by Sara Shepard
“Mom?” Carolyn ran to her. “What’s going on?”
“It’s . . . my . . .” It was all Mrs. Fields could get out. She grabbed her left arm and hunched over.
Carolyn yanked the cordless phone from its cradle on the desk. Her fingers shook as she dialed 911. “Help!” she said, when someone answered. “My mother is having a heart attack!”
Emily knelt by her mother helplessly. She took her mom’s pulse. It was racing fast. “Mom, I’m so sorry,” she said tearfully, staring into her mother’s widened, desperate eyes.
Mr. Fields appeared from behind, pushed a baby aspirin into his wife’s mouth, and made her swallow. Seconds later, sirens blared from up the street. EMTs burst through the front door in a swirl of boots and reflective jackets. They elbowed Emily and the others out of the way and started to attach Mrs. Fields to monitors and an oxygen tank. Two strong men lifted her onto a stretcher, and before Emily knew it, they were carrying her out the door.
Everyone ran outside to where the ambulance was parked. A couple of neighbors stood on the adjacent lawns to gawk. “Only two can ride with us,” the head EMT was saying to Mr. Fields. “The other can follow along behind.”
Mr. Fields looked at Emily. “Stay here,” he growled at her. “Come on, Carolyn.”
Emily shrank back into the house like he’d kicked her. Her father had never spoken to her like that in her life.
She pushed the door shut and leaned against the back of it, breathing hard. In the kitchen, everything was still as they’d left it. Forks protruded out of bowls. The coffeemaker beeped loudly, indicating that the pot had finished brewing. In the living room, the Hummel cabinet lay ruined on the floor, broken Hummels scattered across the carpet. Emily walked over to them and knelt down. Her mom’s favorite milkmaid had a severed head. There was a single arm holding a water bucket by the vent. The little ballerinas were now legless, the tranquil-looking cows were hornless and without tails.
She wanted to find Ali and strangle her with all her might. But all she could do now was look at the shattered remains of her mother’s prized possessions and cry.
21
CLOSED DOORS
A week later, Spencer crept through the woods behind her house to meet Aria, Hanna, and Emily. It was almost too dark to see anything, so she used her cell-phone light to guide the way. Thick roots jutted up from the earth. A fallen log lay across her path. Before long, she came upon the old wishing well, a stone relic left behind from farmers in the 1700s. Moss grew over the sides. Some of the rock had crumbled away. Spencer peered over the edge and threw a pebble down the hole. There was an empty-sounding echo as it plopped into shallow water.
Then she turned and gazed down the hill at her house. Most of the lights were off. The basement window she’d snuck out of was ajar. The spot where her family’s barn apartment had been before Ali burned it down still had no grass. She counted seven news vehicles at the curb, staking out the house. They’d been parked there around the clock since their arrest.
“Hey.” Emily’s head appeared over the other side of the hill. It was a chilly night, and she had on a black hoodie and jeans. She glanced at the well and made a small whimper. “Do you think she really used to come here?”
“I guess.” Spencer dared touch the slimy curved stones. The frame was half-rotted, there was a fuzz of moss on the top and sides, and a rusted metal bucket lay a few feet away. “The top of this hill gave her the perfect vantage of my house.”
Emily clucked her tongue. A twig snapped, and they turned. Aria and Hanna trudged up the hill. When they got to the top, the girls just stood under the moon, staring at one another.
“Well?” Spencer finally blurted. “We’d better start talking. There will be a witch hunt for me soon.” There had been too much turmoil for the four of them to meet after they’d returned home, but finally, tonight, Hanna had sent a text that they needed to talk. But it was true about the witch hunt: The reporters camped outside Spencer’s house were so nosy and clever that they’d figure out she was missing before Spencer’s family did. In the week since the arrest, her mother had barely gotten out of bed, and Mr. Pennythistle had tiptoed around her nervously, as if afraid she was going to freak out and do something crazy. “I’m not actually a murderer!” Spencer had cried out to him once, but it hadn’t done any good.
