by Sara Shepard
Then again, the truth was pretty unthinkable, too.
Her thoughts turned to Julie. Last she’d heard, Julie had been checked into a high-security mental facility about twenty miles away. It was the type of place where she couldn’t have visitors for a while, as she would be in round-the-clock, incredibly intense therapy. Caitlin tried to picture what her days were like. At least she was in a cleaner, less-cluttered environment. At least there were no cats. Would she be sad to part with Parker? Had that even happened yet? Maybe it was the type of thing that took months, even years. It’s like a death, Dr. Rose had said. Caitlin felt so sorry for Julie, despite everything. She couldn’t imagine having to go through losing Taylor twice.
A whistle blew outside, snapping her back to the present. Caitlin adjusted her shin guards, popped in her mouth guard, and followed the rest of her team. As she crossed the parking lot to the field, she caught sight of her moms on the bleachers and smiled. Things were okay with them again, for the first time in a long, long time. Last night, she’d had a serious heart-to-heart with them, and though they were still upset with her for pranking Nolan—especially because it had been her Oxy—they were on her side again. Caitlin had finally admitted to her moms just how much rage she’d felt toward Nolan, and how much she directly blamed him for Taylor’s suicide. She’d told them how she reread Taylor’s journal a thousand times in the past six months, trying to figure out the exact moment when he had decided to go through with it . . . the exact moment when she had missed the most important clue of all.
Her moms had just gazed at her, their eyes spilling over with tears, their mouths squeezed shut to hold back the sobs. Then they had all cried together, and it was like they had finally acknowledged that . . . thing . . . the shared pain that was there with them every moment of every day but was too great to even speak of. Just knowing that they were in it together made it hurt a tiny, microscopic bit less.
Caitlin was the last one on the field. She closed her eyes to absorb the cool evening air, the clatter of the crowd, the opposing team’s coach calling out warm-up drills, the tooting of air horns. There was only one thing that still wasn’t right, that hadn’t been put back into place. Jeremy. They hadn’t spoken since Nyssa’s party. Even Josh had called her the next day, apologizing for drunkenly calling her out about signing his cast. “Was that why my brother left?” he’d asked.
“Not really,” Caitlin said. And it was true: Jeremy had left because of her feelings, her conflict. She didn’t want Josh back. And Josh probably didn’t want her back, either. She understood that even better after his phone call—but it was nice that they’d come to some kind of peace.
Caitlin pulled off her warm-up jacket and threw it onto the grass behind the bench. She had to focus on the game. She bent down to tighten a shoelace on her cleat, and suddenly something caught her eye up in the stands. Jeremy was sitting all alone, his face painted in Beacon High maroon and white. He held a giant poster board sign with GOOOOO, CAITLIN! handwritten in big, sloping letters.
Caitlin’s mouth fell open. Despite the fact that the game was going to start in only a few minutes, she dashed off the field and up the bleacher steps, straight toward him. “Look at you! Oh my god!”
Jeremy smiled sheepishly. “I had to come and support my girl.”
Caitlin felt tears appear in her eyes. “Really?”
“Well, yeah.” He grinned at her, but then his face grew serious. “I thought about what you said, and you were right, Caitlin. I should love you for exactly who you are—and that’s a soccer player. A girl who goes to parties. A really hot girl who plays soccer and goes to parties, by the way.” He touched her arm. “And you know what?” he went on. “I love that girl. Every inch of her.”
Caitlin thought her heart might burst. She broke into a gigantic smile and jumped into Jeremy’s arms. She squeezed him as tightly as she could, breathing him in. It felt so good—so right—to be with him, then and there.
Caitlin could have stayed there all night, just holding him, but she needed to get back to her team. Just as she pulled away from Jeremy, she saw Mary Ann running across the soccer field, headed straight for them. For a millisecond, Caitlin thought her mom was angry about her Jeremy PDA, but as Mary Ann got closer, the look on her face was tense and weird—even worried. It was, Caitlin realized, the same look she’d had when she’d found out Taylor was dead.
Mary Ann reached her side and, winded and panting, grabbed Caitlin by the arm and pulled her away from Jeremy. “What is it?” Caitlin cried. “What’s happening?”
