by Sara Shepard
Hanna slumped against the sideboard, nearly knocking over a decorative plate adorned with a print of Independence Mall. Her mouth felt sticky with vodka, and her limbs hung loose and free.
Ali turned and lobbed something white and fluffy at each of the girls. “Hot tub time!” She clapped her hands. “Make yourselves fresh cocktails and get changed while I go outside and turn it on.”
Grabbing her drink, Ali skipped through the living room and out to the back porch, her blond ponytail bobbing. Hanna stared at the objects Ali had thrown at her—a fluffy white Frette towel and a polka-dotted Marc Jacobs string bikini. She held the bikini top and bottom up to the light, admiring the shiny fabric and silvery ties.
Hanna straightened up, suddenly refortified. Nice try, bitches. The tag inside the butt read size zero. Hanna smiled to herself, flattered and stunned. It was the best compliment anyone could have given her.
27 BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
The alcohol had definitely gone to Emily’s head. She stood in the tiny Pennsylvania Dutch–themed downstairs bathroom clad in only her string bikini, tilting from one side to the other, sizing up her toned biceps, her thin waist, and her shapely shoulders. “You’re hot,” she whispered to her reflection. “Ali wants you.” She started to giggle.
Not only was she drunk on vodka, she was also drunk on Ali. It was thrilling to be back in the Poconos. And kissing Ali at the dance? Emily wasn’t sure when she’d felt happier in her entire life.
Emily marched out of the bathroom, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her waist. She plucked a half-drunk cocktail off the buffet table and skipped out to the three-season porch. It was exactly as she remembered it—the overpowering smell of potting soil and wetness, the stone garden gnomes in the corner, and the quirky, chipped tile-top tables Mrs. DiLaurentis had found at an estate sale. Emily expected to see Ali there—she’d wanted to give Ali a secret kiss before the others came out—but the room was empty.
“Chilly!” Emily cried as her bare toes hit the frigid floor. A heat lamp had been set up near the door, and the big green plastic cover had been pulled off the hot tub. The motor groaned loudly. Bluish bubbles rose to the surface of the tub. When Emily touched the water, she squealed again. It was ice-cold. The tub probably hadn’t been used in years.
Hanna, Spencer, and Aria emerged onto the porch. As they waited for Ali to change, Hanna dragged in the iPod speakers from the living room and put on Britney Spears, who they’d loved dancing to in seventh grade. They all sang along to the music, just like old times. Emily stretched her towel out, sliding it seductively down the length of her bikini-clad body. Hanna strutted up and down the porch like she was on the catwalk, pausing at the end of the room to pose. Spencer did high Rockette-style kicks. Aria tried to imitate her and almost took out a dead fern. The girls doubled over laughing, wrapping their arms around one another. They leaned against the side of the hot tub, gasping for breath.
“I can’t believe we didn’t talk to each other for so many years,” Spencer blurted. “What was wrong with us?”
Aria waved her hand with an uninhibited flourish. “We were stupid. We should’ve stayed friends.”
Emily’s face flushed. “Seriously,” she whispered. She’d had no idea the others felt the same way she did.
Hanna brushed a couple of dead leaves off one of the outdoor chairs and plopped down. “I missed you guys.”
“No, you didn’t.” Spencer pointed at her drunkenly. “You had Mona.”
They all fell silent, ruminating on what Mona had done to all of them. Emily felt a lump in her throat as she watched Hanna wince and turn away. It was bad enough that Mona had tormented Emily, but Mona had been Hanna’s best friend.
Emily stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Hanna. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Spencer moved in next, and then Aria. “She was insane,” Spencer murmured.
“I should have never lost touch with you guys,” Hanna mumbled into Spencer’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Emily cried, petting Hanna’s long, silky hair. “You have us now.”
They remained that way until the song petered out into silence. The hot tub groaned. A loud thump sounded from inside the house. Spencer looked up, her brow furrowing. “Ali sure is taking a long time to change.”
Everyone wrapped their towels around their shoulders and went inside. They moved through the living room and into the kitchen. “Ali?” Hanna called. No answer. Emily poked her head into the bathroom from which she’d just emerged. Water dripped from the faucet. The heat from the vent made the tail of the toilet paper roll float in the air.