“Yeah, I shouldn’t stay out long, either,” Aria mumbled. “But it is good to see you guys.”
“Seriously.” Emily looked at them, her eyes wet. “It’s awful, though, isn’t it?”
Hanna nodded despondently. “I’m going to lose my mind if I have to sit in my house another day.” That was part of their punishment: Until they were extradited to Jamaica, they were to remain in their homes full-time. Rosewood Day hadn’t expelled them, but the school didn’t allow the girls to come back, either.
“Everyone ready for finals?” Aria said in a not-so-joking voice. They were allowed to take their exams at home.
“I don’t see the point,” Spencer said sadly. She looked at the others. “I got a letter from Princeton this week. They don’t want an alleged murderer in their freshman class.”
Emily winced. “I heard from NC State, too.” She made a thumbs-down sign.
“Yep, I’m out of FIT,” Hanna mumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her shoulders. “This isn’t fair, guys. That’s what I keep thinking. This. Just. Isn’t. Fair.”
“Tell me about it,” Aria murmured, shuffling her feet through the dry leaves. “But it’s not like we can do anything.”
Hanna pounded a fist into an open palm. “Yes, we can. I say we look for Ali again ourselves.”
“Are you crazy?” Spencer leaned against the well’s rickety frame. “A could still hurt a lot of people we love. Besides, we should just lie low and not do anything else to stir up the press.”
“So we just wait for them to send us away?” Hanna shrieked. “Have you seen the prisons in Jamaica? They’re filled with snakes. And they, like, force you to do gravity bongs there. It’s one of their torture methods.”
Spencer’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’m sure they don’t do that, Han.”
“I bet they do.” Hanna placed her hands on her hips. “Mike made me smoke out of one once, and I broke out into hives and hallucinated. I was in hell.”
“My dad promised that our legal team will figure out a way to keep us from going there,” Spencer said weakly.
Aria sighed. “No offense to your dad or our legal team, but all the papers are saying the FBI wants to make an example of us. It’s almost guaranteed we’re going to Jamaica.”
Spencer gritted her teeth. “Well, maybe Fuji will realize the truth. Or maybe Ali will screw up.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Emily said despondently. “Ali has us exactly where she wants us. And when has she ever screwed up?”
“I really don’t think we should start digging again, guys,” Spencer warned.
“But we have clues,” Aria said. “That doctored video. Whoever N is.”
Spencer paced in circles. “I know, but . . .”
“Your friend Chase is good with computers, right, Spence?” Hanna begged. “Maybe he can zoom into that video file and show the girls’ faces, prove to the cops it isn’t us.”
Spencer twisted her mouth. “But I can’t put him at risk.”
“He already is at risk,” Aria reminded her.
There was a long pause. A truck shifted gears far off on the turnpike.
“I’m not going to Jamaica,” Hanna said firmly. “I want to stay in Rosewood.”
Aria swallowed hard. “I do, too.”
Spencer stared into the dark sky. Aria was right. If Ali was going to get Chase, the plan was already in motion. Spencer hadn’t heard from Chase since before their arrest, but she knew he would do anything for her.
A light snapped on in her house, and she lowered her shoulders, half expecting her mom to appear on the back porch any second. “I’d better go back. But I’l
l do it, Han. I’ll reach out to Chase.”
“Good.” Hanna sounded relieved.
Spencer started back down the hill, her heart pounding. Mercifully, the light snapped off shortly after it turned on, and no one appeared on the back deck. She walked around to the front of the house, eyeing the car in the driveway, then the vehicles parked at the curb. They’d see her if she backed out—she’d have to take the bus. There was a SEPTA stop only a mile from here, on Lancaster Avenue.
She looked down at her shoes, thankful she was wearing sneakers. Here goes nothing, she thought, taking off jogging. It was the only way.
A half hour later, Spencer boarded a brightly lit, cigarette-stinky Rosewood bus toward Philadelphia and sank into a seat. Across the aisle, a woman was reading a copy of the Philadelphia Sentinel. On the front page was Spencer’s picture.
