by Sara Shepard
Iris stood very still for a few long moments, her back still turned. The vanilla-scented Glade plug-in in the corner outlet let out a sfft. It reminded Hanna eerily of Ali. Finally, Iris whirled around. “God, Hanna.” She exhaled. “That sounds awful.”
“It was,” Hanna admitted.
And then the tears came fast and hot. It felt like every shred of tension and fear she’d been holding in for months erupted from her. For so long, she’d thought if she pretended she was over Mona and Ali and A, it all would eventually fade away. But it wasn’t fading. She was so angry at Mona it physically hurt. She was angry at Ali for being so nasty to Mona that she’d turned into vicious, heartless A. And she was furious at herself for falling for Mona’s friendship—and Ali’s.
“If I hadn’t been friends with Ali, none of this would’ve happened,” Hanna wailed, crying so hard now that her chest heaved uncontrollably. “I wish she’d never been in my life. I wish I never knew her.”
“Shhhh.” Iris petted Hanna’s hair. “You don’t mean that.”
But Hanna did mean it. All Ali gave Hanna was a few months of bliss and then many years of pain. “Would it have been the worst thing if I had stayed an ugly, chubby loser?” Hanna asked. At least then she wouldn’t have hurt people. At least people wouldn’t have hurt her. “Maybe I deserved what Mona did to me. Maybe Ali deserved what someone did to her, too.”
Iris sat back, flinching as if Hanna had pinched her. Hanna realized too late how her words probably sounded. But then Iris stood and straightened her skirt. “The staff is making us watch Ella Enchanted in the theater room.” She rolled her eyes and made a face. “I’ll tell them you’re sick if you want me to. Maybe you need some time alone. I understand if you don’t want to see Tara and the others right now.”
Hanna was about to nod, but then her stomach let out a gurgle. She squared her shoulders. It was true—she didn’t want to face Tara and the other patients, now that they knew the truth. But all of a sudden, she didn’t really care. Everyone here was screwed up. They were no better than she was.
“I’ll be there,” she decided.
Iris smiled. “Take your time.” The door clonked shut on her way out.
Hanna felt her pulse begin to slow. She dabbed her eyes with more Kleenexes, slid her feet into her Ugg slippers, and walked to the mirror. Fixing her puffy eyes was going to take a lot of makeup. Then, she noticed Iris’s black patent leather Chanel purse on the bureau, the corner of a magazine poking out. Hanna pulled at it, hardly believing what she saw.
It was the newest issue of People. The one with the story about Hanna inside.
Alarm bolted through her. Hadn’t the nurses taken this away? Frantically, Hanna leafed to the page where the story about her began. A Week of Secrets and Lies. Her eyes scanned the text. There were details about their friendship with Alison. Their dealings with Mona-as-A. Seeing Ian Thomas’s body, narrowly escaping the fire. There was the box that said 92 percent of the country thought Hanna and the others killed Ali. And then Hanna noticed another sidebar. And where’s Hanna Marin? said bold type. You’ll never believe it! Next to it was a picture of the front of the Preserve.
Hanna’s blood went ice-cold.
There was a list of drugs Hanna was taking, the sleeping pills and the Valium. There was an itinerary of how she spent her days, down to what she ate for breakfast, how long she ran on the treadmill, and how often she wrote in her leather-bound food journal. Below the article was a blurry picture of Hanna in leggings and a T-shirt, sticking her tongue out at the camera, the graffiti on the walls of the secret attic room behind her. Hanna’s raised middle finger had been cropped out, as had the other girl in the picture. “Oh my God,” Hanna whispered.
She stared at the magazine, nausea burbling up in her stomach. In group, Hanna had blamed Tara. But something didn’t fit. Even if Tara had somehow found Iris’s disposable camera, some of these details were too specific. They were things only someone who spent every waking moment with Hanna could know.
Just before Hanna hurled the magazine across the room, she saw something else in the photo. Behind her head, right next to Iris’s sketch of the wishing well, was another drawing in the exact same style and the same color ink. It was of a girl with a heart-shaped face, Cupid-bow lips, and wide, big blue eyes. Hanna brought the magazine closer to her face, staring at it until her eyes crossed. It was the spitting image of a girl Hanna knew very, very well. A girl she thought she’d seen in the woods the week before.
