by Sara Shepard
“Thanks.” Emily blushed.
Lauren leaned over the chipped red bench in the middle of the aisle. “There’s a local recruiter from the University of Arizona here,” she said in a low voice, only to Emily. “She asked if she could speak to you during the second half. That okay?”
Emily’s eyes widened. “Of course!” The University of Arizona was one of the best swimming schools in the country.
“Great. You guys can talk in my office, if you want.” Lauren gave Emily another smile. She disappeared toward the hall that led to the natatorium, and Emily followed. She passed her sister Carolyn, who was coming from the other direction.
“Carolyn, guess what!” Emily bounced up and down.
“A University of Arizona recruiter wants to talk to me! If I went there and you went to Stanford, we’d be close!” Carolyn was graduating this year and had already been recruited by Stanford’s swim team.
Carolyn glanced at Emily and disappeared into a bathroom stall, shutting the door behind her with a slam. Emily backed away, feeling stunned. What just happened? She and her sister weren’t super-close, but she’d expected a little more enthusiasm than that.
As Emily walked toward the hall that led to the pool, Gemma Curran’s face peeped at her from the showers. When Emily met her eyes, Gemma snapped the curtain closed. And as she walked by the sinks, Amanda Williamson was whispering to Jade Smythe. When Emily met their eyes in the mirror, their mouths made small, startled O’s. Emily felt goose bumps rise to the surface of her skin. What was going on?
“God, it seems like even more people are here now!” Lanie murmured, walking into the natatorium behind Emily. And she was right: the stands seemed more packed than during the first half. The band, set up near the diving well, was playing a fight song, and the foamy gray Hammerhead mascot had joined the cheerleaders in front of the stands. Everyone was in the stands—the popular kids, the soccer boys, the drama club girls, even her teachers. Spencer Hastings sat next to Kirsten Cullen. Maya was up there, typing furiously into her cell phone, and Hanna Marin sat near her, all alone and gazing out into the crowd. And there were Emily’s parents, dressed up in their blue-and-white Rosewood Swimming sweatshirts decorated with GO EMILY and GO CAROLYN buttons. Emily tried to wave to them, but they were too busy studying a piece of paper, probably the heat sheet. Actually, a lot of people were looking at the heat sheet. Mr. Shay, the geezerish biology teacher who always watched practice because he’d been a swimmer about a thousand years ago, held a copy about three inches from his face. The heat sheet wasn’t that interesting—it just listed the order of events.
James Freed stepped in Emily’s path. His mouth stretched into a broad grin. “Hey, Emily,” he said leeringly. “I had no idea.”
Emily frowned. “No idea…what?”
Aria’s brother, Mike, sauntered up next to James. “Hi, Emily.”
Mona Vanderwaal came up behind the two boys. “Stop bothering her, you two.” She turned to Emily. “Ignore them. I want to invite you to something.” She dug through her giant butterscotch suede satchel and handed Emily a white envelope. Emily turned it over in her hands. Whatever this was, Mona had scented it with something expensive. Emily glanced up, confused.
“I’m having a birthday party on Saturday,” Mona explained, twisting a long piece of white-blond hair around her fingers. “Maybe I’ll see you?”
“You should totally come,” Mike agreed, widening his eyes.
“I…” Emily stammered. But before she could say anything more, the band struck up another fight song and Mona skipped away.
Emily looked at the invite again. What on earth was that all about? She wasn’t the type of girl who got hand-delivered invitations from Mona Vanderwaal. And she certainly wasn’t the type who got salacious looks from boys.
Suddenly, something across the pool caught her eye. It was a piece of paper taped to the wall. It hadn’t been there before halftime. And it looked familiar. Like a photo.
She squinted. Her heart dropped to her knees. It was a photo…of two people kissing in a photo booth. In Noel Kahn’s photo booth.
“Oh my God.” Emily ran across the natatorium, sliding twice on the wet pool deck.
“Emily!” Aria ran toward her from the side entrance, her suede platform boots clomping against the tile and her blue-black hair flapping wildly all over her face. “I’m sorry I’m late, but can we talk?”
