One of Us Is Next

Karen M. McManus earned her BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and her MA in journalism from Northeastern University. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying, its sequel One of Us Is Next, and Two Can Keep a Secret. Her work has been published in more than 40 languages. To learn more about Karen and her books, visit karenmcmanus.com, or follow @writerkmc on Twitter and Instagram.

I have to go to the football field real quick, I say, hiking my backpack over my shoulder and resting my hand on the car door.
What for? You don t want to be late again, Emma says, narrowing her light brown eyes at me. They re exactly like Dad s, and along with the reddish hair the only trait she and I share. Emma is tall and thin, I m short and curvy. Her hair is stick-straight and doesn t quite reach her shoulders, mine is long and curly. She freckles in the sun, and I tan. We re both February-pale now, though, and I can feel my cheeks redden as I look down at the ground.
It s, um, for homework, I mumble.
Jules grins as she climbs out of the car. Is that what we re calling it now?
I turn on my heel and beat a hasty retreat, but I can still feel the weight of Emma s disapproval settling over my shoulders like a cloak. Emma has always been the serious one, but when we were younger it didn t matter. We were so close that we used to have entire conversations without talking. Mom would joke that we must be telepaths, but it wasn t that. We just knew one another so well that we could read every expression as clearly as a word.
We were close with Owen too, despite the age difference. Dad used to call us the Three Amigos, and every childhood photo shows us posed exactly the same way: Emma and me on either side of Owen, our arms around one another, grinning widely. We look inseparable, and I thought we were. It never occurred to me that Dad was the glue keeping us together.
The pulling apart was so subtle that I didn t notice it right away. Emma withdrew first, burying herself in schoolwork. It s her way of grieving, Mom said, so I let her be, even though my way of grieving would have been to do it together. I compensated by throwing myself into every social activity I could find especially once boys started getting interested in me while Owen retreated into the comforting fantasy world of video games. Before I d realized it, those had become our lanes, and we stayed in them. Our card last Christmas featured the three of us standing beside the tree, arranged by height, hands clasped in front of us with stiff smiles. Dad would ve been so disappointed by that picture.
And by me shortly after we took it, for what happened at Jules s Christmas party. It s one thing to treat your older sister like a polite stranger, and quite another thing to . . . do what I did. I used to feel a wistful kind of loneliness when I thought about Emma, but now I just feel guilt. And relief that she can t read my feelings on my face anymore.
Hey! I m so caught up in my thoughts that I would ve walked right into a pole under the bleachers if a hand hadn t reached out and stopped me. Then it pulls me forward so quickly that my phone slides out of my pocket and makes a faint bouncing noise on the grass.
Shit, I say, but Brandon Weber s lips are pressed against mine before I can get anything else out. I shimmy my shoulders until my backpack joins my phone on the ground. Brandon tugs at the hem of my shirt, and since this is one hundred percent what I came for, I help him along by untucking it.
Brandon s hands move up and across my bare skin, pushing aside the lace of my bra, and he groans against my mouth. God, you re so sexy.
He is, too. Brandon quarterbacks the football team, and the Bayview Blade likes to call him the next Cooper Clay because he s good enough that colleges are already starting to scout him. I don t think that s an accurate comparison, though. For one thing, Cooper has next-level talent, and for another, he s a sweetheart. Brandon, on the other hand, is basically an asshole.<