Pretty Little Liars (16 page)

Aria awoke to her doorbell ringing. Except it wasn't her family's normal doorbell chime, it was “American Idiot,” by Green Day. Huh—when had her parents changed that?

She threw back her duvet, slid on the blue-flowered, fur-lined clogs she'd bought in Amsterdam, and clomped down the spiral staircase to see who it was.

When she opened the door, she gasped. It was Alison. She was taller and her blond hair was cut in long shaggy layers. Her face looked more glamorous and angular than it had in seventh grade.

“Ta-
daa
!” Ali grinned and spread out her arms. “I'm back!”

“Holy…” Aria choked on her words, blinking furiously a couple of times. “
Wh
-where have you been?”

Ali rolled her eyes. “My stupid parents,” she said. “Remember my aunt Camille, the really cool one who was born in France and married my uncle Jeff when we
were in seventh? I went to visit her in Miami that summer. Then, I liked it so much that I just stayed. I totally told my parents about all of it, but I guess they forgot to tell everyone else.”

Aria rubbed her eyes. “So, wait. You've been in…
Miami
? You're
okay
?”

Ali twirled around a little. “I look more than okay, don't I? Hey, did you like my texts?”

Aria's smile faded. “Um…no, actually.”

Ali looked hurt. “Why not? That one about your mom was
so
funny.”

Aria stared at her.

“God, you're sensitive.” Ali narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to blow me off again?”

“Wait, what?” Aria stammered.

Alison gave Aria a long look, and a black, gelatinous substance began dripping out her nostrils. “I told the others, you know. About your dad. I told them everything.”

“Your…nose…” Aria pointed. Suddenly it started seeping out of Ali's eyeballs. Like she was crying oil. It was dripping from her fingernails, too.

“Oh, I'm just rotting.” Ali smiled.

Aria jerked up in bed. Sweat drenched the back of her neck. The sun streamed in through her window, and she heard “American Idiot” on her brother's stereo next door. She checked her hands for black goo, but they were squeaky clean.

Whoa.

“Morning, honey.”

Aria staggered down her spiral staircase to see her father, dressed only in thin, tartan plaid boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, reading the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. “Hey,” she murmured back.

Shuffling to the espresso machine, she stared for a long time at her father's pale, randomly hairy shoulders. He jiggled his feet and made
hmmm
noises at the paper.

“Dad?” Her voice cracked slightly.

“Mmm?”

Aria leaned against the stone-topped island. “Can ghosts send text messages?”

Her father looked up, surprised and confused. “What's a text message?”

She stuck her hand into an open box of Frosted Mini Wheats and pulled out a handful. “Never mind.”

“You sure?” Byron asked.

She chewed nervously. What did she want to ask?
Is a ghost sending me texts?
But c'mon, she knew better. Anyway, she didn't know why Ali's ghost would come back and do this to her. It was as if she wanted revenge, but was that possible?

Ali had been great the day they caught her dad in the car. Aria had fled around the corner and ran until she had to start walking. She kept walking all the way home, not sure what else to do with herself. Ali hugged her for a long time. “I won't tell,” she whispered.

But the next day, the questions started.
Do you know that girl? Is she a student? Is your dad going to tell your mom? Do you think he's doing it with lots of students?
Usually, Aria could take Ali's inquisitiveness and even her teasing—she was okay with being the “weird kid” of the group. But this was different. This
hurt.

So the last few days of school, before she disappeared, Aria avoided Alison. She didn't send her “I'm bored” texts during health class or help her clean out her locker. And she certainly didn't talk about what happened. She was mad that Ali was prying—as if it was some celebrity gossip in
Star
and not her life. She was mad that Ali knew. Period.

Now, three years later, Aria wondered who she'd really been mad at. It wasn't really Ali. It was her dad.

“Really, never mind,” Aria answered her father, who'd been waiting patiently, sipping his coffee. “I'm just sleepy.”

“Okay,” Byron answered incredulously.

The doorbell rang. It wasn't the Green Day song but their normal
bong, bong
chime. Her father looked up. “I wonder if that's for Mike,” he said. “Did you know that some girl from the Quaker school came by here at eight-thirty, looking for him?”

“I'll get it,” Aria said.

She tentatively pulled open the front door, but it was only Emily Fields on the other side, her reddish-blond hair messy and her eyes swollen.

“Hey,” Emily croaked.

