Praise forwe were liars“You’re going to want to remember the title. Liars details the summers of a girl who harbors a dark secret, and deliversa 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 meansto 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 familydrama, the roots of which go back generations. And the ending? Shhhh. Not telling. (But it’s a doozy.) … This is poised tobe 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 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. LockhartJacket photograph © 2014 Getty Images/kang-ggMap and family tree art copyright © 2014 by Abigail DokerAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Delacorte Press,an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,a division of Random House LLC,a Penguin Random House Company, New York.Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teensEducators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.comLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataWe were liars / E. Lockhart. — First edition.pages cmSummary: Spending the summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a specialboy 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) — ISBN 978-0-385-39009-5 (intl. tr. pbk.)[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Love—Fiction. 3. Families—Fiction. 4. Amnesia—Fiction.5. Wealth—Fiction.] I. Title.PZ7.L79757We 2014[Fic]—dc23201342127Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.v3.1 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationMapFamily TreePart One: WelcomeChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Part Two: VermontChapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Part Three: Summer SeventeenChapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31 Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42Chapter 43Chapter 44Chapter 45Chapter 46Chapter 47Chapter 48Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51Chapter 52Chapter 53Chapter 54Chapter 55Chapter 56Chapter 57Part Four: Look, a FireChapter 58Chapter 59Chapter 60Chapter 61Chapter 62Chapter 63Chapter 64Chapter 65Chapter 66Chapter 67Chapter 68Chapter 69Chapter 70Chapter 71Chapter 72Chapter 73Chapter 74Chapter 75Chapter 76Chapter 77Chapter 78Chapter 79 Part Five: TruthChapter 80Chapter 81Chapter 82Chapter 83Chapter 84Chapter 85Chapter 86Chapter 87AcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorOther Books by This Author 1WELCOME 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 arewide, 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 beatwithout a struggle. It doesn’t matter if trust-fund money is running out; if credit card bills gounpaid on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cluster of pill bottles on thebedside table.It doesn’t matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.So muchin lovethat equally desperate measuresmust 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. 2MY 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 housefull 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 meansalmost 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 offwith some woman he loved more than us.Dad was a middling-successful professor of military history. Back then I adored him. Hewore tweed jackets. He was gaunt. He drank milky tea. He was fond of board games and letme 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 letour golden retrievers sleep on the sofas and walked them three miles every morning. He wasnever fond of my grandparents, either, and it was a sign of how much he loved both me andMummy that he spent every summer in Windemere House on Beechwood Island, writingarticles 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. Hetold 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 suitcaseinto the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and startedthe engine.Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and Ifell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into aflower 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 amongthe 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 wentindoors and trashed the gifts he’d given us: jewelry, clothes, books, anything. In the days thatfollowed, we got rid of the couch and armchairs my parents had bought together. Tossed thewedding 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 onour walls.We asked Granddad’s lawyers to secure Mummy’s assets.Then we packed our bags and went to Beechwood Island.
