all—mostly on autopilot, to the kitchen and back again—until the fear of Jan seeing me this way knocked me out of my stupor.

    “I even tried your home line,” Annika said. “Busy signal. All day.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah.