“And these images, found in Mr. Ford’s car, have never been seen before.”
A blurry Polaroid photo materialized. Spencer leaned forward, her eyes widening. It was a shot of the inside of a barn—her family’s barn, which had been ruined in the fire Billy set several weeks ago, presumably to destroy evidence tying him to Ali’s and Ian’s murders. In the picture, four girls sat on the round rug in the center of the room, their heads bowed. A fifth girl stood above them, her arms in the air. The next photo was of the same scene, except the standing girl had moved a few inches to the left. In the following shot, one of the girls who had been sitting had stood up and moved toward the window. Spencer recognized the girl’s dirty blond hair and rolled-up field hockey skirt. She gasped. She was looking at her younger self. These photos were from the night Ali went missing. Billy had been standing outside the barn, watching them.
And they’d never known.
Someone let out a small, dry cough behind her. Spencer whirled around. Mrs. Hastings sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly into a mug of Earl Grey tea. She was wearing a pair of gray Lululemon yoga pants with a tiny hole in the knee, dirty white socks, and an oversize Ralph Lauren polo. Her hair was stringy, and there were toast crumbs on her left cheek. Normally, Spencer’s mom didn’t even let the family dogs see her unless she looked absolutely pristine.
“Mom?” Spencer said tentatively, wondering if her mother had seen the Polaroids, too. Mrs. Hastings turned her head slowly, as though she were moving underwater. “Hi, Spence,” she said tonelessly. Then she turned back to her tea, staring miserably at the bag steeping at the bottom of the cup.
Spencer bit off the tip of her French-manicured pinkie. On top of everything else, her mom was acting like a zombie…and it was all her fault. If only she hadn’t blurted out the horrible secret Billy-as-A had told her about her family: that her dad had had an affair with Ali’s mother, and that Ali was Spencer’s half sister. If only Billy hadn’t convinced Spencer that her mom knew about the affair and killed Ali to punish her husband. Spencer had confronted her mother, only to discover that her mother hadn’t known—or done—anything. After that, Mrs. Hastings kicked Spencer’s dad out of the house, and then more or less gave up on life entirely.
The familiar click-click-click of heels on the mahogany hall floors rang through the air. Spencer’s sister, Melissa, blustered into the room, surrounded by a cloud of Miss Dior. She wore a pale blue Kate Spade sweater dress and gray kitten heels, and her dark blond hair was pulled back in a gray headband. There was a silver clipboard under her arm and a Montblanc pen behind her right ear.
“Hey, Mom!” Melissa called brightly, giving her a kiss on the forehead. Then she appraised Spencer, setting her mouth in a straight line. “Hey, Spence,” she said coolly.
Spencer slumped into the nearest chair. The benevolent, I’m-glad-you’re-alive feelings she and her sister had shared the night Jenna was murdered had lasted exactly twenty-four hours. Now, things were back to status quo, with Melissa blaming Spencer for their family’s ruin, snubbing Spencer every chance she got, and taking on all the home responsibilities like the prissy brownnoser she’d always been.
Melissa lifted the clipboard. “I’m going to Fresh Fields for groceries. Want anything special?” She spoke to Mrs. Hastings in an overly loud voice, as if she were ninety years old and deaf.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Hastings said morosely. She stared into her open palms as if they contained great wisdom. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? We eat the food, and then it’s gone, and then we’re hungry again.” At that, she stood up, sighed loudly, and shuffled up the stairs to her bedroom.
Melissa’s lip twitched. The clipboard knocked against her hip. She glanced over at Spencer, her eyes narrowing. Look what you’ve done, her expression screamed.
Spencer stared out the long line of windows that faced the backyard. Sheets of pale blue ice glistened on the back walkway. Pointed icicles hung from the singed trees. The family’s old barn was a heap of black wood and ash, ruined from the fire. The windmill was still in pieces, the word LIAR scrawled on the base.
Tears rushed to Spencer’s eyes. Whenever she looked at her backyard, she had to resist the urge to run upstairs, curl up under her bed, and shut the door. Things had been great between Spencer and her parents before she exposed the affair—for once. But Spencer now felt the same way she did when she first tasted homemade cappuccino ice cream from the Creamery in Hollis—after just one lick, she had to eat the whole cone. After a taste of what a decent, loving family was like, she couldn’t go back to dysfunction and neglect.
