We Were Liars Deluxe Edition Read online

  Praise for

  we were liars

  “You’re going to want to remember the title. Liars details the summers of a girl who harbors a dark secret, and delivers a satisfying but shocking twist ending.”

  —Breia Brissey, Entertainment Weekly

  ★“ [A] searing story…At the center of it is a girl who learns the hardest way of all what family means, and what it means to lose the one that really mattered to you.”

  —Publishers Weekly, Starred

  ★“Surprising, thrilling, and beautifully executed in spare, precise, and lyrical prose. Lockhart spins a tragic family drama, the roots of which go back generations. And the ending? Shhhh. Not telling. (But it’s a doozy.)…This is poised to be big.”

  —Booklist, Starred

  “A haunting tale about how families live within their own mythologies. Sad, wonderful, and real.”

  —Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Leviathan

  “Spectacular.”

  —Lauren Myracle, author of Shine, The Infinite Moment of Us, and TTYL

  “A haunting, brilliant, beautiful book. This is E. Lockhart at her mind-blowing best.”

  —Sarah Mlynowski, author of Don’t Even Think About It and Gimme a Call

  “Dark, gripping, heartrending, and terrifyingly smart, this book grabs you from the first page—and will never let go.”

  —Robin Wasserman, author of The Waking Dark

  Also by e. lockhart

  The Ruby Oliver Novels

  The Boyfriend List

  The Boy Book

  The Treasure Map of Boys

  Real Live Boyfriends

  • • •

  Genuine Fraud

  Fly on the Wall

  Dramarama

  The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by E. Lockhart

  Additional text copyright © 2017 by E. Lockhart

  Cover photograph © 2014 Getty Images/kang-gg

  Map and family tree art copyright © 2014 by Abigail Daker

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachers­Librarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  We were liars / E. Lockhart.

  pages cm

  Summary: Spending the summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.

  ISBN 978-0-385-74126-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-375-98994-0 (library binding) — ISBN 978-0-375-98440-2 (ebook)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Love—Fiction. 3. Families—Fiction. 4. Amnesia—Fiction. 5. Wealth—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L79757We 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013042127

  Ebook ISBN 9781524766955

  ISBN 9781524764586 (deluxe edition)

  Deluxe Edition

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  For Daniel

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by e. lockhart

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Welcome

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two: Vermont

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Three: Summer Seventeen

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Part Four: Look, a Fire

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Part Five: Truth

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Acknowledgments

  A Note from E. Lockhart

  What Cadence Found: Notes and Poems from Gat

  Original Hand-Drawn Map of Beechwood Island

  Original Hand-Drawn Sinclair Family Tree

  How I Wrote We Were Liars

  The Original Book Proposal

  Why Are They Called Liars?

  Notes I Wrote to Myself

  We Were Liars Book Club Meeting: A Sinclair Family Menu

  Readers’ Group Guide

  Preview of Genuine Fraud

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Welcome

  1

  WELCOME TO THE beautiful Sinclair family.

  No one is a criminal.

  No one is an addict.

  No one is a failure.

  The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive.

  It doesn’t matter if divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts so that they will hardly beat without a struggle. It doesn’t matter if trust-fund money is running out; if credit card bills go unpaid on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table.

  It doesn’t matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.

  So much

  in love

  that equally
desperate measures

  must be taken.

  We are Sinclairs.

  No one is needy.

  No one is wrong.

  We live, at least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts.

  Perhaps that is all you need to know.

  2

  MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.

  I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.

  I am nearly eighteen.

  I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.

  I used to be blond, but now my hair is black.

  I used to be strong, but now I am weak.

  I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.

  It is true I suffer migraines since my accident.

  It is true I do not suffer fools.

  I like a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Do not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.

  Suffer.

  You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.

  —

  MY STORY STARTS before the accident. June of the summer I was fifteen, my father ran off with some woman he loved more than us.

  Dad was a middling-successful professor of military history. Back then I adored him. He wore tweed jackets. He was gaunt. He drank milky tea. He was fond of board games and let me win, fond of boats and taught me to kayak, fond of bicycles, books, and art museums.

  He was never fond of dogs, and it was a sign of how much he loved my mother that he let our golden retrievers sleep on the sofas and walked them three miles every morning. He was never fond of my grandparents, either, and it was a sign of how much he loved both me and Mummy that he spent every summer in Windemere House on Beechwood Island, writing articles on wars fought long ago and putting on a smile for the relatives at every meal.

  That June, summer fifteen, Dad announced he was leaving and departed two days later. He told my mother he wasn’t a Sinclair, and couldn’t try to be one, any longer. He couldn’t smile, couldn’t lie, couldn’t be part of that beautiful family in those beautiful houses.

  Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  He had hired moving vans already. He’d rented a house, too. My father put a last suitcase into the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and started the engine.

  Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,

  then from my eyes,

  my ears,

  my mouth.

  It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.

  Mummy snapped. She said to get hold of myself.

  Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said.

  Because you are. Because you can be.

  Don’t cause a scene, she told me. Breathe and sit up.

  I did what she asked.

  She was all I had left.

  Mummy and I tilted our square chins high as Dad drove down the hill. Then we went indoors and trashed the gifts he’d given us: jewelry, clothes, books, anything. In the days that followed, we got rid of the couch and armchairs my parents had bought together. Tossed the wedding china, the silver, the photographs.

