by Sara Shepard
Maybe she’d been right all along.
She pumped uphill and around a sharp turn, narrowly avoiding a stone Revolutionary War battle memorial sign. If Ali was back, what would that mean for Emily’s friendship with Maya? She sort of doubted she could have two best friends…two best friends she felt so similarly about. She wondered what Ali would even think of Maya. What if they hated each other?
I loved it.
We should just be friends.
She swept past the beautiful farmhouses, crumbling stone inns, and gardeners’ pickups parked on the road’s shoulder. She used to bike this exact route to Ali’s house; the last time, in fact, had been before the kiss. Emily hadn’t planned to kiss Ali before she came; something had come over her in the heat of the moment. She would never forget how soft Ali’s lips were or the stunned look on Ali’s face when she pulled back. “What did you do that for?” she’d asked.
Suddenly, a siren wailed behind her. Emily barely had time to move to the edge of the road again before a Rosewood ambulance screamed past. A gust of wind kicked up, blowing dust into her face. She wiped her eyes and stared as the ambulance got to the top of the hill and paused at Alison’s street.
Now it was turning onto Alison’s street. Fear seized Emily. Ali’s street was…Maya’s street. She gripped the rubber handles of her bike.
With all the craziness, she’d forgotten the secret Maya had told her last night. The cutting. The hospital. That huge, jagged scar. Sometimes I just feel like I need to, Maya had said.
“Oh my God,” Emily whispered.
She pedaled furiously and skidded around the corner. If the ambulance sirens stop by the time I get around the corner, she thought, Maya will be okay.
But then the ambulance pulled to a stop in front of Maya’s house. The sirens were still roaring. Police cars were everywhere.
“No,” Emily whispered. White-coated medics got out of the vehicle and ran for the house. A ton of people littered Maya’s yard, some with cameras. Emily threw her bike at the curb and ran crookedly toward the house.
“Emily!”
Maya burst through the crowd. Emily gasped, then ran into Maya’s arms, tears messily running down her face.
“You’re okay.” Emily sobbed. “I was afraid—”
“I’m fine,” Maya said.
But there was something in her voice that was clearly not fine. Emily stood back. Maya’s eyes were red and watery. Her mouth was drawn down nervously.
“What is it?” Emily asked. “What’s going on?”
Maya swallowed. “They found your friend.”
“What?” Emily stared at her, then at the scene on Maya’s lawn. It was all so eerily familiar: the ambulance, the cop cars, the crowds of people, the long-lensed cameras. A news helicopter hovered overhead. This was exactly the same scene as three years ago, when Ali went missing.
Emily stepped back out of Maya’s arms, grinning in disbelief. She had been right!
Alison was back at her house, like nothing had ever happened. “I knew it!” she whispered.
Maya took Emily’s hand. “They were digging for our tennis court. My mom was there. She…saw her. I heard her scream from my bedroom.”
Emily dropped her hand. “Wait. What?”
“I tried to call you,” Maya added.
Emily wrinkled her brow and stared back at Maya. Then she looked at the twenty-strong team of cops. At Mrs. St. Germain sobbing by the tire swing. At the POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS tape loops around the backyard. And then at the van parked in the driveway. It said, ROSEWOOD PD MORGUE. She had to read it six times for it to make sense. Her heart sped up and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t…understand,” Emily sputtered, taking another step back. “Who did they find?”
Maya looked at her sympathetically, her eyes shiny with tears. “Your friend Alison,” she whispered. “They just found her body.”
31
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
Byron Montgomery took a big sip of coffee and shakily lit his pipe. “They found her when they were excavating the concrete slab in the DiLaurentises’ old backyard to put in a tennis court.”
“She was under the concrete,” Ella jumped in. “They knew it was her from the ring she was wearing. But they’re doing DNA tests to make sure.”
It felt like a fist was pummeling Aria’s stomach. She remembered Ali’s white-gold initialed ring. Ali’s parents had gotten it for her at Tiffany’s when she was ten after she got her tonsils out. Ali liked to wear it on her pinkie.
