Crushed pll-13

by Sara Shepard

  The coach blew the whistle. Noel scooped up his stick, gave Aria another kiss, and trotted with Mike toward the middle of the field to be with their team. Aria’s heart swelled as she stared at his strong, straight back and taut calves. When the girls had been about to confess to the police about killing Tabitha, all she could think of was never seeing Noel again—never kissing him, holding his hand, even lying on the couch and listening to him loudly chew pretzels. Although they hadn’t confessed, she still felt like she was on borrowed time with him.

  After the boys were a safe distance away, Aria cleared her throat. “So I got a weird message yesterday.”

  She showed Hanna the screen on her phone. Your name was on a list of guests at The Cliffs during Tabitha Clark’s murder. . . . We need to speak as soon as possible. . . . I appreciate your cooperation.

  Hanna nodded. “I got this, too. So did Spencer and Emily—and Mike,” she said. “Did Noel?” The boys had been on the Jamaica vacation with them.

  Aria stiffened, glancing at Noel in his lacrosse pads and cleats. He’d just jumped on Mason Byers’s back, and Mason was swinging around, trying to get him off. “Um, I haven’t asked him,” she said in a low voice. “Noel didn’t see us talking to Tabitha, though. And he and Mike definitely didn’t see . . . you know. It’s not like they’ll say anything weird.”

  As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she wasn’t sure if she believed them. On the trip, Noel had paid no mind to Tabitha except to say that she seemed somehow familiar. Then, when Tabitha’s body had washed ashore and it was all over the news, Noel often changed the channel, half the time not even registering that they’d been in Jamaica the same time she had. Only recently had he begun to perk up at the story. Now, every time her picture appeared on TV, he squinted at it curiously, saying, “Doesn’t she remind you of someone?” What if he’d noticed how jumpy Aria was whenever a Tabitha story came on? What if he innocently mentioned that Tabitha reminded him of Ali? There were all sorts of inadvertent, unintentional ways Noel could incriminate her.

  Aria shook out her hands. Noel would probably talk to the officer for two minutes, tops. And anyway, the girls hadn’t killed Tabitha—A had bludgeoned her on the beach.

  Of course, they were the only ones who knew that.

  “Should we meet with Agent Fuji?” Hanna asked.

  “It’s not like we can say no.” Aria bit a nail. “Maybe we could all meet with her together. At least then we’ll all tell the same story.”

  Then Hanna pushed her phone toward Aria. “I also got this.”

  Aria read the message. Only losers campaign against losers. Make any effort to win, and not only will you lose my respect—I’ll tell Agent Fuji about all your naughty little lies. —A

  “Mike was trying to persuade me to run for May Queen,” Hanna whispered. “And then Chassey Bledsoe walked in looking all fabulous.”

  “I saw her!” Aria exclaimed. “She looks sort of . . . airbrushed, doesn’t she?”

  Hanna shrugged. “I don’t know. The weird thing is, A sent this practically the moment I saw Chassey’s makeover . . . like A was watching. There were tons of kids at Rive Gauche that day, but I didn’t see anyone texting.”

  “A is everywhere,” Aria whispered, shivering. They’d been through so many different New A suspects, but each had resulted in a dead end—one of them literally—or a horrible injury. Like Graham, the guy Aria had befriended on the cruise who also happened to be Tabitha’s ex-boyfriend. For a little while, Aria had worried that Graham might be A—he certainly had motive, and he’d begun acting so strangely, insisting that he had something to tell her. She now realized he’d wanted to tell her that someone was watching her. But A had set off a bomb before Graham had said who . . . perhaps because A didn’t want Graham to identify him or her.

  “Have you gotten any A notes?” Hanna slipped the phone back in her pocket.

  Aria shook her head, then showed Hanna a new iPhone in a pink neoprene case. “But maybe that’s because I got this. It has an untraceable number.”

  “Good thinking,” Hanna said. She stared nervously at the field. “Do you think A could frame us for Tabitha?”

  Aria licked her lips. A had all those horrible photos of them on the roof from that night. And who knew what else A hadn’t shown them yet.