Emily didn’t answer Aria. Someone had placed a Xerox of the kissing photo next to the big marker board that listed who was swimming in what race. Her whole team would see it. But would they know it was her?
She tore the Xerox off the wall. On the bottom, in big black letters, it said, LOOK WHAT EMILY FIELDS HAS BEEN PRACTICING WHEN SHE’S NOT IN THE POOL!
Well, that cleared that up.
Aria leaned over and examined the photo. “Is that…you?”
Emily’s chin trembled. She crumpled up the paper in her hands, but when she looked around, she saw another copy sitting on top of someone’s gear bag, a fold already down the center. She grabbed it and crumpled it up, too.
Then she saw another copy lying on the ground near the tub of kickboards. And another one…in Coach Lauren’s hands. Lauren looked from the picture to Emily, from Emily to the picture. “Emily?” she said quietly.
“This can’t be happening,” Emily whispered, raking her hand through her wet hair. She glanced over at the wire-mesh wastebasket near Lauren’s office. There were at least ten discarded pictures of her kissing Maya at the bottom. Someone had thrown a half-drunk can of Sunkist on top. The liquid had oozed out, coloring their faces orange. There were more near the water fountains. And taped up to the racing lane storage wheel. Her teammates, who were all filtering out from the locker rooms, gave her uneasy looks. Her ex-boyfriend, Ben, smirked at her, as if to say, Your little lesbo experiment isn’t so fun now, huh?
Aria picked up a copy that had seemingly fluttered down from the ceiling. She squinted and pursed her shiny, strawberry-red lips together. “So what? You’re kissing someone.” Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
Emily let out a helpless eep.
“Did A do this?” Aria whispered.
Emily looked around frantically. “Did you see who was giving these out?” But Aria shook her head. Emily unzipped the pouch to her swim bag and found her cell phone. There was a text. Of course there was a text.
Emily, sweetie, I know you’re all about tit for tat, so when you made plans to out me, I decided to out you too. Kisses!
—A
“Damn,” Aria whispered, reading the text over Emily’s shoulder.
A sickening thought suddenly hit Emily. Her parents. That paper they were looking at—it wasn’t the heat sheet. It was the photo. She glanced over at the stands. Sure enough, her parents were staring at her. They looked like they were about to cry, their faces red and nostrils flared.
“I have to get out of here.” Emily searched for the nearest exit.
“No way.” Aria grabbed Emily’s wrist and spun her around. “This is nothing to be ashamed of. If someone says something, screw ’em.”
Emily sniffed. People might call Aria weird, but she was normal. She had a boyfriend. She would never know what this felt like.
“Emily, this is our opportunity!” Aria protested. “A is probably here.” She looked menacingly into the bleachers.
Emily peeked over at the stands again. Her parents still wore the same angry and hurt expressions. Maya’s spot was now empty. Emily scanned the length of the stands for her, but Maya was gone.
A was probably up there. And Emily wished she was brave enough to climb up into the bleachers and shake everyone until someone confessed. But she couldn’t.
“I…I’m sorry,” Emily said abruptly, and ran for the locker room. She passed the hundred or so people who now knew what she was really like, trampling over copies of her and Maya on the way.
11 EVEN HIGH-TECH SECURITY DOESN’T PROTECT YOU FROM EVERYTHING
Moments
later, Aria pushed through the fogged-up double doors of Rosewood Day’s natatorium and joined Spencer and Hanna, who were talking quietly by the vending machines. “Poor Emily,” Hanna whispered to Spencer. “Did you know about…this?”
Spencer shook her head. “No idea.”
“Remember when we snuck into the Kahns’ pool when they were on vacation and went skinny-dipping?” Hanna murmured. “Remember all the times we changed in dressing rooms together? I never felt weird.”
“Me neither,” Aria piped up, ducking out of the way so a freshman boy could get a soda out of the Coke machine.
“Do you think she thought any of us were cute?” Hanna widened her eyes. “But I was so fat back then,” she added, sounding a little disappointed.
“A passed around those flyers,” Aria said to Hanna and Spencer. She pointed toward the pool. “A might be here.”
