Pretty Little Liars #9: Twisted

by Sara Shepard

  “That’s crazy,” Spencer snapped, hardly believing Emily was bringing this up in such a public place. “We scoured every inch of that beach. She couldn’t have crawled anywhere that fast.”

  “But . . .” Emily fiddled with the plastic cup she’d received from the refreshment cart. “It just seems strange the tide didn’t bring her in.”

  “It’s good the tide didn’t bring her in,” Spencer whispered, tearing her cocktail napkin into tiny pieces. “The universe is looking out for us—and everyone else she would have murdered. She was crazy, Emily. We did the best thing possible. The only thing.”

  But now, Spencer doubted that Ali had drifted out to sea. She stared at the latest note A had sent: All secrets wash ashore . . . eventually. Emily was right. Ali never washed ashore because she didn’t die in the fall.

  Spencer almost dropped her duffel onto the slushy street. “What?” Hadn’t they just said the Pennythistle family was moving into the Hastings house last night?

  “He’s going to military school in upstate New York,” Mr. Pennythistle said in a bloodless, perfunctory voice he probably used when firing employees. “It’s all set. I made the call this morning.”

  Amelia gasped—this, apparently, was the first she heard of it, too. Spencer eyed Mr. Pennythistle pleadingly. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

  “Spencer.” Mrs. Hastings pulled her away from the vehicle. “This isn’t our concern.”

  Spencer slid back into the car anyway. She was about to apologize once more when hyped-up breaking-news music blared on the radio. “This just in,” a reporter said excitedly. “We just received reports that the remains of a teenage girl have washed up in Jamaica.”

  The hair on the back of Spencer’s neck rose. She pulled away from Zach and stared at the speaker in the backseat. What did the reporter just say? But before she could lurch forward and turn up the dial, Mrs. Hastings yanked her out of the car. “Come on.” She slammed the door and gave Mr. Pennythistle a morose wave. They both watched as the red taillights disappeared down the street and rounded the turn.

  Remains of a teenage girl . . . Jamaica. Spencer reached for her phone just as Hanna was calling again. Spencer answered. “Is there something going on in Jamaica?”

  “I’ve been calling you for over an hour,” Hanna whispered. “Spencer, oh my God.”

  “Get over here,” Spencer said, running toward her house, heart pounding. “Get over here, now.”

  Chapter 34

  The girl on the beach

  When Aria pulled up to Spencer’s, every light was on in the house. Hanna’s Prius and Emily’s Volvo wagon were also parked at the curb. As Aria cut the Subaru’s engine, she saw them delicately walking up the slippery driveway. She joined them at the door. “What’s this all about?” When Spencer had called her, Aria was just getting off the bus from New York. All Spencer would say was that she had to come over right away.

  Hanna and Emily turned to her, wide-eyed. Before they could say anything, Spencer whipped the door open. Her face was drawn and pale. “Come with me.”

  She led them through the hall to the family den. Aria looked around; she hadn’t been in this room in at least a year, but the same school pictures of Melissa and Spencer lined the walls. The television was on, the volume turned up loud. She saw the CNN logo in the bottom right-hand corner. A large yellow banner ran across the screen: FISHERMAN FINDS REMAINS OF MISSING GIRL IN JAMAICA.

  “Jamaica?” Aria whispered, staggering backward. She looked at the others. Emily covered her mouth. Hanna had a hand on her stomach like she was about to puke. And Spencer couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen, which showed a robin’s-egg blue ocean and a smooth, tan shore. A rusty-looking fishing boat sat on the sand, and about a zillion reporters and officials gathered around it, taking pictures.

  Hanna’s eyes shifted back and forth. “This doesn’t mean anything. It could be anyone.”

  “It’s not anyone,” Spencer said in a shaky voice. “Just watch.”

  A blond reporter wearing a green CNN-logo polo popped up on the screen. “What we’re seeing below is the ongoing police investigation of the discovered remains on the shore earlier this morning,” she explained, her hair whipping across her face. “According to the fisherman, who wishes to remain anonymous, he found the remains in a cove about six miles south of Negril.”

  “Negril?” Hanna stared around the others, her lower lip trembling. “You guys . . .”