“Hey,” Aria answered.

Emily puffed up her cheeks with air—her old nervous habit. She stood there for a moment. Then she said, “I should go.” She started to turn.

“Wait.” Aria caught her arm. “What? What's going on?”

Emily paused. “Um. Okay. But…this is going to sound weird.”

“That's okay.” Aria's heart started to pound.

“I was thinking about what you were saying yesterday at the party. About Ali. I was wondering…did Ali ever tell you guys something about me?”

Emily said it very quietly. Aria pushed her hair out of her eyes.

“What?” Aria whispered. “Recently?”

Emily's eyes widened. “What do you mean,
recently
?”

“I—”

“In seventh grade,” Emily interrupted. “Did she tell you…like…something about me in seventh grade? Was she telling everybody?”

Aria blinked. At the party yesterday, when she'd seen Emily, she'd wanted more than anything to tell her about the texts. “No,” Aria answered slowly. “She never talked behind your back.”

“Oh.” Emily stared at the ground. “But I—” she started.

“I've been getting these—” Aria said at the same time.

Then Emily looked past her and her eyes grew still.

“Miss Emily Fields! Hello!”

Aria turned. In the living room stood Byron. At least he'd thrown on a striped bathrobe. “I haven't seen you in ages!” Byron boomed.

“Yeah.” Emily puffed out her cheeks again. “How are you, Mr. Montgomery?”

He frowned. “Please. You're old enough to call me Byron.” He scratched his chin with the top edge of his coffee cup. “How's your life? Good?”

“Absolutely.” Emily looked like she was about to cry.

“Do you need something to eat?” Byron asked. “You look hungry.”

“Oh. No. Thanks. I, um, I guess I didn't really sleep well.”

“You girls.” He shook his head. “You never sleep! I always tell Aria she needs eleven hours—she needs to bank sleep for when she gets to college and parties all night!” He began climbing the stairs to the second floor.

As soon as he was out of sight, Aria whirled back around. “He's so—” she started. But then she realized Emily was halfway across her lawn, on the way to her bike. “Hey!” she called. “Where are you going?”

Emily picked her bike up off the ground. “I shouldn't have come.”

“Wait! Come back! I…I need to talk to you!” Aria called out.

Emily paused and looked up. Aria felt all of her words swarming like bees in her mouth. Emily seemed terrified.

But suddenly Aria was too afraid to ask. How would she talk about the texts from A without mentioning her secret? She still didn't want anyone to know. Especially with her mom just upstairs.

Then she thought of Byron in his bathrobe and how uncomfortable Emily seemed around him just now. Emily had asked,
Did Alison tell you something about me in seventh grade?
Why would she ask that?

Unless…

Aria bit her pinkie nail. What if Emily already
knew
Aria's secret? Aria clamped her mouth shut, paralyzed.

Emily shook her head. “I'll see you later,” she mumbled, and before Aria could compose herself, Emily was biking furiously away.

“Ladies, discover yourselves!”

As Oprah's audience clapped wildly, Hanna sank into her coffee-colored leather couch cushions, balancing the TiVo remote on her bare stomach. She could use a little self-discovery on this crisp Saturday morning.

Last night was pretty blurry—like she'd gone through the night without her contacts in—and her head was throbbing. Had it involved some sort of animal? She'd found some empty candy wrappers in her purse. Had she eaten them?
All
of them? Her stomach hurt, after all, and it looked a little puffy. And why did she have a distinct memory of a Wawa dairy truck? It felt like piecing together a puzzle, except Hanna was too impatient for puzzles—she always jammed pieces together that didn't actually fit.

The doorbell rang. Hanna groaned, then rolled off the couch, not bothering to fix her army-green ribbed tank top, which was turned around and practically exposing her boob. She cracked the oak door and then slammed it shut again.

Whoa.
It was that cop, Mr. April. Er, Darren Wilden.

“Open up, Hanna.”

She checked him out through the peephole. He stood with his arms crossed, seeming all business, but then his hair was a mess and she didn't see his gun anywhere. And what kind of cop worked at 10
A
.
M
. on a cloudless Saturday morning like this?

Hanna glanced at her reflection in the round mirror across the room. Jesus. Sleep marks from the pillow? Yes. Puffy eyes, lips in need of gloss? Absolutely. She quickly ran her hands over her face, pushed her hair into a ponytail, and put on her round Chanel sunglasses. Then she flung open the door.

