Pretty Little Liars #13: Crushed

by Shepard, Sara

  She figured the receptionist wouldn’t buy it, but after a few quick checks with some nurses and Iris’s case manager, Iris was cleared to leave. When she appeared in the lobby, she’d changed into a pair of jeans that were slightly too short, as if she’d bought them a few years back. Coupled with a pink parka and a lumpy leather purse, she looked sort of . . . dorky, like a girl who sat alone in the cafeteria.

  They exited the hospital together. The grass squished beneath their feet as they walked toward the parking lot. It was so quiet outside Emily could hear her own ragged, nervous breathing. She looked around, certain A was watching, but there wasn’t a single car on the road or pedestrian on the little trails that circled the property. The only sound was the bubbling fountain close by, the one dedicated to the memory of Tabitha Clark.

  “Let’s do this, bee-yotch!” Iris whooped as Emily unlocked the Volvo. She climbed into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. “Okay. First stop, the Metropolitan Bar in Philly.”

  “Excuse me?” Emily stared at her. “Why are we going there?”

  Iris held up the paper. It looked like a list, written in craggy, frenzied script. Have cocktails at the Metropolitan Bar. Pretend-hump the dinosaurs at the Franklin Institute. Run up the Art Museum steps like Rocky. Find Tripp. “These are the things I’ve wanted to do for four years. And you’re going to take me to do them.”

  “All of them?” Emily bleated, scanning the list. It was at least fifty items long.

  Iris raised an eyebrow. “If you want intel on Ali, every single one.”

  “Okay,” Emily said quietly. There was nothing like the promise of Ali secrets to shut her down. And she had a feeling Iris knew that, too.

  She started the engine, gritting her teeth. This is all for a good cause, this is all for a good cause. Still, her throat was dry. She glanced at her new cell phone, certain A had sent a text about how she wasn’t going to get away with this.

  But there was nothing.

  8

  A Monster in the Closet

  Aria’s last class of the day was newspaper editing, which was held in the journalism barn. Even though the school paper had gone digital ages ago, the building still smelled like ink and newsprint. Old headlines of important Rosewood Day events decorated the walls, everything from the 1982 Rosewood Day Boys’ Soccer Team winning the state championship to a hundred trees being planted on the school’s perimeter to honor the victims of 9/11.

  Ten minutes into class, Noel slunk through the back door. “Where were you?” Aria asked as he slid into the seat next to her.

  Noel shrugged. “I tried to text you, but this message came on saying your phone was out of service.”

  Aria stared at the grooves in her desk. “I told you. I’m not using technology this week as part of a science project.” The lie felt awkward on her tongue. Noel wasn’t going to buy that story for very long.

  The PA crackled, and a familiar throat-clearing sound signaled that Principal Appleton was about to speak. “Students?” he boomed. “Would everyone mind turning to our school station? We have some important May Day Prom news.”

  Mr. Tremont, the teacher, rolled his eyes but dutifully switched on the television that hung on the wall next to the whiteboard. Penny Dietz, who did the morning news, appeared. “Good afternoon, Rosewood Day students!” she chirped, her cheeks looking extra shiny. “The May Day Prom is approaching, and today we’re going to hear from some of the candidates for prom king and queen. First up, prom queen. We haven’t received Hanna Marin’s video as of yet, so let’s hear from Chassey Bledsoe.”

  Noel frowned. “I can’t believe Hanna didn’t make a video yesterday.”

  Aria looked away. She was busy meeting in a secret room, figuring out who A might be.

  Chassey Bledsoe appeared on the screen, talking overenthusiastically about how she was thrilled to be running and that she was hosting a Vote Chassey Pasta Dinner tomorrow at the local Olive Garden franchise, which her uncle owned.

  Then it was time for the candidates for king. When Noel’s image popped up, Aria’s heart did a proud flip. His hair was pushed back from his forehead, showing off his bright green eyes. The black button-down he was wearing popped against his olive skin.

  Aria poked him playfully. “No wonder all the girls want you.”

  Noel smiled lazily. “But I got the best one.”