The television continued to blare, a picture of Ali filling the screen. Melissa paused to listen for a moment as the reporter walked through the timeline of the murder.
Spencer bit down on her lip. She and Melissa hadn’t discussed the fact that Ali was their half sister. Now that Spencer knew that she and Ali were related, it changed everything. For a long time, Spencer had kind of hated Ali—she’d controlled her every move, stockpiled her every secret. But none of that mattered now. Spencer just wished she could go back in time to save Ali from Billy that horrible night.
The station cut to a studio shot of pundits sitting around a high, bistro-style table, discussing Billy’s fate. “You can’t trust anyone anymore,” exclaimed an olive-skinned woman in a cherry-red power suit. “No child is safe.”
“Now, wait a second.” A black man with a goatee waved his hands to stop them. “Maybe we should give Mr. Ford a chance. A man is innocent until proven guilty, right?”
Melissa scooped up her black patent leather Gucci hobo bag from the island. “I don’t know why they’re wasting their time discussing this,” she spat acidly. “He deserves to rot in hell.”
Spencer gave her sister an uneasy look. That was another strange development in the Hastings household—Melissa had become unequivocally, almost fanatically confident that Billy was the murderer. Every time the news brought up an inconsistency in the case, Melissa grew enraged.
“He’ll go to jail,” Spencer said reassuringly. “Everyone knows he did it.”
“Good.” Melissa turned away, plucked the Mercedes car keys out of the ceramic bowl by the phone, buttoned the checkered Marc Jacobs jacket she’d bought at Saks the week before—apparently she wasn’t too distraught over their broken home to shop—and slammed the door.
As the pundits continued to squabble, Spencer walked to the front window and watched as her sister backed out of the driveway. There was a disquieting smile on Melissa’s lips that sent a shiver up Spencer’s backbone.
For some reason, Melissa almost looked…relieved.
2
THE SECRETS NOW BURIED
Aria Montgomery and her boyfriend, Noel Kahn, huddled close as they walked from the Rosewood Day student parking lot to the lobby entrance. A rush of warm air greeted them as they swept inside the school, but when Aria noticed the display near the auditorium, her blood froze. On a long table across the room was a large photo of Jenna Cavanaugh.
Jenna’s porcelain skin shone. Her naturally red lips revealed a hint of a smile. She wore big wraparound Gucci sunglasses that concealed her damaged eyes. We’ll miss you, Jenna, said gold foil letters above the image. Next to it were smaller pictures, flowers, and other memorabilia and gifts. Someone had added a package of Marlboro Ultra Light cigarettes to the memorial, even though Jenna wasn’t the kind of girl who would smoke.
Aria let out a small groan. She’d heard that the school might erect a shrine in Jenna’s honor, but something about it seemed so…tacky.
“Shit,” Noel whispered. “We shouldn’t have come in this door.”
Aria’s eyes filled with tears. One minute, Jenna was alive—Aria had seen her at a party at Noel’s house, laughing with Maya St. Germain. Then, practically the next minute…well, what happened next was too horrible to think about. Aria knew she should be relieved that at least Jenna’s killer had been caught, Ali’s murder had been solved, and
the threatening notes from A had stopped, but what had happened couldn’t be undone—an innocent girl was still dead.
Aria couldn’t help but wonder if she and her friends could have done more to prevent Jenna’s death. When Billy-as-A had been communicating with them, he’d sent Emily a photo of Jenna and Ali when they were younger. He’d then directed Emily to Jenna’s house when Jenna and Jason DiLaurentis were fighting. He was obviously giving them a hint about his next victim. Jenna had also recently lingered on Aria’s front lawn, looking as though she needed to tell Aria something. When Aria called out to her, Jenna had paled and quickly walked away. Did she sense Billy was going to hurt her? Should Aria have known something was wrong?
A sophomore girl placed a single red rose on the memorial. Aria closed her eyes. She didn’t need any more reminders of all that Billy had done. Just that morning she’d seen a report about a set of Polaroids he’d taken of their end-of-seventh-grade sleepover. It was hard to believe Billy had been so close. As she’d chewed on her quinoa breakfast flakes, she’d parsed her memory of that night over and over, trying to recall anything more. Had she heard any strange noises on the porch or suspicious breathing at the window? Had she felt angry eyes glaring at her through the glass? But she couldn’t remember a thing.
