Toxic

by Sara Shepard

  Hank ignored this, turning to Hanna. “You’re in the crowd, honey,” he said in a much gentler voice. He pointed across the room to what looked exactly like the deck of the Eco Cruise complete with the brass railings, a tiki bar in the corner, and purple plush booths along the walls. There was even a reggae band absently plucking their instruments.

  Hanna said good-bye to Hailey, who still looked pissed off, and sat down at a nearby table with Penelope Riggs, the girl playing Riley. Hanna’s only instructions for this scene were to make it look like she and Riley were having a conversation and to shoot Hailey-as-Hanna daggers every so often. In moments, Hailey reappeared in a beachy sundress that looked precisely like something Hanna would wear. She stood within earshot of Hanna, and Hanna could hear Hailey repeating a bunch of muh-muh-muh vocal exercises under her breath. What a pro, Hanna thought. Maybe she should do vocal exercises, too.

  Hank disappeared behind the wall of cameras. “And, action!” he yelled out, and the cameraman moved in on Hailey. The band started to play. Hanna turned to Penelope and pantomimed a conversation in a low voice, but her attention was really on Hailey across the room. She wanted to see how Hailey played her in this scene.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Hanna,” Bridget-as-Aria said as she ran up to Hailey, her eyes wide and her mannerisms perfectly Aria-like. She clutched Hailey’s hands. “Graham, my partner for the scavenger hunt? He was Tabitha’s boyfriend.”

  “Oh my God,” Hailey said exaggeratedly, her mouth dropping open. “You have to get rid of him!”

  Hanna tried not to twitch. Why was Hailey using that weird Valley Girl voice? Her voice didn’t sound like that, did it?

  “I can’t just get rid of him,” Bridget argued. “What if he suspects something is up? Maybe I should just tell him the truth.”

  “No way,” Hailey said, popping out a hip. “Like, Aria, that is the last thing you should do.”

  Then she made vigorous chomping movements, like she was really chewing hard on a huge wad of gum. Hanna felt queasy. She didn’t even chew gum.

  “Cut!” Hank cried a few moments later, reappearing on the set. Hanna figured he was going to give Hailey some advice on playing Hanna—she kind of needed it. But instead, Hank walked over to the band, speaking in a low voice to the lead singer.

  Hailey turned and glided to Hanna’s table, her eyes shining. “So?” she chirped. “Don’t I make an ah-mazing you?”

  She looked so pleased with herself. And though Hanna was kind of offended at, well, everything Hailey had just done, she couldn’t imagine saying so.

  So Hanna smiled brightly. “You were great,” she said in a small voice.

  “Okay, everyone, places!” Hank interrupted, running back to his post. “We’re going again!”

  The cameras rolled once more. The band launched into the opening bars of “Three Little Birds,” and the partygoers milled around happily. Hanna pretended to talk to Penelope, all the while keeping her eye on Hailey as she did the scene exactly the same way, gum-snapping and all. A horrible feeling welled in the pit of Hanna’s stomach. If Hailey kept this up, Hanna would be the laughingstock of Rosewood—and FIT—once this movie came out. People would do hip-popping, gum-chewing, Valley Girl Hanna impressions. What if they actually thought she was like that?

  She turned her head to idly look around the rest of the set, hoping for some distraction. Suddenly, a flash of blond hair shot through the back of the room. Hanna did a double take. There was another streak of blond. Hanna’s heart started to pound. There was something about the person’s movements that filled her with jitters.

  She half-rose to her feet. The girl playing Riley gave her a strange look. “What are you doing?”

  “Cut!” Hank yelled again. Everyone broke character. Hanna thought he was going to reprimand her, but he went over to Bridget. Seizing the opportunity, Hanna shot off the chair and pushed through the crowd. She had to see who that blonde was.

  She had to weave around a lot of kids, fake palm trees, bistro tables, a large statue of a scuba diver, and several huge potted plants to get to the back. Then she peered around into the sea of extras. None of them was Ali. Spots formed in front of Hanna’s eyes. Had she imagined it?

  But one of the exit doors was easing shut. Hanna rushed for it, nearly tripping over a light cable. She almost had her hand on the knob when someone grabbed her arm. She whirled around, her heart thudding hard.

