Sara Shepard - Toxic

Aria shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“Well, you should,” Ella insisted. “You’ve been so prolific in the past few weeks, and your work is fantastic. Apparently, Mr. Carruthers thinks you’re luminous and a huge talent to watch. And, honey, that’s not all. You know what he bought the painting for? A hundred thousand dollars .”

Aria’s mind went blank. She tried to picture that figure in a bank account, but she felt as if her head might explode.

“That’s . . . amazing ,” she finally managed to say. Then she cleared her throat. “W-which painting did he buy? One of the dark abstract pieces? One of the portraits of Noel?”

Ella coughed awkwardly. “Actually, no. It was the portrait of Alison. That big one in the corner.”

Aria flinched. It wasn’t even her best work, the brushstrokes crude, Ali’s face so creepy. Ella had sent a photo of that ? And someone had bought it? What if he bought it only because it was of Ali—and because she was a Pretty Little Liar?

Then again, maybe she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. A hundred thousand dollars was a hundred thousand dollars. “Well, that’s great,” she murmured to her mom, trying to sound unruffled.

“Listen, I have to get off the line—Jim’s back, and he’s over the moon,” Ella said, suddenly sounding rushed. “I think he’s going to give me a promotion!” she added in a whisper. “But I’ll call you back with all the payment details. I’m so proud of you, honey. This is going to change your life.”

Then Ella was gone. Aria held the phone in her hands, her mind whirring fast. Then she stood and slid the door to the porch open, stepped out, and leaned against the cool glass, taking heaving breaths. The fresh air felt invigorating.

She let what Ella told her sink in. Her first sale. For a painting of Ali.

Aria looked at her phone again. After a beat, she called up her photo gallery, then flipped through the pictures she’d taken of her recent paintings. She stopped on the portrait of Ali. The girl on the canvas was skin and bones, her cheeks hollowed, her hair dulled, her eyes wide and crazy. Then, as Aria stared, Ali seemed to . . . move. One corner of her lip rose in a smirk. Her eyes narrowed a tad.

Aria dropped the phone once more. What the hell?

The device landed faceup, Ali’s picture still on the screen. Aria looked at it again, but it looked like a snapshot on a cell phone. She grabbed the phone, exited out of the photo, and stabbed at the DELETE button.

Good riddance. Thank God Ella was packaging that portrait up and sending it far, far away. Aria couldn’t bear the idea of that face haunting her any longer.

Spencer was finishing dinner with her mother, Mr. Pennythistle, and Amelia. Chinese takeout boxes sat around them, but, typical of Spencer’s mom, they were eating on fine china from Mrs. Hastings’s great-grandmother and using porcelain chopsticks from a specialty shop in Shanghai. Spencer’s mom had dressed for dinner, too, changing out of the jeans and plaid shirt she’d worn at the family’s stables and into a crisp off-white linen dress and shiny black Tory Burch flats.

“So being selected for the orchestra trip is really prestigious.” Amelia adjusted the tortoiseshell headband that held back her tight curls. Even though it was summer vacation, she, too, was dressed up in a crisp white shirt and a gray pleated skirt that didn’t look much different from her St. Agnes uniform. “The orchestra director told me I should be really proud,” she added, looking around expectantly.

“That’s great, honey.” Mr. Pennythistle smiled warmly. So did Spencer’s mom.

But Spencer resisted rolling her eyes. Every time Amelia opened her mouth, it was to brag. Yesterday at dinner, she’d boasted for a while about how good a sleeper she was.

Suddenly, she couldn’t deal with one more boastful thing out of Amelia’s mouth. “May I be excused?” she asked, placing her chopsticks in her soy sauce–stained bowl.

“Yes, but only after we talk about the Rosewood Rallies event,” Mrs. Hastings said.

Spencer fell back into her chair and wrinkled her nose. “We’re actually going?” Why did she need another event to remind her of Ali? Wasn’t the point to get over it?

Mrs. Hastings nodded firmly. “You’re an honored guest. And actually, I’ve volunteered to help out.” She clicked her chopsticks together. “You girls can bring a date, if you like. It should be fun.”

Spencer felt her cheeks flush. A date. Her mind shuffled through her long list of failed romances from the past year. Andrew Campbell had pulled away from her shortly after the Poconos fire, probably because he didn’t want to be associated with someone surrounded by so much drama. And Chase, another Ali detective Spencer had met online, had dropped Spencer when his life was in danger.

Every boy she’d gotten close to had run away screaming . . . and it was all Ali’s fault. Spencer wanted to be with someone . . . but she also felt as if it could never happen.

“I’ll go if it means that much to you,” she told her mother, picking up her dishes. “But I’m not going to enjoy it.”

She carried everything to the stainless steel sink in the kitchen. As she was rinsing off the chopsticks, she sensed a presence behind her and turned. Amelia stood by the fridge. Spencer cringed, anticipating a nasty remark.

But Amelia moved forward almost shyly. “Um, I meant to tell you. A friend directed me to your new blog. It’s kind of . . . awesome.”

Spencer’s mind froze. “You really think so?” she blurted.

“Of course.” Amelia placed her bowl on the counter. “I think it’s really great that you gave all those people a voice.” And then, with a smile, she turned and pranced back into the dining room.

Spencer stood still. She was so dazed she didn’t realize she’d left the tap running until the water flowed over her dirty bowl.

Huh.

Then she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and sat down at her computer, bringing up the blog. It was astonishing, actually, that Amelia even knew about the blog . . . but then again, it had recently garnered quite a following, even showing up on the very first page on a Google search for bullying.

She scrolled through her email. Today’s crop of stories made her own experiences with Ali pale in comparison. There were tales of kids being verbally and physically attacked by whole gangs of enemies. Kids were made fun of for their sexuality, like Emily had been, or for their race or religion. A girl wrote in telling a story about how her best friend committed suicide, unable to take the jeers from her classmates any longer. I miss her every day , the email said. And I’m not even sure the kids who were mean to her understood what they did. Spencer thought of Emily there, too—how they’d saved her from taking her life off the covered bridge. If they hadn’t gotten there in time, she might have gone through with it.

She checked the website stats. To her astonishment, the blog had gotten eight thousand hits in the past twenty-four hours.

Halfway down the list, she opened an email from Greg Messner from Wilmington, Delaware. Greg hadn’t been bullied himself, the letter said, but he’d witnessed other people being picked on and had stood by, doing nothing. Eventually, his passivity began to haunt him, he said. He should have stood up for what was right, yet he’d been too scared that the bully would turn on him. Your site is inspirational , he said, and I want you to know that not just kids who were bullied are reading it. Everyone can use it as a tool to understand what bullying feels like.