Maybe she was overthinking this. Maybe Courtney hadn’t even been flirting with her in gym class. She had been in unconventional schools her whole life—she might not be well-versed in the fine art of flirtation and other social cues.
The doorbell rang, and Emily froze, staring at her wide-eyed expression in the mirror. In an instant, she was thundering down the stairs and scampering through the hall to the door. No one else was home—her mother had taken Carolyn to a doctor’s appointment after swimming, and her dad was still at work. She and Courtney would have the house to themselves.
Courtney stood on the steps, her cheeks pink and her blue eyes sparkling. “Hey!”
“Hi!” Emily unintentionally backed away just as Courtney came in for a hug. Then Emily stepped forward to hug, too, just when Courtney was self-consciously stepping aside.
Emily giggled. “Come in,” she said. Courtney shuffled into the foyer and looked around, taking in the hutch of Hummel figurines in the hall, the dusty, upright piano in the living room, and the cluster of hanging plants that Mrs. Fields had brought indoors for the winter.
“Should we go to your room?”
“Sure.”
Courtney bounded up the stairs, turned right at the landing, and stopped at the door to the bedroom that Emily and Carolyn shared. Emily gawked. “H-how did you know where my room was?”
Courtney gave her a crazy look. “Because it says so on your door.” She pointed at the wooden sign that said EMILY AND CAROLYN in cartoonish letters. Emily let out a breath. Duh. It had been there since she was six.
Emily moved some stuffed animals off her twin bed so they could both fit. “Wow,” Courtney breathed, gesturing at the Ali collage over the bureau. It was a series of photographs of Emily and Ali together from sixth and seventh grade. In one corner was a shot of the five of them in the living room of Ali’s Poconos house, doing each other’s hair. In another corner was a photo of Emily and Ali in matching striped bikinis on Spencer’s pool deck, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There were plenty of pictures of Ali alone, many of which Emily had snapped without Ali knowing—of Ali sleeping on Aria’s rollaway cot, her face relaxed and beautiful. Another of Ali sprinting up the hockey field in her Rosewood Day JV uniform, her stick raised high in the air. Propped up next to the collage was the patent leather change purse Maya had returned to her at the press conference. Emily had scoured all the dirt and grime off it as soon as she’d gotten home that afternoon.
Emily blushed, wondering if the shrine was weird. “That stuff is so old. I haven’t gone through it in a long time.” It’s not like I’m obsessed or anything, she wanted to add.
“No, I like it,” Courtney insisted. She bounced on the bed. “It looks like you guys had a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” Emily said.
Courtney flung off her Frye boots. “What’s that?” She pointed at a jar on Emily’s nightstand.
Emily cradled the jar between her palms. The contents rattled. “Dandelion seeds.”
“What for?”
Color rushed to Emily’s cheeks. “We all tried to smoke them once, to see if we’d hallucinate. It’s stupid.”
Courtney crossed her arms over her chest, looking intrigued. “Did it work?”
“No, but we wanted it to work. So we put on music and started to dance. Aria made these squiggly motions in front of her face, like she was seeing shapes. Hanna stared at her fingerprints, like they were really fascinating. I giggled at everything. Spencer was the only one who didn’t play along. She kept saying, ‘I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything.’”
Courtney leaned forward. “What did Ali do?”
Emily jiggled her knees, suddenly shy. “Ali…well, Ali made up this dance.”
“Do you remember it?”
“It was a long time ago.”
Courtney poked Emily’s leg. “You do remember it, don’t you?”
Of course she did. Emily remembered pretty much everything Ali did.
Wriggling with glee, Courtney clasped Emily’s hands. “Show it to me!”
“No!”
“Please?” Courtney begged. She was still holding Emily’s hands, which made Emily’s heart beat faster and faster. “I’m dying to know what Ali was really like. I hardly saw her. And now that she’s gone…” She broke her gaze, staring absently at the poster of Dara Torres that hung over Carolyn’s bed. “I wish I’d known her for real.”
