by Sara Shepard
Inside, security had set up extra metal detectors, but even so there were long lines. The lights in the courtroom seemed to be harsher and brighter, almost like interrogation fluorescents. And this time, the jury box was full of people who were all staring at Spencer judgingly.
She tried not to look at them as she filed into the room, but it was tough. Every movement she made, every tuck of her hair behind her ear or wipe of her nose, she feared the jury would see as arrogant, or icy, or immature. I didn’t do it, she tried to convey, peeking over and noticing that one of them looked like her uncle Daniel. Which wasn’t entirely a good thing—Uncle Daniel categorically hated children.
Then her gaze settled on a youngish girl at the very end of the jury box who was staring at her with even more disdain than the others. Ali Cat, a voice in her brain whispered, the image of the group outside still so fresh. Was it possible?
Her phone beeped. Spencer reddened and silenced it, but she checked the screen before slipping it into her bag. Two messages had come in. The first was a text from a 215 number she recognized but didn’t have in her contacts: Hope you’re feeling okay. Are those sleeping pills working? Please reach out if you need to talk. I’m here. Wren.
Her first feeling was annoyance. Hadn’t she told Wren she wasn’t interested?
The second note was an email from George Kerrick, who worked for the bank who held Spencer’s trust fund. Dear Spencer, I have inquired about your wish to withdraw funds, and your account is on strict lockdown. I’m sorry; there’s nothing more I can do at this time.
She glowered at the screen. Reaching out to Kerrick had been her one attempt to come up with $100,000 for Angela. But who had ordered a lockdown? Spencer’s mom? The police?
There were some shuffling sounds, and Hanna filed in and took her place on the other side of their lawyer. Spencer glanced at her, then looked away. There had been a few missed calls from Hanna on Spencer’s phone, but Hanna hadn’t left her a voicemail. Spencer suspected Hanna wanted her to apologize—it was the way she got, Spencer remembered, when they used to have fights in seventh grade. Hanna had even once frozen Ali out until Ali crumbled and said she was sorry. But what about what Hanna had said? Spencer was unbelievably hurt that Hanna could accuse her of being responsible for what had happened to Emily. Dealing with Emily’s death was already hard enough.
After a moment, Hanna thrust her chin in the air and turned away. Fine, Spencer thought.
More people filed into the courtroom until the place was almost filled. Spencer noticed Ali’s father—who wasn’t really her father, ironically—standing at the back of the courtroom alone. Then she saw her own dad on the other side of the courtroom, glancing surreptitiously in Mr. DiLaurentis’s direction. She felt a lump in her throat and turned away. It was so weird to consider what was going through both their minds.
She scanned the aisles some more, expecting Aria, but she still hadn’t arrived. Finally, Aria’s father materialized in the back of the courtroom and motioned Rubens over to talk. As Byron Montgomery whispered in his ear, Rubens’s expression shifted. Then Rubens strode to the judge’s bench and spoke softly. Hanna whispered something to Mike. Finally, Rubens returned to their aisle.
Spencer stared at him. “What’s going on?”
“Aria Montgomery is missing,” he said in a low voice. “The police have reason to believe she was at the airport yesterday, and that she boarded a plane to Paris. Her name was on the flight manifest. The French authorities are on it, but everyone’s hunch is that she’s out of Paris by now.”
Spencer gasped. “How did Aria get to Europe? Weren’t the cops tracking her?”
Rubens shook his head. “She left before they could attach her monitor.”
Spencer ran her hand over her hair. Aria had had the same idea she did—except she’d followed through on it. It was a brilliant plan, maybe one that Spencer should have thought of. Brilliant, but reckless. Escaping to Europe without taking the proper steps to disappear seemed really foolhardy. Aria was going to get in major trouble. She wondered, too, if this was why her account was frozen. The authorities thought—with good reason—that she was going to do the same thing.
She glanced at Hanna, and Hanna met her eyes for a second. Spencer considered saying something to break the ice. This was way bigger than their stupid fight, after all. She wondered, too, if Hanna had seen the Ali Cats outside.