“Ali?” Aria called into the formal sitting room. Sheets had been draped over the chairs, making them look like lumpish ghosts. Everyone stood stock-still, listening.
Spencer paused in the kitchen. “Maybe I shouldn’t be bringing this up now, but my mom called earlier. My sister is still missing….”
“What?” Emily stopped next to the stove.
“What if she followed us?” Spencer’s voice wobbled. “What if she’s here?”
“She can’t be.” Hanna took a fortifying swig of her cocktail. “Spencer, there’s no way.”
Spencer pulled her sweater over her head and padded toward the door that led to the side yard. Emily grabbed her sweatshirt and jeans, pulled them on, and followed. The old, rusty side door creaked as it opened. The sky was bright with stars. The only other light was a single golden beam from the garage. The black BMW was parked in the driveway. Emily’s eyes flickered back and forth, searching desperately for a shifting shadow. She pulled out her phone, wondering if they should call someone. Her screen said No Service Available. Everyone else looked at their phones, too, and shook their heads. They were all out of range.
Emily shivered. This can’t be happening. Not again. What if they’d been on the sun porch, having a great time, and something awful had happened to Ali? It was like a repeat of seventh grade: For minutes they’d sat in the barn, dumbly hypnotized, while a girl had been murdered.
“Ali!” Emily cried out. The name echoed into the night. “Ali!” she called again.
“What?” came a voice.
Everyone whipped around. Ali was standing in the kitchen doorway, still dressed in her jeans and cashmere hoodie. She was looking at them like they were crazy.
“Where have you guys been?” Ali laughed. “I just went to check the temperature in the hot tub, and I couldn’t find you anywhere!” She pretended to wipe sweat from her brow. “I was so scared!”
Emily walked back into the house, breathing a long sigh of relief. But as Ali held the door for her, giving her a huge, bright smile, Emily heard a branch snap from behind. She froze and glanced over her shoulder, certain she would see a pair of eyes gazing at her from the dense woods.
But everything was still and quiet. There was no one.
28 WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
Spencer and the others followed Ali back into the house. “The hot tub is way too cold,” Ali decided. “But there are lots of other things to do.”
Spencer plopped her unused bath towel on the kitchen table, walked into the living room, and sat down on the leather couch. Her skin felt numb, both from the cold and the scare that something might have happened to Ali. An uneasy feeling nagged at her, too, one she couldn’t quite describe. How had Ali not heard them when they were calling for her? How had they not seen her go into the porch and test the water of the hot tub? What was that thump they’d heard inside the house? And where was Melissa, anyway?
The other girls gathered around the room. Ali sat in the wicker wing chair they used to call “The Duchess Chair”: whichever girl they deemed the “Duchess” got to sit in the chair and make the others do whatever she wanted for the entire day. Hanna sat on the old yellow beanbag near the TV. Emily perched cross-legged on the leather ottoman by the couch, absently poking her finger into a tiny hole in the upholstery. Aria sat on the couch next to Spencer and pulled a cherry-blossom-printed satin pillow into her ch
est.
Ali curled her hands around the Duchess Chair’s twisted, twiggy arms and took a big breath. “So. Now that the hot tub idea is a bust, I have a proposition for you.”
“What?” Spencer asked.
Ali shifted her weight, making the wicker creak. “Since our last sleepover went so badly, I think we should wipe it out of our minds for good. I’d like to re-create it. Minus a couple of details, of course.”
“Like you disappearing?” Emily said.
“Naturally.” Ali twirled a piece of hair around her finger. “And, well, for it to be accurate, I’ll have to hypnotize you.”
Spencer’s skin went cold. Emily lowered her glass to the table. Hanna froze, a handful of Cheez-Its halfway to her mouth. “Uh…” Aria started.
Ali cocked an eyebrow. “When I was in the hospital, they made me go to all these therapists. One of them told me that the best way to get over a terrible memory is to reenact it. I really think it will help me….” She sighed. “Maybe it will help all of us.”