They all peered into the natatorium. Competitors stood on the blocks, waiting. The hammerhead shark mascot paraded up and down the length of the pool. The stands were still packed. “What are we supposed to do about it?” Hanna asked, narrowing her eyes. “Stop the meet?”
“We shouldn’t do anything.” Spencer zipped up her khaki Burberry anorak to her chin. “If we look for A, A might get mad…and do something worse.”
“A. Is. Here!” Aria repeated. “This might be our big chance!”
Spencer looked at the crowd of kids in the lobby. “I…I have to go.” With that, she darted through the revolving doors and sprinted across the parking lot.
Aria turned to Hanna. “Spencer ran out of here like she was A,” she half-joked.
“I heard she’s a finalist in some big essay contest.” Hanna pulled out her Chanel compact and began dabbing at her chin. “You know she gets manic when she’s competing. She’s probably going home to study.”
“True,” Aria said quietly. Maybe Spencer was right—maybe A would do something worse if they searched the stands.
Suddenly, someone whipped her hood off her head from behind. Aria swirled around. “Mike,” she gasped. “God.”
Her brother grinned. “Did you get a photo of the lesbo action?” He pretended to lick the picture of Emily and Maya. “Can you get me Emily’s digits?”
“Absolutely not.” She surveyed her brother. His STX lacrosse cap smashed down his blue-black hair, and he was wearing his blue-and-white Rosewood Day Varsity lacrosse windbreaker. She hadn’t seen him since last night.
“So.” Mike put his hands on his hips. “I hear you got kicked out of the house.”
“I wasn’t kicked out,” Aria said defensively. “I just thought it would be better if I stayed away for a while.”
“And you’re moving into Sean’s?”
“Yeah,” Aria answered. After Ella had told Aria to leave, Aria had called Sean in hysterics. She hadn’t been fishing for an invitation—but Sean had offered, saying it wouldn’t be any trouble at all.
Hanna’s jaw dropped. “You’re moving to Sean’s? As in, his house?”
“Hanna, not by choice,” Aria said quickly. “It’s an emergency.”
Hanna cut her eyes away. “Whatever. I don’t care. You’re going to hate it. Everybody knows that staying with your boyfriend’s parents is relationship suicide.” She whirled around, pushing through the crowd toward the front door.
“Hanna!” Aria protested, but Hanna didn’t turn around. She glared at Mike. “Did you have to mention that when she was standing here? Do you have no tact at all?”
Mike shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t speak PMS.” He pulled out a PowerBar from his pocket and started to eat it, not bothering to offer Aria any. “You going to Mona’s party?”
Aria stuck out her lip. “Not sure. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Are you depressed or something?” Mike asked, his mouth full.
Aria didn’t have to think about it too hard. “Kind of. I mean…Dad left. How do you feel?”
Mike’s face changed from being open and jokey to hardened and guarded. He let the paper fall to his side. “So, last night I asked Mom some questions. She told me Dad was seeing that girl before we went to Iceland. And that you knew.”
Aria put the ends of her hair in her mouth and stared at the blue recycling can in the corner. Someone had drawn a cartoonish pair of boobs on the lid. “Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about it?”
Aria glanced at him. “Byron told me not to.”
Mike took a violent bite of PowerBar. “It was okay, though, to tell Alison DiLaurentis. And it’s okay for her to say it in a video that’s all over the news.”
“Mike…” Aria started. “I didn’t tell her. She was with me when it happened.”
“Whatever,” Mike grunted, colliding with the shark mascot as he pushed angrily through the natatorium’s double doors. Aria considered going after him but didn’t. She was reminded, suddenly, of the time in Reykjavík when she was supposed to baby-sit Mike but had gone off to the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa with her boyfriend, Hallbjorn, instead. When she returned, smelling like sulfur and covered in curative salt, she’d discovered that Mike had set half the backyard’s wood trellis on fire. Aria had gotten in deep trouble for it—and really, it had been her fault. She’d noticed Mike eagerly eyeing the kitchen matches before she left for the lagoon. She could have stopped him. She probably could have stopped Byron, too.