But then she had a thought and turned to Rubens. “Will the jury judge us because of this?”
Rubens made a face. “Well, it doesn’t exactly look good for the two of you. One of you commits suicide, the other flees to Europe? That’s not exactly innocent-person behavior.”
Spencer closed her eyes. That was what she’d feared he’d say.
Rubens leaned in. “We’re going to continue with the hearing anyway. Aria will be tried in absentia. The police are going to want to question you girls about it after court adjourns today, though.”
Spencer wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t have anything to do with Aria’s escape.”
“Me neither,” Hanna piped up.
“You all took off to New Jersey together. You’re her number-one accomplices. Just tell them the truth, and there won’t be any trouble.”
The judge banged his gavel and called the lawyers to his bench. After some talk, Seth and the DA introduced themselves to the jury, and then it was time for opening statements. Spencer’s heart pounded. It was happening. Their trial for murder was about to start.
The prosecution went first. Dressed in a pinstriped suit and expensive-looking loafers, his hair slicked back from his face and his skin oddly tanned, Brice Reginald, the District Attorney, sidled up to the jury box and gave each of the jurors a smile Spencer could only describe as icky. “We all know about Alison DiLaurentis,” he began. “It’s hard not to, isn’t it? Pretty girl goes missing, on the cover of People magazine, captivates the country’s attention . . . and then we find out her mentally unstable twin—the real Alison—killed her. Or . . . did she?” He looked at the jurors, his eyes dramatically wide. “Was Alison Courtney’s killer? Was she really the monster people think she is? Or was she an innocent victim, first played by her manipulative and unstable boyfriend, Nicholas, and then tormented by the four young women who were her sister’s best friends?”
At this point, his attention turned to Spencer and Hanna. Naturally, the jury stared at them, too. Spencer put her head down, feeling even her scalp burn. Never had she felt quite so shamed.
“What is real in this case, and what is made up?” the lawyer went on. “Who is playing for sympathy, and who is the true victim? Over the next few days, I am going to tell you who Alison really was. A girl who was sent to a mental hospital by concerned parents . . . but who was browbeaten there. A girl who escaped from a hellish situation only to fall in with a young man who forced her to abet in murder after murder, and who escaped from him only to fall prey to four girls who wanted revenge at any cost. And I’m going to tell you about four girls from Rosewood who had a vendetta they wanted to settle. On the surface, they seem like sweet teenagers who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But if we dig deeper, this is who they really are.”
He turned to a TV screen by the judge’s bench and pressed PLAY on the DVD player. A surveillance tape appeared. It was the feed they’d set up to watch the pool house—Spencer recognized the rickety front porch and spidery tree branch. There, on the screen, was Emily, whirling around the room, smashing various things to pieces.
Her stomach clenched. It was heartbreaking to see Emily alive again, whole and real and also . . . crazy. Emily’s eyes were wild as she wheeled about the space. Her nostrils flared, and she actually growled. And at the end of her rampage, she looked straight into the surveillance camera, teeth bared. “I will never love you! Never, ever! And I will kill you! You will pay for this!”
Spencer’s heart dropped like a stone.
The DA turned off the TV. “I will describe to you exactly what these girl
s did to Alison, which includes beating her to the point of knocking out her teeth and slicing her up so that she bled profusely. These were girls whose lives were on the rise. And yet, that wasn’t enough. What they wanted, what they craved, was getting Alison out of their lives once and for all.” He looked around at the courtroom with a triumphant and righteous smile. “Yes, we should be sympathetic that these girls had some near misses with Nicholas Maxwell. But we should blame the person who deserves it—Maxwell, not Alison. The girls should have listened to her pleas that she was innocent. But they are here because they didn’t, and it is up to you to make the right decision to convict them for their heinous, violent crime.”
He ended with a flourish of his hands. Spencer almost thought he was going to take a bow. She turned to her lawyer, horrified. “None of that is even true!” she whispered. “Can’t you, like, object or something?”
“Not during opening statements,” Rubens said through his teeth.