  Aria squeezed his arm, but then her smile dimmed, and she turned away. Spencer had written Noel’s name on the suspects board yesterday . . . and Aria had let her. Just that alone made her feel dirty and ashamed.

  All day, Spencer had been texting Aria, asking if she’d asked Noel anything yet. But what the hell was Aria supposed to ask? Hey, did you kill a girl who was impersonating Alison in Jamaica and are you now trying to pin it on us? Didn’t Spencer realize her relationship, the only good thing Aria had going right now, would be over?

  How could her friends possibly think Noel could be helping Ali out? Okay, so Noel had been in Jamaica—it was possible he could have seen the girls on the roof with Tabitha. But he never, ever would have fed Tabitha those Ali-lines. And, what, did they seriously think he’d killed Tabitha on the beach? Noel let spiders out of the house instead of stepping on them. He couldn’t go into the SPCA, because he said he’d take every dog home with him.

  Yes, he had known Ali—both Alis. He and Their Ali had even dated for a little while at the end of seventh grade, but Ali had broken up with him after two dates, probably because she liked Ian Thomas.

  When Aria looked up, Penny was back on the TV screen. “I also have an exciting announcement about the head of the prom decor committee. In a secret meeting with Rosewood staff, students, and our generous donors, it has been decided that this year’s decor chairwoman for the Starry Night–themed event is . . . Aria Montgomery!”

  Everyone turned and stared at Aria. She blinked at the television. Images of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night swirled, accompanied by a techno song. Then her senior picture appeared. ARIA MONTGOMERY, it read at the bottom. MAY DAY PROM DECOR CHAIRWOMAN!

  “Congrats!” Devon Arlyss patted Aria on the back. “I’m so jealous.”

  “Can I help out?” Colleen Bebris asked excitedly, even though she was only a sophomore.

  “This is awesome!” Noel’s face popped up in front of Aria. “You’ve always wanted decor chairwoman, right?”

  “B-but I didn’t apply for it,” Aria blurted out.

  Noel frowned. “Do you not want it?”

  Aria swallowed hard. “I . . .” Not long ago, she would have. But the very last thing she wanted to do was a big mural of The Starry Night.

  Her thoughts returned to that night in Iceland. After Hanna caught her and Olaf kissing, all three of them had stumbled back into the bar. Aria had been sure that as soon as she walked in, Noel would know . . . but he was chatting up a couple of blond girls from Poland. The girls were making Noel and Mike say certain words with American accents; every time Noel said something new, the girls laughed and shook their boobs. Would he even care that Aria had hooked up with someone else? Did she even matter?

  She wanted to prove something to herself that night. That she was still worldly. That she was still Icelandic Aria. She grabbed Olaf’s arm and whispered, “Let’s steal that painting that’s locked in the chateau.”

  Olaf blinked. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah!” Aria jumped up and down. “We’ll be art vigilantes! We’ll call up the press and tell them we’ve saved it and we’re going to put it in a museum. Maybe we could start our own museum!”

  There were crinkles by Olaf’s eyes when he smiled. “You’re so cute when you get excited.”

  “This isn’t about being cute!” Aria cried. “Will you do it?”

  Olaf glanced over at Noel, as if to say, You aren’t going to involve your boyfriend in this, too, are you? Then he shrugged. “What the hell?”

  They waited another hour—by that time, Noel wa
s barely intelligible, and he, Mike, and Hanna were getting ready to go back to the guesthouse. Aria went with him, but then said she’d forgotten something at the bar and needed to go back. Noel stumbled to bed, not even questioning her. Aria ran to the next alleyway, where Olaf was waiting in his Jeep. He gathered her in his arms, his breath smelling sweet, not boozy at all—Aria then realized she’d only seen him nurse a single beer all night. “This is so incredible,” he whispered.

  “I know,” Aria said, but she pulled away. She was quite drunk—too drunk to kiss, even. Her head was whirling all over the place.

  They skidded out of the parking space down the bumpy Reykjavik streets. Olaf gripped Aria’s knee with one hand as he steered. When a stone house perched atop a hill came into view, Aria actually gasped. Some of the windows in the house were made of stained glass. A weathervane spun at the top. The house had gargoyles and turrets and a lot of ornate arches, nothing like the sporty, simple, nautical homes in town.

