by Sara Shepard
The key to the BMW.
“Sweet,” she whispered, stroking the alarm button with her finger. Then she dropped the jeans back on the ground and shoved the keys into her blue quilted Moschino bag.
It was a gorgeous night for a drive.
22
BEER BATHS ARE GOOD FOR THE PORES
“Check it out,” Maya whispered excitedly. “There used to be one of these in my favorite café back in Cali!”
Emily and Maya stared at the old-school photo booth at the perimeter of Noel’s yard and the woods. A long, orange extension cord wound its way to the booth from Noel’s house across the lawn. As they admired it, Noel’s older brother, Eric, and a very-giddy Mona Vanderwaal fell out of the booth, grabbed their photos, and skipped away.
Maya glanced at Emily. “Wanna try it?”
Emily nodded. Before they ducked inside, she quickly glanced around the party. Some kids were gathered around the keg and a lot of other people held their red plastic cups in the air as they danced. Noel and a bunch of boys were swimming in the duck pond in their boxers. Ben was nowhere to be seen.
Emily sat beside Maya on the photo booth’s little orange seat and closed the curtain. They were so squeezed together, their shoulders and thighs touched.
“Here.” Maya handed her the Jack Daniel’s bottle and hit the green start button. Emily did a shot, then held it up triumphantly as the camera snapped the first picture. Then they squished their faces together and donned huge grins. Emily rolled her eyes back into her head, and Maya puffed her cheeks out like a monkey for the third picture. Then the camera caught them looking seminormal, if maybe a bit nervous.
“Let’s go see how they look,” Emily said.
But as she stood up, Maya grabbed her sleeve. “Can we stay in here a sec? This is such a great hiding spot.”
“Um, sure.” Emily sat back down. She swallowed loudly, without meaning to.
“So, how have you been?” Maya asked, pushing hair out of Emily’s eyes.
Emily sighed, trying to get comfy on the cramped seat. Confused. Upset at my possibly racist parents. Afraid I made the wrong decision about swimming. Kinda freaked that I’m sitting so close to you.
“I’m all right,” she said finally.
Maya snorted and took a swig of whiskey. “I don’t believe that for one second.”
Emily paused. Maya seemed like the only person who actually understood her. “Yeah, I guess not,” she said.
“Well, what’s going on?”
But suddenly, Emily didn’t want to talk about swimming or Ben or her parents. She wanted to talk about…something else completely. Something that had been slowly dawning on her. Maybe seeing Aria had triggered it. Or maybe finally having a real friend again had brought the feeling back. Emily thought Maya would understand.
She took a deep breath. “So, you know that girl Alison, the one who used to live in your house?”
“Yeah.”
“We were really close and I, like, really loved her. Like, everything about her.”
She heard Maya breathe out and nervously took another sip of Jack Daniel’s from the bottle.
“We were best friends,” Emily said, rubbing her fingers between the ratty blue fabric of the photo booth curtain. “I cared about her so much. So this one day, sort of out of the blue, I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Well, Ali and I were in this tree house in her backyard—we went there a lot to talk. We were sitting up there, talking about this guy that she liked, some older boy whose name she wouldn’t say, and I just felt like I couldn’t hold any of it in anymore. So I leaned over…and kissed her.”
Maya made a small sniffing noise.
“She wasn’t into it, though. She was even kind of distant and said, like, ‘Well, now I know why you get so quiet when we’re changing for gym!’”
“God,” Maya said.
Emily took another sip of whiskey and felt dizzy. She’d never had this much to drink. And here was one of her biggest secrets, hanging out like granny underwear on a clothesline. “Ali said she didn’t think best friends should kiss,” she went on. “So I tried to play it off as a joke. But when I went home, I realized how I really felt. So I wrote her this letter, telling her that I loved her. I don’t think she ever got it, though. If she did, she never said anything.”
A tear plopped on Emily’s bare knee. Maya noticed it, and smeared it with her finger.
