Sara Shepard - Ruthless

“We’re not as close as we used to be.” Emily pushed her straw around her water glass, making a mini whirlpool with the ice cubes.

Kelsey’s hands shook faster. When she reached for the fries, she could barely hold one without it wobbling all over the place. “Are you okay?” Emily asked worriedly.

“I’m fine.” Kelsey shot Emily a tight smile and tucked her hands in her lap. “Just a little overwhelmed, I guess.”

Emily touched Kelsey’s shoulder. “I’m not judging you, you know. We’ve all made mistakes. I’m really flattered you told me about juvie. It must have been really rough.”

“It was.”

Kelsey’s quavering voice made Emily’s heart break. She felt terrible that Kelsey had been sent to juvie for something she wasn’t entirely guilty of. How could Spencer have done such a thing? And it appeared that Kelsey had no idea, either. Should Emily tell her?

Kelsey leaned into Emily. “Going to juvie was horrible, but probably not as awful as losing a best friend. And you were stalked, too, right? By her twin?” Her eyes widened.

The sound of bowling balls striking pins thundered behind them, and a group of bowlers burst into applause. “I can hardly think about it,” Emily whispered. “Especially because . . .” Now it was her turn to trail off. She’d been about to say, Especially because I think the Real Ali is still alive .

Suddenly, a scrawny older woman in a baggy wife-beater and child-sized acid-washed jeans clonked by in rented bowling shoes. “Oh my God,” Kelsey blurted. “Velma!”

Emily craned her neck to look, then burst out laughing. “You know her, too?” Velma was an institution at this place—Emily had noticed her ever since she started coming here as a second grader with her Brownie troop. She always bowled by herself, got some insane score, and then sat at the bar and smoked a zillion cigarettes. Everyone was afraid to talk to her. Now, when Velma passed a greasy-haired guy with a huge beer gut, he actually cowered.

“Of course I know her,” Kelsey said. “She’s always here.” Then she touched Emily’s arm. “I have a challenge for you, bad girl. Steal one of her Marlboros.” She pointed to a pack of Marlboro Lights in Velma’s back pocket.

Emily thought about it for a moment, then slid off the bar stool. “That’s easy.”

Velma had paused at the end of the bar to study a scorecard. Emily crept up behind her, giggling with every few steps. When she was almost behind Velma, the cigarettes within reach, the old woman turned around and peered at Emily with lined, rheumy-blue eyes. “May I help you, darlin’?”

Emily’s mouth dropped open. She’d never actually heard Velma speak before, and was surprised by her clear, songbirdlike voice and oozing-with-sweetness southern accent. It was so disarming that she took a few big steps backward, waving her arms in front of her body and blurting, “Never mind. Sorry to bother you.”

When she returned to her seat, Kelsey was doubled over. “You totally choked!”

“I know,” Emily said between gulps of laughter. “I didn’t expect her to be nice!”

“Sometimes people aren’t what they seem.” Kelsey swallowed a chuckle. “Like you. You look all sweet and sporty, but deep down you’re a wild child.” And then, before Emily knew what was happening, she leaned forward and gave Emily a little peck on the cheek. “And I love it,” she whispered in Emily’s ear.

“Thanks,” Emily said back. Kelsey was definitely right about that—people weren’t what they seemed. Kelsey wasn’t a crazy, duplicitous stalker, as Spencer had implied. She was just a normal girl, much like Emily was.

She was also the coolest friend Emily had made in a long time. A girl Emily didn’t have any intention of dropping anytime soon.

On Monday morning, Aria sat at a long study table in the Rosewood Library. The room was full of kids browsing for books, working at the computer stations in the corner, and secretly playing games on their phones. After making sure no one was looking, Aria pulled out the thick manuscript Ezra had given her and opened to the last page she’d read. Instantly, a blush rose to her cheeks. Ezra’s novel was utterly romantic, exceptionally vivid, and all about her .

Ezra had given her a different name—Anita—and they lived in a different town—somewhere in northern California—but the girl in the book had long, blue-black hair, a willowy ballerina frame, and startling blue eyes, which was exactly what Aria saw when she looked in a mirror. The novel had started out with an account of Anita and Jack, Ezra’s alias, meeting in Snookers, a college bar. On page two was a conversation about how shitty American beer was. On page four was their shared nostalgia about Iceland. On page seven, they snuck off to the bathroom and kissed. In reading, Aria got to see the situation from Ezra’s perspective. He wrote that Anita was “fresh” and “nubile” and “the stuff of dreams.” Her hair was “like spun silk,” and her lips “tasted like petals.” Not that Aria thought petals really had a taste, but it was still awesome.

The similarities didn’t stop there. When Jack and Anita discovered they were teacher and student, they got all weird and embarrassed about it, just like they had in real life. Only, in Ezra’s novel, they figured out a way to make it work. They met in secret after school at Jack’s apartment. They snuck off to the city to attend art openings. They confessed their love to one another by night and acted completely professional by day. There were some strange missteps, like how Anita was way clingier than Aria had ever been in real life, and how Jack could be droning and pedantic at times, subjecting Anita to diatribes about philosophy and literature. But those things were easy to adjust in the next draft.

As Aria read, all worries that Ezra had forgotten about her in the year he’d been away flew out the window. Writing this novel had surely taken many long, arduous, thoughtful months—Aria must have been on his mind all the time .

“Hey, can I talk to you?”

Aria looked up and saw Hanna pulling back a chair beside her. She covered the manuscript with her hand. “Sure. What’s up?”

Hanna bit her glossy bottom lip. “Do you really think”—she glanced around nervously—“ you know who is Kelsey?”

Aria twisted her mouth, her heart jumping. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Hanna looked worried, maybe for good reason. Aria had been surprised when she heard that Hanna had helped get Spencer out of jail. She remembered Spencer’s frantic phone call, saying she’d gotten caught with drugs. She’d felt terrible for hanging up on Spencer, but she would have felt wrong helping her, too. And anyway, she had still been smarting from the last time she’d seen Spencer, at one of Noel’s parties a few weeks before.

Spencer had come to the party with Kelsey, and it was obvious the two of them were on something. Halfway through the bash, at about the time the boys were starting to play beer pong, Aria had pulled Spencer around the side of the Kahns’ house, where it was quieter. “I realize we all need to blow off some steam sometimes,” she whispered, “but drugs, Spence? Really?”

Spencer rolled her eyes. “You and Hanna are worse than parents. It’s safe—I swear. And actually, Aria, if you ever break up with Noel, you should go for my dealer—he’s hot and totally your type.”

“Is this because of your friend?” Aria spotted Kelsey across the Kahns’ expansive lawn. She was sitting in James Freed’s lap, and her blouse had fallen off her shoulder, revealing the lacy cup of her bra. “Did she get you into this?”