“So this one’s yours,” Sean said, leading Aria down his mahogany-floored, immaculately clean hallway to a large, white bedroom. It had a bay window with a window seat, gauzy white curtains, and a white bouquet of flowers on the end table.
“I love it.” The room looked like the Parisian boutique hotel room her family stayed in the time her father was interviewed on Parisian television for being an expert on gnomes. “You sure it’s okay for me to stay?”
“Of course.” Sean gave her a demure kiss on the cheek. “I’ll let you get settled.”
Aria looked out the window at the pinkish, late-Tuesday sky and couldn’t help comparing this view to hers at home. The Ackards’ estate was nestled in the deep woods and surrounded by at least ten acres of untouched land. The nearest property, a castlelike monolith with medieval-style turrets, was at least three football fields away. Aria’s house was in a lovely but rickety neighborhood close to the college. The only thing she could see of her neighbors’ yard was their unfortunate collection of birdbaths, stone animals, and lawn jockeys.
“Everything okay with the room?” Mrs. Ackard, Sean’s stepmother, asked as Aria drifted downstairs into the kitchen.
“It’s great,” Aria said. “Thank you so much.”
Mrs. Ackard gave her a sweet smile in return. She was blond, a bit pudgy, with inquisitive blue eyes and a mouth that looked like it was smiling even when she wasn’t. When Aria closed her eyes and pictured a mom, Mrs. Ackard was pretty much what she imagined. Sean had told her that before she married his dad she’d worked as a magazine editor in Philadelphia, but now she was a fulltime housewife, keeping the Ackards’ monstrous house looking photo-shoot ready at all times. The apples in the wooden bowl on the island were unbruised, the magazines in the living room rack all faced the same direction, and the tassels on the giant Oriental rug were even, as if they’d just been combed.
“I’m making mushroom ravioli,” Mrs. Ackard said, inviting Aria to come over and smell a pot of sauce.
“Sean said you’re a vegetarian.”
“I am,” Aria answered softly. “But you didn’t have to do that for me.”
“It’s no trouble,” Mrs. Ackard said warmly. There were also scalloped potatoes, a tomato salad, and a loaf of the hearty, gourmet seven-grain bread from Fresh Fields that Ella always scoffed at, saying anyone who paid $10.99 for some flour and water ought to have his head examined.
Mrs. Ackard pulled the wooden spoon out of the pot and rested it on the counter. “You were good friends with Alison DiLaurentis, weren’t you? I saw that video of you girls on the news.”
Aria ducked
her head. “That’s right.” A lump grew in her throat. Seeing Ali so alive in that video had brought Aria’s grief to the surface all over again.
To Aria’s surprise, Mrs. Ackard wrapped her arm around her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
Tears prickled at Aria’s eyes. It felt good to be nestled in a mom’s arms, even if she wasn’t her mom.
Sean sat next to Aria at dinner, and everything was the antithesis of how it went at Aria’s house. The Ackards put their napkins on their laps, there was no television news droning in the background, and Mr. Ackard, who was rangy and balding but had a charismatic smile, didn’t read the newspaper at the table. The younger Ackard twins, Colin and Aidan, kept their elbows off the table and didn’t poke each other with their forks—Aria could only imagine what atrocities Mike would commit if he had a twin.
“Thank you,” Aria said as Mrs. Ackard poured more milk in her glass, even though Byron and Ella had always said milk contained synthetic hormones and caused cancer. Aria had told Ezra about her parents’ ban on milk the evening she’d spent at his apartment a few weeks ago. Ezra had laughed, saying his family had their freak-show granola moments, too.
Aria laid down her fork. How had Ezra crept into her peaceful dinnertime thoughts? She quickly eyed Sean, who was chewing a forkful of potatoes. She leaned over and touched his wrist. He smiled.
“Sean tells us you’re taking AP classes, Aria,” Mr. Ackard said, spearing a carrot.
Aria shrugged. “Just English and AP studio art.”
“English lit was my major in college,” Mrs. Ackard said enthusiastically. “What are you reading right now?”
“The Scarlet Letter.”
“I love that book!” Mrs. Ackard cried, taking a small sip of red wine. “It really shows how restrictive the Puritan society used to be. Poor Hester Prynne.”