Then it was Rubens’s turn. He strode to the front of the courtroom, and then made his way to the jury box, smiling at them sheepishly. “Mr. Reginald paints a pretty picture,” he began. “And maybe it’s true. Some of it, anyway. Maybe Nicholas Maxwell coerced Alison. Maybe she isn’t guilty of as much as we think. But that’s not what the case is about. This case is about whether or not four girls murdered Miss DiLaurentis. And I’m here to tell you that they did not.”
There was a long pause. The jury shifted.
Rubens took a breath. “It’s not even clear, in fact, that Alison is dead.” The DA let out a guffaw. “Yes, some of her blood was found. And there is certain evidence that puts my clients in the same place where a murder may have occurred, though I certainly have theories about others who might have wanted Alison DiLaurentis gone and could have pulled off such a thing. However, we don’t even know if a murder did occur, and that her body is missing leaves a huge gap in this case. Mr. Reginald has told us one way to look at this story, and I will tell you another: These girls were set up by the very girl who we think is dead. She spilled her own blood. She pulled her own tooth. She cleaned up the mess with bleach, making it look like the girls were responsible. She faked her death and framed the girls because it was her perfect escape—for all we know, she is out there somewhere, enjoying her life, while my clients are on trial for their lives.”
Spencer’s heart thudded. So he was using their theory. She checked out the jury’s expressions. Most of them looked perplexed. The young woman Spencer had focused on earlier looked downright disgusted.
Rubens came to a stop by the judge. “I’m here to describe to you how that might have happened. And like Mr. Reginald said, it’s up to you to make the right call on what went on that night.”
There was a lot of shuffling and whispering. Spencer was dying to see Mr. DiLaurentis’s expression, but she was far too scared to turn around. Finally, the judge cleared his throat. “We’ll adjourn for an hour and then call the first witnesses,” the judge ordered. Then he stood and marched into his chambers.
Everyone else in the courtroom rose and filed out. Only Spencer remained seated, staring at her feet. She felt even more doomed than before. After a moment, she looked up and saw Hanna staring at her. “And so it begins,” her friend said softly.
“Yeah,” Spencer answered.
She wanted to reach out and touch Hanna. But she also felt so awkward . . . and drained . . . and totally not in the right headspace to make amends. So she stood abruptly from the seat and pivoted toward the center aisle. And just like that, even though she knew deep down she really needed Hanna, she walked off to seek a private refuge where she could process everything alone.
13
HOW TO PLAN A WEDDING IN FIVE DAYS
Hanna and Mike sat on the couch in Hanna’s living room, Hanna’s miniature pinscher, Dot, snuggling in Hanna’s lap. A woman named Ramona, who had angularly cut, ice-blond hair, harsh gray eyes, and high cheekbones, and was wearing a Chanel suit and very expensive-looking five-inch snakeskin heels, sat opposite them, a large binder on her lap. “Are you telling me,” she said in an intimidating voice, “that you want me to pull together an unforgettable wedding by the end of the week?”
Hanna swallowed hard. Maybe calling Ramona, who was supposed to be the best wedding planner in the business—she’d apparently arranged a ton of starlets’ nuptials all over the country—was a crazy idea. So, probably, was asking that she have it at Chanticleer, her favorite mansion on the Main Line. “I realize weddings normally take a while to plan,” she said meekly. “Is there anything you can do for us?”
“Oh, I can do anything you want,” Ramona said haughtily. “I’ve planned weddings with far less time. It just means we have to start now.”
Then she looked at Fidel, her gaunt, ponytailed, effeminate assistant who’d trailed in timidly behind her. He was twitching in the shadows, taking notes on an iPad. “Bring in the samples!” she boomed. Fidel skittered out the front door.
Hanna squeezed Mike’s hand. They were doing it. Really getting married. Sure, the wedding plans were a bit overshadowed by everything else going on, but Hanna was happy to have something good in her life to take her mind off all that, at least for a little while.
There was a swift knock on the door. Dot sprang up and started barking. “Entrée, you fool!” Ramona bellowed, and Fidel burst into the foyer pushing a wheeled clothes rack with one arm and balancing several white bakery boxes in another.
