Heartless

by Sara Shepard

Page 3

 

  They’d run blindly to Spencer’s yard, catching up with

  Aria, who’d cut through the woods from her new house one street over. Aria had a girl with her, someone who’d been trapped in the fiery woods. Someone Emily thought she’d never see again.

  Emily pulled the oxygen mask away from her face. “Alison,” she shouted. “Don’t forget Alison!”

  The cop cocked his head. The paramedic cupped his hand to his ear. “Who?”

  Emily turned around, gesturing to where Ali had just been lying on the grass. She took a big step back. Ali was gone.

  “No,” she whispered. She wheeled around. The paramedics were loading her friends into ambulances. “Aria!” Emily screamed. “Spencer! Hanna!”

  Her friends turned. “Ali!” Emily screeched, waving at the now-empty spot where Ali had been. “Did you see where Ali went?”

  Aria shook her head. Hanna held her oxygen mask to her face, her eyes darting back and forth. Spencer’s skin paled with terror, but then a bunch of EMTs surrounded her, helping her into the back of an ambulance.

  Emily turned desperately to the paramedic. His face was backlit by the Hastingses’ burning windmill. “Alison’s here. We just saw her!”

  The paramedic looked at her uncertainly. “You mean Alison DiLaurentis, the girl who . . . died?”

  “She’s not dead!” Emily wailed, nearly tripping over a tree root as she backed up. She gestured toward the flames. “She’s hurt! She said someone was trying to kill her!”

  “Miss. ” The cop placed a hand on her shoulder. “You need to settle down. ”

  There was a snap a few feet away, and Emily pivoted. Four news reporters stood near the Hastingses’ deck, gaping. “Miss Fields?” a journalist called, running toward Emily and jabbing her microphone in Emily’s face. A man with a camera and another guy holding a boom raced forward too. “What did you say? Who did you just see?”

  Emily’s heart pounded. “We’ve got to help Alison!” She looked around again. Spencer’s yard was crawling with cops and EMTs. By contrast, Ali’s old yard was dark and empty. When Emily saw a shape dart behind the wrought-iron fence that separated the Hastingses’ yard from the DiLaurentises’, her heart leapt. Ali? But it was only a shadow made by the flashing lights of a police car.

  More journalists gathered, spilling from the Hastingses’ front and side yards. A fire truck screamed up too, the firefighters leaping from the vehicle and pointing a huge hose at the woods. A bald, middle-aged reporter touched Emily’s arm. “What did Alison look like?” he demanded. “Where has she been?”

  “That’s enough. ” The cop brushed everyone away. “Give her some space. ”

  The reporter shoved the microphone at him. “Are you going to investigate her claim? Are you going to search for Alison?”

  “Who set the fire? Did you see?” another voice screamed over the sound of the fire hoses.

  The paramedic maneuvered Emily away from them. “We need to get you out of here. ”

  Emily let out a fevered whimper, desperately staring at the empty patch of grass. The very same thing had happened when they saw Ian’s dead body in the woods last week—one minute he was lying there, bloated and pale on the grass, and the next he was . . . gone. But it couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t. Emily had spent years pining over Ali, obsessing over every contour of her face, memorizing every hair on her head. And that girl from the woods looked exactly like Ali. She had Ali’s raspy, sexy voice, and when she wiped the soot from her face, it had been with Ali’s small, delicate hands.

  They were at the ambulance now. Another EMT clapped the oxygen mask back over Emily’s mouth and nose and helped her onto a small cot inside. The paramedics buckled themselves in beside her. Sirens whooped, and the vehicle rolled slowly off the lawn. As they turned onto the street, Emily noticed a police car through the ambulance’s back window, its sirens silenced, the headlights off. It wasn’t driving toward the Hastingses’ house, though.

  She turned her attention back to Spencer’s house, looking once more for Ali, but all she saw were curious bystanders. There was Mrs. McClellan, a neighbor from down the street. Hovering by the mailbox were Mr. and Mrs. Vanderwaal, whose daughter, Mona, had been the original A. Emily hadn’t seen them since Mona’s funeral a few months ago. Even the Cavanaughs were there, gazing at the flames in horror. Mrs. Cavanaugh had a hand resting protectively on her daughter Jenna’s shoulder. Even though Jenna’s sightless eyes were obscured by her dark Gucci sunglasses, it seemed like she was staring straight at Emily.

  But Ali wasn’t anywhere in the chaos. She’d vanished—again.

  Chapter 2

  Up in Smoke

  About six hours later, a perky nurse with a long brown ponytail pushed back the curtain to Aria’s little cordoned-off nook in the Rosewood Memorial emergency room. She handed Aria’s dad, Byron, a clipboard and told him to sign at the bottom. “Besides the bruises on her legs and all the smoke she inhaled, I think she’s going to be fine,” the nurse said.

  “Thank God. ” Byron sighed, penning his name with a flourish. He and Aria’s brother, Mike, had shown up at the hospital shortly after the ambulance deposited Aria here. Aria’s mom, Ella, was in Vermont for the night with her vile boyfriend, Xavier, and Byron had told her that there was no reason for her to rush home.