  It was Jared, the guy playing Mike. “Hanna, right?” His eyes shifted back and forth. “Everything okay?”

  Hanna looked at the door. “I—I need to go outside for a sec.”

  Jared shook his head. “Not through that door. An alarm will sound. Hank will freak.”

  Hanna glanced at the door again. EMERGENCY EXIT, read big, bright letters above it. “But someone just went through here, though, and nothing happened,” she protested weakly. Her head was suddenly swimming.

  Jared patted Hanna’s arm and guided her away from the door. “Take a deep breath, okay? I’ve worked on a lot of films, and first days can definitely be hairy. I’ve seen people with way more experience panic much worse than you.”

  “But I’m not . . .” Hanna trailed off. She wasn’t panicking. She’d been perfectly calm and centered before Ali appeared in the crowd.

  Only, had it been Ali? How could someone go through an emergency exit without setting off the alarm?

  You imagined it, she told herself as fake-Mike escorted her back to the scene. But she peeked behind her one more time to be sure Ali wasn’t there.

  She wasn’t, of course. But Hanna still had the eerie sense she was close. Watching.

  6

  AND NOW, INTRODUCING ROSEWOOD’S LATEST PRODIGY . . .

  Aria sat in her father’s airy den, listlessly pulling apart a stick of Monterey Jack string cheese. Byron flitted around the room, doing his annual reorganizing of the bookshelves, a ritual in which he pulled all his tomes off the wall and arranged them in a new way that was understandable only to him. His new baby, Lola, cooed happily from a jungle-themed jumping apparatus in the corner, a tinny version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” tinkling through the tiny speakers.

  Byron’s wife, Meredith, flipped through channels. Finally, she settled on a celebrity exposé on Bravo, which was utterly unMeredith—Aria had always thought she’d be the type of person who hated reality TV. She turned to Aria and smiled brightly. “I heard your friend Hanna is going to be in a movie!”

  “Uh-huh,” Aria mumbled, hoping that Meredith wouldn’t ask the obvious follow-up question—why she wasn’t in the movie, too. Aria was happy that Hanna felt comfortable enough to act in the film—one of them should get to capitalize off this nightmare. But Aria was a behind-the-scenes kind of girl—when she and her friends were younger, she used to direct artsy movies, usually making Courtney-as-Ali the star. And anyway, she’d had enough time in front of a camera with all those torturous Ali interviews.

  When the show broke for commercials, Meredith flipped the channel again, this time landing on a local newscast. Aria tuned out—now that their Ali struggle was old news, the reporters were back to talking about picayune stuff like squabbles at town hall or whether to put a new GAP on this corner or that corner. But then Meredith exclaimed brightly, “Oh! How nice!”

  “Huh?” Aria turned around. On the screen was a banner that read ROSEWOOD RALLIES FOR YOUTHS. Then came a shot of the outside of the Rosewood Country Club; Aria used to spend a lot of time there because Spencer’s dad was a member.

  A woman with light blond hair held back in a black headband popped up on the screen. The name Sharon Winters appeared under her face. “We’ve had a lot of tragedy happen in this town, but it’s time to turn it into something positive,” she said. “Next Friday, we’re throwing a fund-raiser for all the disadvantaged and troubled youth in Rosewood and its surrounding areas. My hope is that everyone comes out and supports the cause.”

  Meredith looked at Aria excitedly. “Didn’t yo
u get an invite for this?”

  “Maybe,” Aria mumbled, staring at the string cheese in her hands.

  Byron stopped to look at the screen. “Hmm. Perhaps we should all go.”

  “Are you kidding?” Aria cried. Her dad usually hated big parties.

  Byron shrugged. “They should throw you a party after all you’ve been through. And you can take Noel.”

  He smiled at her dopily. Aria looked at the floor. “Noel’s busy that night,” she muttered, thinking about their conversation outside the gallery the other day.

  Her phone buzzed, and Hanna’s name appeared on the screen. Aria squinted at the text. I just saw Ali.

  Aria’s blood ran cold. She shot up and walked out of the room, dialing Hanna’s number.

  Hanna picked up right away. “What are you talking about?” Aria whispered.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Hanna whispered back. “But she’s on the set—she was in a crowd scene I was in. I looked across the room and saw this blond head . . . and I had this sense. It was her.”

