Ruthless

by Sara Shepard

Page 38

 

  Dear Spencer,

  Apparently one of the steps to getting better in rehab is letting go of bad blood between people, so I guess I’ll start with you. I’m not mad at you anymore. I mean, I was pissed at you for months after I went to juvie, wondering if you had something to do with getting me in trouble, but I never knew for sure until Emily told me on Friday. So you saved yourself; good for you. I don’t really blame you, I guess. When I texted you on Friday about how we needed to talk, I thought I could keep my cool, but then I saw you and I got so angry. Then again, you were angry, too. But I even forgive you for hurting me. I don’t know what your problem is, but you seriously need help.

  Good luck with everything. Think of me when you’re at Princeton—yeah, right.

  Kelsey

  “Whoa,” Hanna said when she finished.

  “I don’t understand. ” Spencer looked at Emily. “She didn’t know what I did until you told her? If she’s A, how is that possible?”

  “She did seem surprised when I told her at the cast party,” Emily murmured. “But then, at the quarry, I figured she was lying—that she knew all along. ”

  Hanna pointed to Emily’s letter. “What does yours say?”

  Emily looked nervously at each of them, almost as if she’d rather read the missive in private, but then she shrugged and unfolded the letter.

  Dear Emily,

  I suppose I have some explaining to do. I totally screwed up, and I dragged you into it, and I’m so sorry. But I’m mad at you, too. You kept a huge secret from me.

  When I met you, I was clean and sober. Happy. Excited to make a new friend. But then I made the connection of who you were and who you knew. That made me think of Spencer, and all the bad memories flooded back. So I started on pills again. I popped them before we hung out at the bowling alley and before we walked on the trail. I popped them at the play. You asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d try everything in your power to stop me, and I didn’t want to stop.

  As soon as you told me what Spencer did, I drowned my sorrows, taking more pills than I could handle. I was out of my mind when we were at the quarry, and I’m sorry if I put you in danger. I can’t thank you enough for pulling me back from the edge, and although I’m pissed to be in rehab, my therapist says that if I give it time, maybe I’ll really get better. You never know.

  The thing is, I’m a liar, too. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things no one would ever put on her bad-girl bucket list. I cheated on my SATs. I bribed a teacher sophomore year to give me an A by making out with him in the supply closet. And when I was on spring break in Jamaica, I met this guy the first afternoon and left with him hours after getting there, going to the other side of the island and leaving my friends without a car or money.

  So see, you’re not alone in being a shitty person. I forgive you, and I hope you can forgive me, too. Maybe someday we can be friends again.

  Or maybe life sucks, and then you die.

  Kelsey

  When everyone finished reading, Emily folded the letter back up, tears in her eyes. “Poor Kelsey. ”

  “Poor Kelsey?” Spencer exploded. “Poor you!”

  “And, you guys, Jamaica. ” Aria pointed to the bottom of the page. “This part where she says she took off with a guy her first day there. Could that be true?”

  Hanna glanced out into the hall again. Kelsey was still sitting in the nurse’s office, fiddling with the string on her pajama pants. “If it is, she wouldn’t have seen us interacting with Tabitha. She certainly wouldn’t have seen . . . what happened. ”

  “Maybe she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t know who Tabitha was,” Emily whispered.

  Spencer shook her head, her dangling earrings trembling. “It’s not possible. What about that photo she sent me of Tabitha on the beach . . . dead?”

  A light went on in Hanna’s mind. “Let me see your phone. ”

  Spencer gave her a strange look, but then turned it over. Hanna opened up Spencer’s saved texts and scrolled through her history. A’s message was still there: You hurt both of us. Now I’m going to hurt you. But Spencer also had at least twenty unopened messages from Friday after the play. Many of them were from her family or friends or that guy who played Macbeth, but one was from an unknown number with a 484 area code.

  Hanna opened it up. Emily told me what you did, bitch, it said. We need to talk. Kelsey.

  “Jesus,” Hanna whispered, showing it to Spencer. “What if this was the text she was talking about in the letter? The text she was referring to on Friday night?”

  The blood drained from Spencer’s face. “B-but I didn’t see this on Friday. All I saw was that one from A, and then Kelsey came up, and I put two and two together, and . . . ”

  She let the phone fall to the table. Her gaze searched the room, seemingly trying to hold on to something stable and solid. “Kelsey must have sent both texts. ”

  “But what if she didn’t?” Hanna whispered. “What if this second one was from someone else?”

  Everyone stared at one another, wide-eyed. Then Hanna turned around and peeked into the nurse’s office across the hall. They needed to solve this. They needed to ask Kelsey what the hell was going on.

  But the office was empty. The nurse was gone . . . and Kelsey was, too.

  Chapter 38

  SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

  “Visiting hours are over,” a nurse in crisp medical scrubs said, poking her head into the visitation room. “If you want to schedule another appointment for tomorrow, you’re welcome to come between noon and two P. M. ”

  Emily bit the inside of her cheek. They had school tomorrow. “Is there any way we could call Kelsey?” she asked. “We have a quick question for her. It’s important. ”

  The woman fingered the badge that hung from her jacket. “I’m sorry, but phone calls are verboten for the patients. We want them concentrating on the work they do inside here, not dealing with anything from the outside world. But like I said, if you’d like to visit again . . . ” She opened the door that led to the hall that eventually emptied into the lobby.