Mary Ann caught her breath and locked eyes with her daughter. “It’s Julie. She broke out of the mental hospital. She’s . . . gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
FLAT, BRIGHT SUNSHINE ILLUMINATED THE landscape outside Julie’s hotel room window. Palm trees dotted the horizon, and cars glinted on the freeway overpass as the afternoon rush hour swung into full gear. Julie leaned back in the stiff upholstered chair and gazed into the cloudless blue sky. Her whole body—arms and legs, fingers and toes—was relaxed. Her mind was still for the first time in as long as she could remember. The absence of stress, of fear, was beautiful and invigorating.
The last twenty-four hours were a blur. Julie had no idea exactly how far she’d traveled, but it didn’t matter. All she needed to know was that she was as far from the secrets and cruelties of Beacon Heights as possible, where no one would find her. She had left them all behind, shaken them all from her trail—even the doctors and nurses at the facility, even the cops. They were smart, there was no denying that, but she had still executed her plan to perfection. There was no way she was going to stay in a mental institution, for god’s sake—there were limits, after all, to how far she’d go for Parker.
Julie felt no remorse for lying to the hospital staff. She did the right thing, telling the doctors and cops and attorneys that she was sick, letting them work themselves into a tizzy over her very rare, very severe case of dissociative identity disorder. After all, escaping a mental hospital was a hell of a lot easier than escaping from prison. How else would she have been able to get away? Lying to them, telling them that Parker was a figment of her imagination, was her only choice. And she had done it for both of them, for herself and for Parker. But Julie knew the truth: Parker was as real as she was. And Parker was the one who had committed those crimes. Not her.
It had been Parker, though, even before she’d turned herself into the cops, who’d laid the groundwork for the plan. Julie had found her in the woods when she’d fled from that party, and Parker had taken her shoulders and said, “It’s going to be okay. For both of us. I have an idea. We should use Fielder.”
“Fielder?” Julie had frowned. “I thought you hated him.”
And then it was Parker who’d come clean: She’d been seeing Fielder, both as a patient and, sort of, as a friend (she’d lowered her eyes when she said this, though). She told Julie that she’d really bonded with him, and it seemed that he had a soft spot for her, considering what had happened to his mom. “He’ll come and see you in the hospital, I promise,” Parker had said. “And then . . .” She whispered the rest.
Julie had been hesitant, but she’d taken Parker’s word. So she’d turned herself in to the cops. Let them cart her off to the hospital, tie her down, sedate her—but they promised, from the start, that they’d try to track down Fielder. Finally, he’d arrived, all flushed and freaked out, his hair flying every which way around his head, and his shirttails hanging out over his pants. He heard her out. She gave him the same spiel about Parker not being real. Fielder had nodded, tears in his eyes. “I want to get better,” Julie had urged. Fielder had placed his hand over hers. “I want that for you, too.”
It was when he’d grabbed his coat that she’d snatched the visitor’s pass off his jacket. He didn’t catch it at all, smiling at her sadly when he left, promising to return the next week. Twenty minutes later, when she was sure he was gone and the nurse shift had changed—she was still s
o new that most of the nurses didn’t recognize her—Julie changed clothes, pinned the badge on her shirt (luckily, it only said E. Fielder, so she could be an Elizabeth, or an Elsa) and walked out of there. Easy as that.
Did she feel bad she’d used Fielder? Not really. He’d stalked Parker, and that still made him a weirdo in Julie’s book. And anyway, it had been Parker’s idea: We have to take extreme measures to get free, she’d whispered to Julie that night in the woods. Fielder would be fine: Guards might suspect him of assisting in her escape at first, but once they talked it out, this wouldn’t hurt his career. He’d just look like a dupe.
Julie’s stomach growled as she watched the cars slow to a standstill on the off-ramp. She’d need to get some food soon. Traffic inched forward. So many people, Julie thought, stuck in their cars, stuck in their lives, just waiting for someone else to get out of their way. But not me.