One Lie Too Many, read the headline. Spencer turned toward the window and scrunched up her body to make herself seem smaller. She’d avoided the news all week, knowing she’d only see stories like that. Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, she willed. The woman folded over the page. Spencer’s picture vanished. No one said a word.
Chase lived in Merion, a suburb closer to the city. Spencer pulled the chain at her stop and rushed off the bus. Though she had never been to Chase’s house before, she found the apartment building easily and walked up the uneven sidewalk to the front door. There was a swish behind her, and she turned. A car slowly drifted by, a MERION PD logo blazing across the side.
Spencer ducked behind a tree. The cruiser rolled past at a steady clip, the cop staring straight ahead. After a moment, the car rounded the corner. Safe.
She scurried inside the first door and examined the list of names of residents. Chase lived in apartment 4D; she pressed the buzzer. A few seconds passed. Nothing happened. Spencer cocked her head, listening. It was only a little after ten thirty, and Chase had once admitted that he often stayed up until one or two in the morning. Maybe he wasn’t home?
A woman carrying a green purse appeared on the stairs inside the building. She gave Spencer a cursory glance, then pushed out the door and into the street. Spencer caught the door and slipped inside the building, her heart hammering hard. Maybe Chase’s buzzer didn’t work. She would knock on his door herself.
She climbed four flights, huffing a little as she finally reached Chase’s door. She had to stop breathing to listen for sounds inside the apartment. Music thumped in a back room. And then, a cough. Yes. He was home.
The doorbell was broken when she tried it, so she knocked—first quietly and then louder. “Chase?” she called out. “It’s me. Spencer. I need to talk to you.”
The music went silent. Footsteps sounded near the door, and Chase opened it a crack, the chain unlatched. “Spencer.” His eyes met hers. “You can’t be here.”
Spencer’s jaw dropped. “B-but we’re being framed. There’s a video I need you to look at—one of us in Jamaica. Alison obviously doctored it.”
Chase’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me I was on the hit list, too?”
“What?” She thought of the A note threatening him. How had Chase found out? “D-did you get a note from A? Has someone tried to hurt you?”
Chase’s eyes darted back and forth. “No,” he said, after too long a beat, but it was the most pitiful lie Spencer had ever heard.
Spencer’s head buzzed. All she could focus on, for a moment, was the bumpy texture of the hallway walls. “I-I thought the police would keep you safe,” she said helplessly. “I thought they’d keep all of us safe.” She tried to pull open the door. “Please let me in. We can crack this video—I know we can. I need you.”
Chase pressed his lips together as if he were trying to keep from crying. “You have to go, Spencer. I’m sorry. I’ve just been through too much, okay? This is too intense, even for me.”
“But—”
“And I can’t believe you didn’t warn me.” Chase’s eyes were sad. “I thought I meant more to you than that.”
Then the door slammed. There were clicking sounds as Chase twisted the locks on the inside. Footsteps receded. The music came on again, louder now. A fast, angry song drowning out everything.
Spencer felt like he’d slapped her across the face. She stepped away from the door, surprised tears coming to her eyes. All at once, she felt completely abandoned. No one would help her anymore.
The magnitude of what was happening hit her hard. There was no way out of this. Ali had really and truly won.
Spencer reached for her phone and stared at it hard. Text me, bitch, she thought fiercely, desperately. If only Ali would write to her right now and rub this in her face. Boo-hoo, maybe. Poor widdle Spencer lost her boyfriend. She was probably dying to.
She stared hard at the screen, willing something to happen. She walked to the front of the apartment building and stood on the porch so Ali could see her, so that she’d know her pain. “Come get me,” she even said out loud into the still darkness. “Stop hiding and actually show your face, you coward.”
No one moved behind the bushes. No giggles echoed in the treetops. Spencer’s phone remained silent. She shut her eyes and drew back her hand, ready to hurl the phone to the sidewalk.
But instead she let her arm wilt at her side and walked the three blocks to catch the bus home.