  They parked away from the house and got out. Even though it was two AM, they could easily see the doors and windows under the midnight sun. “Look,” Olaf whispered, pointing at a wide-open window on the first floor. It was like whoever lived here was asking to be robbed.

  Aria watched his feet disappear through the window. A second later, his head popped over the sash. “You coming?”

  Aria dove into the house as well. It smelled like mildew inside, and there was a fine film of dust on the floor. Sheet-covered furniture stood in every room. A grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. Gilded-framed paintings hung on the walls, but most were more abstract than The Starry Night, cubes and lines and even one that was, as far as Aria could tell, nothing but blue squiggles.

  Olaf disappeared down a hall, and Aria followed. When she looked into a small, dim office, she saw a medium-sized canvas with familiar swirls and stars. She gasped and backed up, her head spinning with booze. She blinked hard, wondering if she was imagining things. She hadn’t actually believed they’d find it.

  “Olaf!” she cried out, leaping over an ottoman in the middle of the room and touching the frame with both hands. The painting dislodged from its hook easily. Aria steadied it in her arms. It smelled like canvas and dust. Up close, she could just make out the Van Gogh signature at the bottom.

  It sobered her immediately. She held the painting outstretched as if it had just hissed at her. Holy shit, a voice screamed loudly in her mind. She was holding a Van Gogh. Was she insane?

  “Nice!” Olaf said from the doorway. He beckoned Aria to him, but her legs felt useless. Letting out a wail, she shoved the painting at him and stumbled away.

  “Aria?” Olaf had called after her. “Where are you going?” It was then that all the alarms went off.

  The bell signaling the end of the period rang, and Aria jumped. Noel was staring at her curiously, but everyone else in class had gone back to their own business. Mr. Tremont opened the door, and the class filed out. Aria followed, still in a daze. People surrounded her as soon as she walked onto the grass.

  “Congratulations, Aria!” said Reeve Donahue, one of the girls on the prom committee.

  “Nice one!” Mai Anderson chirped, patting Aria’s arm.

  Riley Wolfe sniffed. “You know it’s just because she’s going out with Noel,” she whispered loudly to Naomi Zeigler.

  Aria blinked blearily at Noel, Riley’s words ringing true. “Did you have something to do with this?”

  Noel twisted his mouth, looking guilty. “I thought you’d be happy about it. I knew you hadn’t applied . . . so I put in an application for you, using some of your art projects.”

  Aria swallowed hard. She knew she should be touched, but all she felt was panic. “I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now, that’s all,” she mumbled after too long a beat.

  “Like what?” Noel asked.

  “Like . . .” She looked around and lowered her voice. “I was questioned about that girl’s death in Jamaica.”

  Noel shrugged. “Yeah, I was questioned, too. What’s the big deal?”

  Aria peeked at him, her pulse picking up speed. “You talked to Agent Fuji? What did you say?”

  They reached the main building. Kids thundered past them in the halls. Someone banged a locker door shut. Noel worked his locker combination, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t know. I told her that I saw Tabitha around but didn’t talk to her. And I certainly didn’t see someone beating her skull in on the beach.”

  “That’s all you said?”

  Noel pulled a book off the shelf. A muscle next to his eye twitched. “Yes. Why? What’s going on?”

  She licked her lips. If she continued with this line of questioning, she was going to seem really, really guilty. “I’m just freaked out,” she managed to say. “After all the Ali stuff . . . it’s just hard to talk to more cops.”

  Noel slammed his locker shut and touched her arm. “But it’s over. The FBI lady won’t bother you again—she said she was done with me, too. It sucks that we were there when someone died, but it’s not like we killed her.”

  Nerves slashed through Aria’s chest. “Uh-huh,” she said weakly.

  All of a sudden, she had to get out of here. She kissed him hurriedly. “I’m excited about the decor chairperson thing, really. Thank you so much. But now I have to go.”

  It took her only ten minutes to get to her mother’s house, and she tried to keep her mind blank the whole drive home. She barreled up the driveway and jammed her key into the lock. But before she even turned it, the door opened. Usually they locked the dead bolt, too.

