Flawless (8 page)

Ben needed just one strong arm to hold her down. He pressed his body up against hers. “I said,
prove it
.”

“Ben, stop.” Frightened tears came to her eyes. She swatted at him tentatively, but his movements just became more forceful. He ran his hand up her chest. A small squeak escaped her throat.

“There a problem?”

Ben stepped back suddenly. Behind them on the far side of the hall stood a boy in a Tate Prep warm-up jacket. Emily squinted. Was that…?

“It’s none of your business, man,” Ben said loudly.

“What isn’t any of my business?” The boy stepped closer. It was.

Toby Cavanaugh
.

“Dude.” Ben twisted around.

Toby’s eyes moved down to Ben’s hand on Emily’s wrist. He nudged his chin up at Ben. “What’s the deal?”

Ben glared at Emily, then let go of her. She shot away from him, and Ben used his shoulder to shove open the boys’ locker room door. Then, silence.

“You all right?” Toby asked.

Emily nodded, her head down. “I think so.”

“You sure?”

Emily sneaked a peek at Toby. He was really tall now, and his face was no longer rodentlike and guarded but, well, high-cheekboned and dark-eyed gorgeous. It made her think of the other part of A’s note.
Although most of us have totally changed
…

Her knees felt wobbly. It couldn’t be…
could it
?

“I have to go,” she mumbled, and ran, her arms outstretched, into the girls’ locker room.

8

EVEN TYPICAL ROSEWOOD BOYS SOUL-SEARCH

Tuesday afternoon as Aria was driving home from school, she passed the lacrosse field and recognized the lone figure sprinting around the goal area, his lacrosse stick cradled in front of his face. He kept switching directions and sliding in the wet, muddy grass. Ominous gray clouds had gathered overhead, and now it was starting to sprinkle.

Aria pulled over. “Mike.” She hadn’t seen her brother since he’d stormed out of the Victory yesterday. A few hours afterward, he’d called home saying he was having dinner at his friend Theo’s house. Then, later, he called to say he was staying overnight.

Her brother looked up from across the field and frowned. “What?”

“Come here.”

Mike trudged across the close-cropped, not-a-weed-in-sight grass. “Get in,” Aria commanded.

“I’m practicing.”

“You can’t avoid this forever. We have to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Um, what we saw yesterday? At the bar?”

Mike picked at one of the rawhide straps on his lacrosse stick. Raindrops bounced off the canvas top of his Brine cap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What?” Aria narrowed her eyes. But Mike wouldn’t even look at her.

“Fine.” She shifted into reverse. “Be a wuss.”

Then Mike wrapped his hand around the window frame. “I…I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said quietly.

Aria pressed the brake. “What?”

“If they get divorced, I don’t know what I’ll do,” Mike repeated. The vulnerable, embarrassed expression on his face made him look as if he were about ten years old. “Blow myself up, maybe.”

Tears came to her eyes. “It’s not going to happen,” she said shakily. “I promise.”

Mike sniffed. She reached out for him, but he jerked away and ran down the field.

Aria decided to go, slowly rolling down the twisty, wet road. Rain was her favorite kind of weather. It reminded her of rainy days, back when she was nine. She’d sneak over to her neighbor’s parked sailboat, climb under the tarp, and snuggle into one of the cabins, listening to the sound of the rain hitting the canvas and writing entries in her Hello Kitty diary.

She felt like she could do her best thinking on rainy days, and she definitely needed to think now. She could have dealt with A telling Ella about Meredith if it had been in the past. Her parents could talk through it, Byron could say it would never happen again, yadda yadda yadda. But now that Meredith was back, well, that changed everything. Last night, her father hadn’t come home for dinner—because of the, um, papers he had to grade—and Aria and her mom had sat on the couch in front of
Jeopardy!
with bowls of soup in their laps. They were both totally silent. The thing was, she didn’t know what she’d do if her parents divorced, either.

Climbing a particularly steep hill, Aria gunned the engine—the Subaru always needed an extra push on inclines. But instead of revving forward, the interior lights flickered out. The car began to roll backward down the hill. “Shit,” Aria whispered, jerking up the e-brake. When she tried the ignition again, the car wouldn’t even start.