  She was about to answer when suddenly the speakers mounted on top of the bleachers screeched with feedback. “Attention!” said an echoing voice. A loud cough and a lugee-hocking sound followed. It was Principal Appleton. For some reason, he always cleared his throat into the microphone, making noises that often sounded like belches.

  “All seniors! I have some exciting news!” Appleton said. “We have our May Day King and Queen nominees! For king, it’s Joseph Ketchum and Noel Kahn!”

  Everyone in the bleachers cheered. Hanna nudged Aria, and guys on the field clapped Noel on the back in that jokey, let’s-pretend-prom-doesn’t-matter-even-though-it-sort-of-does way.

  “And for queen,” Appleton went on, “we have Hanna Marin . . .”

  Hanna smiled nervously. Aria squeezed her arm.

  “. . . and Chassey Bledsoe!” Appleton finished.

  A spattering of applause followed. A couple of people frowned, asking who Chassey was—as if they hadn’t all gone to school together since kindergarten. Hanna set her mouth in a line.

  “You’re not actually worried about Chassey winning, are you?” Aria asked.

  “I can’t campaign!” Hanna picked at a loose string on her skirt. “There’s no way I’m going to bring all you guys down just so I can be May Day Queen.”

  The speaker crackled again. “As for May Day decor,” Appleton said, “we’ve gotten a lot of applications for decor chairperson. We’ll make an announcement as soon as we choose!”

  The crowd murmured. Hanna looked at Aria. “Did you apply for that?”

  “I wanted to, but I forgot,” Aria said, feeling a flutter of disappointment. Rosewood Day took its decor chairperson job seriously—those who were interested had to fill out a ten-page application with design ideas and sketches months in advance, and many applicants even included digital portfolios and personal videos explaining why they should be chosen—but people who had held the title in the past always gushed about how fun it was. Besides designing all the prom decor, the chairperson also did the prom blog and took pictures of goofy-but-exclusive prom rituals, like the big conga line, and of the king and queen at the graveyard near the Four Seasons hotel in Philly, where the event was held every year. Aria had been so consumed with A that she’d missed the application deadline.

  “But I can tell you that we’ve decided on a theme!” Appleton went on. “Student Council has decided on . . . The Starry Night!”

  People cheered. Hanna rested her spine against the fence behind them. “That’s a pretty good theme, don’t you think?”

  Aria just stared at Hanna, the blood draining from her head. On second thought, thank goodness she hadn’t applied. It was a terrible theme.

  “What?” Hanna blinked. “They could do big Van Gogh paintings and . . . oh.”

  The painting. Aria could see the thought flashing across Hanna’s mind as if it were in neon. Aria and Hanna had never spoken about that night . . . but that didn’t mean Aria had forgotten. She could tell Hanna hadn’t, either.

  Aria put her hands over her eyes. The trip to Iceland had been such a disaster from the very start. They’d sat on the runway for almost two hours before taking off. Then no one’s ATM cards worked in the Keflavik Airport, which meant they had to scrape together traveler’s checks for a bus to the hotel instead of a cab. The hotel lost their reservation and referred them to a guesthouse down the street, which was damp, smelled of fish, and so small and overbooked that they all had to share a room.

  Then Noel started complaining about everything—how weird the milk tasted, how the backyard hot tub was probably full of bacteria, how uncomfortable the duvet felt against his skin. Aria had just chalked it up to jet
lag, except he bitched the next day, too. And the next. He didn’t seem impressed by their romantic walks around town. He didn’t compliment the delicious local beer. He didn’t even find the penis museum interesting. He thought the native horses were ridiculous, and when Aria pointed at the gorgeous Mount Esja in the distance, Noel had said, “Eh, the Rockies are better.”

  Mike got into the act, saying that the bars in town seemed even lamer than when they lived there. When Hanna whined about the lack of boutiques, Aria had gone into the bedroom and screamed into a pillow. Typical Rosewoods, she’d thought bitterly.