  “Hello?” Aria called into the hall. No answer. She peeked into the kitchen, the backyard, and then the bedrooms. Her mother, Ella, wasn’t here.

  She looked in her bedroom last, and her blood went cold. There, on the bed, lay a piece of paper that hadn’t been there this morning. She snatched it and looked at the words marching across the top of the page. They were in Icelandic. The bottom half of the page had been translated into English: Wanted Reykjavik Man Missing. Murder Suspected.

  When Aria saw the face in the photo, she gasped. Olaf.

  She swallowed hard and looked at the article. Olaf Gundersson, 21, went missing from his house on the outskirts of Reykjavik on the night of January 4.

  That seemed like ages ago. Aria thought back. She had no idea what she was doing January fourth. Lounging around—they’d still been on winter break. Bored without Noel—his family had gone to Switzerland to ski.

  She read on. Foul play is suspected, as Mr. Gundersson’s apartment was ransacked and there was blood on the floor. After extensive police questioning, locals said that Mr. Gundersson, who was “a bit of a hermit,” had been in a loud and violent fight the evening before, though they couldn’t identify the other person in the argument.

  Mr. Gundersson had been accused of breaking into the Brennan Manor last summer and stealing the Starry Night study painting by Vincent van Gogh, though Mr. Gundersson had claimed in earlier questioning that he did no such thing. A police search of Mr. Gundersson’s home did not turn up the painting, and one theory is that Mr. Gundersson took it with him after the attack. There is a citywide search for both his body and the priceless artwork, though nothing has been recovered yet.

  Aria’s head swirled.

  Then she noticed the red scrawl at the very bottom of the page. Look in your closet. Someone had drawn a big, bold arrow, as if Aria might not know where her closet was.

  Shaking, she turned and stared at her closed closet door. Someone had been in here. They could still be here. Should she call the police? And say . . . what?

  She inched over to the closet door and pulled at the knob. Her shirts and dresses swung on hangers. Her shoes rested in shoe trees. But there, on the dusty wood floor, was a rolled-up canvas. Aria’s fingers fumbled with it as she lifted it up and pulled off the rubber band. A familiar painting, now out of its heavy frame, unfurled. There were those iconic swirls and cometlike stars. And there, at the bottom, was a si
gnature that took her breath away: VAN GOGH.

  She dropped the painting to the floor. As it bounced on the hardwood, a small slip of paper dislodged from somewhere inside. It landed faceup, so Aria could read exactly what it said without laying a finger on it.

  Dear Aria,

  Isn’t seeing good art truly liberating?

  —A

  9

  Spencer Was Never One for Rules. . . .

  Spencer peeked through the bay window of the model home at Crestview Estates. A stone McMansion loomed over the trees across the street. A mallard waddled in the direction of the water. A car swished past on the road, but it didn’t slow at the house.

  She hadn’t wanted to come here again—it was unnerving enough stealing Mr. Pennythistle’s spare key once. Besides, she had a history paper to write, calculus homework to decipher, and potential prom dates to call and feel out—there was Jeff Grove from yearbook, though she didn’t feel too excited about him, and, of course, Andrew, but she could just picture his I-knew-you’d-want-me-back tone of voice when she asked, even though he’d been the one to end things with her. But Aria had called the girls’ burner phones this morning and said Not it. So it was back to the panic room they went.

  The others hadn’t arrived yet, so she settled into the so-new-it-still-smelled-like-a-leather-factory couch in the generically decorated living room and stared at her old cell phone, which she’d removed from the data plan and was using via the house’s WiFi. Taking a deep breath, she typed ALISON DILAURENTIS CONSPIRACY THEORIES into the browser.

  She paused before pressing the search button. She hated resorting to the Internet for information on Ali, but she was out of options. She’d driven by the abandoned house in Yarmouth where the DiLaurentises lived when “Courtney” returned. She’d walked the whole way around the property. The deck was swept clean. There was a single Rubbermaid garbage can in the garage, but Spencer couldn’t get inside to see what was in it.