  Aria sank into the window seat in the living room. “But you’re not sure.”

  “Well, no, but . . .”

  Aria jumped up nervously and started pacing around. “Let’s try to think about this logically. Could Ali actually get onto a movie set? Isn’t there lots of security?”

  “Yeah . . .” Hanna sounded uncertain. “But she’s a master at sneaking in and out.”

  “But why would she risk mixing with people who might recognize her? And she’d be on camera.”

  “True,” Hanna said. She exhaled loudly. “Okay. Maybe it was my imagination. I mean, that has to be it, right? Ali wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Aria assured her.

  But when she hung up, she wandered into the kitchen and stared blankly out the stained-glass window over the sink. Past the flat expanse of grass was a long, gradual slope leading to thick, dark woods. Ali had set fire to those woods the year before, nearly killing Aria and the others and decimating Spencer’s family’s barn. What if Hanna was right? What if Ali was somewhere close, ready to torment them again?

  She stared at her phone, figuring it was the perfect time to receive a text from A. On cue, her phone bleated. The device fell from her hands and clattered to the wood floor. A 610 number flashed on the screen.

  It took Aria a moment to realize it was her mom at the gallery. “Aria?” Ella said when Aria answered. “Are you sitting down?”

  “Yeah . . . ,” Aria said uncertainly, her heart starting to thud all over again as she sat at the breakfast table. Maybe Ella had seen Ali?

  “You aren’t going to believe this”—Ella’s voice swooped—“but we got a call from a very wealthy New York collector today. Mr. John Carruthers.”

  “Wait, the John Carruthers?” Aria asked. There’d been a profile of him in Art Now magazine—he’d recently bought two Picassos at auction because his wife wanted one for each of their kids’ rooms. He was the collector every artist and gallery owner wanted to woo.

  “Yep,” Ella chirped. “His assistant called and had me describe the paintings we had. I almost fell out of my chair. Then he asked me to send a few pictures. He hung up, but he called back a little while later saying Mr. Carruthers was interested in purchasing one. And guess what? It’s one of yours.”

  “W-what?” Aria shot to her feet. “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope!” Ella screamed. “Honey, you’ve been discovered!”

  Aria shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

  “Well, you should,” Ella insisted. “You’ve been so prolific in the past few weeks, and your work is fantastic. Apparently, Mr. Carruthers thinks you’re luminous and a huge talent to watch. And, honey, that’s not all. You know what he bought the painting for? A hundred thousand dollars.”

  Aria’s mind went blank. She tried to picture that figure in a bank account, but she felt as if her head might explode.

  “That’s . . . amazing,” she finally managed to say. Then she cleared her throat. “W-which painting did he buy? One of the dark abstract pieces? One of the portraits of Noel?”

  Ella coughed awkwardly. “Actually, no. It was the portrait of Alison. That big one in the corner.”

  Aria flinched. It wasn’t even her best work, the brushstrokes crude, Ali’s face so creepy. Ella had sent a photo of that? And someone had bought it? What if he bought it only because it was of Ali—and because she was a Pretty Little Liar?

  Then again, maybe she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. A hundred thousand dollars was a hundred thousand dollars. “Well, that’s great,” she murmured to her mom, trying to sound unruffled.

  “Listen, I have to get off the line—Jim’s back, and he’s over the moon,” Ella said, suddenly sounding rushed. “I think he’s going to give me a promotion!” she added in a whisper. “But I’ll call you back with all the payment details. I’m so proud of you, honey. This is going to change your life.”

  Then Ella was gone. Aria held the phone in her hands, her mind whirring fast. Then she stood and slid the door to the porch open, stepped out, and leaned against the cool glass, taking heaving breaths. The fresh air felt invigorating.

  She let what Ella told her sink in. Her first sale. For a painting of Ali.

  Aria looked at her phone again. After a beat, she called up her photo gallery, then flipped through the pictures she’d taken of her recent paintings. She stopped on the portrait of Ali. The girl on the canvas was skin and bones, her cheeks hollowed, her hair dulled, her eyes wide and crazy. Then, as Aria stared, Ali seemed to . . . move. One corner of her lip rose in a smirk. Her eyes narrowed a tad.

