Toxic

by Sara Shepard

  Then she imagined Hailey’s response. Would Hailey use that ditzy voice again? Snap that imaginary gum? Earlier, Hailey had performed yet another scene as Hanna, and it was just as dreadful as the other day. To Hanna’s relief, Hank had sprung up and said, “Hailey, I don’t know if you have the character right. Why don’t you do some thinking on it, and we’ll reschedule your scenes tomorrow?”

  Hailey’s jaw had dropped, and her face had turned red. As soon as the sound engineer had removed her microphone, she’d stormed over to Hanna. “Do you think I’m doing a good job? Because your opinion is the only one that matters.”

  It had been Hanna’s chance to say something, but she’d felt so cornered. She’d given Hailey a closed-mouth smile and nodded feverishly, not trusting her voice.

  Hanna repeated her lines again and again, tinkering with her movements and blocking. On the third try, she even felt her eyes well with tears. I am kind of good at this, she thought, feeling satisfied. Then she gathered up her things and slipped out the side door.

  Even though it was only five o’clock, the sky was surprisingly pitch-black. Wind swirled, kicking up dry leaves, and the rain pelted down in sideways sheets. Hanna peered down the long alley that led to the parking lot. It seemed full of shadows, and all at once, she thought she heard a faint sniff. She whipped around, looking this way and that, but the alley was empty.

  Taking a deep breath, she started down the metal ramp to her car. Halfway down the alley, she felt herself hurtle forward, and suddenly she was on the ground. Her palms stung from the impact, and it felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. She scrambled to her knees and looked up, but all she saw was the almost-black sky above. She looked at the ground again and gasped. There, written on the pavement, was a message in chalk. BreAk a leg, Hanna, it said. The a in break was capitalized, bigger than the other letters.

  “What do you want?”

  Hanna screamed. Someone else was in the alley, their body in shadow. When the figure moved into the light, Hanna realized it was Daniel, Hank’s strange assistant—the one who’d practically snuck into Hailey’s dressing room to retrieve them a few days before.

  “W-what are you doing here?” Hanna bleated. He’d come out of nowhere. “Did you shove me?”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and they looked even more beady and hollow than ever. “No, but I saw you fall. You shouldn’t be here right now, Hanna. Hank sent everyone home.”

  Then why are you here? Hanna wanted to ask, but she didn’t. “I—I was just going over my lines,” she said weakly, jumping to her feet. She glanced down at the chalk A again, her heart pounding hard. “And I’m leaving now.”

  “Good.” Daniel was looking at her with an expression Hanna couldn’t quite identify. “A girl like you shouldn’t be alone anywhere. After everything that’s happened to you, I would have thought you’d be more careful.”

  Hanna nodded, then scuttled to her car. It was only once she’d locked the doors that she realized that his expression had kind of been ominous. She thought again about the flash of blond hair in the crowd scene the other day. Could Daniel have helped her, somehow? Could an Ali Cat be on the Burn It Down crew?

  Hanna’s phone beeped, and she screamed again. She glanced at it in her lap.

  Ali just attacked me at school, said a message from Emily. Come now!

  Hanna threw the car into drive, her mind suddenly switching gears. She certainly couldn’t worry about Daniel right now. All she could think about was getting to Emily as fast as she could.

  The sky was an ugly gray and the air was peppered with low rumbles of thunder when Hanna pulled into the Rosewood Day parking lot next to Emily’s Volvo. In the distance, she could see Emily sitting on one of the swings on the Lower School’s playground. Her head was down, her hair shiny and wet, and it looked like she was in a bathing suit. A nervous bolt surged through Hanna once more.

  Spencer and Aria were pulling into the parking lot at the same time, and all the girls rushed toward the swings. Emily didn’t look up at them, her gaze fixed firmly on the ground. Her feet were bare and muddy. Her skin looked slightly blue. There was a hooded sweatshirt balled up in her hands, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t put it on.

  “What happened?” Hanna bellowed, dropping to her knees next to her friend and touching her hand. Emily’s skin was cold and covered in goose bumps. She smelled overwhelmingly like chlorine.

  “Are you okay?” Spencer sank into a swing next to her.