It was better this way, Julie knew. There was nothing for them in Beacon Heights anyway—not anymore. She felt a shot of longing for Carson, who had been so good to her, but then she reminded herself that he most certainly thought she was nuts, just like everyone else in town. Just like her own mother, according to the horribly awkward interviews she’d given on CNN, MSNBC, 60 Minutes. It was better to have a clean break. She should have thought of doing this years ago.
There was a knock on the door, and Julie hopped out of her seat. She skipped across the room, past the two queen beds, past the tiled bathroom, and opened the door slowly. When she saw who stood there on the thick carpet in the hall, she let out a little cry of joy.
“Oh, thank god!” Julie exclaimed, shooting forward and wrapping her arms tightly around Parker’s thin, hunched, hoodie-clad frame.
Parker stood outside the door, grinning broadly. Julie looked so grateful, as if she’d feared she might never see her again. “Can I come in?”
“You don’t need an invitation.” Julie laughed, opening the door wider.
Parker stepped over the threshold, a plastic bag bursting with Chinese takeout boxes dangling from one hand, spilled sauce beginning to pool in a corner of the sack. “Hungry?”
“Starving.” Julie smiled, a smile big and broad and full of sunshine. “Thank god you’re okay,” she gushed, holding out her arms and pulling her friend into a hug.
“Oh, please,” Parker scoffed, brushing her off. “I’m a fighter. I’ll always be okay, Julie. You know that.”
“I know, but you risked so much.”
Parker shrugged. All she’d done, really, was hide while everything went down with Julie. While Julie turned herself in, while Julie spent those days at the hospital, while Julie narrowly escaped, carefully adhering to Parker’s plan. She’d known where to find Julie afterward, traveling far to get here, always in disguise. After all, Julie was the one who’d taken the heat—for everything Parker had done.
And Parker would always be in her debt.
Then she pulled away and looked her friend squarely in the eye. “I’m always going to be fine, you know. As long as I have you.”
Julie beamed. “Same here.”
Then they sat down and divvied up the food. Parker ate and ate and ate, suddenly hungrier than she’d been in years. She felt . . . alive again. Revived. Everything about this moment was right. They were alone, but they had each other. In a teeny, tiny way, Parker regretted using Fielder—they really had made a connection, she thought. But she couldn’t dwell on that. The important thing now was Julie. Finally, they were together, with no one to threaten their bond again. The closest of friends forever.
And Parker and Julie swore to themselves in a singular thought, communicated through that uncanny telepathy they sometimes had, that they would never, ever be apart again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HUGE THANKS TO KATIE MCGEE, Lanie Davis, Sara Shandler, Les Morgenstein, Josh Bank, Romy Golan, and Kristin Marang for their creative brilliance on this project. Also kudos and hugs to Jen Klonsky, Kari Sutherland, and Alice Jerman at Harper for making the project even better. A big shout-out to Jen Shotz: I couldn’t have done it without you.
Also, though this is a work of fiction, I want to emphasize that there is nothing glamorous about laughing at the expense of others, much less what these characters do in the books. Everyone, be good to each other. Kisses!
EXCERPT FROM PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
Read on for a sneak preview of
Aria Montgomery burrowed her face in her best friend Alison DiLaurentis’s lawn. “Delicious,” she murmured.
“Are you smelling the grass?” Emily Fields called from behind her, pushing the door of her mom’s Volvo wagon closed with her long, freckly arm.
“It smells good.” Aria brushed away her pink-striped hair and breathed in the warm early-evening air. “Like summer.”
Emily waved ’bye to her mom and pulled up the blah jeans that were hanging on her skinny hips. Emily had been a competitive swimmer since Tadpole League, and even though she looked great in a Speedo, she never wore anything tight or remotely cute like the rest of the girls in her seventh-grade class. That was because Emily’s parents insisted that one built character from the inside out. (Although Emily was pretty certain that being forced to hide her IRISH GIRLS DO IT BETTER baby tee at the back of her underwear drawer wasn’t exactly character enhancing.)