“I still think about her a lot.” Emily sighed. “I’d sort of pushed that memory back, told myself it was just about her being my very best friend but not anything, you know…else…but now I don’t know.”
They sat there for a few minutes. The party sounds filtered in. Every few seconds, Emily heard the rough flicker of someone’s Zippo lighting a cigarette. She wasn’t that surprised about what she’d just said about Ali. It was scary, of course—but it was also the truth. In a way, it felt good to have finally figured it out.
“Since we’re sharing,” Maya said quietly, “I have something to tell you, too.”
She turned her forearm over to show Emily the white, raised scar on her wrist. “You might have seen this.”
“Yeah,” Emily whispered, squinting at it in the pale, semidarkness of the booth.
“It’s from one of the times I cut myself with a razor blade. I didn’t know it was going to go so deep. There was so much blood. My parents took me to the emergency room.”
“You cut yourself on purpose?” Emily whispered.
“Um…yeah. I mean, I don’t really do it anymore. I try not to.”
“Why do you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Maya said. “Sometimes I just…feel like I need to. You can touch it, if you want.”
Emily did. It was puckered and smooth, not like real skin at all. Touching it felt like the most intimate thing Emily had ever done. She reached over to hug Maya.
Maya’s body shook. She buried her head in Emily’s neck. Like before, she smelled like artificial bananas. Emily pressed herself to Maya’s slight chest. What was it like to cut yourself, to watch yourself bleed like that? Emily had her fair share of baggage, but even in the wake of her absolute worst memories—like of when Ali rejected her, or of The Jenna Thing—she’d felt guilty and horrible and strange, but she’d never wanted to hurt herself.
Maya raised her head and met Emily’s eyes. Then smiling a little sadly, she kissed Emily’s lips. Emily blinked at her, surprised.
“Sometimes best friends do kiss,” Maya said. “See?”
They hung apart, nose practically touching nose. Outside, the crickets sawed away furiously.
Then Maya reached for her. Emily melted into her lips. Their mouths were open and she felt Maya’s soft tongue. Emily’s chest clenched up excitedly as she raked her hands through Maya’s rough hair, then down to her shoulders, then her back. Maya stuck her hands under Emily’s polo shirt and pressed her fingers flat against her belly. Emily self-consciously flinched but then relaxed. This felt a zillion times different than kissing Ben.
Maya’s hands traveled up her body and felt over her bra. Emily shut her eyes. Maya’s mouth tasted delicious, like Jack Daniel’s and licorice. Next, Maya kissed Emily’s chest and shoulders. Emily threw her head back. Someone had painted a moon and a bunch of stars on the photo booth’s ceiling.
Suddenly, the curtain started to open. Emily jumped, but it was too late—someone had torn the curtain back completely. Then Emily saw who it was. “Oh my God,” she sputtered.
“Shit,” Maya echoed. The Jack Daniel’s bottle swished onto the floor.
Ben held two cups of beer, one in each hand. “Well. This explains things.”
“Ben…I…” Emily scrambled out of the booth, bumping her head on the door.
“Don’t get up for me,” Ben said in a horrible, mocking, angry-yet-hurt voice Emily had never heard before.
“No…,” Emily squeaked. “You don’t understand.”
She climbed out of the booth completely.
So did Maya. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily noticed Maya pick up their strip of photos and stuff it into her pocket.
“Don’t even talk,” Ben spat. Then he turned and threw one of the cups of beer at her. It splashed warmly all over Emily’s legs, her shoes, and her shorts. The cup bounced crazily into the bushes.
“Ben!” Emily cried.
Ben hesitated, then threw the other one more directly at Maya. It splashed her face and hair. Maya screamed.
“Stop it!” Emily gasped.
“You fucking dykes,” Ben said. She heard the crackly tears in his voice. Then he turned and ran crookedly into the darkness.
23
ICELANDIC ARIA GETS WHAT SHE WANTS
“Finland! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
It was an hour later, and Aria was just stepping out of the photo booth. Noel Kahn stood in front of her, naked except for his Calvin Klein boxers, which were wet and clingy. He was holding a yellow plastic cup of beer and her just-developed strip of pictures. Noel shook his hair around a little, and water from his hair sprayed onto her APC miniskirt.
