by Sara Shepard
They each looked out their windows onto Rosewood’s tranquil, empty streets. The clouds had shifted and all the stars had come out. The pavement shone from the rain. Hanna stared at her driveway—only her mother’s car was there now. Her father had moved out. Emily looked at her backyard and the forest beyond it. She’d never braved those woods—she’d heard ghosts lived in them. Aria listened to the sounds emanating from her parents’ bedroom, wondering if they’d woken up, too—or perhaps they were fighting again and hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Spencer gazed at the DiLaurentises’ back porch, then across their yard to the huge hole the workers had dug for the gazebo’s foundation. The rain had turned some of the dug-up dirt to mud. Spencer thought about all the things in her life that made her angry. Then she thought about all the things in her life she wanted to have—and all the things she wanted to change.
Spencer reached under her bed, found her red flashlight, and shone it into Ali’s window. One flash, two flashes, three flashes. This was her secret code to Ali that she wanted to sneak out and talk in person. She thought she saw Ali’s blond head sitting up in bed, too, but Ali didn’t flash back.
All four of them fell back onto their pillows, telling themselves that the feeling was nothing and they needed their sleep. In twenty-four short hours, they’d be at the end of their seventh-grade sleepover, the first night of summer. The summer that would change everything.
How right they were.
1 THE ZEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
Aria Montgomery woke up mid-snore. It was Sunday morning, and she was curled up on a blue vinyl chair in the Rosewood Memorial Hospital waiting room. Everyone—Hanna Marin’s parents, Officer Wilden, Hanna’s best friend Mona Vanderwaal, and Lucas Beattie, a boy in her class at Rosewood Day who looked like he’d just arrived—was staring at her.
“Did I miss something?” Aria croaked. Her head felt like it was stuffed with marshmallow Peeps. When she checked the Zoloft clock hanging over the waiting room entrance, she saw it was only eight thirty. She’d been out for just fifteen minutes.
Lucas sat down next to her and picked up a copy of Medical Supplies Today magazine. According to the cover, the issue featured all the latest colostomy bag models. Who puts a medical supplies magazine in a hospital waiting room? “I just got here,” he answered. “I heard about the accident on the morning news. Have you seen Hanna yet?”
Aria shook her head. “They still won’t let us.”
The two of them fell gravely silent. Aria surveyed the others. Ms. Marin wore a rumpled gray cashmere sweater and a pair of great-fitting distressed jeans. She was barking into her little Motorola earpiece, even though the nurses had said they couldn’t use cell phones in here. Officer Wilden sat next to her, his Rosewood PD jacket unbuttoned to his mid-chest and showing a frayed white T-shirt beneath it. Hanna’s father was slumped in the chair closest to the intensive care unit’s two giant double doors, jiggling his left foot. In a pale pink Juicy sweat suit and flip-flops, Mona Vanderwaal looked uncharacteristically disheveled, her face puffy from crying. When Mona looked up and saw Lucas, she gave him an annoyed stare, as if to say, This is for close friends and family only. What are you doing here? Aria couldn’t blame everyone for feeling testy. She had been here since 3 A.M., after the ambulance came to the Rosewood Day Elementary School parking lot and swept Hanna off to the hospital. Mona and the others had arrived at various points in the morning, when the news had begun to circulate. The last update the doctors had given them was that Hanna had been moved to intensive care. But that was three hours ago.
Aria reviewed the previous night’s horrific details. Hanna had called to tell her that she knew the identity of A, the diabolical messenger who had been taunting Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer for the past month. Hanna hadn’t wanted to reveal any details over the phone, so she’d asked Aria and Emily to meet her at the Rosewood Day swings, their old special spot. Emily and Aria had arrived just in time to see a black SUV mow Hanna down and speed away. As the paramedics rushed to the scene, put a cervical collar around Hanna’s neck, and carefully lifted her onto a stretcher and into the ambulance, Aria had felt numb. When she pinched herself hard, it didn’t hurt.
Hanna was still alive…but barely. She had internal injuries, a broken arm, and bruises everywhere. The accident had caused head trauma, and now she was in a coma.