Spencer rubbed her feet together, trying to warm them up. A sudden wind whistled outside. She stared again at the photo of them next to the canoe. Reenacting the hypnosis sounded awful, but maybe Ali was right. After everything they’d been through, maybe they needed to do something to get past it, once and for all. “I’m game,” she decided.
“Yeah, I guess I’m in, too,” Emily decided.
“Sure,” Hanna said.
Ali looked hopefully at Aria, and Aria nodded reluctantly. “Thank you.” Ali jumped to her feet. “Let’s do it in the upstairs bedroom, though. It’s more intimate. More like the barn was.”
They followed her up the pink-carpeted stairs to the second level. A huge, pale moon shone through the circular window on the landing. The yard was empty, the pine trees forming a thick barrier between the house and the road. There was a man-made pond off to the left, though it had been drained for the winter. Now it was merely a dry, deep ditch.
Ali led them to the back bedroom. The door was already ajar, as if someone had been in here recently. Spencer remembered the cross-stitch sampler on the wall, the Queen Anne’s lace curtains, and the twin brass beds. Her nose twitched. She’d expected the room to be redolent with lilac-scented air freshener and maybe mildew, but there was a rotting, curdling odor instead. “What’s that smell?” she cried.
Ali wrinkled her nose, too. “Maybe there’s something dead inside the walls. Remember when that happened the summer between sixth and seventh grades? I think it was a raccoon.”
Spencer racked her brain, but she didn’t remember smelling anything remotely like this before.
Then Aria froze. “Did you hear that?”
Everyone tensed, listening. “No…” Spencer whispered.
Aria’s eyes were wide. “I think I heard someone cough. Is there someone outside?”
Ali peeled back a wooden slat in the blinds. The driveway was deserted. There were tracks in the gravel from where the BMW had pulled in. “Nothing,” Ali whispered.
They all let out a long sigh. “We’re psyching ourselves out,” Spencer said. “We’ve got to calm down.”
They plopped on the round rug on the floor. Ali pulled out six vanilla candles from a plastic bag and positioned them on the nightstands and the bureau. The match made a spitting sound as it ignited. The room was already dark, but Ali twisted the blinds closed and pulled the curtains tight. The candles cast eerie shadows on the wall.
“Okay,” Ali said. “Um, everyone, just relax.”
Emily giggled anxiously. Hanna let out a breath. Spencer tried to make her arms go limp, but her blood still zoomed in her ears. She’d relived the moment Ali had hypnotized her so many times in her mind. Every time she thought about it, her body contorted with panic. You’ll be fine, she told herself.
“Your heartbeat’s slowing down,” Ali chanted. “Think calm thoughts. I’m going to count down from one hundred, and as soon as I touch all of you, you’ll be in my power.”
No one spoke. The candles snapped and danced. Spencer shut her eyes as Ali began to count. “One hundred…ninety-nine…ninety-eight…”
Spencer’s left leg twitched, then her right. She tried to think calm thoughts, but it was impossible not to return to the night they’d done this last. She’d sat on the round rug in her family’s barn, pissed off that Ali had yet again talked them into something they didn’t want to do. What if Ali’s hypnosis made her blurt out she’d kissed Ian…and Melissa heard? Melissa and Ian had just been in the barn—they still could be close by.
And maybe, just maybe, Melissa had been close by. Like at the window…with a camera.
“Eighty-five, eighty-four…” Ali lilted.
Her voice faded farther and farther away until it sounded like she was whispering from the end of a very long tunnel. Then smudged light appeared before Spencer’s eyes. Sound warped and twisted. The smell of sanded floorboards and microwave popcorn tickled her nose. She took a few long, deep breaths, trying to imagine air flowing in and out of her lungs.
When Spencer’s vision came into focus, she realized she was in her family’s old barn. She was sitting on the old, soft rug her parents had bought in New York. The scent of pine and early summer flowers wafted in from outside. She looked at her friends. Hanna’s stomach bulged. Emily was bone thin and freckly. Aria had streaks of pink in her hair. Ali tiptoed among them, touching their foreheads with the fleshy part of her thumb. When she got to Spencer, Spencer jumped up.