“Why did they have to do DNA tests?” Mike asked. “Was she all decomposed?”
“Michelangelo!” Byron frowned. “That’s not a very sensitive thing to say in front of your sister.”
Mike shrugged and jammed a piece of sour green-apple Bubble Tape into his mouth. Aria sat opposite him, tears quietly running down her cheeks, absentmindedly unraveling the edge of a rattan place mat. It was 2 P.M., and they were sitting around the kitchen table.
“I can handle it.” Aria’s throat constricted. “Was she decomposed?”
Her parents looked at each other. “Well, yes,” her father said, scratching his chest through a little hole in his shirt. “Bodies break down pretty fast.”
“Sick,” Mike whispered.
Aria shut her eyes. Alison was dead. Her body was rotted. Someone had probably killed her.
“Sweetheart?” Ella asked quietly, cupping her hand over Aria’s. “Honey, are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Aria murmured, trying not to start bawling all over again.
“Would you like a Xanax?” Byron asked.
Aria shook her head.
“I’ll take a Xanax,” Mike said quickly.
Aria nervously picked at the side of her thumb. Her body felt hot and then cold. She didn’t know what to do or think. The only person who she thought might make her feel better was Ezra; she thought she could explain all of her feelings to him. At the very least, he would let her curl up on his denim futon and cry.
Scraping back her chair, she started for her room. Byron and Ella exchanged glances and followed her to the spiral staircase.
“Sweetie?” Ella asked. “What can we do?”
But Aria ignored them and pushed through her bedroom door. Her room was a disaster. Aria hadn’t cleaned since she’d moved back from Iceland, and she wasn’t the neatest girl in the world to start with. Her clothes were all over the floor in unorganized piles. On her bed were CDs, sequins she was using to make a beaded hat, poster paints, playing cards, Pigtunia, line drawings of Ezra’s profile, several skeins of yarn. The carpet had a big, red candle wax stain on it. She searched in the covers of her bed and on the surface of her desk for her Treo—she needed it to call Ezra. But it wasn’t there. She checked the green bag she’d taken to the party last night, but her phone wasn’t in that, either.
Then she remembered. After she received that text, she’d dropped the phone like it was poisonous. She must have left it behind.
She stormed down the stairs. Her parents were still on the landing.
“I’m taking the car,” she mumbled, grabbing the keys off the ring by the foyer table.
“Okay,” her father said.
“Take your time,” her mother added.
Someone had propped the front door to Ezra’s house open with a large metal sculpture of a terrier. Aria stepped around it and walked inside the hallway. She knocked on Ezra’s door. She had the same feeling she did when she had to pee really badly—it might be torture, but you knew that very soon, you were going to feel a whole hell of a lot better.
Ezra flung open the door. As soon as he saw her, he tried to shut it again.
“Wait,” Aria squeaked, her voice still filled with tears. Ezra retreated into his kitchen, his back to her. She followed him in.
Ezra whirled around to face her. He was unshaven and looked exhausted. “What are you doing here?”
Aria chewed on her lip. “I’m here to see you. I got
some news….” Her Treo sat on his sideboard. She picked it up. “Thanks. You found it.”
Ezra glared at the Treo. “Okay, you got it. Can you leave now?”
“What’s going on?” She walked toward him. “I got this news. I had to see—”
“Yeah, I got some news too,” he interrupted. Ezra moved away from her. “Seriously, Aria. I can’t…I can’t even look at you.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “What?” Aria stared at him, confused.
Ezra lowered his eyes. “I found what you said about me on your cell phone.”
Aria wrinkled her eyebrows. “My cell phone?”
Ezra raised his head. His eyes flashed with anger. “Do you think I’m stupid? Was this all just a game? A dare?”
“What are you…?”
Ezra sighed angrily. “Well, you know what? You got me. Okay? I’m the brunt of your big joke. You happy? Now get out.”
“I don’t understand,” Aria said loudly.