“Why are you all wet?” Aria asked.
“We were playing water polo.”
Aria glanced at the pond. The boys were batting one another in the heads with pink fun-noodles. On the banks, girls in nearly identical Alberta Ferrari minidresses huddled together, gossiping. Over by the hedges, not that far from them, she spied her brother, Mike. He was with a petite girl in a plaid micromini and platform heels.
Noel followed her gaze. “That’s one of those Quaker school girls,” he murmured. “Those chicks are nuts.”
Mike glanced up and saw Aria and Noel together. He gave Aria an approving nod.
Noel tapped Aria’s photo strip with his thumb. “These are gorgeous.”
Aria looked at them. Bored out of her skull, she’d been taking pictures of herself in the booth for twenty minutes. This round, she’d made sultry, sex-kitten expressions.
Très sigh. She’d come here thinking that Ezra, jealous and lustful, would come and whisk her away. But, duh, he was a teacher, and a teacher wouldn’t go to a students’ party.
“Noel!” James Freed called from across the lawn. “Keg’s tapped!”
“Shit,” Noel said. He gave Aria a wet kiss on her cheek. “This beer’s for you. Don’t leave.”
“Uh-huh,” Aria said drolly, watching him scamper away, his boxers slowly sliding down to reveal his pale, defined-from-running butt.
“He really likes you, you know.”
Aria turned. Mona Vanderwaal sat on the ground a few feet away. Her blond hair was in coils around her face and her gold-rimmed bug-eye sunglasses had slid down her nose. Noel’s older brother, Eric, had his head in her lap.
Mona blinked slowly. “Noel’s awesome. He’d make such a good friendboy.”
Eric burst out laughing. “What?” Mona bent down to him. “What’s so funny?”
“She’s so stoned,” Eric said to Aria.
As Aria scoured her brain for something to say, her Treo beeped. She wrenched it out of her purse and looked at the number. Ezra. Oh my God, oh my God!
“Um, hello?” she answered quietly.
“Hey. Um, Aria?”
“Oh. Hey! What’s up?” She tried to sound as controlled and cool as possible.
“I’m at home, having a Scotch, thinking about you.”
Aria paused, closed her eyes, and a glow passed through her. “Really?”
“Yep. You at that big party?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You bored?”
She laughed. “A little.”
“Wanna come by?”
“Okay.” Ezra started to give her directions, but Aria already knew where it was. She’d looked up his address on MapQuest and Google Earth, but she couldn’t exactly tell him that.
“Cool,” she said. “See you soon.”
Aria shoved the phone back into her purse as calmly as she could, and then banged the rubbery soles of her boots together. Yesssss!!!
“Hey, I know where I know you from.”
Aria looked over. Noel’s brother, Eric, was squinting at her while Mona kissed his neck. “You’re the friend of that chick who disappeared, right?”
Aria looked at him and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, and walked away.
A lot of Rosewood was gated estates and renovated fifty-acre horse farms, but near the college there was a series of rambling, cobblestone streets lined with falling-to-pieces Victorian houses. The houses in Old Hollis were painted crazy colors like purple, pink, and teal and were usually split into apartments and leased to students. Aria’s family had lived in an Old Hollis house until Aria was five, which was when her dad got his first teaching job at the college.
As Aria drove slowly down Ezra’s street, she noticed one house with Greek letters mounted onto its siding. Toilet paper wound through its trees. Another house had a half-finished painting on an easel in the front yard.
She pulled up to Ezra’s house. After parking, she climbed up the stone front steps and rang the bell. The door flung open, and there he was.
“Wow,” he said. “Hey.” His mouth spread into a wiggly smile.
“Hi,” Aria answered, smiling back at him in the same way.
Ezra laughed. “I…um, you’re here. Wow.”
“You already said wow,” Aria teased.