  By the last night, the air had crackled with tension, and they’d all gone to a bar down the road to let off steam. When Aria sat down next to the shaggy-haired, emo-bearded, bespectacled boy named Olaf, who struck up a conversation about an Icelandic poet Aria loved, she’d almost hugged him out of relief. Here was someone who knew there was more to life than Rosewood. Someone who liked interesting music, had his own pony, and loved Iceland as much as she did.

  Of course Noel and Mike thought he was ridiculous. They called him Gayloff behind his back—not quietly, either—as they also drank shot after shot of Black Death schnapps, told stupid jokes, and acted so American and idiotic Aria wished it wasn’t so obvious she was with them. Then they tried to infiltrate Aria and Olaf’s conversation. “You’re an art student?” Noel slurred at Olaf. “Hey, I like art, too.”

  Olaf raised an eyebrow. “Who’s your favorite artist?”

  Aria wanted to hide. Football, Noel could talk about. But art? Disaster. “Uh, that painting with the trippy stars and swirls,” Noel answered. “By that dude who cut off his ear?”

  “You mean Van Gogh?” Olaf said it like Van Gock.

  Noel smirked at his pronunciation but didn’t comment. “Did you hear there’s a top secret painting by him stashed in a mansion not far from here? It was stolen by this German baron from a rich Jewish guy during the Hologram.”

  He’d said Hologram instead of Holocaust. Aria covered her eyes. “Where did you hear something that idiotic?” she mumbled, mortified.

  “Actually, I heard him saying it.” Noel jutted a thumb at Olaf.

  Olaf raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Well, it was someone,” Noel slurred. Then he puffed out his chest, which only made him lose his balance and topple off the stool. Mike laughed long and hard while the bartender eyed the two of them wearily, surely thinking, God, I’m so sick of American kids.

  But then Olaf had touched Aria’s arm. “He’s right, though. There is a painting in a mansion not far from here—a practice study of Starry Night. No one has ever seen it.”

  “Really?” Aria raised an eyebrow.

  “Really.” Olaf peered out the window thoughtfully. “The woman who owns the house is very stingy with her money and her things. Word has it she has all kinds of priceless possessions in that house that should be in museums, but she wants them all to herself.”

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous.” Aria put her hands on her hips. “That’s the most bourgeois thing I’ve ever heard. The masses deserve to witness great art just as much as rich people do.”

  “I agree,” Olaf said. “Art like that should be owned by the world, not just one person.”

  Aria nodded emphatically. “It should be liberated.”

  “Liberated?” Noel guffawed from the floor. “It’s not a caged tiger, Aria.”

  But Olaf’s eyes twinkled. “That is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard,” he said in his delicious Icelandic accent.

  The next thing she knew she was leaning against a brick wall outside the bar, Olaf’s beard scratching her face, his lips searching for hers. When the door creaked, they shot apart. A figure was standing in the doorway, and Aria’s heart stopped. Noel?

  It was Hanna who’d walked out. She’d stopped short when she saw them, a disgusted look on her face. “Please,” Aria had begged, stepping away from Olaf. “Don’t say anything, okay?”

  Now a whistle blew, yanking Aria from her memory. She glanced at Hanna and saw her biting her nails as though they were made of chocolate. Down on the field, Noel was laughing with Jim Freed. He probably didn’t remember that night’s conversation—he’d been so wasted. Thank goodness he had no idea what else had happened that night—no one did except Hanna. Sometimes, in dark moments, Aria dared to think of Olaf. There had never been a story about the police catching him—she assumed he and the painting were still out there. But how had he escaped the chateau? Where had he gone?

  Bloop.

  Aria looked down and frowned. There, on her new phone’s screen, was an alert for a text message. Only she hadn’t given anyone the number yet.

  Her heart began to pound. Nervously, she opened the text. It was a picture of the Splendor of the Seas cruise ship on fire. A message accompanied it.

  That was one smokin’ cruise, Aria—I’m sure your BFF Graham thinks so too. Better hope he pulls through!

  —A

  5

  Let the Questioning Begin

  On Wednesday afternoon, Spencer stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, inspecting her reflection. Agent Fuji was coming to interview all of them in a few minutes, and Spencer couldn’t remember the last time she’d agonized over her outfit so much.