  “Shh.” Spencer waved her hands to silence her. The newscaster was speaking again. “Judging by the condition of the remains, experts say the girl was about seventeen. From the level of decay, they believe she died about a year ago. Forensic experts are working very diligently to identify who this victim might be.”

  “Oh my God.” Aria slumped down in the chair. “You guys, is this . . . Ali?”

  “How is that possible?” Hanna held up her phone. “Isn’t she the one sending us the texts? Isn’t she the one who saw what we did?”

  “What are the odds that another seventeen-year-old girl died near The Cliffs?” Spencer barked, her mouth a wobbly rectangle. “This is her, you guys. And when the cops identify her and figure out that we were there around that time, they’ll put two and two together.”

  “They don’t have any proof it was us!” Hanna said.

  “They will.” Spencer squeezed the bridge of her nose. “A is going to tell them.”

  Aria looked around the room, as though the school pictures on the wall might give her some solace. Everything suddenly felt turned on its head. So Ali really did die in the fall? Had the ocean swept her away that quickly, before they could even find her on the beach? Why had it taken her a whole year to turn up in a cove only six miles away?

  And, the biggest question of all: Who was A, if not Ali?

  “I’m just getting some new information!” the newscaster shouted, making the girls’ heads snap up. The camera wobbled, first showing the knot of people on the beach, then focusing on the newscaster’s feet, then righting itself on her face once more. The newscaster pressed her finger to her ear, listening to someone’s voice through an earpiece. “They’ve identified the body,” she said. “We have a match.”

  Hanna gasped. Aria grabbed Emily’s hand and squeezed. Alison DiLaurentis, Aria waited for the reporter to say slowly. A look of confusion would surely wash over her face. She’d worry that she hadn’t gotten that name quite right. Wasn’t Alison DiLaurentis dead? she’d think. Or was this a girl by the same name, a cruel coincidence?

  Suddenly, a photograph filled the screen, and the girls screamed. There was Ali in her latest incarnation, with her straight blond hair, slightly pointier chin, higher cheekbones, and thinner lips. It was exactly the girl they’d met on the roof deck after dinner that horrible night. Exactly the girl who’d teased them with eerie secrets only Ali knew, lured them up to the roof, and almost pushed Hanna off. It was almost a relief to Aria to finally see her again, though. At least they knew she was really dead.

  “The parents have just identified the deceased by three pins in her ankle bone from an old accident,” the newscaster explained, the photo of Ali minimizing to the corner of the screen. “They’ve released this photograph of what she looked like just before she disappeared. Her name was Tabitha Clark from New Jersey.”

  For a moment, Aria thought her brain had malfunctioned. She swung around and stared at Spencer at the exact same time Spencer turned to look at her. Emily leapt to her feet. Hanna tipped closer to the TV, as if she didn’t believe it. “Wait a minute, what did she just say?” Hanna said.

  “Her name was Tabitha Clark,” Spencer repeated in monotone, looking stunned. “From New Jersey.”

  “But . . . no!” Aria’s head started to spin. “Her name wasn’t Tabitha! It was Alison! Our Alison!”

  Spencer whipped around and pointed at Emily. “You were sure of it! You looked at her and said ‘That’s Ali’!”

  “She knew things only Ali knew!” Emily cried
. “You guys believed it, too!”

  “We all did,” Aria whispered, staring dazedly ahead.

  The newscaster continued. The girls turned back to the screen. “According to her parents, Tabitha had run away from home about a year ago. She was always a troubled child, first suffering from a near-fatal house fire when she was thirteen years old, then undergoing agonizing reconstructive surgeries to deal with the burns. Her parents knew she’d been in Jamaica, but they didn’t realize anything was wrong until five months ago, when she didn’t check in with them as usual. They tracked down her friends, who said they hadn’t heard from Tabitha in more than a year.”

  The newscaster paused and sadly shook her head. “I’m just getting word that Mr. and Mrs. Clark have been looking for her for months to no avail. It’s heartbreaking that their long search for their daughter had to end in such tragedy.”

  Another image appeared on the screen. It was a picture of Tabitha in a cheerleading uniform, surrounded by girls Aria had never seen before. Then, there was a photo of Tabitha standing in front of a stadium, wearing an oversized New Jersey Devils T-shirt and giving a thumbs-up. Ali never would have worn something as garish as a New Jersey Devils T-shirt.

