by Sara Shepard
“Ali’s going to love that gazebo,” Emily s aid confidently. “She’ll have the best parties there.”
The others nodded cautiously. They hoped they’d be invited. They hoped this wasn’t the end of an era.
And then they parted ways, each girl going home. Spencer wandered into her kitchen, gazing out the back windows at the barn where the dreadful sleepover had taken place. So what if Ali ditched them forever? Her friends might be devastated, but maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Spencer was over Ali pushing her around.
When she heard a sniffle, she jumped. Her mother was sitting at the island counter, staring into space, her eyes glassy. “Mom?” Spencer said softly, but her mother didn’t answer.
Aria walked down the DiLaurentises’ driveway. The family’s trash cans sat on the curb, waiting for the Saturday garbage collection. One of the lids had fallen off, and Aria saw an empty prescription bottle sitting on top of a black plastic bag. The label was mostly scratched off, but Ali’s name was printed there in block letters. Aria wondered if they were antibiotics or spring allergy meds—the pollen in Rosewood was brutal this year.
Hanna waited on one of the boulders in Spencer’s front yard for her mom to pick her up. Mona Vanderwaal was riding her scooter around the cul-de-sac. Could Mrs. DiLaurentis be right? Had someone dared to tease Ali, just like Ali and the others taunted Mona?
Emily grabbed her bike and walked to Ali’s backwoods for the shortcut back to her house. The gazebo workers were taking a break. That same scrawny guy with the gold tooth was horsing around with someone sporting a wispy mustache, inattentive to the concrete as it flowed from the cement mixer into the hole. Their cars—a dented Honda, two pickups, and a bumper sticker-slathered Jeep Cherokee—were parked along the curb. At the very end of the line was a vaguely familiar black vintage sedan. It was nicer than the others, and Emily could see her reflection in the shiny doors as she biked past. Her face looked pensive. What would she do if Ali didn’t want to be her friend anymore?
As the sun rose higher in the sky, each girl wondered what would happen if Ali dropped them cold, like she had Naomi and Riley. But none of them paid any attention to Mrs. DiLaurentis’s frantic questions. She was Ali’s mom—it was her job to worry.
None of them could have predicted that by the following day, the DiLaurentises’ front lawn would be filled with news vans and police cars. Nor could they have known where Ali truly was or whom she’d really planned on meeting when she’d run out of the barn that night. No, on that pretty June day, the first full day of summer vacation, they pushed Mrs. DiLaurentis’s concerns aside. Bad things didn’t happen in places like Rosewood. And they certainly didn’t happen to girls like Ali. She’s fine, they thought. She’ll be back.
And three years later, maybe, just maybe, they were finally right
Chapter 1 Don’t Breathe In
Emily Fields opened her eyes and looked around. She was lying in the middle of Spencer Hastings’s backyard, surrounded by a wall of smoke and flames. Gnarled tree branches snapped and dropped to the ground with deafening thuds. Heat radiated from the woods, making it feel like it was the middle of July, not the end of January.
Emily’s other old best friends, Aria Montgomery and Hanna Marin, were nearby, dressed in soiled silk and sequined party dresses, coughing hysterically. Sirens roared behind them. Fire truck lights whirled in the distance. Four ambulances barreled onto the Hastingses’ lawn, giving no heed to the perfectly shaped shrubs and flower beds.
A paramedic in a white uniform burst through the billowing smoke. “Are you all right?” he cried, kneeling down at Emily’s side.
Emily felt as if she’d awakened from a yearlong sleep. Something huge had just happened . . . but what?
The paramedic caught her arm before she collapsed to the ground again. “You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke,” he yelled. “Your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. You’re lapsing in and out of consciousness.” He placed an oxygen mask over her face.
A second person swam into view. It was a Rosewood cop Emily didn’t recognize, a man with silvery hair and kind green eyes. “Is there anyone else in the woods besides the four of you?” he shouted over the din.
Emily’s lips parted, scrambling for an answer that felt just beyond her reach. And then, like a light switching on, everything that had happened in the last few hours flooded back to her.
All those texts from A, the torturous new text messager, insisting that Ian Thomas hadn’t killed Alison DiLaurentis. The sign-in book Emily had found at the Radley hotel party with Jason DiLaurentis’s name all through it, indicating he might have been a patient back when the Radley was a mental hospital. Ian confirming on IM that Jason and Darren Wilden, the cop working on Ali’s murder case, had been the ones to kill Ali—and warning them that Jason and Wilden would stop at nothing to keep them quiet.
And then the flicker. The horrible sulfuric smell. The ten acres of woods bursting into flames.
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, desperat
ely 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.
“Of course I did!” Emily whispered.
“But . . . Emily . . .”
“What?” Emily snapped. She glared at Spencer crazily, as if there was a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead.
“Em
, it was just a hallucination. The doctors said so. Ali’s dead.”
Emily’s eyes boggled. “But we all saw her, didn’t we? Are you saying we all had the exact same hallucination?”
Spencer stared unblinking at Emily. A few tense seconds passed. Outside the room, a beeper went off. A hospital bed with a squeaky wheel rolled down the hall.
Emily let out a whimper. Her cheeks had turned bright pink. She turned to Hanna and Aria. “You guys think Ali was real, right?”
“It could have been Ali, I guess,” Aria said, sinking into a spare wheelchair by the tiny bathroom. “But, Em, the doctor told me it was smoke inhalation. It makes sense. How else could she have just vanished after the fire?”
“Yeah,” Hanna said weakly. “And where would she have been hiding all this time?”
Emily slapped her arms to her sides violently. The IV pole next to her rattled. “Hanna, you said you saw Ali standing over you in your hospital bed the last time you were here. Maybe it really was her!”
Hanna fiddled with the high heel of her suede boot, looking uncomfortable.
“Hanna was in a coma when she saw Ali,” Spencer jumped in. “It was obviously a dream.”
Undaunted, Emily pointed at Aria. “You pulled someone out of the woods last night. If it wasn’t Ali, then who was it?”
Aria shrugged, running her hands along the spokes on one of the wheelchair’s wheels. Out the big window, the sun was just coming up. There was a line of shiny BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in the hospital parking lot. It was amazing how normal everything looked after such a crazy night. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The woods were so dark. And . . . oh shit.” She dug in the inner pocket of her bag. “I found this last night.”
She opened her palm and showed them the familiar-looking Rosewood Day class ring with a bright blue stone. The inscription on the inside of the band said IAN THOMAS. When they’d discovered Ian’s supposedly dead body in the woods last week, the ring had been on Ian’s finger. “It was just lying there in the dirt,” she explained. “I don’t know how the cops didn’t find it.”