  Was a pin-striped blazer too corporate? She frowned and pulled it off and tried on a pink blouse, but that just made her look like a big square of bubble gum. She needed casual but serious. Girl next door—no, smart girl next door. Someone who would never, ever break the law.

  Her gaze drifted to the shimmering pearl-gray Zac Posen gown that hung in plastic in her closet. The tag was still on, but she didn’t have the heart to return it. Two days later, Reefer’s rejection still stung. Spencer had sent him a few plaintive texts, begging for another conversation. Maybe she’d misinterpreted what he’d meant when he said they shouldn’t be tied down. Maybe he’d had a change of heart. But Reefer hadn’t written back, and she’d begun to feel foolish and desperate. What she needed, she decided, was a prom date to take her mind off things. But who? All the eligible boys had been claimed months ago. Spencer considered calling her old boyfriend, Andrew Campbell, who had graduated early and was now at Cornell, but they hadn’t spoken since last spring.

  The doorbell rang, and she shed the blouse, changed again, and padded downstairs in a blue oxford shirt and skinny khakis. Aria, Emily, and Hanna stood on the porch, bouncing and quivering like a trio of shaken-up soda bottles. They rushed inside.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Hanna said.

  “I think A’s reading my e-mails,” Emily wailed at the same time.

  “I got a note on an unlisted phone,” Aria blurted out.

  “Hold up.” Spencer stopped at the border of the hall and the living room. “Start over.”

  Each girl explained that they’d all gotten A notes in the past forty-eight hours. All of them had to do with telling the cops on them, like Spencer’s had, and several mentioned Agent Fuji by name. Aria’s was especially disconcerting—A had cracked her unlisted number in a matter of hours.

  “Does A have an in with Verizon or something?” she moaned. “And I think A is trying to frame us for hurting Graham. As if I set off that explosion.”

  “A could try to do that with Gayle, too,” Emily said. “We were in her driveway when she was shot. I’m sure A has something up his or her sleeve about all of that.”

  “Don’t forget A’s threat to kill us,” Hanna added.

  “This is getting ridiculous. It’s like A’s everywhere.” Spencer thought about how A had texted her almost the minute Reefer left. But how had A known? Spencer had been inside her house. It was like A had bugged the place or something.

  She blinked. Was it possible? She peered into the corners of the room, the spaces under the couches, at the high windowsills. A rearing horse in the garish Civil War painting Mr. Pennythistle had hung in the hall leered at her.

  Suddenly, she hit on an idea.
“Come on,” she commanded the others over her shoulder, heading toward the backyard.

  Everyone followed her out the sliding door. It was wet and gray outside, and the air smelled like freshly cut grass and the swampy creek in the woods at the back of the property. A big blue tarp covered the family’s swimming pool. An eerie haze hung over the trees where the Hastingses’ refurbished barn had once stood—before Ali burned it down. To the left was the DiLaurentises’ old house, though the only reminder that they’d lived there was the big boulder in the middle of the backyard that they never dug up—the new family had removed all other traces of them by now, including their old deck, and there was no longer an Ali shrine on the front curb.

  Spencer marched to the shed Mr. Pennythistle had installed a few weeks ago, unlocked the door, and looked around. An orange leaf blower leaned against the left wall. She grabbed it, dragged it to the middle of the yard, and pulled the starter chain. Her three friends stared at her like she was crazy, but there was a method to her madness. Everyone’s hair flew about until Spencer pointed the nozzle at the ground. The air filled with the noxious scent of gasoline. The best and most important part was the deafening noise the thing made. No one, not even A, would be able to hear the girls over it.

  Spencer gestured for the girls to move in closer. “This has got to stop,” she said angrily. “If A knows where we are at all times, then A must be bugging us somehow. A’s trying to pin all these crimes we didn’t commit on us, and if we don’t act soon, A might just succeed.”

  “What do we do?” Hanna yelled over the leaf blower.

  “I say we go rogue,” Spencer declared. “We get rid of our current phones and phone numbers. If we need cell phones for absolute emergencies, we can get a burner cell, but we can’t tell one another anything critical on calls or voicemails. We should use a code phrase.”