“Hey!” she said brightly. “How are you?”

“Is your mom home?” he asked.

“Nope,” Hanna said flirtatiously. “She's out all morning.”

Wilden pursed his lips together, looking stressed. Hanna noticed Wilden had a little clear Band-Aid right above his eyebrow. “What, did your girlfriend deck you?” she asked, pointing at it.

“No…” Wilden touched the Band-Aid. “I banged it on my medicine cabinet when I was washing my face.”
He rolled his eyes. “I'm not the most graceful person in the morning.”

Hanna smiled. “Join the club. I fell on my ass last night. It was so random.”

Wilden's kind expression was suddenly grim. “Was that before or after you stole the car?”

Hanna stood back. “What?”

Why was Wilden looking at her as if she were the love child of space aliens? “There was an anonymous tip that you stole a car,” he enunciated slowly.

Hanna's mouth fell open. “I…
what
?”

“A black BMW? Belonging to a Mr. Edwin Ackard? You crashed it into a phone pole? After you drank a bottle of Ketel One? Any of this sound familiar?”

Hanna shoved her sunglasses up her nose. Wait,
that
was what happened? “I wasn't drunk last night,” she lied.

“We found a vodka bottle on the driver's-side floor in the car,” Wilden said. “So,
someone
was drunk.”

“But—” Hanna started.

“I have to bring you into the station,” Wilden interrupted, sounding a little disappointed.

“I didn't steal it,” Hanna squeaked. “Sean—his son—said I could take it!”

Wilden raised an eyebrow. “So you admit you were driving it?”

“I—” Hanna started.
Shit.
She took a step back into the house. “But my mom's not even here. She won't know what happened to me.” Embarrassingly, tears
rushed to her eyes. She turned away, trying to get her shit together.

Wilden shifted his weight uncomfortably. It seemed like he didn't know what to do with his hands—first he put them in his pockets, then they hovered near Hanna, then he wrung them together. “Listen, we can call your mom at the station, all right?” he said. “And I won't cuff you. And you can ride up front with me.” He walked back to his car and opened the passenger door for her.

An hour later, she sat on the police station's same yellow plastic bucket seats, staring at the same
Chester County's Most Wanted
poster, fighting back the urge to start crying again. She'd just been given a blood test to see if she was still drunk from last night. Hanna wasn't sure if she was—did alcohol stay in your body for that long? Now Wilden was hunching over his same desk, which held the same Bic pens and a metallic Slinky. She pinched her palm with her fingernails and swallowed.

Unfortunately, the events of last night had coalesced in her head. The Porsche, the deer, the airbag.
Had
Sean said she could take the car? She doubted it; the last thing she could remember was his little self-esteem speech before he'd ditched her in the woods.

“Hey, were you at the Swarthmore battle of the bands last night?”

A college-age guy with a buzz cut and a uni-brow sat next to her. He wore a ripped flannel surfer's shirt,
paint-spattered jeans, and no shoes. His hands were cuffed. “Um, no,” Hanna muttered.

He leaned close to her, and Hanna could smell his beery breath. “Oh. I thought I saw you there. I was and I drank too much and started terrorizing someone's cows. That's why I'm here! I was trespassing!”

“Good for you,” she answered frostily.

“What's your name?” He jingled his cuffs.

“Um, Angelina.” Like hell she was giving him her real name.

“Hey, Angelina,” he said. “I'm Brad!”

Hanna cracked a smile at how lame that line was.

Just then, the station's front door opened. Hanna jerked back in her seat and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Great. It was her mom.

“I came as soon as I heard,” Ms. Marin said to Wilden.

This morning, Ms. Marin wore a simple white boat-neck tee, low-waisted James jeans, Gucci slingbacks, and the exact same Chanel shades that Hanna was wearing. Her skin radiated—she'd been at the spa all morning—and her red-gold hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. Hanna squinted. Had her mom stuffed her bra? Her boobs looked like they belonged to someone else.

“I'll talk to her,” Ms. Marin said to Wilden in a low voice. Then she walked over to Hanna. She smelled of seaweed body wrap. Hanna, certain that she smelled of Ketel One and Eggo waffles, tried to shrink in her seat.

“I'm sorry,” Hanna squeaked.

“Did they make you take a blood test?” she hissed.

She nodded miserably.

“What else did you tell them?”

