One of Us Is Lying characters

Appears from the start

A senior at Bayview High and the school's most driven student: near-perfect grades, a crowded record of activities, and Yale in her sights. She plays cello, volunteers, and has spent years being the responsible daughter and the steady older sister to Maeve. Sent to detention over a phone she says is not hers, she is the least likely of the five to be in the room and the most frightened of what being there might cost her.

Appears from the start

A senior whose life has been organized around her boyfriend, Jake Riordan, since their freshman year. Pretty, agreeable, and continually told how lucky she is, she takes her cues from Jake and from a mother who treats a good-looking boyfriend as an achievement in itself. She has an older sister, Ashton, and very little sense of who she would be outside the relationship.

Appears from the start

A senior on probation for dealing drugs, living in a decaying house with an alcoholic father after his mother left years earlier. Blunt, wary, and written off across Bayview as the school criminal, he does nothing to correct the reputation. His probation means that any fresh trouble is far more dangerous for him than for anyone else in the room.

Appears from the start

Bayview's star baseball pitcher, a transplant from the South whose arm has college recruiters and professional scouts watching him. Polite, popular, and carefully managed by an ambitious father who has staked the family's future on his career, he dates Keely and is practiced at never disturbing the picture other people have of him.

Appears from the start

A senior who runs About That, a gossip app on which he publishes unflattering secrets about Bayview students, which makes him both feared and widely disliked. He takes obvious satisfaction in the app's reach and in knowing what other people want hidden. He is the fifth student in the detention room, where he suffers a severe allergic reaction and dies.

Appears from the start

Addy's boyfriend since freshman year and one of the most popular boys in their class, friendly with the athletes and with Simon alike. Charming in public and exacting in private, he holds firm views about how Addy should look and behave, and she has spent three years meeting them.

Appears from the start

The Bayview teacher supervising the detention. Rigid about rules and uninterested in explanations, he confiscates the phones found in his classroom and sends all five students to serve the hour together.

First appears in chapter 2

Bronwyn's younger sister and a survivor of childhood leukemia, an illness that made her the fragile centre of the family for years. Sharp, funny, and far better than her sister with computers and online research, she becomes Bronwyn's ally in trying to work out what actually happened in that classroom.

First appears in chapter 2

Cooper's girlfriend, a cheerful and popular senior at the centre of the school's social group. Their relationship is public, uncomplicated on the surface, and one of the fixtures of the image Cooper maintains.

First appears in chapter 4

A member of Addy and Jake's social circle, quick to gossip and quicker to take sides. Her friendship with Addy runs exactly as far as Addy's standing in the group does.

First appears in chapter 4

Simon's closest friend, a quiet senior who kept to the edges of Bayview's social life alongside him. His death leaves her isolated and visibly unwell, and she treats the four students who were in the room with open hostility.

First appears in chapter 5

Addy's older sister, recently married and outwardly settled, whose own marriage is quietly coming apart. Practical where Addy is passive, she is the person Addy turns to when her life stops holding together.

First appears in chapter 12

A young lawyer at Until Proven, a nonprofit that takes on cases it believes have gone wrong, who represents Nate. Rumpled, overworked, and unimpressed by public opinion, he is the first adult to treat the case as something to be taken apart rather than accepted.

First appears in chapter 14

A Bayview student in Jake's wider circle. Addy spent a night with him while Jake was away with his family, something she has kept hidden and that becomes public knowledge once the school's secrets start appearing online.

First appears in chapter 20

A college student from a nearby town who has been in a relationship with Cooper, kept private because of what Cooper believes it would cost him with his father, his town, and the scouts watching his career.