  Hanna clutched the side of her head. “You guys . . . what’s happening?”

  Aria’s heart thumped so fast she was sure it was going to burst out of her chest. The worst possible thought clanged in her head. By the looks on her friends’ faces, she was sure they were thinking the exact same thing.

  She took in a deep breath and said the scariest thing she could even imagine out loud: “Guys, Tabitha wasn’t Ali. We killed an innocent girl.”

  Chapter 35

  Don’t close your eyes . . .

  Emily sank to the floor, the awful truth swarming in her head like a hive of bees. Tabitha wasn’t Ali. Tabitha was innocent. We killed an innocent girl.

  It didn’t seem possible, and yet there it was on the screen. Tabitha had a whole life that was nothing like Ali’s. She had parents. A home. Her burns had been from a house fire when she was young, not an explosion in the Poconos. Whatever she was doing to them in Jamaica must have been a silly ruse, a dare she’d wagered with herself, a game of chicken she didn’t want to lose.

  “There might have been sites that told more about us than we realized,” Spencer murmured faintly, her eyes glazed and unblinking. “Maybe she was, like, obsessed. And when she saw us . . .”

  “. . . she thought she’d fuck with us,” Hanna finished, placing her head in her hands and rocking her body side to side. “You guys, I was about to go to the police about this. I was going to tell them about A, and Ali, and even what we did in Jamaica.”

  “Jesus,” Spencer whispered. “Thank God you didn’t.”

  Tears pricked Hanna’s eyes. “Oh God. Oh God. What have we done? They’re going to trace the murder back to us!”

  “A sent that picture of me and Tabitha dancing,” Emily whispered. “It’s proof we knew her. What if A sent that photo to Tabitha’s parents, maybe? Or the cops?”

  “Wait a minute.” Aria pointed at the screen.

  The camera cut to a shot of the sheriff, a tall Jamaican in a shiny blue uniform. He stood on a makeshift platform right behind the dilapidated fishing boat that had exhumed Tabitha’s bones. “Our guess is that Ms. Clark decided to go swimming while intoxicated,” he said into a series of microphones. “The Cliffs resort has had trouble with underage drinking, and it’s time to put a stop to it. As of today, the resort is shut down indefinitely.”

  Flashbulbs popped. Reporters lobbed questions. Emily sat back in her chair, feeling numb. Spencer blinked. Aria pulled her knees up to her chest. Hanna shook her head and burst into tears again. Emily knew she should feel relieved, but the feeling didn’t come. She knew the truth. It hadn’t been an accident. Tabitha’s blood was on their hands.

  The fireplace snapped and crackled. The sharp, woodsy smell reminded Emily of so many things at once—like the campfire they’d sat around in the woods the summer after the Jenna Thing. By dying firelight, Ali had presented them with their string bracelets, making them promise never to tell what they’d done until the day they died. The bracelet on Tabitha’s wrist had been eerily identical to the ones Ali had made for them, three different colors of blue string wound together to make the colors of a clear, clean lake.

  But it must have been a coincidence. And now, they had a new secret they had to keep until the day they died. One that was way, way worse than the last.

  The smoky smell reminded Emily of something else, too: the charred, blazing Poconos cabin the day Ali set fire to it, hoping to kill them all. For a brief moment, Emily allowed herself to revisit the memory of when she’d raced toward the kitchen door, desperate to get free. Ali had been there, too, grappling to get out before the others so she could barricade them inside. But Emily caught Ali’s arm and spun her around.

  “How could you do this?” she demanded.

  Ali’s eyes blazed. A small smile appeared on her lips. “You bitches ruined my life.”

  “But . . . I loved you,” Emily cried.

  Ali giggled. “You’re such a loser, Emily.”

  Emily squeezed Ali’s shoulders hard. And then, a loud boom filled the air. The next thing Emily knew, she was lying on the ground by the door. As she scrambled for safety, she knocked something to the floor. It was an orange tassel that had hung over the doorknob ever since she could remember. Every time Emily entered the Poconos house, giggling with Ali, ready for a fun weekend, she’d run her fingers through the tassel’s silky threads. It made her feel like she was home.