And suddenly, Ali’s voice lilted in her ear. She wants to hurt you just like she already hurt me.
Ali hadn’t been talking about Tara at all; she’d been talking about Iris.
Chapter 25 Aria Says Good-Bye
An hour after her meeting with Esmeralda, Aria parked at the gates of St. Basil’s cemetery. The majestic mausoleums and headstones were dappled with silver moonlight. A couple of tall, old-fashioned lanterns lit the brick pathway. There was a gentle breeze shaking the bare willow trees. Aria knew every step to Ali’s grave, but that wouldn’t make the journey there any easier.
Ali killed Ali. It was shocking . . . and unbelievable . . . and filled Aria with penetrating, unbelievable guilt. Someone murdering Ali was one thing, truly tragic. But Ali killing herself? It could have been prevented. Ali could have sought help.
And still, Aria was skeptical that Ali could have done such a thing. She’d seemed so happy, so carefree. But the day Mrs. DiLaurentis questioned them about Ali’s whereabouts, after Aria and her friends parted ways, she’d started down the DiLaurentises’ driveway and noticed the lid to one of their garbage cans had blown off. Bending down to put it back on the can, she spied an empty bottle for pills nestled atop the trash bags. The prescription was for Ali, but the medication’s name had been rubbed off. At the time, Aria hadn’t thought much of it, but now she reexamined the memory more closely. What if the pills were to treat depression or anxiety? What if Ali took a whole handful of them on the night of the seventh-grade sleepover, too overcome to go on? She could have climbed into that hole on purpose, folded her hands over her chest, and waited for the drugs to take effect. But there was no way to prove it—Ali’s body had been so decomposed by the time the workers found her that there was no way to test for a drug overdose.
R U avoiding me? Ali had texted Aria in those last few weeks she was alive. I want 2 talk. But Aria had ignored almost every one of them—there was only so much teasing about Byron’s affair she could take. What if Ali had needed to talk about something else? How had Aria missed something so huge?
Even though she’d only seen Noel an hour ago, she pulled out her phone and called him. He answered right away. “I’m at the cemetery,” she said. Then she paused, figuring Noel would know why.
“It’ll be okay,” Noel said. “It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”
Aria picked up the crinkly wrapping around the bouquet of flowers she’d picked up at the grocery store just minutes ago. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to Ali here—or what answers she’d get. But at this point, she was willing to try anything to feel better. She swallowed hard, pressing the phone to her ear. “Ali might have been reaching out to me about something, but I ignored her. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not,” Noel soothed. The other end crackled with static. “I think that about my brother sometimes, too . . . but you can’t. It’s nothing I could’ve prevented, and it’s nothing you could’ve stopped, either. And it wasn’t like you were Ali’s only friend. She could’ve reached out to Spencer or Hanna or her parents. But she didn’t.”
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Aria said, her voice thick with tears. Then she hung up, grabbed the flowers, opened the passenger door, and started up the walk. The grass was wet and squishy under her feet. Within minutes, she was climbing the hill and approaching Ali’s headstone. Someone had set up fresh flowers at the headstone’s base and taped a picture of Ali to the stone itself.
“Aria? “
&n
bsp; She jumped. A shiver went down her back. Jason DiLaurentis was standing a few feet away under a big sycamore tree. She braced herself, ready for him to get angry, but he just stood there, his eyes darting back and forth. He wore a heavy black jacket with a thick, padded hood, black pants, and black gloves. For a wild second Aria wondered if he was going to rob a bank.
“H-hey,” she finally sputtered. “I just . . . wanted to talk to Ali. Is that okay?”
Jason shrugged. “Sure.” He began to walk down the hill, giving her space. “Wait,” Aria called. Jason stopped, leaned his hand against a tree, and peered at her.
Aria considered her words. One short week ago, when they were dating, Jason had encouraged her to discuss Ali with him—he said everyone else seemed too uncomfortable to even utter her name in his presence. She brushed her hands on her jeans. “We’ve found out a lot about Ali that we didn’t know,” she finally said. “A lot that’s really painful. I’m sure it’s been hard on you, too.”
Jason kicked his toe into a loose clump of soil. “Yeah.”