Ezra slapped his palm against the wall. The force of it made Aria jump. “Don’t play dumb! I’m not some boy, Aria!”
Aria’s whole body started to tremble. “I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you explain, please? I’m kind of falling apart here!”
Ezra took his hand off the wall and started to pace around the tiny room. “Fine. After you left, I tried to sleep. There was this…this beeping. You know what it was?” He pointed to the Treo. “Your cell phone thing. The only way to shut it up was to open your text messages.”
Aria wiped her eyes.
Ezra crossed his arms over his chest. “Shall I quote them for you?”
Then Aria realized. The text messages. “Wait! No! You don’t understand!”
Ezra trembled. “Student-teacher conference? Extra credit? This sound familiar?”
“No, Ezra,” Aria stammered. “You don’t understand.” The world was spinning. Aria gripped the edge of Ezra’s kitchen table.
“I’m waiting,” Ezra said.
“This friend of mine was killed,” she began. “They just found her body.” Aria opened her mouth to say more, but couldn’t find the words. Ezra stood at the farthest point in the room from her, behind the bathtub.
“It’s all so silly,” Aria said. “Can you please come over here? Can you at least hug me?”
Ezra crossed his arms over his chest and looked down. He stood that way for what felt like a long time. “I really liked you,” he finally said, his voice thick.
Aria choked back a sob. “I really like you, too….” She walked over to him.
But Ezra stepped away. “No. You have to get out of here.”
“But…”
Ezra clapped his hand over her mouth. “Please,” he said a little desperately. “Please leave.”
Aria widened her eyes and her heart started to pound. Alarms went off in her head. This felt…wrong. On impulse, she bit down into Ezra’s hand.
“What the fuck?” he shrieked, pulling away.
Aria stood back, dazed. Blood dripped out of Ezra’s hand onto the floor.
“You’re insane!” Ezra cried.
Aria breathed heavily. She couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. So she turned and ran for the door. As her hand turned the doorknob, something screamed past her, bounced off the wall, and landed next to her foot. It was a copy of Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Aria turned back to Ezra, her mouth open in shock.
“Get out!” Ezra boomed.
Aria slammed the door behind her. She tore down across the lawn as fast as her legs would carry her.
32
A FALLEN STAR
The next day, Spencer stood at her old bedroom window, smoking a Marlboro and looking across her lawn into Alison’s old bedroom. It was dark and empty. Then, her eyes moved to the DiLaurentises’ yard. The flashing lights hadn’t stopped since they found her.
The police had put up DO NOT CROSS tape all around the concrete area of Alison’s old backyard, even though they had already removed her body from the ground. They’d put huge tents around the area while doing that, too, so Spencer hadn’t seen anything. Not that she’d have wanted to. It was beyond awful to think that Ali’s body had been next door to her, rotting in the ground for three years. Spencer remembered the construction before Ali disappeared. They dug the hole right around the night she went missing. She knew, too, that they’d filled it after Ali disappeared but wasn’t sure when. Someone had just dumped her there.
She stubbed out her Marlboro in the brick siding of her house and turned back to Lucky magazine. She’d hardly exchanged a word with her family since yesterday’s confrontation and she’d been trying to calm herself down by going methodically through it and marking everything she wanted to buy with the magazine’s little YES stickers. As she looked at a page on tweed blazers, though, her eyes glazed over.
She couldn’t even talk to her parents about this. Yesterday, after they confronted her at breakfast, Spencer had wandered outside to see what the sirens were all about—ambulances still made her nervous, from both The Jenna Thing and Ali’s disappearance. As she walked across her lawn to the DiLaurentis house, she sensed something and turned back. Her parents had come out to see what was going on too. When they saw her turn, they quickly looked away. The police told her to stand back, that this area was off limits. Then Spencer saw the morgue van. One of the policeman’s walkie-talkies crackled, “Alison.”