  Not knowing quite why, Emily slipped the tassel into her pocket. Then, she glanced over her shoulder one more time. She saw something she would never tell another soul, partly because she wasn’t sure it was true or something she’d hallucinated after inhaling too much smoke, partly because she knew her friends wouldn’t believe her, and partly because it was too scary and awful to even utter out loud.

  When she’d looked back through the open doorway into the about-to-explode house, Ali wasn’t anywhere. Had she been surrounded by too much smoke? Had she simply crawled farther into the kitchen and resigned herself to death?

  Or maybe, just maybe, she was trying desperately to get out of the house, too. What Emily did next she would never forget. Instead of slamming the door hard, even shoving an Adirondack chair in front of it to make sure Ali wouldn’t escape, she’d left the door unlatched and ajar. One weak push, and Ali would be out. Safe. Free. Emily just couldn’t let her die in there. Even if Ali had said all those horrible things, even if Ali had broken Emily’s heart in a million different ways, she couldn’t do that.

  Now, in Spencer’s den, Emily reached into her pocket and touched the silky orange tassel once more. That horrible scene in Jamaica flashed before her eyes. Everyone thought you died in the fire, Emily had said to the girl they all swore was Ali.But—

  But what? The girl interrupted. But I escaped? Any ideas how that could have happened, Em? Then she’d pointedly glanced at Emily’s pocket as though she had X-ray vision and could see the orange tassel Emily had carried everywhere even then, the tassel that hung on the very door that had allowed for Ali’s escape.

  Tabitha knew what Emily had done. But . . . how?

  When Emily’s phone beeped in her bag, shrill and loud in the silent room, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Moments later, Spencer’s cell phone buzzed. Aria’s let out a car honk. Hanna’s made a bird-tweet. The noises cycled once more, the ringing and buzzing a cacophony of wails. The girls stared at one another, terrified. If Tabitha wasn’t Ali, and Tabitha had died that night, then who was doing this to them? Ali still could have survived the fire. Was A still Ali, tormenting them with the juiciest, most heinous secret of their lives?

  Slowly, Spencer reached for her phone. So did Aria, then Hanna. Emily pulled her own phone out of her bag and stared at the screen. ONE NEW TEXT. From anonymous. Of course.

  You think that’
s all I know, bitches? It’s only the

  tip of the iceberg . . . and I’m just getting warmed up. –A

  What happens next . . .

  Did you really think it was over? Please. As long as these girls are misbehaving, I’ll be watching. And boy, have they been bad. Shall we recap?

  Hanna’s boob nearly made Page Six. And, sure, she paid off Patrick, but she’s about to find out that there’s more than one way to kill Daddy’s campaign.

  Emily shattered Chloe’s family. Last time I checked, that’s not what friends are for. Perhaps Chloe should return the favor and tell Mrs. Fields exactly how Emily spent her summer break . . . or maybe I’ll do it for her.

  When push came to shove, Aria became pretty . . . vicious. Now, Klaudia’s leg isn’t the only thing that’s broken. Can Aria and Noel’s relationship survive Hurricane Klaudia? As they say in Finland: Ja right.

  And finally we come to naughty, naughty Spencer. Think Zach is the only person whose life she’s ruined? Think again. She pulled some very dirty tricks to get into her dream school—and someone got trampled in the process.

  But here’s the question that’s on all of our minds: Just how long will Hanna, Emily, Aria, and Spencer be able to keep what they did in Jamaica under wraps? Or I guess the real question is: How long will I let them?

  Stick with me, kids. It’s about to get so good . . .

  —A

  Acknowledgments

  First off, let me say how thrilled I am that the Pretty Little Liars saga continues. As soon as I wrote the very first sentence of this book, I felt so . . . right, so thrilled and privileged to delve into the twisted lives of Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna once more. As always, I owe a ton of gratitude to the smart, lovely people who helped create the new web of lies and threats for our Liars to face: Les Morgenstein, Josh Bank, Sara Shandler, and Lanie Davis at Alloy. It’s been such a pleasure working with all of you on this series—there is truly something magical that happens whenever we convene.