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 © 2021 by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Cover art copyright © 2021 by MISHKO
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.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alvarez, Jennifer Lynn, author.
Title: Lies like wildfire / Jennifer Lynn Alvarez.
Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2021] |
Audience: Ages 14 and up. | Summary: When Hannah and her best friends accidentally spark an enormous and deadly wildfire, their instinct is to lie, but as the blaze roars through their rural town, Hannah’s friends begin to crack and one ends up missing.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020032253 (print) | LCCN 2020032254 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-593-30963-6 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-593-30964-3 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-593-30965-0 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. |
Wildfires—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.A4797 Li 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.A4797 (ebook)
Ebook ISBN 9780593309650
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: The Lie
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part Two: The Missing
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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
A Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For good people who do bad things
1
August 11
Time: 11:10 a.m.
I’m not dressed to find a body. I’m wearing cutoffs and a thin white tank top. The mosquitoes are going to suck me dry, and my new Vans are going to get trashed. I’m dressed for summer, not for crawling around in the woods, searching for one of my best friends with a bunch of overcaffeinated volunteers.
I hope we don’t find her. I want Violet to be alive. We just graduated high school, and we’re going to college soon. Getting kidnapped or murdered or committing suicide, or whatever happened to her, was not scheduled for today. What was scheduled was shopping for bedding and other dorm supplies.
So no, I’m not dressed or prepared to find Violet Sandoval’s dead body. Besides that, I believe she was murdered, and I’d like to let that sleeping dog lie. Why? Well, why would anyone want a dead girl to stay missing? Because they don’t like her? Maybe (but not in this case). Because they want a shot at her boyfriend? Perhaps. Or because they helped kill her? Now that’s a reason. I just got out of the hospital, and I don’t know what happened to Violet and I don’t want to know.
Only one thing is certain: it all began with a flame.
2
July 7
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Five weeks earlier…
As I reach into my Jeep, I hear quick footsteps and feel the back of my bikini top snap against my skin. I whip around to see the gleeful face of Nathaniel James Drummer, my main best friend out of my four best friends, smiling at me from my driveway. I aim a kick at him. “What are you, twelve?”
He dances out of my striking range, cloaked as usual in faded jeans and a too-tight T-shirt. Grizzled, spiny trees surround us, rearing toward the sky, and a hot summer wind gusts off the Sierra Nevada mountains. “What’s in the bag?” he asks. “And you better not say homework.”
“It’s summer, idiot.” I snatch my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. I did make the long drive to the library to check out books on criminology, nothing wrong with getting a head start, but it isn’t technically homework—not until I leave for college.
Drummer eyeballs the heavy pack, and his smile deflates. “Come on, Han, don’t waste the time we have left reading.”
I laugh. “That’s exactly why I’m going to college and you’re not.” But when I meet his gaze, my stomach lightens. Drummer has no idea I fell in love with him in the sixth grade. It happened fast, like sliding off a cliff. One moment he was my sharp-kneed, slightly smelly best friend, and the next he was golden-skinned and handsome and a million miles out of my league. I cross my arms so he can’t see the gigantic Drummer-shaped hole in my chest. The thing about love is, unless your best friend falls too, you fall alone.
Drummer hooks his finger around a loop in my jeans and tugs me closer, his deep voice making my eardrums vibrate: “I came to get you. Everyone’s meeting up at the Gap for a swim. Want to go?”
“Everyone?”
“Yep, all the monsters. And Mo’s bringing beer.”
Our group—Mo (short for Maureen), Luke, Violet, Drummer, and me, Hannah—are the kids he’s referring to when he talks about the “monsters,” a nickname we received when we were seven years old.
It was at the community center. Our parents had signed us up for a low-budget daycare-in-disguise summer production of Where the Wild Things Are. The director asked who wanted to be a wild thing, and since none of us wanted to play
the human, our hands shot into the air. After that, she called us simply the monsters, and we’ve been the monsters and best friends ever since.
I bump my hip against his. “Let’s ride the horses there.”
He and I have moved into the shade and are now leaning against my Jeep in the driveway. My bloodhound, Matilda, watches us from the family room window, her big ears cocked.