Her body had grown very cold. The world spun. Spencer slumped down on the grass. Someone spoke to her, but she couldn’t understand him. “You’re in shock,” she finally heard. “Just try to calm down.” Spencer’s field of vision was so narrow, she wasn’t sure who it was—only that it wasn’t her mom or dad. The guy came back with a blanket and told her to sit there for a while and keep warm.
Once Spencer felt well enough to get up, whoever had helped her was gone. Her parents had left too. They hadn’t even bothered to see if she was okay.
She’d spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday in her room, only going out into the hall to the bathroom when she knew no one else was around. She hoped someone would come up and check on her, but when she heard a small, tentative knock on her door earlier this afternoon, Spencer didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure why. She listened to whoever it was sigh and pad back down the hall.
And then, only a half hour ago, Spencer had watched her dad’s Jaguar back out of the driveway and turn toward the main road. Her mom was in the passenger seat; Melissa was in the back. She had no idea where they were going.
She slumped down in her computer chair and pulled up that first e-mail from A, the one talking about coveting things she couldn’t have. After reading it a few times, she clicked REPLY. Slowly she typed, Are you Alison?
She hesitated before hitting SEND. Were all the police lights making her trippy? Dead girls didn’t have Hotmail accounts. Nor did they have Instant Messenger screen names. Spencer had to get a grip—someone was pretending to be Ali. But who?
She stared up at the Mondrian mobile she’d bought last year at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Then she heard a plink sound. There it was again.
Plink.
It sounded really close, actually. Like at her window. Spencer sat up just as a pebble hit her window again. Someone was throwing rocks.
A?
As another rock hit, she went to the window—and gasped. On the lawn was Wren. The blue and red lights from the police cars kept making streaky shadows across his cheeks. When he saw her, he broke into a huge smile. Immediately, she bolted downstairs, not caring how horrible her hair looked or that she was wearing marinara-stained Kate Spade pajama pants. Wren ran for her as she came out the door. He threw his arms around her and kissed her scruffy head. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she murmured.
“I know.” He stood back. “But I noticed your parents’ car was gone, so…”
She pushed her hand through his soft hair. Wren looked exhausted. What if he had to sleep in his little Toyota last night
?
“How did you know I’d be back in my old room?”
He shrugged. “A hunch. I also thought I saw your face at the window. I wanted to come earlier, but there was…all that.” He gestured to the police cars and random news vans next door. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Spencer answered. She tilted her head up to Wren’s mouth and bit her chapped lip to keep from crying. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Sure.”
“Do you have somewhere to live?”
“I can stay on a friend’s couch until I find something. Not a big deal.”
If only Spencer could stay on a friend’s couch too. Then something occurred to her. “Are you and Melissa over?”
Wren cupped her face in his hand and sighed. “Of course,” he said softly. “It was kind of obvious. With Melissa, it wasn’t like…”
He trailed off, but Spencer thought she knew what he was going to say. It wasn’t like being with you. She smiled shakily and laid her head against his chest. His heart thumped in her ear.
She looked over at the DiLaurentis house. Someone had started a little shrine to Alison on the curb, complete with pictures and Virgin Mary candles. In the center were little alphabet magnet letters that spelled Ali. Spencer herself had propped up a smiling picture of Alison in a tight blue Von Dutch T-shirt and spanking new Sevens. She remembered when she’d taken that picture: They were in sixth grade, and it was the night of the Rosewood Winter Formal. The five of them had spied on Melissa as Ian picked her up. Spencer had gotten hiccups from laughing when Melissa, trying to make a grand entrance, tripped down the Hastingses’ front walk on the way to the tacky rented Hummer limo. It was probably their last really fun, carefree memory. The Jenna Thing happened not too long after. Spencer glanced at Toby and Jenna’s house. No one was home, as usual, but it still made her shiver.
As she blotted her eyes with the back of her pale, thin hand, one of the news vans drove by slowly, and a guy in a red Phillies cap stared at her. She ducked. Now would not be the time to capture some emotional-girl-breaks-down-at-the-tragedy footage.