“N-n-nothing,” she stuttered.

Ms. Marin laced her French-manicured hands together. “Okay. I'll handle this. Just be quiet.”

“What are you going to do?” she whispered back. “Are you going to call Sean's dad?”

“I said I'll
handle
it, Hanna.”

Her mother rose up from the plastic bucket seats and leaned over Wilden's desk. Hanna tore through her purse for her emergency pack of Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel. She'd just have a couple, not the whole pack. It had to be in here somewhere.

As she pulled out the Twizzlers, she felt her BlackBerry buzzing. Hanna hesitated. What if it was Sean, chewing her out via voice mail? What if it was Mona? Where the hell
was
Mona? Had they actually let her go to the golf tourney? She hadn't stolen the car, but she'd come along for the ride. That had to count for something.

Her BlackBerry had a few missed calls. Sean…six times. Mona, twice, at 8
A
.
M
. and 8:03. There were also some new text messages: a bunch from kids at the party, unrelated, and then one from a cell number she didn't know. Hanna's stomach knotted.

Hanna blinked. A cold, clammy sweat gathered on the back of her neck. She felt dizzy.
The Kate toothbrush?
“Come on,” she said shakily, trying to laugh. She glanced up at her mother, but she was still bent over Wilden's desk, talking.

When she was in Annapolis, after her father told Hanna that she was, essentially, a pig, Hanna shot up from the table and ran inside. She ducked into the powder room, shut the door, and sat down on the toilet.

She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. Why couldn't she be beautiful and graceful and perfect like Ali or Kate? Why did she have to be who she was, dumpy and clumsy and a wreck? And she wasn't sure who she was angriest at—her dad, Kate, herself, or…Alison.

As Hanna choked on hot, angry tears, she noticed the three framed pictures on the wall across from the toilet. All three were close-ups of someone's eyes. She recognized her father's squinty, expressive eyes right away. And there were Isabel's small, almond-shaped ones. The third pair of eyes were large, intoxicating. They looked like they were straight out of a Chanel mascara ad. They were obviously Kate's.

They were all watching her.

Hanna stared at herself in the mirror. A peal of laughter floated in from outside. Her stomach felt like it was bursting from all the popcorn everyone had watched her eat. She felt so sick, she just wanted it
out
of there, but when she leaned over the toilet, nothing happened. Tears
spilled down her cheeks. As she reached for a Kleenex, she noticed a green toothbrush sitting in a little porcelain cup. It gave her an idea.

It took her ten minutes to work up the nerve to put it into her throat, but when she did, she felt worse—but also better. She started crying even harder, but she also wanted to do it again. As she eased the toothbrush back in her mouth, the bathroom door burst open.

It was Alison. Her eyes swept over Hanna kneeling on the floor, the toothbrush in her hand. “Whoa,” she said.

“Please go away,” Hanna whispered.

Alison took a step into the bathroom. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Hanna looked at her desperately. “At least close the door!”

Ali shut the door and sat on the side of the tub. “How long have you been doing this for?”

Hanna's lip quivered. “Doing what?”

Ali paused, looking at the toothbrush. Her eyes widened. Hanna looked at it too. She hadn't noticed before, but
KATE
was printed on the side in white letters.

A phone rang loudly in the police station and Hanna flinched.
Remember the Kate toothbrush?
Someone else might have known about Hanna's eating problem, or might have seen her going into the police station, or might even know about Kate. But the
green toothbrush
? There was only one person who knew about that.

Hanna liked to believe that if Ali were alive, she'd be rooting for her, now that her life was so perfect. That was the scene she replayed in her mind constantly—Ali impressed by her size 2 jeans. Ali oohing over her Chanel lip gloss. Ali congratulating Hanna on how she'd planned the perfect pool party.

With shaking hands, Hanna typed,
Is this Alison?

“Wilden,” a cop shouted. “We need you in the back.”

Hanna looked up. Darren Wilden rose from his desk, excusing himself from Hanna's mom. Within seconds, the whole precinct burst into action. A cop car flew out of the parking lot; three more followed. Phones rang maniacally; four cops sprinted through the room.

“It looks like something big,” said Brad, the drunk trespasser sitting next to her. Hanna flinched—she'd forgotten he was there.

“A donut shortage?” she asked, trying to laugh.

“Bigger.” He jiggled his handcuffed hands excitedly. “Looks like something
very
big.”