Temperatures will soar into the hundreds today, with afternoon winds blowing from the east. Humidity is at 11 percent and dropping. I know because Red Flag Warnings started pinging on my phone at 8:00 a.m. Drought caused an early fire season this year, and the electric company plans to shut off the power at noon. When you live in California, in a tinderbox called a forest, you know more than you ever wanted to about wildfires.
Drummer slits his eyes. “I’m not riding that colt that stomped on you.”
“Sunny didn’t stomp on me; he stepped on me. Not his fault he weighs a thousand pounds.”
“Another reason I’d rather not ride him.” His gaze shifts to the tank top covering my bikini, and his eyes burn straight through it. “You’re the only woman on this damn earth who can get me on a horse, you know that?”
My voice falls an octave. “I know it.” Drummer flirts with everyone, it means nothing, but my stupid, traitorous heart soars when he looks at me like that.
His pretty blue eyes slide up to my face. “All right, Hannah Banana, have it your way.”
A half hour later, we’re saddled and on the trail. Drummer’s horse, my fourteen-year-old Appaloosa barrel racer named Pistol, hops at every shadow. “He’s bucking,” Drummer complains.
“That’s not bucking. Sit up and relax.” Drummer obeys and Pistol settles.
We emerge from the pines and there’s Gap Lake, a sapphire oval sunk in its mountain crown. Steep, unshaven peaks surround it, and the wind creates ripples that blow across the water, making it shimmer like wrinkled satin. Underground springs feed the Gap all summer, and rainwater and snowmelt replenish it in winter. Pine trees and noble firs surround the shoreline like undecorated Christmas trees.
The Gap is a pit, really, a hole full of fresh water with no shallow end, its sheer edge skidding straight down into a black abyss. Scientists say the lake was formed by shifting tectonic plates back in 480 CE. Ancient peoples claim that it was carved out during a volcanic battle between gods. The citizens of Gap Mountain don’t care how it came to be. We care that (according to new measurements) it has surpassed Lake Tahoe as the deepest lake in California, and we care that if you drown in the Gap, your body will never be recovered.
Violet spots us. “Over here,” she calls, waving.
Our group is sprawled on a piece of dusty shoreline we call “the beach,” the only area where you can climb out of the Gap. There are no other kids here, which means everyone else is at the river. Mo is digging into her hot/cold bag that I know will be filled with cut fruit, sandwiches, chips, homemade muffins or cookies, and beer, while Violet lounges on an oversized towel, humming a tune. I don’t see Luke.
Drummer and I guide the horses to the beach and slide out of the saddles.
“Hannah!” Violet leaps to her feet and hugs me before I can tie them up. A heady cloud of designer lotions and perfumes wafts from her hair and sun-darkened skin, tickling my sinuses. She smiles up at me—sable eyes shining, dimples popping. She’s short and curvy and bright, and I feel like a giraffe standing next to her—tall and wiry with huge eyes and a long nose, camouflaged to blend.
She kisses each of my cheeks in her continental way. “Tell me who sings this?” Violet breaks into some new song from the radio and, as usual, I guess wrong.
“Close,” she cries, generous as always.
Violet is the only monster who doesn’t live in Gap Mountain. She comes up from Santa Barbara each summer to visit her rich grandmother. Sometimes her older brother comes too, but this year he’s in the Maldives with his new wife, so we get Violet to ourselves. She nods toward Drummer, grinning. “I can’t believe you got him on a horse.”
“It tried to buck me off,” Drummer calls out.
“He did not,” I protest.
Mo slides her sunglasses down her freckled nose. “You guys hungry?”
“Hell yeah.” Drummer helps himself to her bag.
“Take off those boots—you’re getting dirt on the blanket.” Mo jabs his ribs with her bare foot, but Drummer doesn’t listen, just starts snacking on muffins. Mo hands me a bottle of sunscreen. “Lather up.”
“No thanks, that stuff’s worse for you than the sun.”
“I believe that’s a conspiracy theory, Han, but whatever.” She goes back to jabbing Drummer until he removes his boots.
“Where’s Luke?” I ask.
Violet nods toward the tree line. “Sulking, as usual.”