  “Was it really her?” Aria wrapped her arms around Emily’s shoulders.

  Emily indicated a purplish bruise on her neck. “It was definitely her,” she said, her voice tinged with sobs. “She tried to kill me.”

  She told the girls what had happened. With every sentence, Hanna’s heart began to bang faster. By the time Emily got to the part about Ali pushing her under the water, she could barely breathe. “I shouldn’t have swum alone,” Emily moaned when she finished. “It was the perfect place for Ali to find me.”

  “And then she just stopped holding you under?” Spencer repeated.

  “That’s right.” Emily shrugged. “All of a sudden, she pulled up and ran off.”

  “And she disappeared?” Aria asked.

  Emily nodded miserably. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but she was suddenly gone.”

  “How did she . . . look?” Hanna asked, her voice catching.

  Emily’s head rose for the first time. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her mouth was drawn. “Corpselike.” She grimaced, then looked down at the hoodie she was holding. “I managed to pull this thing off her before she got away.”

  Hanna shut her eyes. Maybe the girl she’d seen on the film set wasn’t a figment of her imagination—and maybe Ali herself had written that note in chalk outside the soundstage. Where else had Ali been in the past two weeks? Maybe she’d never left Rosewood. Maybe she’d been watching them this whole time.

  More rain began to fall. Aria paced around the swings, her booties splashing in the mud. “Okay. Okay. First things first. Emily, do you need to go to the ER?”

  Emily shook her head vehemently. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Spencer looked surprised. “Ali practically drowned you. The bruises on your neck are as big as plums. And you’re really shivering. You might be in shock.”

  “I’m fine,” Emily insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

  But then her teeth started chattering. “Let’s get her in my car,” Hanna instructed.

  Hanna lifted her by her arms. The others rushed to help, and they hurried through the rain and tumbled into Hanna’s Prius, settling Emily into the front passenger seat. Hanna turned on the engine and twisted the heat to high. Aria found a blanket in the backseat and piled it around Emily’s legs. Spencer peeled off her jacket and wrapped it around Emily’s shoulders.

  After a few moments, Emily’s lips looked a little less blue. “I told you I was fine,” she insisted.

  “Still. This is a big deal. I’m not a fan of handling this at all, but we can’t handle this alone.” There was a steely look on Spencer’s face as she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Her brow furrowed, and she scrolled through her contacts for a number. A tinny ringing sound pinged through the speaker.

  “Who are you calling?” Hanna demanded.

  Spencer held up a finger. An attentive look crossed her face when whoever it was answered. “Agent Fuji?” she said into the phone. “This is Spencer Hastings.”

  “Spencer!” Emily whispered, trying to grab the phone away.

  Spencer ducked to the side, making a face. We have to do this, she mouthed.

  But Hanna wasn’t sure about the decision, either. Jasmine Fuji was the FBI agent in charge of Tabitha Clark’s murder case. She’d seemed to take their side when they told her about A tormenting them, but then she’d had them arrested for Tabitha’s murder when that fake video came out. Sure, Fuji had made amends after Nick revealed himself, but Hanna didn’t trust her.

>   Spencer nodded into the phone. “Listen, something happened I need to discuss with you. It’s about Alison. Actually, Emily can tell it better.”

  Then she shoved the phone at Emily, putting it on speaker. Emily shook her head vigorously, but Spencer made an imploring face. Talk, she mouthed.

  Emily lowered her shoulders and retold the story. Hanna hid her eyes. It was just as hard to hear the second time around.

  “Did you happen to see where this person ran off to?” Fuji’s voice blared through the speaker when Emily finished.

  Emily cleared her throat. “No. By the time I got through the door to the hall, she was gone.”

  “But it was definitely Alison,” Aria piped up. “Emily wouldn’t make something like that up. Actually, we’ve all felt Alison’s presence, but none of us have been entirely sure. Emily made eye contact, though. Alison spoke to her.”

  “That’s right,” Emily said. “She said, ‘Did you really think I’d leave for good?’”

