Unbelievable pll-4

by Sara Shepard

  Ian’s face became businesslike. “Of course not.”

  “And she didn’t seem suspicious or anything?”

  Ian put on aviator sunglasses, concealing his eyes. “Melissa isn’t that scary, you know. She’s not going to bite you.”

  Spencer clamped her mouth shut. These days, it seemed that Melissa wasn’t just going to bite her—she was going to give Spencer rabies. “Just don’t say anything,” she growled.

  “Spencer Hastings?” the girl at the desk called. “They’re ready for you.”

  When Spencer stood up, her parents gathered around her like bees swarming a hive. “Don’t forget about the time you played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with the raging stomach flu,” Mrs. Hastings whispered.

  “Don’t forget to mention that I know Donald Trump,” her father added.

  Spencer frowned. “You do?”

  Her father nodded. “We sat next to each other at Cipriani once and exchanged business cards.”

  Spencer breathed yoga fire breaths as covertly as she could.

  Table six was a small, intimate nook at the back of the restaurant. Three adults had already gathered there, sipping coffee and picking at croissants. When they saw Spencer, they all stood. “Welcome,” a balding, baby-faced man said. “Jeffrey Love. Golden Orchid ’87. I have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.”

  “Amanda Reed.” A tall, wispy woman shook Spencer’s hand. “Golden Orchid 1984. I’m editor in chief at Barron’s.”

  “Quentin Hughes.” A black man in a beautiful Turnbull & Asser button-down nodded at her. “Nineteen-ninety. I’m a managing director at Goldman Sachs.”

  “Spencer Hastings.” Spencer tried to sit down as daintily as possible.

  “You’re the one who wrote the ‘Invisible Hand’ essay.” Amanda Reed beamed, settling back down in her chair.

  “We were all very impressed with it,” Quentin Hughes murmured.

  Spencer folded and unfolded her white cloth napkin. Naturally, everyone at this table worked in finance. If only they could’ve thrown her an art historian, or a biologist, or a documentary filmmaker, someone she could talk to about something else. She tried to picture her interviewers in their underwear. She tried to picture her labradoodles, Rufus and Beatrice, humping their legs. Then she imagined telling them the truth about all this: that she didn’t understand economics, that she really hated it, and that she’d stolen her sister’s paper for fear of messing up her 4.0 average.

  At first, the interviewers asked Spencer basic questions—about where she went to school, what she liked to do, and what her volunteering and leadership experiences were. Spencer breezed through the questions, the interviewers smiling, nodding, and jotting notes down in their little leather Golden Orchid notebooks. She told them about her part in The Tempest, how she was the yearbook editor, and how she’d organized an ecology trip to Costa Rica her sophomore year. After a few minutes, she sat back and thought, This is okay. This is really okay.

  And then her cell phone beeped.

  The interviewers looked up, their stride broken. “You were supposed to turn off your phone before you came in here,” Amanda said sternly.

  “I’m sorry, I thought I did.” Spencer fumbled in her bag, reaching to turn the phone to silent. Then, the preview screen caught her eye. She had received an IM from someone called AAAAAA.

  AAAAAA: Helpful hint to the not-so-wise: You’re not fooling anyone. The judges can see you’re faker than a knockoff Vuitton.

  P.S. She did it, you know. And she won’t think twice about doing it to you.

  Spencer quickly shut off her phone, biting hard on her lip. She did it, you know. Was A suggesting what Spencer thought A was suggesting?

  When she looked again at her interviewers, they seemed like completely different people—hunched and serious, ready to get down to the real questions. Spencer started folding the napkin again. They don’t know I’m fake, she told herself.

  Quentin folded his hands next to his plate. “Have you always been interested in economics, Miss Hastings?”

  “Um, of course.” Spencer’s voice came out scratchy and dry. “I’ve always found…um…economics, money, all that, very fascinating.”

  “And whom do you consider to be your philosophical mentors?” Amanda asked.

  Spencer’s brain felt hollowed out. Philosophical mentors? What the hell did that mean? Only one person came to mind. “Donald Trump?”