She looked down the empty, two-lane country road. Thunder broke overhead, and the rain started to hurtle down from the sky. Aria searched through her bag, figuring she needed to call a tow truck or her parents to come get her, but after rooting around the bottom, she realized she’d left her Treo at home. The rain was falling so violently, the windshield and windows blurred. “Oh God,” Aria whispered, feeling claustrophobic. Spots formed in front of her eyes.

Aria knew this anxious feeling: It was a panic attack. She’d had them a few times before. One was after The Jenna Thing, one was after Ali went missing, and one was when she was walking down Laugavegur Street in Reykjavík and saw a girl on a billboard that looked exactly like Meredith.

Calm down,
she told herself.
It’s just rain
. She took two cleansing breaths, stuck her fingers in her ears, and started singing “Frère Jacques”—for some reason, the French version did the trick. After she went through three rounds, the spots began to disappear. The rain had let up from hurricane-force to merely torrential. What she needed to do was walk back to the farmhouse she’d passed and ask to use their phone. She thrust open the car door, held her Rosewood Day blazer over her head, and started to run. A gust of wind blew up her miniskirt, and she stepped in an enormous, muddy puddle. The water seeped right through the gauzy straps of her stacked-heel sandals. “Damn it,” she muttered.

She was only a hundred feet from the farmhouse when a navy-colored Audi passed. It splashed a wave of puddle water at Aria, then stopped at the dead Subaru. It slowly backed up until it was right next to her. The driver’s window glided down. “You okay?”

Aria squinted, raindrops dripping off the tip of her nose. Hanging out the driver’s side was Sean Ackard, a boy in her class. He was a typical Rosewood boy: crisp polo, moisturized skin, All-American features, expensive car. Only he played soccer, not lacrosse.
Not
the kind of person she wanted to see right now. “I’m fine,” she yelled.

“Actually, you’re soaked. Need a ride?”

Aria was so wet, she felt like her face was pruning. Sean’s car looked dry and snuggly. So she slid into the passenger seat and shut the door.

Sean told her to throw her soaked blazer into the back. Then he reached over and turned up the heat. “Where to?”

Aria pushed her matted-down, fringey black bangs off her forehead. “Actually, I’ll just use your cell phone and then be out of your way.”

“All right.” Sean dug through his backpack to find it.

Aria sat back and looked around. Sean hadn’t plastered his car with band stickers like some guys did, and the interior didn’t reek of boy sweat. Instead, it smelled like some combination of bread and a freshly shampooed dog. Two books sat on the passenger-side floor:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
and
The Tao of Pooh.

“You like philosophy?” Aria moved her legs so she wouldn’t get them wet.

Sean ducked his head. “Well, yeah.” He sounded embarrassed.

“I read those books, too,” Aria said. “I also got really into French philosophers this summer, when I was in Iceland.” She paused. She’d never really spoken to Sean. Before she left, Rosewood boys terrified her—which was probably partly why she hated them. “I, um, was in Iceland for a while. My dad was on sabbatical.”

“I know.” Sean gave her a crooked smile.

Aria stared at her hands. “Oh.” There was an awkward pause. The only sound was the hurtling rain and the windshield wipers’ rhythmic
whaps
.

“So you read, like, Camus and stuff?” Sean asked. When Aria nodded, he smirked. “I read
The Stranger
this summer.”

“Really?” Aria jutted her chin into the air, certain he hadn’t understood it. What would a typical Rosewood boy want with deep philosophy books, anyway? If this were an SAT analogy, it would be “typical Rosewood boy: reading French philosophers:: American tourists in Iceland: eating anywhere but McDonald’s.” It just didn’t happen.

When Sean didn’t answer, she dialed her home number into his cell phone. It rang and rang, not going to voice mail—they hadn’t set up the answering machine yet. Next she dialed her dad’s number at school—it was almost five, and he had posted his 3:30–5:30 office hours on the refrigerator. It rang and rang too.

The spots started to flash in front of Aria’s eyes again as she imagined where he could be…or who he could be with. She leaned forward over her bare legs, trying to breathe deeper.
Frère Jacques,
she chanted silently.

“Whoa,” Sean said, his voice sounding very far away.

“I’m all right,” Aria called, her voice muffled in her legs. “I just have to…”

She heard Sean fumbling around. Then he pressed a Burger King bag into her hands. “Breathe into this. I think there were some fries in there. Sorry about that.”