Aria leaned against the wall at the far end of the lobby. A bunch of boys on the crew team were crowded around an iPhone, laughing about an app that made a toilet-flushing noise. Sean Ackard and Kirsten Cullen were comparing answers to that day’s trig assignment. Jennifer Thatcher and Jennings Silver were making out near the Jenna shrine. Jennifer’s hip bumped against the table, knocking over a small photo of Jenna in a shiny gold frame.
A knot tightened in Aria’s chest. She marched across the room and straightened the picture. Jennifer and Jennings broke apart, looking guilty.
“Have some respect,” Aria snapped at them anyway.
Noel touched Aria’s arm. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get out of here.”
He pulled her out of the lobby and around the corner. Kids were at their lockers, hanging up their coats and pulling out books. In a far corner, Shark Tones, Rosewood Day’s a cappella group, was rehearsing a version of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” for an upcoming concert. Aria’s brother, Mike, and Mason Byers were in a shoving match near the water fountains.
Aria approached her locker and spun the dial. “It’s like no one even remembers what happened,” she murmured.
“Maybe it’s their way of dealing,” Noel suggested. He rested his arm on Aria’s. “Let’s do something to get your mind off this.”
Aria wriggled out of the houndstooth coat that she’d bought at a thrift store in Philly and hung it on a hook in her locker. “What do you have in mind?”
“Anything you want.”
Aria gave him a grateful hug. Noel smelled like spearmint gum and the licorice-scented tree that hung from the rearview mirror of his Cadillac Escalade.
“I wouldn’t mind going to Clio tonight,” Aria suggested. Clio was a new, quaint café that had opened in downtown Rosewood. The hot chocolates were served in mugs the size of a baseball hat.
“Done,” Noel answered. But then he winced and squeezed his eyes shut. “Wait. I can’t tonight. I have my support group.”
Aria nodded. Noel had lost an older brother to suicide and now attended grief support meetings. After Aria and her old friends had seen Ali’s spirit the night Spencer’s woods burned down, Aria contacted a medium who told her that Ali killed Ali, leading Aria to briefly wonder if Ali had committed suicide, too. “Is it helping?” she asked.
“I think so. Wait—” Noel snapped his fingers at something across the hall. “Why don’t we go to that?”
He was pointing to a hot-pink poster. It had black silhouettes of dancing kids all over it, like the once-ubiquitous iPod ads. But instead of holding Nanos and Touches, they were holding small white hearts. FIND LOVE AT THE VALENTINE’S DAY DANCE THIS SATURDAY, the poster proclaimed in sparkly red letters.
“What do you say?” There was a sweetly vulnerable look on Noel’s face. “Want to go with me?”
“Oh!” Aria blurted. Truthfully, she’d wanted to go to the Valentine’s Day dance ever since Teagan Scott, a cute freshman, asked Ali in seventh grade. Aria and the others had helped Ali get ready like she was Cinderella going off to the ball. Hanna was in charge of curling Ali’s hair, Emily helped Ali into her ballerina-skirt dress, and Aria had the honor of clipping the diamond pendant Mrs. DiLaurentis had let Ali borrow for the night around her neck. Afterward, Ali bragged about her beautiful wrist corsage, the awesome music the DJ played, and how the dance photographer followed her around the entire time, telling her she was the most beautiful girl in the room. As usual.
Aria gazed bashfully at Noel. “Maybe that would be fun.”
“It’ll definitely be fun,” Noel corrected her. “I promise.” His piercing blue eyes softened. “And you know, the people at the Y are starting another group for general grief. Maybe you should go.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aria said noncommittally, moving out of the way as Gemma Curran tried to shove her violin case into the adjacent locker. “I’m not really into the group therapy thing.”
“Just think about it,” Noel advised.
Then he leaned over, pecked Aria on the cheek, and left. Aria watched him disappear into the stairwell. Grief counseling wasn’t the answer—she and her old friends had met with a grief counselor named Marion in January in an attempt to put Ali behind them, but it had only made them more obsessed.