  We purchased new furniture. Hired a decorator. Placed an order for Tiffany silverware. Spent a day walking through art galleries and bought paintings to cover the empty spaces on our walls.

  We asked Granddad’s lawyers to secure Mummy’s assets.

  Then we packed our bags and went to Beechwood Island.

  3

  PENNY, CARRIE, AND Bess are the daughters of Tipper and Harris Sinclair. Harris came into his money at twenty-one after Harvard and grew the fortune doing business I never bothered to understand. He inherited houses and land. He made intelligent decisions about the stock market. He married Tipper and kept her in the kitchen and the garden. He put her on display in pearls and on sailboats. She seemed to enjoy it.

  Granddad’s only failure was that he never had a son, but no matter. The Sinclair daughters were sunburnt and blessed. Tall, merry, and rich, those girls were like princesses in a fairy tale. They were known throughout Boston, Harvard Yard, and Martha’s Vineyard for their cashmere cardigans and grand parties. They were made for legends. Made for princes and Ivy League schools, ivory statues and majestic houses.

  Granddad and Tipper loved the girls so, they couldn’t say whom they loved best. First Carrie, then Penny, then Bess, then Carrie again. There were splashy weddings with salmon and harpists, then bright blond grandchildren and funny blond dogs. No one could ever have been prouder of their beautiful American girls than Tipper and Harris were, back then.

  They built three new houses on their craggy private island and gave them each a name: Windemere for Penny, Red Gate for Carrie, and Cuddledown for Bess.

  I am the eldest Sinclair grandchild. Heiress to the island, the fortune, and the expectations.

  Well, probably.

  4

  ME, JOHNNY, MIRREN, and Gat. Gat, Mirren, Johnny, and me.

  The family calls us four the Liars, and probably we deserve it. We are all nearly the same age, and we all have birthdays in the fall. Most years on the island, we’ve been trouble.

  Gat started coming to Beechwood the year we were eight. Summer eight, we called it.

  Before that, Mirren, Johnny, and I weren’t Liars. We were nothing but cousins, and Johnny was a pain because he didn’t like playing with girls.

  Johnny, he is bounce, effort, and snark. Back then he would hang our Barbies by the necks or shoot us with guns made of Lego.

  Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain. Back then she spent long afternoons with Taft and the twins, splashing at the big beach, while I drew pictures on graph paper and read in the hammock on the Clairmont house porch.

  Then Gat came to spend the summers with us.

  Aunt Carrie’s husband left her when she was pregnant with Johnny’s brother, Will. I don’t know what happened. The family never speaks of it. By summer eight, Will was a baby and Carrie had taken up with Ed already.

  This Ed, he was an art dealer and he adored the kids. That was all we’d heard about him when Carrie announced she was bringing him to Beechwood, along with Johnny and the baby.

  They were the last to arrive that summer, and most of us were on the dock waiting for the boat to pull in. Granddad lifted me up so I could wave at Johnny, who was wearing an orange life vest and shouting over the prow.

  Granny Tipper stood next to us. She turned away from the boat for a moment, reached in her pocket, and brought out a white peppermint. Unwrapped it and tucked it into my mouth.

  As she looked back at the boat, Gran’s face changed. I squinted to see what she saw.

  Carrie stepped off with Will on her hip. He was in a baby’s yellow life vest, and was really no more than a shock of white-blond hair sticking up over it. A cheer went up at the sight of him. That vest, which we had all worn as babies. The hair. How wonderful that this little boy we didn’t know yet was so obviously a Sinclair.

  Johnny leapt off the boat and threw his own vest on the dock. First thing, he ran up to Mirren and kicked her. Then he kicked me. Kicked the twins. Walked over to our grandparents and stood up straight. “Good to see you, Granny and Granddad. I look forward to a happy summer.”

  Tipper hugged him. “Your mother told you to say that, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Johnny. “And I’m to say, nice to see you again.”

  “Good boy.”

  “Can I go now?”

  Tipper kissed his freckled cheek. “Go on, then.”

  Ed followed Johnny, having stopped to help the staff un
load the luggage from the motorboat. He was tall and slim. His skin was very dark: Indian heritage, we’d later learn. He wore black-framed glasses and was dressed in dapper city clothes: a linen suit and striped shirt. The pants were wrinkled from traveling.

  Granddad set me down.

  Granny Tipper’s mouth made a straight line. Then she showed all her teeth and went forward.

  “You must be Ed. What a lovely surprise.”

  He shook hands. “Didn’t Carrie tell you we were coming?”

  “Of course she did.”

  Ed looked around at our white, white family. Turned to Carrie. “Where’s Gat?”

  They called for him, and he climbed from the inside of the boat, taking off his life vest, looking down to undo the buckles.

  “Mother, Dad,” said Carrie, “we brought Ed’s nephew to play with Johnny. This is Gat Patil.”

  Granddad reached out and patted Gat’s head. “Hello, young man.”

  “Hello.”

  “His father passed on, just this year,” explained Carrie. “He and Johnny are the best of friends. It’s a big help to Ed’s sister if we take him for a few weeks. And, Gat? You’ll get to have cookouts and go swimming like we talked about. Okay?”