  Aria dropped the phone once more. What the hell?

  The device landed faceup, Ali’s picture still on the screen. Aria looked at it again, but it looked like a snapshot on a cell phone. She grabbed the phone, exited out of the photo, and stabbed at the DELETE button.

  Good riddance. Thank God Ella was packaging that portrait up and sending it far, far away. Aria couldn’t bear the idea of that face haunting her any longer.

  7

  THE BULLIED . . . OR THE BULLY?

  Spencer was finishing dinner with her mother, Mr. Pennythistle, and Amelia. Chinese takeout boxes sat around them, but, typical of Spencer’s mom, they were eating on fine china from Mrs. Hastings’s great-grandmother and using porcelain chopsticks from a specialty shop in Shanghai. Spencer’s mom had dressed for dinner, too, changing out of the jeans and plaid shirt she’d worn at the family’s stables and into a crisp off-white linen dress and shiny black Tory Burch flats.

  “So being selected for the orchestra trip is really prestigious.” Amelia adjusted the tortoiseshell headband that held back her tight curls. Even though it was summer vacation, she, too, was dressed up in a crisp white shirt and a gray pleated skirt that didn’t look much different from her St. Agnes uniform. “The orchestra director told me I should be really proud,” she added, looking around expectantly.

  “That’s great, honey.” Mr. Pennythistle smiled warmly. So did Spencer’s mom.

  But Spencer resisted rolling her eyes. Every time Amelia opened her mouth, it was to brag. Yesterday at dinner, she’d boasted for a while about how good a sleeper she was.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t deal with one more boastful thing out of Amelia’s mouth. “May I be excused?” she asked, placing her chopsticks in her soy sauce–stained bowl.

  “Yes, but only after we talk about the Rosewood Rallies event,” Mrs. Hastings said.

  Spencer fell back into her chair and wrinkled her nose. “We’re actually going?” Why did she need another event to remind her of Ali? Wasn’t the point to get over it?

  Mrs. Hastings nodded firmly. “You’re an honored guest. And actually, I’ve volunteered to help out.” She clicked her chopsticks together. “You girls can bring a date, if you like. It should be fun.”

  Spencer felt her cheeks flush. A date. Her mind shuffled through her long list of fai
led romances from the past year. Andrew Campbell had pulled away from her shortly after the Poconos fire, probably because he didn’t want to be associated with someone surrounded by so much drama. And Chase, another Ali detective Spencer had met online, had dropped Spencer when his life was in danger.

  Every boy she’d gotten close to had run away screaming . . . and it was all Ali’s fault. Spencer wanted to be with someone . . . but she also felt as if it could never happen.

  “I’ll go if it means that much to you,” she told her mother, picking up her dishes. “But I’m not going to enjoy it.”

  She carried everything to the stainless steel sink in the kitchen. As she was rinsing off the chopsticks, she sensed a presence behind her and turned. Amelia stood by the fridge. Spencer cringed, anticipating a nasty remark.

  But Amelia moved forward almost shyly. “Um, I meant to tell you. A friend directed me to your new blog. It’s kind of . . . awesome.”

  Spencer’s mind froze. “You really think so?” she blurted.

  “Of course.” Amelia placed her bowl on the counter. “I think it’s really great that you gave all those people a voice.” And then, with a smile, she turned and pranced back into the dining room.

  Spencer stood still. She was so dazed she didn’t realize she’d left the tap running until the water flowed over her dirty bowl.

  Huh.

  Then she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and sat down at her computer, bringing up the blog. It was astonishing, actually, that Amelia even knew about the blog . . . but then again, it had recently garnered quite a following, even showing up on the very first page on a Google search for bullying.

  She scrolled through her email. Today’s crop of stories made her own experiences with Ali pale in comparison. There were tales of kids being verbally and physically attacked by whole gangs of enemies. Kids were made fun of for their sexuality, like Emily had been, or for their race or religion. A girl wrote in telling a story about how her best friend committed suicide, unable to take the jeers from her classmates any longer. I miss her every day, the email said. And I’m not even sure the kids who were mean to her understood what they did. Spencer thought of Emily there, too—how they’d saved her from taking her life off the covered bridge. If they hadn’t gotten there in time, she might have gone through with it.