The truth was, some niggling inconsistencies and unanswered questions about the case remained, things Aria still couldn’t help thinking about. Like exactly how Billy knew so much about her and her friends—down to Spencer’s family’s dark secrets. Or what Jason DiLaurentis had said to Aria in the cemetery, after she accused him of being a psychiatric patient: You’ve got it all wrong. Only, what did Aria have wrong? Jason had obviously been an outpatient at the Radley, a mental hospital now turned classy hotel. Emily had seen his name all through the hospital’s logbooks.
Aria slammed her locker shut. As she started down the hall, she heard a far-off giggle—just like the one she’d been hearing ever since she started receiving notes from A. She looked around, her heart slamming against her rib cage. The halls were thinning out, everyone scuttling off to homeroom. No one was paying any attention to her.
With trembling hands, Aria reached into her yak-fur bag and pulled out her cell phone. She clicked on the envelope icon, but there were no new text messages. No new clues from A.
She sighed. Of course there wasn’t a new note from A—Billy had been arrested. And all of A’s clues had been misleads. The case was solved. The pieces that didn’t make sense weren’t worth thinking about anymore. Aria dropped her phone back into her bag and wiped the sweat from her palms on her blazer. A is gone, she told herself. Maybe if she repeated it enough, she’d actually begin to believe it.
3
HANNA AND MIKE, POWER COUPLE
Hanna Marin sat at a corner table in Steam, Rosewood Day’s chic coffee bar, waiting for her boyfriend, Mike Montgomery, to show up. It was the very last period of the school day, and both of them had it free. To prepare for the mini-date, Hanna flipped through the latest Victoria’s Secret catalogue and folded down various pages. She and Mike liked picking which girls had the fakest boobs. Hanna used to play a version of the game with her now dead best friend turned maniac killer, Mona Vanderwaal, but it was way more fun playing it with Mike. Most things were more fun with Mike. The guys Hanna had dated in the past were either too prudish to look at nearly naked girls, or else thought making fun of people was mean. Best of all, thanks to being a member of the Rosewood Day varsity lacrosse team, Mike was more popular than all of them—even Sean Ackard, who’d gotten kind of preachy ever since he’d broken up with Aria and repledged his devotion to Virginity Club.
Hanna’s iPhone chimed. She pulled it out of its pink leat
her case. On the screen was a new e-mail from Jessica Barnes, a local reporter. She was sniffing around for a quote for yet another Billy Ford story. Thoughts about Billy’s lawyer saying he’s innocent? Reaction to the Polaroids of the four of you on the night Alison disappeared? Twitter me! J.
Hanna deleted the message without replying. The idea that Billy was innocent was such bullshit. Lawyers probably had to say that about their clients, even if they were the biggest scumbags on earth.
Hanna had no comment on the creepy, hazy Polaroids from the night Ali went missing, either. She didn’t want to think about that sleepover ever again for as long as she lived. Whenever she dared to dwell on Ali’s, Ian’s, or Jenna’s murders—or the fact that Billy had stalked Hanna and her old friends—her heart pounded faster than a techno beat. What if the cops hadn’t caught Billy? Would Hanna have been next?
Hanna gazed down the school hallway, wishing Mike would hurry up. A bunch of kids were leaning against the lockers, fiddling with their BlackBerrys. A squirrelly-looking sophomore boy was writing notes on his hand, probably for a test he had next period. Naomi Zeigler, Riley Wolfe, and Hanna’s soon-to-be stepsister, Kate Randall, stood by a large oil painting of Marcus Wellington, one of the school’s founders. They were laughing at something Hanna couldn’t see, their hair shiny, their skirts shortened three inches above the knee, all of them wearing matching Tod’s loafers and J. Crew patterned tights.
Hanna smoothed the new sapphire Nanette Lepore silk top she bought last night at Otter, her favorite store at the King James Mall, and ran her fingers down the length of her frizz-free auburn hair—she’d gone to Fermata spa this morning for a blowout. She looked perfect and glamorous, definitely not the kind of girl who’d spent any time in a mental hospital. Not the kind of girl who’d been tormented by her mentally ill roomie, Iris, or who’d spent a couple of hours in jail just two weeks ago. Definitely not the kind of girl anyone would exclude or ostracize.
Sara Shepard Page 2