Courtney looked at Emily with clear blue eyes so much like Ali’s that the back of Emily’s throat burned. Emily pressed her hands to her knees and stood. She shifted from left to right, then shimmied her shoulders up and down. After about three seconds of dancing, she blurted out, “That’s all I can remember,” and went to sit down fast. But her left foot stumbled over her fish-shaped slippers next to the bed. As she groped for balance, her hip rammed into the bed frame. “Oof,” she said, hurtling face-first toward Courtney’s lap.
Courtney grabbed Emily’s waist. “Whoa,” she giggled. She didn’t let go right away. Pulsing heat sizzled through Emily’s veins.
“Sorry,” Emily mumbled, shooting up to stand.
“No worries,” Courtney said quickly, straightening her plaid shirt.
Emily sat back down on the bed and looked anywhere else in the room besides Courtney’s face. “Oh! It’s four fifty-six,” she blurted stupidly, pointing to the digital clock by the bed. “Four-five-six. Make a wish.”
“I thought that was only for eleven eleven,” Courtney teased.
“I make up my own rules.”
“It seems that way.” Courtney’s eyes gleamed.
Emily felt suddenly breathless.
“Tell you what,” Courtney chuckled. “I’ll make a wish if you do.”
Emily shut her eyes and lay back on the bed, her body throbbing from the fall and her head reeling from the smell of Courtney’s skin. There was something she really wanted to wish for, but she knew it was impossible. She tried to think of random wishes instead. For her mom to finally let her paint her side of the bedroom a color other than pink. For her English teacher to give her a good grade on the F. Scott Fitzgerald paper she’d handed in that morning. For spring to come unnaturally early that year.
Emily heard a sigh and opened her eyes. Courtney’s face was inches from hers. “Oh,” Emily breathed. Courtney moved even closer. The room vibrated with possibility.
“I…” Emily started, but then Courtney leaned forward and touched her lips to Emily’s. A billion explosions went off in Emily’s head. Courtney’s lips were soft yet firm. Emily’s mouth fit hers perfectly. They kissed deeper, pressing harder. Emily was pretty sure her heart was beating even faster than it did in a fifty-meter freestyle sprint. When Courtney broke away, her eyes were shining.
“Well, I got my wish,” Courtney said giddily. “I always hoped I’d get to do that again.”
Emily’s mouth tingled. It took her three long beats before she realized what Courtney said. “Wait…Again?”
Courtney’s smile turned shaky. She bit her bottom lip and grabbed Emily’s hand. “Okay. Don’t freak out. But Em…it’s me. Ali.”
Emily dropped Courtney’s hand and moved a few inches away. “I’m sorry. What?”
Courtney’s eyes were glassy, as if she was about to cry. Light from the corner window spilled across her face, making her look both angelic and ghostly. “I know it’s crazy, but it’s true. I’m Ali,” she whispered, lowering her head. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you.”
“To tell me that you’re…Ali?” The words felt leaden on Emily’s tongue.
Courtney nodded. “My twin’s name was Courtney. But she didn’t have health problems. She was certifiably insane. In second grade, she started imitating me, pretending to be me.”
Emily scuttled backward until her spine hit the wall. The words weren’t exactly making sense.
“She hurt me a couple of times,” Courtney went on, her voice strained. “And then she tried to kill me.”
“How?” Emily whispered.
“It was the summer before third grade. I was in the pool in our old house in Connecticut. Courtney came out and started dunking me. At first, I thought it was a game, but she wouldn’t let me up. While she held me underwater, she said, ‘You don’t deserve to be you. I do.’”
“Oh my God.” Emily curled into a ball, gripping her knees to her chest tightly. Out the window, a flock of birds took off from the roof. Their wings flapped fast, as if they were fleeing something terrifying.
“My parents were horrified. They sent my sister away and moved the family to Rosewood,” the girl across from Emily whispered. “They told me never to talk about her, which is why I kept her secret. But then in sixth grade, Courtney switched from the Radley to the Preserve. She put up this huge fight about it—she didn’t want to start over at a new hospital—but once she was there, she finally began to improve. My parents decided to have her live at home for the summer after seventh grade on a trial basis. She came back a few days before the school year ended.”
Emily opened her mouth, but no words came out. Courtney had been here in seventh grade, too? But Ali and Emily were friends then. How had Emily missed her?