Aria put the bag over her mouth and slowly inflated and deflated it. She felt Sean’s warm hand on the middle of her back. Slowly, the dizziness started to fade. When she raised her head, Sean was looking at her anxiously.

“Panic attacks?” he asked. “My stepmom gets them. The bag always works.”

Aria crumpled the bag in her lap. “Thanks.”

“Something bothering you?”

Aria shook her head quickly. “No, I’m cool.”

“C’mon,” Sean said. “Isn’t that, like, why people get panic attacks?”

Aria pressed her lips together. “It’s complicated.”
Besides,
she wanted to say,
since when are typical Rosewood boys interested in weird girls’ problems?

Sean shrugged. “You were friends with Alison DiLaurentis, right?”

Aria nodded.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Although, um, it’s not weird in the way you might think. I mean, it
is
weird in that way, but it’s weird in other ways, too.”

“Like how?”

She shifted; her wet underwear was starting to itch. Today at school it had felt like everyone was speaking to her in babyish whispers. Did they think that if they spoke in normal-person volume, Aria would have an insta-breakdown?

“I just wish everyone would leave me alone,” she managed. “Like last week.”

Sean flicked the pine tree air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror, making it swing. “I know what you mean. When my mom died, everyone thought that if I had a second to myself, I’d lose it.”

Aria sat up straighter. “Your mom died?”

Sean looked at her. “Yeah. It was a long time ago. Fourth grade.”

“Oh.” Aria tried to remember Sean from fourth grade. He had been one of the shortest kids in the class, and they’d been on the same kickball team a bunch of times, but that was it. She felt bad for being so oblivious. “I’m sorry.”

A silence passed. Aria crossed and uncrossed her bare legs. The car had begun to smell like her skirt’s wet wool. “It was tough,” Sean said. “My dad went through all these girlfriends. I didn’t even like my stepmom at first. I got used to her, though.”

Aria felt her eyes well up with tears. She didn’t want to get used to
her
family changing. She let out a loud sniff.

Sean leaned forward. “You sure you can’t talk about it?”

Aria shrugged. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“Tell you what. How about if you tell me your secret, I’ll tell you mine?”

“All right,” Aria quickly agreed. The truth was, she was dying to talk about this. She would’ve admitted it to her old friends, but they were so tight-lipped about their own A secrets, it made Aria feel even weirder about revealing hers. “But you can’t say anything.”

“Absolutely.”

And then Aria told him about Byron and Ella, Meredith, and what she and Mike had seen at the bar yesterday. It all just came spilling out. “I don’t know what to do,” she finished. “I feel like I’m the one who has to keep everyone together.”

Sean was quiet, and Aria was afraid he’d stopped listening. But then he raised his head. “Your dad shouldn’t be putting you in that position.”

“Yeah, well.” Aria glanced at Sean. If you got past his tucked-in shirt and khaki shorts, he was actually pretty cute. He had really pink lips and knobby, imperfect fingers. From the way his polo shirt fit snugly against his chest, she guessed he was in tip-top soccer boy shape. She suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious. “You’re easy to talk to,” Aria said shyly, staring at her naked knees. She’d missed a few hairs on her knees when shaving. It usually didn’t matter, but it sort of did now. “So, um, thanks.”

“Sure.” When Sean smiled, his eyes got crinkly and warm.

“This definitely isn’t how I imagined spending my afternoon,” Aria added. The rain was still pelting the windshield, but the car had gotten really warm while she’d been talking.

“Me neither.” Sean looked out the window. The rain had started to subside. “But…I don’t know. It’s kind of cool, right?”

Aria shrugged. Then she remembered. “Hey, you promised me a secret! It better be good.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s
good
.” Sean leaned toward Aria, and she scooted closer. For a crazy second, she thought they might kiss.

“So, I’m in this thing called V Club,” Sean whispered. His breath smelled like Altoids. “Do you know what that is?”

“I guess.” Aria tried to keep her lips from wriggling into a smirk. “It’s the no-sex-till-marriage thing, right?”

“Right.” Sean leaned back. “So…I’m a virgin. Except…I don’t know if I want to be one anymore.”