Aria shut her eyes, ready to burst into tears again. The most inconceivable thing about all of this was the text Aria and Emily had received after Hanna’s accident. She knew too much. It was from A. Which meant…A knew what Hanna knew. Just like A knew everything else—all their secrets, the fact that it had been Ali, Aria, Spencer, Emily, and Hanna who’d blinded Jenna Cavanaugh, not Jenna’s stepbrother, Toby. A probably even knew the truth about who killed Ali.
Lucas tapped Aria on the arm. “You were there when that car hit Hanna, right? Did you get a look at the person who did it?”
Aria didn’t know Lucas very well. He was one of those kids who loved school activities and clubs, whereas Aria was the type to stay far, far away from all things involving her Rosewood Day peers. She didn’t know what connection he had to Hanna, but it seemed sweet that he was here. “It was too dark,” she mumbled.
“And you have no idea who it could have been?”
Aria bit down hard on her bottom lip. Wilden and a couple other Rosewood cops had shown up the night before just after the girls received their note from A. When Wilden asked the girls what happened, they all insisted that they hadn’t seen the driver’s face or the make of the SUV. And they swore over and over that this must have been an accident—they didn’t know why anyone would do this on purpose. Maybe it was wrong to withhold this information from the police, but they were all terrified of what A had in store for the rest of them if they told the truth.
A had threatened them about not telling before, and Aria and Emily both had been punished once already for ignoring those threats. A had sent Aria’s mother, Ella, a letter telling her that Aria’s father was having an affair with one of his university students, and revealed that Aria had kept her dad’s secret. Then A had told the entire school that Emily was dating Maya, the girl who had moved into Ali’s old house. Aria glanced at Lucas and silently shook her head no.
The door to the ICU swept open, and Dr. Geist strode into the waiting room. With his piercing gray eyes, sloped nose, and shock of white hair, he looked a little like Helmut, the German landlord of the old row house Aria’s family had rented in Reykjavík, Iceland. Dr. Geist gave everyone the same judging stare Helmut had given Aria’s brother, Mike, when he discovered that Mike had been keeping Diddy, his pet tarantula, in an empty terra-cotta pot Helmut used to grow tulips.
Hanna’s parents nervously stood up and walked over to the doctor.
“Your daughter is still unconscious,” Dr. Geist said quietly. “Not much has changed. We’ve set her broken arm and are checking the extent of her internal injuries.”
“When can we see her?” Mr. Marin asked.
“Soon,” Dr. Geist said. “But she’s still in very critical condition.”
He turned to go, but Mr. Marin caught his arm. “When will she wake up?”
Dr. Geist fiddled with his clipboard. “She has a lot of swelling in her brain, so it’s hard for us to predict the extent of the damage at this point. She might wake up just fine, or there might be complications.”
“Complications?” Ms. Marin went pale.
“I’ve heard that people who are in comas have less of a chance of recovering from them after a certain amount of time,” Mr. Marin said nervously. “Is that true?”
Dr. Geist rubbed his hands on his blue scrubs. “That is true, yes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”
A murmur went through the room. Mona burst into tears again. Aria wished she could call Emily…but Emily was on a plane to Des Moines, Iowa, for reasons she hadn’t explained—only that A had done something to send her there. Then there was Spencer. Before Hanna had called with
her news, Aria had pieced together something terrifying about Spencer…and when Aria had seen her cowering in the woods, twitching like a feral animal just after the SUV hit Hanna, it had only confirmed her worst fears.
Ms. Marin picked up her oversize brown leather tote from the floor, breaking Aria out of her thoughts. “I’m going to go get some coffee,” Hanna’s mom said softly to her ex-husband. Then, she gave Officer Wilden a kiss on the cheek—before tonight Aria hadn’t known there was something going on between them—and disappeared toward the elevator bank.
Officer Wilden slumped back down in his chair. The week before, Wilden had visited Aria, Hanna, and the others, asking them questions about the details surrounding Ali’s disappearance and death. In the middle of that interview, A had sent each of them a note saying that if they dared tattle about the notes A had been sending them, they’d be sorry. But just because Aria couldn’t tell Wilden what A had potentially done to Hanna, that didn’t mean she couldn’t share the horrible thing she’d realized about Spencer.