“You guys!” Alison pirouetted through the front yard. Her hair was bunched up in a messy ponytail, and she was still wearing her rolled-up field hockey kilt from the team’s end-of-the-year party that afternoon. Alison was the only seventh grader to make the JV team and got rides home with the older Rosewood Day School girls, who blasted Jay-Z from their Cherokees and sprayed Alison with perfume before dropping her off so that she wouldn’t smell like the cigarettes they’d all been smoking.
“What am I missing?” called Spencer Hastings, sliding through a gap in Ali’s hedges to join the others. Spencer lived next door. She flipped her long, sleek dark-blond ponytail over her shoulder and took a swig from her purple Nalgene bottle. Spencer hadn’t made the JV cut with Ali in the fall, and had to play on the seventh-grade team. She’d been on a year-long field hockey binge to perfect her game, and the girls knew she’d been practicing dribbling in the backyard before they arrived. Spencer hated when anyone was better at anything than she was. Especially Alison.
“Wait for me!”
They turned to see Hanna Marin climbing out of her mom’s Mercedes. She stumbled over her tote bag and waved her chubby arms wildly. Ever since Hanna’s parents had gotten a divorce last year, she’d been steadily putting on weight and outgrowing her old clothes. Even though Ali rolled her eyes, the rest of the girls pretended not to notice. That’s just what best friends do.
“I’m so glad this day is over.” Alison moaned before gently pushing Spencer back through the gap in the hedges. “Your barn.”
“I’m so glad seventh grade is over,” Aria said as she, Emily, and Hanna followed Alison and Spencer toward the renovated barn-turned-guesthouse where Spencer’s older sister, Melissa, had lived for her junior and senior years of high school. Fortunately, she’d just graduated and was headed to Prague this summer, so it was all theirs for the night.
Suddenly they heard a very squeaky voice. “Alison! Hey, Alison! Hey, Spencer!”
Alison turned to the street. “Not it,” she whispered.
“Not it,” Spencer, Emily, and Aria quickly followed.
Hanna frowned. “Shit.”
It was this game Ali had stolen from her brother, Jason, who was a senior at Rosewood Day. Jason and his friends played it at inter-prep school field parties when scoping out girls. Being the last to call out “not it” meant you had to entertain the ugly girl for the night while your friends got to hook up with her hot friends—meaning, essentially, that you were as lame and unattractive as she was. In Ali’s version, the girls called “not it” whenever there was anyone ugly, uncool, or unfortunate near them.
This time, “not it” was for Mona Vanderwaal—a dork from
down the street whose favorite pastime was trying to befriend Spencer and Alison—and her two freaky friends, Chassey Bledsoe and Phi Templeton.
“You guys want to come over and watch Fear Factor?” Mona called.
“Sorry,” Alison simpered. “We’re kind of busy.”
Chassey frowned. “Don’t you want to see when they eat the bugs?”
“Gross!” Spencer whispered to Aria, who then started pretending to eat invisible lice off Hanna’s scalp like a monkey.
“Yeah, I wish we could.” Alison tilted her head. “We’ve planned this sleepover for a while now. But maybe next time?”
Mona looked at the sidewalk. “Yeah, okay.”
“See ya.” Alison turned around, rolling her eyes, and the other girls did the same.
They crossed through Spencer’s back gate. To their left was Ali’s neighboring backyard, where her parents were building a twenty-seat gazebo for their lavish outdoor picnics. “Thank God the workers aren’t here,” Ali said, glancing at a yellow bulldozer.
Emily stiffened. “Have they been saying stuff to you again?”
“Easy there, Killer,” Alison said. The others giggled. Sometimes they called Emily “Killer,” as in Ali’s personal pit bull. Emily used to find it funny, too, but lately she wasn’t laughing along.
As they reached the barn, the girls heard giggles coming from inside. Someone squealed, “I said, stop it!”
“Oh God,” Spencer moaned. “What is she doing here?”
As Spencer peeked through the keyhole, she could see Melissa, her prim and proper, excellent-at-everything older sister, and Ian Thomas, her tasty boyfriend, wrestling on the couch. Spencer kicked at the door with the heel of her shoe, forcing it open. The barn smelled like moss and slightly burned popcorn. Melissa turned around.
“What the fu—?” she asked. Then she noticed the others and smiled. “Oh, hey guys.”