Courtney—or was it Ali?—gave Emily a knowing look, as if she understood what Emily was thinking. “You guys saw her. Remember the day before our sleepover when I found you on the patio, but you said you’d just seen me upstairs in my room?”
Emily blinked fast. Of course she remembered. They’d caught Ali in her bedroom, reading a notebook. Mrs. DiLaurentis had appeared and sternly told the girls to go downstairs. Minutes later, when Ali found them in the backyard, she’d acted as if the incident in the bedroom had never happened. She had on a completely different outfit, and she seemed startled that Emily and the others were there, like she’d had no memory of the past ten minutes.
“That was Courtney. She was reading my journal, trying to be me again. After that, I stayed away from her. The night of our sleepover, Spencer and I fought, and I ran out of the barn. But Billy didn’t attack me like everyone thinks—I ran back to my bedroom, and he…well, he got the wrong sister.”
Emily put her hand over her mouth. “But…I don’t understand….”
“My sister was supposed to stay in her bedroom all night,” Courtney—no, Ali—went on. “When my parents saw only me the next morning, they assumed I was Courtney—Ali was supposed to be in Spencer’s barn. I tried to tell my parents that I was Ali, but they didn’t believe me—that was Courtney’s act. I’m Ali, I’m Ali, she always said.”
“Oh my God,” Emily whispered. The peanut butter crackers she’d eaten earlier roiled in her stomach.
“Then when the twin they thought was Ali didn’t come home from the sleepover, they flipped out. They figured I was Courtney, and that I had done something terrible. They couldn’t handle having a sick daughter home while the other was missing, so they sent the girl they thought was her back to the Preserve the next afternoon. Except…it was me.” She placed her palm over her heart, her eyes filling with tears. “It was horrible. They didn’t visit me once. Jason used to visit Courtney all the time, but even he wouldn’t listen to me when I pleaded that I was Ali. It was like a light switch went off in their heads and I was dead to them.”
The neighbor’s rattling Honda Civic passed. A dog barked, then another. Emily stared at the girl across from her. The girl who claimed to be Ali. “But…why didn’t you call us before they shipped you off?” Emily asked. “We would’ve known the truth.”
“My parents wouldn’t let me use the phone. And then at the hospital, I wasn’t allowed to make any calls. It was like being in prison.” Tears streamed down Ali’s face. “The more I said I was Ali, the sicker everyone thought I was. I realized that the only way to get out was to act like I really was Courtney. My parents still don’t know who I am. If I tell them, they might send me back.” She hiccupped. “I just want my life again.”
Emily offered her a Kleenex from a box on her nightstand, and then took one herself. “So whose body did the police find?”
“Courtney’s. We’re twins, so we have the same DNA. We even have the same dental records.” She gazed at Emily in grief and desperation. “I remember everything about you, Emily. I was the one who did that dance when we smoked the dandelion seeds. I’m the one in these photos on your wall. I remember how we met, and I especially remember you and me, in my tree house, kissing.”
The smell of vanilla soap filled Emily’s nostrils. She closed her eyes, practically seeing the stunned look on Ali’s face after she’d kissed her. She and Ali had never directly discussed it. There were plenty of times Emily had wanted to, but she’d been too afraid. Ali had started teasing her about it so quickly afterward.
“I was talking about an older boy I liked,” Ali rehashed, “and then suddenly, you kissed me. I got all self-conscious and scared, but then you wrote that note to me. The one that said how much you liked me. I loved it, Em. I’d never gotten a note like that from anyone in my life.”
“Really?” Emily traced a heart into her duvet cover. “I figured you thought I was a freak.”
Ali winced. “I was scared. And stupid. I acted like an idiot. But I had almost four long years in the hospital to think it over.” She placed her palms on her knees. “What more do I need to say to make you believe me? What can I do to prove that I’m Ali?”
Emily’s lips still tingled from the kiss, and her hands and legs were trembling with shock. But as stunning as this was, she’d known, deep down, that something about Courtney was amiss. She’d felt that special spark between them, like they’d known each other for years. And they had.