  The interviewers sat stunned for a moment. Then Quentin began to laugh. Then Jeffrey, then Amanda. They were all smiling, so Spencer smiled, too. Until Jeffrey said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  Spencer blinked. “Of course I’m kidding.” The interviewers laughed again. Spencer wanted so badly to rearrange the croissants in the middle of the table into a neater pyramid. She shut her eyes, trying to focus, but all she saw was the image of a plane falling from the sky, its nose and tail in flames. “But as far as inspirations…well, I have so many. It’s hard to name just one,” she sputtered.

  The interviewers didn’t look particularly impressed. “After college, what’s your ideal first job?” Jeffrey asked.

  Spencer spoke before thinking. “Working as a reporter at the New York Times.”

  The interviewers looked confused. “A reporter in the economics section, right?” Amanda qualified.

  Spencer blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  She hadn’t felt this awkward and nervous since…well, ever. Her interview notes remained in a neatly stacked pile in her hands. Her mind felt like a chalkboard erased clean. A peal of laughter floated over from table ten. Spencer looked over and saw the brunette girl from the W smiling easily, her interviewers happily smiling back. Beyond her was a wall of windows; outside, on the street, Spencer saw a girl looking in. It was…Melissa. She was just standing there, staring blankly at her.

  And she won’t think twice about doing it to you.

  “So.” Amanda added more milk to her coffee. “What would you say is the most significant thing that’s happened to you during your high school career?”

  “Well…” Spencer’s eyes flicked back to the window, but Melissa was gone. She took a nervous breath and tried to get a grip. Quentin’s Rolex gleamed in the light of the chandelier. Someone had put on too much musky cologne. A French-looking waitress poured another round of coffee at table three. Spencer knew what the right answer was: competing in the econ math bowl in ninth grade. Summer interning on the options trading desk at the Philly branch of J. P. Morgan. Only, those weren’t her accomplishments, they were Melissa’s, this award’s rightful winner. The words swelled on the tip of her tongue, but suddenly, something unexpected spilled out of her mouth instead.

  “My best friend went missing in seventh grade,” Spencer blurted out. “Alison DiLaurentis? You may have heard about it. For years, I had to live with the question of what happened to her, where she’d gone. This September, they found her body. She’d been murdered. I think my greatest achievement is that I’ve held it together. I don’t know how any of us have done it, how we’ve gone to school and lived our lives and just kept going. She and I may have hated each other sometimes, but she meant everything to me.”

  Spencer shut her eyes, returning to the night Ali went missing, to when she had shoved Ali hard, and Ali slid backward. A horrible crack rang through the air. And suddenly, her memory opened an inch or two wider. She saw something else…something new. Just after she shoved Ali, she heard a small, almost girlish gasp. The gasp sounded close, as if whoever it was had been standing right behind her, breathing on her neck.

  She did it, you know.

  Spencer’s eyes sprang open. Her judges seemed to be on pause. Quentin held a croissant an inch from his face. Amanda’s head was cocked at an awkward angle. Jeffrey kept his napkin at his lips. Spencer wondered, suddenly, if she’d just voiced her newly recalled memory out loud.

  “Well,” Jeffrey said finally. “Thank you, Spencer.”

  Amanda stood, tossing her napkin o
n her plate. “This has been very interesting.” Spencer was pretty sure that was shorthand for You have no chance of winning.

  The other interviewers snaked away, as did most of the rest of the candidates. Quentin was the only one who remained sitting. He studied her carefully, a proud smile on his face. “You’re a breath of fresh air, giving us an honest answer like that,” he said in a low, confidential voice. “I’ve followed your friend’s story for a while now. It’s just awful. Do the police have any suspects?”

  The air-conditioning vent far above Spencer’s head showered cold air on her full force, and the image of Melissa beheading a Barbie doll popped into her mind. “They don’t,” she whispered.

  But I might.

  25

  WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS

  After school on Friday, Emily wrung out her still-wet-from-swim-practice hair and walked into the yearbook room, which was plastered with snapshots of Rosewood Day’s finest. There was Spencer from last year’s graduation-pin ceremony, accepting the Math Student of the Year award. And there was Hanna, emceeing last year’s Rosewood Day charity fashion show, when she really should’ve been a model herself.