“And sometimes you just don’t know what’s going on inside of people,” Aria added, thinking about how Ali had happily pirouetted across the lawn the evening seventh grade ended, seemingly overjoyed to see her best friends. “People always seem so perfect on the surface,” she added. “But . . . it’s not always the case. Everyone hides things.”
Jason’s toe kicked up more dirt.
“But it’s not your fault,” Aria went on. “It’s not any of our faults.”
And all of a sudden, she really believed that. If Ali really had committed suicide, and if she’d known she was going to do it ahead of time, Aria still might not have been able to do anything to stop her. It broke her heart that she hadn’t sensed it coming, and it sucked that she didn’t know why Ali had done it . . . but maybe she just had to accept it, grieve, and move on.
Jason opened his mouth as if to speak, but a shrill ring pierced the air. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I should get this,” he said, glancing at the screen, his tone apologetic. Aria gave him a wave as he turned and walked down the hill into the shadows.
Then she faced Ali’s headstone. Alison Lauren DiLaurentis. Nothing else. Had Ali known the night of the sleepover would be her last on earth, or had it been a spur-of-the-moment, I can’t take it anymore thing? The very last time Aria saw Ali alive, Ali had been about to hypnotize them, but Spencer had jumped up and tried to open the blinds. It’s too dark in here, Spencer said. It has to be dark, Ali argued, whipping the blinds shut. That’s how it works.
Then, when Ali turned, Aria got a peek at her face. She hadn’t seemed manipulative and domineering, but fragile and scared. Seconds later, Spencer told Ali to leave . . . and Ali did. She backed down, something she’d never done before, like her spunk and resolve had evaporated.
Aria knelt down in the grass, touching the cool marble of Ali’s headstone. Hot tears rushed to her eyes. “Ali, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Whatever was going on, I’m sorry.”
A jet roared overhead. The fragrant bouquet of roses next to Ali’s grave made Aria’s nose itch. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Aria?” a high-pitched voice called.
Aria jumped. There was a blinding light in her face. Her hands shook, and for a moment, she was sure it was Ali. But then the light shifted. A woman cop in dark-framed glasses and a Rosewood PD ski cap knelt down. “Aria Montgomery?”
“Y-yes?” Aria stammered.
The cop touched Aria’s arm. “You need to come with me.”
“Why?” Aria laughed nervously, pulling her arm away.
The walkie-talkie on the cop’s belt bleeped. “It would be best if you spoke to the boys downtown.”
“What’s going on? I didn’t do anything.”
The cop curled her lips into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “What are you so sorry about, Aria?” She glanced at Ali’s grave, obviously having heard everything Aria had just said. “Is it because you’ve been hiding evidence from us?”
Aria shook her head, not understanding. “Evidence?”
The cop gave her a knowing, condescending look. “A certain ring.”
Aria’s throat instantly went dry. She clutched her yak-fur bag to her chest. Ian’s ring was still nestled in the inner pocket. She’d been so busy trying to contact Ali, she hadn’t thought about it in days. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Mm-hmm,” the cop murmured, neither interested nor impressed. She unclipped a pair of handcuffs from her belt and glanced at Jason, who was standing just a few feet away. “Thanks for your call, telling us she was here.”
Aria’s mouth fell open. She whipped around and stared at Jason too. “You told them I was here?” she exclaimed. “Why?”
Jason shook his head, his eyes wide. “What? I didn’t—”
“Mr. DiLaurentis told the officer at the station everything he knew,” the cop interrupted. “He’s just doing his civic duty, Miss Montgomery.” She wrested Aria’s bag from her hands, then placed her cuffs over Aria’s wrists. “Don’t be angry at him for what you did. What all of you did.”
The reality of what the cop was saying slowly sank in. Could she really mean what Aria thought she meant? She whipped around to Jason. “You’re making this up!”
“Aria, you don’t understand,” Jason protested. “I didn’t—”
“Come on,” the cop blustered. Aria’s arms were now roughly bent behind her back. She could see Jason’s lips moving but couldn’t make out the words.
“And since when do the police take advice from psychos?” she exploded to the cop. “Don’t you know Jason’s been in and out of mental hospitals for years?”