Hanna’s mother, who had been in the kitchen, hurried down the hall to grab the boxes before they fell. “My goodness!” she cried. She opened the lid of one of them and swooned. “Wedding cake samples, Han!” she cried. “From Bliss Bakery, and Angela’s—these are the best!”
Hanna smiled gratefully. It wasn’t any mom who would take her daughter’s announcement that she was hastily getting married before she was probably going off to prison in stride. Ms. Marin had basically said that if Hanna was happy, then she was happy. She’d even agreed to sign off on the marriage certificate—which a parent had to do, as Hanna and Mike were both under eighteen. And she’d even left a few copies of Brides and Vogue Weddings on Hanna’s bed this evening and said she would handle securing a DJ for the night—her advertising company had some connections.
Mike’s parents had accepted it, too: Hanna had received a congratulatory hug from both Ella Montgomery and Byron’s new wife, Meredith, that morning. Of course, in that family the wedding was overshadowed by Aria’s disappearance, for good reason.
Hanna glanced at Mike, who was sitting next to her. He hadn’t said anything in a while. In fact, he seemed out of it. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
Mike flinched and returned to earth. “Yeah,” he answered. “Of course. Just, you know . . . thinking about Aria.”
Hanna swallowed hard. Of course he was. She’d been thinking about Aria a lot, too. It astonished Hanna that she’d actually escaped. The cops had interrogated her this afternoon with questions about Hanna helping to escort Aria out of the country. It was even on CNN this evening. Apparently, authorities all over the EU were searching for her. Her picture was up everywhere, and already people in Spain, France, Luxembourg, and Wales claimed to have seen her, though Hanna hadn’t been able to tell if any of the leads were valid.
“Are you sure you don’t want to postpone this until she’s found?” Hanna whispered.
Mike shook his head. “No. Let’s do it.” He leaned in closer. “And we don’t want her to be found, right?”
Hanna bit her lip, frowning. Mike was right—in a way. Hanna wanted Aria to be free of this. On the other hand, her absence made it way worse for her and Spencer. Another story on CNN was how guilty they looked now that Emily was dead and Aria was AWOL. Several legal experts had said they might as well enter a plea bargain and be done with it.
She turned back to the clothes rack Fidel had pushed into the center of the living room. At least fifteen wedding dresses wrapped in plastic hung from the bar. There were shoe bags beari
ng names like Vera Wang and Manolo Blahnik. A final hanger held a small velvet bag containing jewelry. An assortment of veils and tiaras were draped over the top bar, and a sudden smell of floral perfume had filled the room.
She looked at Ramona. “Is that stuff for me?” She leapt up and looked at the tags. The dresses were in her size. She peeked in one of the shoe bags. The gorgeous pair of off-white pumps also looked like it would fit her. “How did you know what to choose?” She’d only contacted Ramona a few hours ago, and the woman had asked her the briefest of questions.
Ramona rolled her eyes. “That’s why I’m the best. Now, go try some things on. Your groom and I will talk about the menu, things like that.”
Mike suddenly looked intrigued. “Can we have Hooters cater chicken wings?”
Hanna shrugged. “If you want, I guess.”
Mike’s eyes lit up. “What about Hooters girls serving the wings?”
Ramona looked horrified, and Hanna was about to shoot him a look. But then she realized—this was Mike’s wedding, too. And she’d do anything to take his mind off Aria. “If you promise not to touch the Hooters girls, then yes,” she said primly.
“Sweet!” Mike crowed. He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling them right now.”
“I’ll handle it,” Ramona grumbled, gesturing to Fidel. He typed something on the iPad. Then Ramona turned to Hanna. “And are you thinking about bridesmaids? We should get them in for a fitting, too.”
“Yes,” Hanna said automatically. “I want Aria, Spencer, and Emily.”
Everyone gasped. It took Hanna a moment to realize her gaffe, and she hiccupped. “Or, um, not Emily, obviously.” She suddenly felt disoriented. “And maybe not those others, either.” It wasn’t like Spencer would want to do it. And Aria . . . well, that was out of the question, too. “It would probably be better if it was just me.”