Can I talk to you? she mouthed to Wilden across the room. Wilden nodded and stood. They walked out of the waiting room and into a little alcove marked VENDING. Inside were six glowing vending machines, offering a range from sodas to full-on meals, unidentifiable sandwiches, and shepherd’s pie, which reminded Aria of the glop her father, Byron, used to make for dinner when her mother, Ella, was working late.
“So listen, if this is about your teacher friend, we let him go.” Wilden sat down on the bench next to the microwave and gave Aria a coy little smile. “We couldn’t hold him. And just so you know, we’ve kept it quiet. We won’t punish him unless you want to press charges. But I should probably tell your parents.”
The blood drained from Aria’s face. Of course Wilden knew about what had happened the night before with her and Ezra Fitz, the love of her life and her AP English teacher. It was probably the talk of the Rosewood Police Department that a twenty-two-year-old English teacher had been canoodling with a minor—and that it was the minor’s boyfriend who’d ratted them out. They’d probably gossiped about it at the Hooters that was next to the police station, amid Buffalo wings and cheese fries and girls with big boobs.
“I don’t want to press charges,” Aria sputtered. “And please, please don’t tell my parents.” The last thing she needed was some sort of big, dysfunctional family discussion.
Aria shifted her weight. “But anyway, that’s not why I want to talk to you. I…I think I might know who killed Alison.”
Wilden raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
Aria took a deep breath. “First off, Ali was seeing Ian Thomas.”
“Ian Thomas,” Wilden repeated, his eyes widening. “Melissa Hastings’s boyfriend?”
Aria nodded. “I noticed something in the video that was leaked to the press last week. If you watch it closely, you can see Ian and Ali touching hands.” She cleared her throat. “Spencer Hastings had a crush on Ian, too. Ali and Spencer were competitive, and they got into this awful fight the night Ali disappeared. Spencer ran out of the barn after Ali, and she didn’t come back for at least ten minutes.”
Wilden looked incredulous.
Aria took a deep breath. A had sent Aria various clues about Ali’s killer—that it was someone close by, someone who wanted something Ali had, and someone who knew every inch of Ali’s backyard. With those clues in place, and once Aria had realized Ian and Ali were together, Spencer was the logical suspect. “After a while, I went outside to look for them,” she said. “They weren’t anywhere…and I just have this horrible feeling that Spencer…”
Wilden sat back. “Spencer and Alison weighed about the same, right?”
Aria nodded. “Sure. I guess.”
“Could you drag someone your size over to a hole and push her in?”
“I–I don’t know,” Aria stammered. “Maybe? If I was mad enough?”
Wilden shook his head. Aria’s eyes filled with tears. She recalled how eerily silent it had been that night. Ali had been just a few hundred yards away from them, and they hadn’t heard a sound.
“Spencer also would’ve had to calm down enough so she didn’t seem suspicious when she returned to you guys,” Wilden added. “It takes a pretty damn good actor to pull that off—not a seventh-grade girl. I think whoever did this was obviously nearby, but the whole thing took more time.” He raised his eyebrows. “Is this what you Rosewood Day girls do these days? Blame your old friends for murder?”
Aria’s mouth dropped open, surprised at Wilden’s scolding tone. “It’s just—”
“Spencer Hastings is a competitive, high-strung girl, but she doesn’t strike me as a killer,” Wilden interrupted. Then, he smiled at Aria sadly. “I get it. This must be tough for you—you just want to figure out what happened to your friend. I didn’t know that Alison was secretly with Melissa Hastings’s boyfriend, though. That’s interesting.”
Wilden gave Aria a terse nod, stood up, and turned back to the hallway. Aria remained by the vending machines, her eyes on the mint-green linoleum floor. She felt overheated and disoriented, as if she’d spent too much time in a sauna. Maybe she should be ashamed of herself, blaming an old best friend. And the holes Wilden had poked in her theory made a lot of sense. Maybe she’d been foolish to trust A’s clues at all.
A chill went up Aria’s spine. Perhaps A had sent Aria those clues to deliberately throw her off track—and take the heat off the true murderer. And maybe, just maybe, the true murderer was…A.
