Excerpt from We Were Liars by E Lockhart, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Gat didn't mention her at all, but he had trouble meeting my eyes.

That first night, I cried and bit my fingers and drank wine I snuck from the Clairmont pantry. I spun violently into the sky, raging and banging stars from their moorings, swirling and vomiting.

I hit my fist into the wall of the shower. I washed off the shame and anger in cold, cold water. Then I shivered in my bed like the abandoned dog that I was, my skin shaking over my bones.

The next morning, and every day thereafter, I acted normal. I tilted my square chin high.

We sailed and made bonfires. I won the tennis tournament.

We made vats of ice cream and in the sun.

One night, the four of us ate a picnic down on the tiny beach. Steamed clams, potatoes, and sweet corn. The staff made it. I didn't know their names.

Johnny and Mirren carried the food down in metal roasting pans. We ate around the flames of our bonfire, dripping butter onto the sand. Then Gat made triple-decker s'mores for all of us. I looked at his hands in the firelight, sliding marshmallows onto a long stick. Where once he'd had our names written, now he had taken to writing the titles of books he wanted to read.

That night, on the left: Being and. On the right: Nothingness. I had writing on my hands, too. A quotation I liked. On the left: Live in. On the right: today.

"Want to know what I'm thinking about?" Gat asked.

"Yes," I said.

"No," said Johnny.

"I'm wondering how we can say your granddad owns this island. Not legally but actually."

"Please don't get started on the evils of the Pilgrims," moaned Johnny.

"No. I'm asking, how can we say land belongs to anyone?" Gat waved at the sand, the ocean, the sky.

Mirren shrugged. "People buy and sell land all the time." "Can't we talk about sex or murder?" asked Johnny. Gat ignored him. "Maybe land shouldn't belong to people at all. Or maybe there should be limits on what they can own." He leaned forward. "When I went to India this winter, on that volunteer trip, we were building toilets. Building them because people there, in this one village, didn't have them."

"We all know you went to India," said Johnny. "You told us like forty-seven times."

Here is something I love about Gat: he is so enthusiastic, so relentlessly interested in the world, that he has trouble imagining the possibility that other people will be bored by what he's saying. Even when they tell him outright. But also, he doesn't like to let us off easy. He wants to make us think—even when we don't feel like thinking.

He poked a stick into the embers. "I'm saying we should talk about it. Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don't have work. Some don't have food."

"Stop talking, now," said Mirren.

"Stop talking, forever," said Johnny.

"We have a warped view of humanity on Beechwood," Gat said. "I don't think you see that."

"Shut up," I said. "I'll give you more chocolate if you shut up."

And Gat did shut up, but his face contorted. He stood abruptly, picked up a rock from the sand, and threw it with all his force. He pulled off his sweatshirt and kicked off his shoes. Then he walked into the sea in his jeans.

Angry.

I watched the muscles of his shoulders in the moonlight, the spray kicking up as he splashed in. He dove and I thought: If I don't follow him now, that girl Raquel's got him. If I don't follow him now, he'll go away. From the Liars, from the island, from our family, from me.

I threw off my sweater and followed Gat into the sea in my dress. I crashed into the water, swimming out to where he lay on his back. His wet hair was slicked off his face, showing the thin scar through one eyebrow.

Excerpted from We Were Liars by E Lockhart. Copyright © 2014 by E Lockhart. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.