  There was a long pause. Static crackled through the phone, and Hanna thought they’d lost the connection. Then Fuji sighed. “Okay. We’re obviously going to take someone attacking Emily very seriously. I’m going to call a team out to Rosewood Day to check it out right now, and we’re going to figure out what happened—”

  “What happened?” Spencer interrupted. “We just told you!”

  “Girls,” Fuji said, her voice suddenly firm, “you’ve been through a lot of trauma. And I completely understand why you think you saw Alison the night with Nicholas in that basement when you were drugged. But I can only tell you so many times: Alison is dead. She died in the Poconos. Whoever you saw in the pool was someone else. Maybe someone who was impersonating her. Maybe someone in one of those Alison fan clubs. But not Alison herself.”

  “How do you know?” Hanna wailed, her heart pounding fast. The blasting heat was beginning to make her feel faint. “Emily saw her. Do you completely disregard all your victims’ testimonies, or just ours?”

  Spencer pinched Hanna’s arm, but Hanna felt totally justified in saying what she’d said. She was so freaking sick of Fuji and every other adult who thought they were just scared, paranoid kids seeing ghosts. Ali was out there. She was a real, viable, terrifying threat. If someone didn’t act, she was going to do something awful . . . probably to one of them.

  “I have her hoodie,” Emily said in a small voice. Her gaze dropped to the sweatshirt she’d had in her hands on the swings. “She wriggled out of it to escape. Can’t you test it for DNA?”

  Fuji sighed. “Fine. Bring it into the station.” She sounded annoyed. “Can you come in now?”

  Everyone said yes, despite the fact that Fuji’s office was all the way in the city. Then the agent hung up without saying good-bye.

  No one spoke. A lawn mower grumbled far in the distance. Spencer scowled at her phone. “She’s such a bitch.”

  Aria cleared her throat. “Why do you think Fuji keeps insisting Ali’s dead? Do you think she has evidence she’s not telling us about?”

  “I doubt it,” Hanna said sharply. “She just doesn’t want to be wrong.” She leaned over and picked up the hoodie. When the heat hit it, Hanna got a whiff of something sour, sweaty, and vanilla-ish from the fabric. It was sickening to think that was Ali’s smell.

  Then she noticed a single, long blond hair attached to the sleeve. “Guys. Look.”

  Aria noticed it, too. “Be careful! It might be our only link to Ali!”

  Hanna carefully placed the hoodie back on the floor, but then her fingers clamped down on something that made a crackling sound. It felt like paper. She plunged her hand into the pocket and extracted a small receipt.

  TURKEY HILL, it read at the top in purple ink. That was the name of a local mini-mart—Hanna loved its homemade iced tea. Below that was printed an address in Ashland, a town about forty-five minutes away, along with a date and time from several days ago. A few items had been purchased, though they came up as generic beverages and hot food items. The bill had been paid in cash.

  “My mom loves the outlets in Ashland,” Emily said softly. “What do you think Ali was doing there?”

  “Probably not outlet shopping,” Hanna deadpanned. Her eyes lit up. “Maybe it’s where she’s hiding out?”

  “That could make sense,” Spencer said slowly. “No one would be looking for her all the way up there. But it’s not so far away that she couldn’t pop down here.”

  “There’s a SEPTA bus that runs there, too, in case she doesn’t have a car,” Aria said.

  “But where is she sleeping?” Emily asked. “In a barn?” She made a face.

  Aria shrugged. “Don’t forget, she and Nick were staying in that bombed-out shack next to Hanna’s dad’s office. A barn probably seems like the Four Seasons.”

  Everyone looked at one another. Hanna could tell they were all having the same thought.

  “DNA testing might take a while,” Aria said cautiously.

  “But if Ali visited that Turkey Hill once, she might go there again,” Emily added.

  Hanna nodded excitedly. Spencer sighed. “Looks like we’re going on a road trip,” she said in defeat.

  Everyone squeezed hands, knowing what was coming next.

  10

  MAXI STALKING AT THE MINI-MART

  The girls took one car to Philly to drop off the hoodie, but Spencer insisted on taking her own car up to Ashland—partly because Hanna’s driving made her carsick, and partly because she only felt 100 percent comfortable when she was behind the wheel. It was almost dark by the time she pulled into the mini-mart’s parking lot, and her mood was just as ominous and muddled as the low-hanging clouds.