Aria was lost in her thoughts when suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. She flinched and turned, her heart racing. Standing behind her, wearing a ratty Hollis College sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with a hole through the left front pocket, was Aria’s father, Byron. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling awkward. She hadn’t really spoken to her father in a few weeks.
“Jesus, Aria. Are you all right?” Byron blurted out. “I saw you on the news.”
“I’m okay,” Aria said stiffly. “It was Hanna who was hurt, not me.”
As her father pulled her in for a hug, Aria wasn’t sure whether to squeeze him tight or let her arms go limp. She’d missed him since he’d moved out of their house a month ago. But Aria was also furious that it had taken a life-threatening accident and a TV appearance to motivate Byron to leave Meredith’s side and reach out to his own daughter.
“I called your mother this morning, asking how you were, but she said you weren’t living there anymore.” Byron’s voice quivered with concern. He ran his hand over the top of his head, mussing up his hair even more. “Where are you living?”
Aria stared blearily at the brightly printed Heimlich maneuver poster tucked behind the Coke machine. Someone had drawn a pair of boobs on the choking victim’s chest, and it looked like the person giving the Heimlich was feeling her up. Aria had been staying at her boyfriend Sean Ackard’s house, but Sean had made it clear she wasn’t welcome there anymore when he’d ordered a raid on Ezra’s apartment and dumped Aria’s crap on Ezra’s doorstep. Who had tipped Sean off about Aria’s affair with Ezra? Ding ding ding! A.
She hadn’t given a new living situation much thought. “The Olde Hollis Inn?” Aria suggested.
“The Olde Hollis Inn has rats. Why don’t you stay with me?”
Aria vigorously shook her head. “You’re living with—”
“Meredith,” Byron stated firmly. “I want you to get to know her.”
“But…” Aria protested. Her father, however, was giving her his classic Buddhist monk look. Aria knew the look well—she’d seen it after he’d refused to let Aria go to an arty summer camp in the Berkshires instead of Hollis Happy Hooray day camp for the fourth summer in a row, which meant ten long weeks of making paper-bag puppets and competing in the egg-and-spoon race. Byron had donned the look again when Aria asked if she could finish school at the American Academy in Reykjavík instead of coming back to Rosewood with the rest of the family. The look was often followed by a saying Byron had lea
rned from a monk he’d met during his graduate work in Japan: The obstacle is the path. Meaning what wouldn’t kill Aria would just make her stronger.
But when she imagined moving in with Meredith, a more appropriate quote came to mind: There are some remedies worse than the disease.
2 ABRACADABRA, NOW WE LOVE EACH OTHER AGAIN
Ali sank onto one hip and glared at Spencer Hastings, who stood across from her on the back path that led from the Hastingses’ barn to the woods. “You try to steal everything from me,” she hissed. “But you can’t have this.”
Spencer shivered in the cold evening air. “Can’t have what?”
“You know,” Ali said. “You read it in my diary.” She pushed her honey-blond hair over her shoulder. “You think you’re so special, but you’re so lame, acting like you didn’t know Ian was with me. Of course you knew, Spence. That’s why you liked him in the first place, isn’t it? Because I’m with him? Because your sister’s with him?”
Spencer’s eyes boggled. The night air turned sharp, almost acrid-smelling. Ali stuck out her bottom lip. “Oh, Spence. Did you really believe he liked you?”
Suddenly, Spencer felt a burst of anger, and her arms shot out in front of her, pushing Ali in the chest. Ali teetered backward, stumbling against the slippery rocks. Only, it wasn’t Ali anymore—it was Hanna Marin. Hanna’s body flew up in the air, and she hit the ground with a sharp crack. Instead of all her makeup and BlackBerry bursting out of her purse as from a smashed-open piñata, Hanna’s internal organs spewed out of her body, raining down on the concrete like hail.
Spencer shot up, her blond hair damp with sweat. It was Sunday morning, and she was lying in her bed, still in the black satin dress and uncomfortable thong underwear she’d meant to wear to Mona Vanderwaal’s birthday party the night before. Soft gold light slanted across her desk, and starlings chirped innocently in the giant oak next to her window. She’d been awake nearly all night, waiting for her phone to ring with news about Hanna. But no one had called. Spencer had no idea if the silence was good…or terrible.