Emily had dreamed of this moment for years. She’d consulted horoscopes and tarot cards and numerological charts, desperate for a clue that Ali was alive. She’d saved every single one of Ali’s notes, random doodles, and just-’cause-I-feel-like-it gifts, unable to let them go because a deep, mystical force inside her urged that this wasn’t over. Ali was still out there. She was okay.
And all this time, Emily had been right. She’d been granted her biggest wish of all.
The clouds lifted from her head. Emily’s heart banged out a constant, steady beat, clear and pure. She gave Ali a wobbly smile. “Of course I believe you,” she said, throwing her arms around her old friend. “I’m so glad you came back.”
13
BLAST FROM THE PAST
Spencer adjusted the scoop neck of her Milly halter dress and flashed a fake ID to a bald bouncer at Paparazzi, a two-story club in Old City, Philadelphia. The bouncer studied it, nodded, and handed it back to Spencer. Sweet.
Next came Courtney, dressed in a gorgeous gold minidress. Courtney showed the bouncer an old fake ID of Melissa’s, and the bouncer nodded her through. Emily pulled up the rear, looking surprisingly sexy in a red A-line dress, a bold beaded necklace, and strappy silver heels she’d borrowed from Courtney’s closet. Courtney had called Spencer an hour before they were supposed to leave for their big night out, saying that she and Emily had really hit it off and that she wanted to invite Emily to go dancing with them. Spencer didn’t mind—now that she’d bonded with Ali’s twin, she wanted everyone else to love her just as much.
Emily handed the bouncer her older sister’s fake ID, and after the bouncer nodded inattentively and handed it back, the three of them pushed inside. “We are going to have an awesome time,” Courtney said, grabbing their hands. “I am so excited.”
“Me too,” Emily said, giving Courtney a long, meaningful look. Spencer couldn’t help but smirk. It looked like Emily’s crush on Ali had transferred over to her twin sister.
It was crowded for a Wednesday night. The club was in an old bank with marble pillars, intricate woodwork, and a mezzanine level that looked over the dance floor. A Black Eyed Peas song was playing at a deafening volume, and a bunch of college-age kids were writhing around enthusiastically, not caring that they had no rhythm—or that they were spilling their drinks all over
themselves. The place smelled overwhelmingly like beer, cologne, and too many bodies in too small a space. A bunch of guys turned when they saw Spencer and her friends, their eyes instantly zeroing in on Courtney’s blond hair, her slim hips, the way her dress skimmed her thighs. Everyone knew who she was. It was a wonder the news vans hadn’t arrived yet.
Courtney leaned over the bar and ordered them three raspberry martinis. She returned with three pinkish drinks. “Bottoms up, ladies.”
“I don’t know…” Spencer said uncertainly.
“Yeah!” Emily said at the same time. Spencer gaped at her. Who was this girl, and what had she done with the old Emily?
“You’re outvoted!” Courtney grinned. “Ready, set, chug!”
Spencer good-naturedly tilted the drink to her lips, letting the tart liquid spill down her throat. When she finished, she wiped her mouth and let out a whoop.
The others finished their drinks, too, and Courtney flagged down a seven-foot-tall bartender who looked suspiciously like a drag queen. “Let’s dance!” she said after handing them their second rounds. They shimmied toward the dance floor and began to gyrate to “Hollaback Girl.” Courtney stretched her arms over her head and closed her eyes. Emily swayed back and forth to the beat.
Spencer leaned forward and shouted in Emily’s ear. “Remember those dance contests we used to have in Ali’s living room?” They moved all the furniture to the corners, cranked up the stereo, and made up elaborate dance moves to Justin Timberlake. “This is just like that…only better.”
Emily gave Spencer a coy look. “More than you know, actually.”
Spencer frowned. “What do you mean?” But Emily took a long swig of her drink and turned away.
The crowd around them thickened. Spencer felt people staring. A bunch of guys edged close, taking advantage of every opportunity they could to bump against Courtney’s hips, Emily’s long legs, or Spencer’s bare shoulders. Girls looked on longingly, many of them waving their arms over their heads like Courtney was, hoping some of her magic would rub off on them. The wallflowers sitting in booths gaped at the three of them as if they were Hollywood starlets.
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