Drummer licks his sticky fingers and grabs Violet’s hand. “Let’s swim.” He drags her toward the Gap while she protests about her hair, which she flat-ironed this morning.
Drummer isn’t having it. “Don’t come to the Gap unless you plan to get wet,” he teases. “Totally soaking wet.” He picks her up, tosses her into the water, and dives in after her.
Mo shouts at them, “Get a room.”
“He wasn’t—they’re not,” I start, and then shut my mouth. In the sixth grade, our group made a pact: monsters don’t date monsters. It was my idea to sign it in blood, and so far, we’ve stuck to it.
I pull off my tank top and slide out of my jeans, revealing the same faded-orange Walmart bikini I wore last year. “I’ll take a muffin,” I say to Mo.
She opens a plastic container and hands me a blueberry muffin, still warm from the oven. Then she pulls out two bottles of Bud Light. “My brother got us beer. You want one?”
I shake my head. My dad is the county sheriff, and his deputies patrol the lake sometimes. The last thing he needs is for his daughter to get hauled into the station for underage drinking. Besides that, I lost my mom to a drunk-driving accident that happened when I was six.
Strangers freak out when they hear this. They pat me and say poor thing, and single women flirt with my dad—the stoic widower raising a motherless girl. We hate that, Dad and I, but we let them fawn, since it’s better than hitting them with the punch line: my mom was the drunk driver.
She didn’t die right away, but the driver of the other car did. Yeah, my mom got convicted of DWI and murder. My dad was still a deputy when he arrested her—The law is the law, Bug—and Mom died in prison two years later of inflammatory breast cancer. But I don’t blame the illness for taking her. No, I lost my mother, and in some ways my father, the night of the accident.
So it’s not that I don’t drink—I do sometimes—but I know better than to get caught. It’s why I’m going into law enforcement. I’d rather drive the police cruiser than ride in the back, and maybe that’s the difference between my mom and me, and maybe it’s the only one, but it’s probably the most important.
Mo returns the extra beer to her bag, pulls out an ice-cold bottle of lemonade, and presses it against my leg, making me squeal. She nods toward Sunny. “You probably shouldn’t drink and ride a horse anyway, huh?”
Laughing, I open the lemonade and take a long swig. “Probably not.”
We squeeze onto the blanket together and watch Drummer and Violet swim. The cell signal here sucks, so Mo and I take dozens of photos and videos to post later.
Luke finally shows up, stomping out of the trees like a yeti, his clothing wrinkled and his face screwed up tight. “Fucking assholes,” he says.
“Who?” Mo asks.
“Everyone.” Luke skips a stone across the water, almost striking Drummer and Violet, who raise their hands in protest.
“I wouldn’t throw rocks if I were you,” Drummer shouts, recalling Luke’s vandalism last spring. He’s on probation for throwing rock
s at his neighbor’s house after they harassed him about his loud music. He broke six windows and caused two thousand dollars in property damage. After a beat, we all bust up laughing.
“You’re the assholes,” Luke says, and then he pulls off his shirt, kicks off his shorts, and stands at the edge of the Gap in his underwear. He lifts weights obsessively, and his body is thick and pale and ripped with muscles. Luke was a happy kid, but that changed in middle school after his mom left his dad. Since then, he’s moody and sad and he won’t let any of us in except Mo.
“Afraid to get wet?” I yell as Luke paces the shore like a dog wondering if it should jump in.
He gives me the finger and then dives headfirst into the water, which is cold even during summer. When he pops back up, he whoops and shakes out his hair, flinging water droplets in an arc around him.
My eyes slide back to Drummer. He’s cradling Violet in his arms as she floats on her back, and my heart dips to the pit of my stomach. She’s so relaxed, so happy, and she’s headed to Stanford in the fall, no need for financial aid or a scholarship, the whole world at her pretty feet.
Violet has no idea I applied to Stanford too, or that they rejected me. She doesn’t know how hard I work at home, cleaning stalls, mending fences, and training my horses myself because I can’t afford to hire help. Her grandmother pays twelve hundred dollars a month to board each of Violet’s imported show horses—animals so expensive she’s not allowed to ride them on trails, only in carefully engineered arenas with perfect footing so they don’t slip or trip.
Lies Like Wildfire Page 1