  Two hands clapped over Emily’s eyes. “Hey there,” Maya whispered in her ear. “How was swimming?” She said it teasingly, sort of like a nursery rhyme.

  “Fine.” Emily felt Maya’s lips brush against hers, but she couldn’t quite kiss back.

  Scott Chin, a closeted-but-not-really yearbook photographer, swept into the room. “Guys! Congratulations!” He air-kissed both of them, then reached out to turn Emily’s collar out and sweep a stray kinky hair out of Maya’s face.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  Scott pointed Maya and Emily toward the white backdrop on the far wall. “We’re taking all the Most Likely To photos there. Personally, I would love to see the two of you against a rainbow background. Wouldn’t that be awesome? But we have to be consistent.”

  Emily frowned. “Most likely to…what? I thought we were voted best couple.”

  Scott’s houndstooth newsboy cap slipped over one of his eyes as he bent over the camera tripod. “No, you were voted most likely to be together at the five-year reunion.”

  Emily’s mouth fell open. At the five-year reunion? Wasn’t that a tad extreme?

  She massaged the back of her neck, trying to calm down. But she hadn’t felt calm since she found A’s note in the restaurant bathroom. Not knowing what else to do with it, she’d stashed it in the front pocket of her bag. She’d been taking it out periodically through her classes, each time pressing it to her nose to smell the sweet scent of banana gum.

  “Say gouda!” Scott cried, and Emily moved toward Maya and tried to smile. The flash from Scott’s camera left spots in front of her eyes, and she suddenly noticed that the yearbook room smelled like burning electronics. In the next shot, Maya kissed Emily on the cheek. And in the next, Emily willed herself to kiss Maya on the lips.

  “Hot!” Scott encouraged.

  Scott peeked into his camera’s preview windowpane. “You’re free to go,” he said. Then, he paused, looking curiously at Emily. “Actually, before you do, there’s something you might want to see.”

  He led Emily to a large drafting table and pointed to a bunch of pictures arranged in a two-page layout. Missing You Terribly, said the headline across the top of the mock-up. A familiar seventh-grade portrait stared at Emily—not only did she have a copy in the top drawer of her nightstand, but she’d also seen it nearly every night on the news for months now.

  “The school never did a page for Alison when she went missing,” Scott explained. “And now that she…well…we thought we should. We might even have a commemorative event to show off all these old Ali photos. Sort of an Ali retrospective, if you will.”

  Emily touched the edge of one of the photos. It was of Emily, Ali, Spencer, Aria, and Hanna at a lunch table. In the photo, they all clutched Diet Cokes, their heads thrown back in hysterical laughter.

  Next to it was a photo of just Ali and Emily, walking down the hall with their books clutched to their chests. Emily towered over the petite Ali, and Ali was leaning up to her, whispering something in her ear. Emily bit down on her knuckles. Even though she’d found out lots of things about Ali, things that she wished Ali had shared with her years ago, she still missed her so much that it ached.

  There was someone else in the background of the photo that Emily hadn’t noticed at first. She had long, dark hair and a familiar apple-cheeked face. Her eyes were round and green, and her lips were pink and bow-shaped. Jenna Cavanaugh.

  Jenna’s head was turned toward someone beside her, but Emily could only see the edge of the other girl’s thin, pale arm. It was strange to see Jenna…sighted. Emily glanced at Maya, who had moved on to the next photo, obviously not seeing this one’s significance. There was so much Emily hadn’t told her.

  “Is that Ali?” Maya said. She pointed to a shot of Ali and her brother, Jason, embracing on the Rosewood Day commons.

  “Uh, yeah.” Emily couldn’t control the annoyance in her voice.

  “Oh.” Maya stood back. “It just doesn’t look like her, is all.”

  “It looks like every other picture of Ali here.” Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes as she glanced at the picture. Ali looked impossibly young, maybe only ten or eleven. It had been taken before they’d become friends. It was hard to believe that once upon a time, Ali had been the leader of a completely different clique—Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe had been her underlings. They’d even teased Emily and the other girls from time to time, making fun of Emily’s hair, which was tinged green from hours spent in chlorinated water.

  Emily studied Jason’s face. He seemed so delighted to be giving Ali a bear hug. What in the world had he meant in that news interview yesterday, when he said his family was messed up?