22
SLOWLY SINKING
Two weeks after her arrest, Hanna staggered down the stairs of her mom’s house with her mini Doberman, Dot, following on her heels. All the lights were still on in the kitchen, but the room was empty. A note on the table said, I made coffee. Muffins in fridge.
Hanna listened, but there were no sounds of her mom anywhere—she must have already gone to work. Ms. Marin had been weirdly attentive in the past few days, bringing home sushi from the store, watching Teen Mom marathons with Hanna and Mike, even offering to give Hanna a mani-pedi, although Ms. Marin had a very well-known aversion to feet. On the one hand, Hanna thought it was sweet that her mom was trying to make an effort and stand by her. But it was too late. Her fate was sealed.
She fell into a kitchen chair, flipped on the TV, and absently stroked Dot’s smooth, flat head. Her blinking phone on the table caught her eye. TEN NEW MESSAGES. Her heart lifted, thinking one might be from her dad, who she hadn’t heard from since before her arrest. But then she scrolled through each of the messages. They were all from her classmates.
You’re disgusting, wrote Mason Byers. I bet you hurt Noel, too, right?
And from Naomi Zeigler: I hope you rot in Jamaica forever, bitch. And Colleen Bebris, Mike’s ex: I knew you were capable of this sort of thing.
Even Madison had written: Maybe I forgave you too soon. Now I don’t know what to think about the crash.
More of the same. Hanna had been getting these nonstop since she had been released from jail. She deleted them without reading more. Maybe it was good she’d been suspended: If she returned to Rosewood Day, she’d be the most-hated girl at school.
She held her phone in her palms for a few moments, then clicked over to a saved video link. An image of a waving American flag appeared. Then came her father’s voice-over: I’m Tom Marin, and I approve this message.
Hanna watched the whole PSA from start to finish. She would be the only person in Pennsylvania who actually saw it, as it had been pulled from the networks before it even aired. “And that’s why I stand behind Tom Marin’s Zero-Tolerance Plan,” TV Hanna said brightly at the end, offering a huge smile.
The camera zoomed in on her father’s supportive expression. He turned to Hanna at the end of the commercial, his essence oozing love and pride and loyalty.
What a farce.
As if on cue, a news broadcast appeared on the TV in the kitchen. Hanna looked up. The anchor was talking about Hanna’s dad’s run for Senate. “Since Mr. Marin’s daughter’s arrest, there has been a sharp downturn of Tom Marin supporters,” the woman said. A line graph appeared on the screen. A bo
ld red line, representing the number of Tom Marin devotees, made a roller-coaster-like plunge. “Protesters demand that he withdraw,” the reporter added.
There was a shot of an angry mob holding picket signs. They’d been on the news nonstop, too—they were the same people who had protested outside Graham’s funeral, and the news had spent a good deal of time with them the day Hanna was released from jail, when they’d picketed her father’s office. It looked like they were in front of the office again today. Some of them bore the same STOP THE ROSEWOOD SERIAL KILLER message, but there were new signs now of Mr. Marin’s face with a red slash across it and Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria wearing devil horns.
Hanna flicked off the TV fast, experiencing the dizzy feeling she got when she knew she was going to puke. She fled to the bathroom and leaned over the bowl until the queasiness passed. Then she felt for her phone in her pocket. She had to fix this for her dad. His voters needed to understand that this wasn’t her fault. He needed to understand it, too.
The doorbell rang. Dot scampered toward it, barking hysterically. Hanna stood up and trudged down the hall. A shape moved through the opaque sidelight, and she worried for a moment it might be the cops coming to take her to Jamaica now. Maybe her dad had arranged to get her out of the country early.
But it was just Mike. “Your final exam, madam,” he offered, pushing an envelope into her hands.
Hanna stared at it. Honors Calculus it said at the top.
“You have two hours,” Mike said, glancing at his watch. “And they’re even letting me be your proctor. Do you want to start now?”
Hanna suddenly felt exhausted. When was she ever going to use calculus—especially if she was in prison? “Let’s do it later,” she said, placing the envelope on the side table in the foyer. “I need a favor.”