They entered into a hallway. Ahead of her, a creaky staircase with a different swatch of carpet on each step wound its way upstairs. On the right, a door was ajar. “This apartment’s mine.”
Aria walked in and noticed a claw-foot bathtub in the middle of Ezra’s living room. She pointed at it.
“It’s too heavy to move,” Ezra said sheepishly. “So I store books in there.”
“Cool.” Aria looked around, taking in Ezra’s gigantic bay window, dusty built-in bookshelves, and yellow crushed velvet sofa. It smelled faintly of macaroni and cheese but there was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a funky mosaic tile around the mantel, and real logs in the fireplace. This was so much more Aria’s style than the Kahns’ million-dollar duck pond and twenty-seven-room estate.
“I totally want to live here,” Aria said.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Ezra said at the same time.
Aria looked over her shoulder. “Really?”
Ezra came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. Aria leaned slightly into him. They stood there for a moment, and then Aria turned. She stared at his clean-shaven face, at the bump at the edge of his nose, the green flecks in his eyes. She touched a mole on his earlobe and felt him shudder.
“I just…couldn’t ignore you in class,” he whispered. “It was torture. When you were giving that report…”
“You touched my hand today,” Aria teased. “You were looking at my notebook.”
“You kissed Noel,” Ezra said back. “I was so jealous.”
“Then it worked,” Aria whispered.
Ezra sighed and wrapped his arms around her. She met his mouth with hers and they kissed feverishly, their hands crawling up each other’s backs. They backed up for a second, breathlessly staring into each other’s eyes.
“No more talk about class,” Ezra said.
“Deal.”
He guided her into a tiny back bedroom that had clothes all over the floor and an open bag of Lay’s on the nightstand. They sat down on his bed. The mattress was barely bigger than a twin, and even though the comforter was made of stiff denim and the mattress probably had potato chip crumbs in the cracks, Aria had never felt anything so perfect in her life.
Aria was still on the bed, staring up at a crack in the ceiling. The streetlight outside the window cast long shadows across everything, turning Aria’s bare skin a weird shade of pink. A stiff, chilly breeze from the open window blew out the sandalwood candle next to the bed. She heard Ezra turn on the faucet in the bathroom.
Wow. Wow wow
wow!
She felt alive. She and Ezra had nearly had sex…but then, at exactly the same time, they’d agreed that they should wait. So then they’d snuggled up to each other, naked, and started to talk. Ezra told her about the time he was six and sculpted a red squirrel out of clay, only to have his brother squash it. How he used to smoke a lot of pot after his parents got divorced. About the time he had to take the family’s fox terrier to the vet to have her put to sleep. Aria told him about how when she was little, she kept a can of split pea soup named Pee as a pet and cried when her mom tried to cook Pee for dinner. She told him about her furious knitting habit and promised to knit him a sweater.
It was easy to talk to Ezra—so easy she could imagine doing it forever. They could travel together to faraway places. Brazil would be amazing…. They could sleep in a tree and eat nothing but plantains and write plays for the rest of their lives….
Her Treo beeped. Ugh. It was probably Noel, wondering what happened to her. She hugged one of Ezra’s pillows close to her—mmm, it smelled just like him—and waited for him to come out of the bathroom and kiss her some more.
Then it beeped again. And again and again.
“Jesus,” Aria groaned, leaning her naked body off the bed to pull it out of her bag. Seven new text messages. More kept beeping in.
Opening her inbox, Aria frowned. The messages all had the same title: STUDENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE! Her stomach turned as she opened the first one.
Aria,
That’s some kind of extra credit!
Love ya,
-A
P.S. Wonder what your mom would think if she found out about your dad’s little, uh, study buddy…and that you knew!
Aria read the next text message and the next and the next. All the messages said the same thing. She dropped the Treo on the floor. She had to sit down.
No. She had to get out of here.
“Ezra?” She frantically peered out Ezra’s windows. Was she watching, right this second? What did she want? Was it really her? “Ezra, I have to go. It’s an emergency.”