  Their trip to the Philadelphia FBI office to drop off the hoodie hadn’t exactly been encouraging. Agent Fuji hadn’t even been there, leaving instructions with her assistant to deposit the sweatshirt with a thuggish guy named Fred who worked in Evidence. Fred had barely looked at the girls when he’d taken the hoodie from them, manhandling the thing into a ziplock bag and tossing it in a bin. “Please be careful!” Hanna had cried. Fred had stared at her, a wisp of a smirk on his face.

  Now Spencer turned into a parking spot. The windows of the Turkey Hill Mini-Mart were slathered with posters for the signature ice cream and iced tea, Marlboro cigarettes, and two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew. There was also a poster that said ROSEWOOD RALLIES in red letters at the top. A FUND-RAISER TO BENEFIT DISADVANTAGED AND TROUBLED YOUTHS. It gave directions to the Rosewood Country Club and said that tickets were $100 apiece. Spencer doubted that people up this way would spend their money on that.

  Her phone beeped. Two messages had come in from the bullying site. One was from DominickPhilly. You just can’t stand it when you don’t have all the attention, can you? That’s why you’re doing this site. Not because you care.

  Spencer felt a sting. Obviously Dominick hadn’t read the tab of the blog called “My Story.” Spencer had written about Ali as plainly and soberly as she could, hitting on the emotional aspects of how it felt to be picked on day and night by a bully so rabid and determined she’d actually burned down multiple properties in an attempt to kill Spencer off. Or maybe Dominick had, and he still thought she was a phony?

  The next note was from Greg Messner, the same boy who’d contacted her the other day. How did you get to be so brave? he’d written. I would kill for a tenth of your strength.

  She smiled. It was almost like Greg had read the horrible Dominick email and found the perfect thing to make her feel better. Thank you, she wrote back. Sometimes I doubt myself. It’s nice to know someone cares.

  She put her phone away, then spotted Hanna’s Prius across the lot. Her friends were sitting in it, staring at the mini-mart.

  Spencer crossed the line of gas pumps and tapped on Hanna’s window. Hanna unlocked the doors, and Spencer climbed into the backseat. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Did you go in yet?”

  Hanna shook her head. “We decided to stake out the place for a while.
Maybe Ali will just . . . show up.”

  Spencer bit her thumbnail. “With the Prius right here? Ali’s smarter than that, guys. She can probably see us coming from a mile away.”

  Hanna frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Spencer knew she couldn’t forget about Ali anymore, not after she’d hurt Emily. But she wasn’t sure about this plan. It seemed like a good idea to retrace Ali’s steps in theory, but what if Ali had planted that receipt in the hoodie pocket? Perhaps she’d wriggled out of that hoodie willingly to lead them here. She glanced nervously at the gas pumps behind them. What if Ali materialized with a lit cigarette and sent the whole place up in flames?

  “Ali’s a mastermind,” Spencer said aloud. “She knows by now that we found that receipt. She’ll probably never come by here again.”

  Aria’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well, we’re already here. We might as well do something.”

  Spencer peered again at the mini-mart. A bunch of preteen boys on BMXs hung out by the doors, passing around a cigarette. Inside, the cashier leaned behind the counter, her chin in her hands. It looked like she might fall asleep at any moment.

  “I guess we could ask questions,” Spencer suggested, climbing out of the car and striding across the parking lot. “Maybe someone knows something.”

  She passed the BMX boys and pushed open the door, and was greeted by a very loud Faith Hill song on the stereo. The air smelled of burnt coffee and microwaved burritos, and there was a yellow A-frame sign on the floor warning that the place had recently been mopped. An older man was standing at a wall of beef jerky. Of course there was no Ali.

  But she had been here—days ago. Spencer tried to imagine it. Had Ali taken her time, walking up and down the aisles, trying to figure out what she wanted to buy? Or had she darted in and out fast, afraid someone might recognize her? Had anyone? Maybe not recognized her, per se, but brushed against her, or gave her change, or held the door for her on the way out?

  Emily walked to the counter, and Spencer followed. The sleepy woman she’d seen from the car was now reorganizing a display of Trident gum.