The cop cocked her head, seemingly perplexed. Jason made a gurgling sound. “Aria . . .” His voice cracked. “No. You’ve got it all wrong.”
Aria paused. Jason sounded aghast. “What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
The cop grabbed her arm. “Come on, Miss Montgomery. Let’s go.”
But Aria’s gaze was still on Jason. “What do I have wrong?” Jason stared, his lips parted. “Tell me!” she pleaded. “What do I have wrong?” But Jason just stood there, watching as the cop pulled Aria down the hill to the flashing cruiser.
Chapter 26 The Evidence doesn’t Lie
The trip from Lancaster to Rosewood was supposed to take two hours at the most, but Emily had made the mistake of getting on a bus that stopped at a couple of authentic Pennsylvania Dutch farms on the way back. It had then deposited her in Philadelphia, meaning she’d had to get on another bus to Rosewood, which sat in the station for an additional forty-five minutes before then getting stuck in jammed traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. By the time the Greyhound sighed into Rosewood, Emily had bit every fingernail to the quick and had torn a giant hole in the vinyl bus seat. It was almost 6 P.M., and a cold, ugly sleet had begun to fall. The bus opened its doors, and Emily scampered down the steps.
The town was quiet and dead. The traffic lights changed from red to green, but no cars passed through. Ferra’s Cheesesteaks still had an OPEN SIGN in the window, but there wasn’t a single customer inside. The smell of roasted coffee beans wafted from the Unicorn Cafe, but the place was locked up tight.
Emily started to run, skidding down the shiny sidewalk, careful not to slip in her pathetically thin, tractionless Amish boots. The police station was only a few blocks away. There were lights on in the main building, where Emily and the others had gone when they’d figured out Mona Vanderwaal was Old A. The back of the complex, where New A had told her to go, had no windows, making it impossible to tell whether it was occupied. Emily spied a big metal door propped open by a coffee cup and gasped. A had left the door open, as promised.
A long hallway stretched in front of her. The floors smelled like industrial-strength cleaner, and an exit sign glowed at the far end of the corridor. The only sound was a faint, annoying buzz from the overhead fluorescent light, and Emi
ly could hear every breath she took.
She ran her fingers along the edges of the walls as she walked, stopping at each office door to read the names on the plaques. FILING. MAINTENANCE. EMPLOYEES ONLY. Four offices down, her heart leapt. EVIDENCE.
Emily peered through the little window in the metal door. The room was long and dark, with a mess of shelves, folders, file boxes, and metal filing cabinets. She thought of the papers in that photo A had texted. The interview with Ali’s mom. The timeline of when Ali went missing. The weird paper from the Preserve at Something-or-other, which sounded like a swanky housing development. And, last but not least, the DNA report, surely saying the body in the hole wasn’t Ali’s, but Leah’s.
Suddenly, a hand clapped on her shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Emily jumped away from the door and whirled around. A Rosewood cop held her roughly by the upper arm, his eyes aflame. The EXIT sign above him cast eerie red shadows along his cheeks. “I . . .” she stammered.
His brow furrowed. “You’re not supposed to be down here!” Then he stared at her harder. Recognition flickered across his face. “I know you,” he said.
Emily tried to back away from him, but he held her tight. His jaw dropped. “You’re one of the girls who thought she saw Alison DiLaurentis.” The corners of his lips curled into a smile and he pressed his face close to hers. His breath smelled like onion rings. “We’ve been looking for you.”
A streak of fear shot through Emily’s stomach. “It’s Darren Wilden you should be looking for! The body in that hole isn’t Alison DiLaurentis—it’s a girl named Leah Zook! Wilden murdered her and dumped her there! He’s guilty.”
But the cop just laughed and, to Emily’s horror, began to handcuff her hands behind her back. “Sweetheart,” he said as he led her down the hall, “the only guilty one here is you.”
Chapter 27 That’s Amore!
Mrs. Hastings refused to tell Spencer where they were going, only that it was a surprise. The large, turreted houses on their street swept by, followed by the rambling Springton Farm and then the upscale Gray Horse Inn. Spencer took her money out of her wallet and rearranged her bills by serial number. Her mom had always been a quiet driver, fiercely concentrating on the roads and traffic, but something was different today, and it had Spencer on edge.