  The nurse looked at Aria. “Your friend Spencer wants to see you before you go. She’s on the second floor. Room two-oh-six. ”

  “Okay,” Aria said shakily, shifting her legs underneath the scratchy, standard-issue hospital linens.

  Byron rose from the white plastic chair beside the bed and met Aria’s gaze. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby. Take your time. ”

  Aria slowly got up. She raked her hands through her blue-black hair, little flakes of soot and ash raining onto the sheets. When she leaned down to pull on her jeans and put on her shoes, her muscles ached like she’d climbed Mount Everest. She’d been up all night, freaking out over what had just happened in the woods. Even though her old friends had been brought to the ER, too, they’d all been taken to separate corners of the ward, so Aria hadn’t been able to speak to any of them. Every time she’d tried to get up, the nurses had swept into her room and told her that she needed to relax and get some sleep. Right. Like that was going to happen again.

  Aria had no idea what to think about the ordeal she’d just been through. One minute, she was sprinting through the forest to Spencer’s barn, the piece of Time Capsule flag she’d stolen from Ali in sixth grade tucked in her back pocket. She hadn’t looked at the shiny blue fabric in four long years, but Hanna was convinced the drawings on it contained a clue about Ali’s killer. And then, just as Aria had slipped on a patch of wet leaves, the acrid smell of gas had filled her nostrils and she’d heard the papery rasp of a match igniting. All around her, the woods exploded into flames, burning hot and bright and searing her skin. Moments later, she came upon someone in the woods screaming desperately for help. Someone whose body they’d all thought was in that half-dug hole in the DiLaurentises’ old backyard. Ali.

  Or so Aria had thought at the time. But now . . . well, now she didn’t know. She looked at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the door. Her cheeks were gaunt, her eyes rimmed with red. The ER doctor who’d treated Aria explained that it was common to see crazy things after inhaling a bunch of noxious smoke—when deprived of oxygen, the brain went haywire. The forest had been really suffocating. And Ali had seemed so hazy and surreal, definitely like a dream. Aria hadn’t known that group hallucinations were possible, but they’d all had Ali on their minds last night. Maybe it was obvious why Ali was the first thing each of them thought of when their brains began to shut down.

  After Aria finished changing into the jeans and sweater Byron had brought her from home, she made her way to Spencer’s room on the second floor. Mr. and Mrs. Hastings were slumped on chairs in the waiting area across the hall, checking their BlackBerrys. Hanna and
Emily were already inside the room, dressed in jeans and sweaters, but Spencer was still in bed in her hospital gown. IV tubes fed into her arms, her skin was sallow, and there were dark purple circles under her blue eyes and a bruise on her square jaw.

  “Are you all right?” Aria exclaimed. No one had told her Spencer was hurt.

  Spencer nodded weakly, using the little remote on the side of the bed to sit up straighter. “I’m much better now. They say smoke inhalation can sometimes affect people really differently. ”

  Aria looked around. The room smelled of sickness and bleach. There was a monitor in the corner tracking Spencer’s vital signs, and a small chrome sink with stacks of boxes of surgical gloves in the corner. The walls were wasabi green, and next to the floral-curtained window was a big poster explaining how to self-administer the monthly breast exam. Predictably, some kid had drawn a penis next to the woman’s boob.

  Emily was perched on a child-size chair near the window, her reddish-blond hair tangled, her thin lips cracked. She shifted uncomfortably, her broad swimmer’s body too big for the seat. Hanna was by the door, leaning against a sign proclaiming that all hospital employees must wear gloves. Her hazel eyes were glazed and vacant. She looked even frailer than usual, her skinny, dark-denim jeans hanging loosely on her hips.

  Wordlessly, Aria pulled Ali’s flag from her yak-fur bag and spread it on Spencer’s bed. Everyone moved in and stared. Shiny silver doodles covered the fabric. There was a Chanel logo, a Louis Vuitton luggage pattern, and Ali’s name in big bubble letters. A stone wishing well, complete with an A-frame roof and crank, was in the corner. Aria traced the outline of the well with her finger. She didn’t see any glaring, vital clues here about what might have happened to Ali the night she was killed. This was the same kind of stuff everyone drew on their Time Capsule flags.

  Spencer touched the edge of the fabric. “I forgot Ali made bubble letters like that. ”

  Hanna shivered. “Just seeing Ali’s writing makes me think she’s here with us. ”

  Everyone raised their heads, exchanging a spooked glance. It was obvious they were all thinking the same thing. Just like she was with us in the woods a few hours ago.

  At that, they all spoke at once. “We’ve got to—” Aria blurted.

  “What did we—” Hanna whispered.

  “The doctor said—” Spencer hissed a half-second later. They all stopped and looked at one another, their cheeks as pale as the pillowcases behind Spencer’s head.

  It was Emily who spoke next. “We’ve got to do something, guys. Ali is out there. We need to figure out where she went. Has anyone heard anything about people looking for her in the woods? I told the cops we saw her, but they just stood there!”

  Aria’s heart flipped. Spencer looked incredulous. “You told the cops?” she repeated, pushing a strand of dirty blond hair out of her eyes.