  There was nothing to do but comply. Emily followed Spencer, Hanna, and Aria through the hall, her mind swarming. Kelsey’s letter to Spencer was puzzling, and her letter to Emily was downright heartbreaking. Had Kelsey really not seen what they’d done to Tabitha . . . or was that just another one of her A mind games? If she didn’t know, what did Kelsey mean at the quarry when she’d said Emily was a terrible person? Maybe it simply was because Emily had kept the secret of what Spencer had done to her. Kelsey had trusted Emily, after all.

  “So what do we do?” Emily whispered. “Visit her on another day?”

  “I guess so,” Spencer said. “If she’ll see us. ”

  The girls walked slowly through the corridor, which was lit with harsh overhead fluorescent lights and lined with tightly shut doors. “Look,” Aria hissed, stopping at a small alcove that held a water fountain. On the inside wall were dozens of scrawled names in different-colored pens. PETRA. ULYSSES. JENNIFER. JUSTIN.

  “That was my roommate,” Hanna whispered, pointing to the large IRIS in pink marker. “The one I thought was A. ”

  Then Emily spied something in the corner, a signature so hauntingly familiar she felt her knees go wobbly. COURTNEY, it said, in silvery bubble letters. It was the same handwriting that was on the sixth-grade mural where everyone had to stamp their handprints and write a few adjectives about themselves. It was very similar handwriting, too, to the real Courtney, the girl Emily had always known as Ali. Emily pictured Her Ali writing her name at the top of a vocab quiz, the e in DiLaurentis just as loopy as this e in Courtney, the letters slanted slightly forward in the same way. Courtney had wanted to be just like Ali down to the last detail—and she had been.

  The other girls followed Emily’s gaze. “So she really was here,” Spencer said quietly.

  Hanna nodded. “Seein
g it makes it so real. ”

  Emily glanced at the signature once more, then looked down the Preserve’s joyless, spic-and-span hallway. What must it have been like for Real Ali here with no one believing she was who she said she was for close to four long, miserable years? Ali must have burned with hatred for her sister for making the switch. She must have seethed with rage at Emily, Aria, Spencer, and Hanna for being at the wrong place at the right time, too. While inside these walls, she’d plotted her return, orchestrated her sister’s murder, laid out her plans as A, and even masterminded the Poconos fire.

  And, if Emily’s gut feeling was right, she was still out there. Alive.

  Emily turned to her three old best friends, wondering if she should tell them the secret she’d kept for over a year now. If they were going to start off on the right foot and really be close again, it had to come out sometime, right?

  But then Hanna sighed and pushed out the exit door at the end of the corridor. Spencer followed, then Aria. Emily took one last look at the inside of the facility. A faint, high-pitched giggle echoed in her ears. She jumped, whirling around. But, of course, no one was there.

  The girls walked across the lawn toward the parking lot. A gardener was on his hands and knees, cleaning out dried grass from one of the flower beds. A Pennsylvania state flag flapped on a pole, making a snapping noise in the wind. For the first time in a while, as they all walked quietly in a line, Emily didn’t feel awkward around her old friends. Instead, she felt comfortable. She cleared her throat. “Maybe we could hang out a little later this week,” she said softly. “Get coffee or something. ”

  Aria looked up. “I’d like that. ”

  “Me too,” Hanna said. Spencer smiled and bumped Emily’s hip. A warm sense of satisfaction fell over Emily like a thick blanket. At least one good thing had come out of this. She hadn’t realized how desperately she’d missed her old friends.

  They passed a wrought-iron bench by the flagpole. It must have been newly installed; the cement base looked freshly poured. A shiny copper plaque lay in front of the bench, a bouquet of lilies next to it. Emily glanced at the plaque idly, her eyes sweeping over the letters but not really taking them in. Then, she stopped short and read them again. “You guys. ”

  The other girls, now a few paces ahead, doubled back. Emily pointed at the sign on the ground.

  Everyone stared at the newly chiseled letters. THIS BENCH IS DEDICATED TO TABITHA CLARK, FORMER PRESERVE AT ADDISON-STEVENS PATIENT. REST IN PEACE. Her birth and death years were inscribed below the message. They were the same years as Real Ali’s.

  “Oh my God,” Spencer whispered. Aria clapped her hand over her mouth. Hanna took a wheeling step backward.

  “Tabitha was here?” Spencer said.

  “Why didn’t this ever come up in the news articles?” Aria shook her head.

  Emily looked around at the others, making a chilling connection. “Do you think she knew . . . Ali?”

  Everyone exchanged a horrified glance. The wind kicked up, brushing a smattering of dead, dry leaves across Tabitha’s name. Then Aria’s cell phone let out a beep. Seconds later, Spencer’s phone, tucked deep in her bag, chimed. Hanna’s phone made a snake-hiss sound, and Emily’s phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump.