Emma Davis is the protagonist and narrator of The Last Time I Lied. She grew up in New York City, and at 13, her parents sent her to the elite Camp Nightingale, where she roomed with three older girls. Emma admired all of them, but none so much as Vivian, who told Emma she would be her “big sister” for the summer. However, when Emma saw Vivian having sex with Emma’s camp crush, she felt betrayed. That night, Vivian and the others sneaked out of the cabin and were never seen again. Plagued by guilt after the tragedy, Emma experienced a mental health crisis. She began hallucinating the girls and spent six months in a mental hospital.

Fifteen years later, Emma’s life is defined by the trauma she experienced at Camp Nightingale: the memory of her last words to Vivian, the guilt of locking the cabin door, and the shame of accusing Theo of hurting the girls. She is “obsessed” with the girls’ disappearance to a degree that “unnerves” her. As an artist, Emma recreates her cabinmates’ disappearance by repeatedly painting the girls and then painting over them with vines and trees until no trace of them is left.