  “What’s this?” Maya pointed to the photos on the next desk.

  “Oh, that’s Brenna’s project.” Scott stuck his tongue out, and Emily couldn’t help but giggle. The bitter rivalry between Scott and Brenna Richardson, another yearbook photographer, was the stuff of reality TV. “But for once, I think it’s a good idea. She took pictures of the insides of people’s bags to show what a typical Rosewood student carries around each day. Spencer hasn’t seen it yet, though, so she might not approve.”

  Emily leaned over the next desk. The yearbook committee had written each bag’s owner’s name next to each photo. Inside Noel Kahn’s lacrosse duffel bag were a bacteria-laden towel, the lucky squirrel stuffed animal he always talked about, and Axe body spray. Ick. Naomi Zeigler’s elephant-gray quilted tote held an iPod Nano, a Dolce & Gabbana glasses case, and a square object that was either a tiny camera or a jeweler’s loupe. Mona Vanderwaal carried around M.A.C. lip gloss, a pack of Snif tissues, and three different organizers. Part of a photo showing a slim arm with a frayed sleeve cuff poked out of the blue one. Andrew Campbell’s backpack contained eight textbooks, a leather day planner, and the same Nokia Emily had. The photo showed the start of a text message he had either written or received, but Emily couldn’t tell what it said.

  When Emily looked up, she saw Scott fiddling with his camera, but she didn’t see Maya anywhere in the room. Just then, her cell phone started vibrating. She had one new text message.

  Tsk tsk, Emily! Does your girlfriend know about your weakness for blondes? I’ll keep your secret…if you keep mine. Kisses!—A

  Emily’s heart hammered. Weakness for blondes? And…where had Maya gone?

  “Emily?”

  A girl stood in the yearbook doorway, wearing a gauzy pink baby-doll top, as if she were impervious to the mid-October chill. Her blond hair whipped around like she was a bikini model standing in front of a wind machine.

  “Trista?” Emily blurted out.

  Maya reemerged from the hallway, frowning, then smiling. “Em! Who’s this?”

  Emily whipped her head around at Maya. “Where were you just now?”

  Maya cocked her hea
d. “I was…in the hall.”

  “What were you doing?” Emily demanded.

  Maya shot her a look that seemed to say, What does it matter? Emily blinked hard. She felt like she was losing her mind, suspecting Maya. She looked back at Trista, who was striding across the room.

  “It’s so good to see you!” Trista crowed. She gave Emily a huge hug. “I hopped a plane! Surprise!”

  “Yeah,” Emily croaked, her voice barely more than a whisper. Over Trista’s shoulder, Emily could see Maya glaring at her. “Surprise.”

  26

  DELIGHTFULLY TACKY, YET UNREFINED

  After school on Friday, Aria drove down Lancaster Avenue past the strip malls, Fresh Fields, A Pea in the Pod, and Home Depot. The afternoon was overcast, making the normally colorful trees that lined the road look faded and flat.

  Mike sat next to her, sullenly screwing and unscrewing his Nalgene bottle cap over and over again. “I’m missing lacrosse,” he grumbled. “When are you going to tell me what we’re doing?”

  “We’re going somewhere that’s going to make everything right,” Aria said stiffly. “And don’t worry, you’re going to love it.”

  As she paused at a stop sign, a shimmer of pleasure ran through her. A’s hint about Meredith—that she had a dirty little Hooters secret—made perfect sense. Meredith had acted so funny when Aria saw her at Hollis the other day, saying she had to be somewhere but not telling where that somewhere was. And just two nights ago, Meredith had commented that because the rent on the Hollis house was going up and she hadn’t made much on her artwork lately, she might have to get a second job to make ends meet. Hooters girls probably got great tips.

  Hooters. Aria clamped her mouth shut to keep from laughing. She couldn’t wait to reveal this to Byron. Every time they’d driven by the place in years past, Byron had said that only puerile philistines went to Hooters, men who were more closely related to monkeys than humans. Last night, Aria had given Meredith a chance to admit her sins to Byron on her own, sidling up to her and saying, “I know what you’re hiding. And you know what? I’m going to tell Byron if you don’t.”