It’s too dark in here, she heard herself saying. The words spilled out of her mouth, beyond her control.
No, Ali insisted. It’s got to be dark. That’s how it works.
It doesn’t always have to be the way you want it, you know, Ali? Spencer told her.
Close them, Ali answered, baring her teeth.
Spencer struggled to let light into the room. Ali let out a frustrated groan. But when Spencer glanced back at Ali, she realized that Ali wasn’t just angry. She’d frozen in place, her face drawn and ghost-pale, her eyes round. It was like she’d seen something awful.
Spencer turned back to the window, a shadow catching her eye. It was a tiny shard of a memory, barely anything. Spencer clung to the image now, desperate to remember whether it had really happened. And then…she saw. It was Ali’s reflection…except she wore a hood and carried a bulky camera. Her eyes were demonic and unblinking, out for murder. It was someone Spencer knew very well. She tried to say her name, but her lips wouldn’t work. She felt like she was choking.
The memory was rolling forward without her. Leave, she heard herself demand to Ali.
Fine, Ali answered.
“No!” Spencer told her old self. “Call Ali back! Keep her in the room! It’s…it’s her sister out there! And she wants to hurt Ali!”
But the memory careened on, out of Spencer’s grasp. Ali was at the door now. She turned around, giving Spencer a long look. Spencer let out a hoarse gasp. Suddenly, Ali didn’t quite look like the girl who was with them today.
Then Spencer’s gaze fell to the silver ring on the girl’s finger. Ali had said she hadn’t been wearing a ring that night, but there it was. Only, except instead of an A in the center, there was a C.
Why did Ali have on the wrong ring?
There was a tap on the window, and Spencer turned. The girl outside smiled sinisterly, running a hand along her eerily identical heart-shaped face. She held up the fourth finger on her right hand. She was wearing a ring, too—hers with the initial A. Spencer’s head felt like it was going to explode. Was Ali out there…and Courtney in here? How had that happened?
My memory’s playing tricks on me, she told herself. This didn’t happen. It’s just a dream.
The Ali at the door turned, her hand on the knob. Suddenly, her skin began to fade from pink to pale to white to ashen. “Ali?” Spencer called out cautiously. “Are you okay?”
Ali’s skin had begun to flake off in thick curls. “Does it look like I’m okay?” she snapped. She shook her
head at Spencer. “I’ve been trying to tell you…”
“Trying to tell me?” Spencer echoed. “What do you mean?”
“All those dreams you’ve had about me? Don’t you remember?”
Spencer blinked. “I…”
Ali rolled her eyes. Her skin was peeling off faster now, revealing ropy muscles and bleached bones. Her teeth plunked to the floor like acorns. Her hair turned from golden blond to pale gray. Then it started to fall out in chunks. “You really are stupider than I thought, Spence,” she hissed. “You deserve this.”
“Deserve what?” Spencer screamed.
Ali didn’t answer. When she turned the knob, her hand flaked off at the elbow, as brittle as a dried flower. It landed on the wood floor and promptly dissolved into dust. Then the door slammed hard, the force resonating through Spencer’s body. It sounded close. Real. Memory and reality collided.
Spencer’s eyes sprang open. The bedroom was oppressively hot; sweat poured down her face. Her old friends sat cross-legged on the carpet, their faces docile and relaxed, their eyes sealed shut. They looked…dead.
“Guys?” Spencer called. No answer. She wanted to reach out and touch Hanna, but she was afraid.
The dream crackled in her brain. I’ve been trying to tell you, the girl in the vision said. The one who looked like the Ali she remembered…but the one who was wearing Courtney’s ring. All those dreams you’ve had about me. Don’t you remember?
Spencer did remember plenty of dreams about Ali. Sometimes, she even dreamed about two different Alis.
“No,” Spencer whispered perilously. She didn’t understand this. She blinked in the darkness, looking for her fourth friend.
“Ali?” she squeaked.
But Ali didn’t answer. Because Ali was gone.
29 THE LETTER UNDER THE DOOR
Aria heard a slam and jerked awake. Half the candles had blown out. A putrid smell filled the air. Her three old best friends were sitting on the carpet, staring at her.
