Sara Shepard - Ruthless

After a moment, the door from the hallway creaked open, and a stout nurse with a hairy mole on her chin led a frail-looking girl in pink hospital pajamas into the room. The girl had bright red hair and small, even features, but it still took Hanna a beat to realize that this was the same person she had briefly met at Noel’s party last year . . . or the crazed figure she’d seen on the cliff two nights ago. There were circles under Kelsey’s eyes. Her hair was matted. Her shoulders slumped, and her arms hung heavy.

Everyone stiffened as Kelsey pulled out a chair and quietly sat down. She looked at them blankly, her face betraying nothing. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hello,” Spencer answered. She gestured at Hanna and the others. “You remember everyone, right? This is Hanna and Aria . . . and you know Emily.”

“Uh huh,” Kelsey said morosely.

There was a long, punishing silence. Hanna stared at her hands in her lap, suddenly desperate to busy them with a nail file or a cigarette. She and her friends hadn’t exactly discussed what they were going to say to Kelsey once they got here. They’d never been in this situation before: face-to-face with A, able to ask her why she was torturing them.

Finally, Kelsey sighed. “So my therapist says I’m supposed to apologize.”

Hanna snuck a peek at Aria. Apologize?

“I shouldn’t have dragged you out to that quarry.” Kelsey looked at Emily. “My therapist said I put you in danger.”

Emily’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. Wasn’t that the point? Hanna wanted to say.

“And I should thank you, too.” Kelsey stared at her fingernails, sounding upset. “For saving my life on Saturday. So . . . gracias. ”

Emily blinked. “Uh, you’re welcome?”

Kelsey pushed a letter into Emily’s palm. “This is for you. I wrote it this morning, and it explains . . . everything. We don’t have access to phones or computers here, so our shrinks are all about us writing letters to get our feelings out.” She rolled her eyes.

“Thanks,” Emily said, staring at the folded piece of paper.

Kelsey shrugged. “I’m glad you pulled me back from the cliff, but you shouldn’t have called an ambulance.”

Emily’s mouth dropped open. “You were convulsing! What were we supposed to do?”

“Leave me. I would’ve come out of it okay. It’s happened before.” Kelsey started to tear a random napkin that was sitting on the table into pieces. Redness crept into her neck. “The cops had zero tolerance because of my record. This was strike three, so I’m automatically back in rehab. And after rehab, more juvie.”

Emily shook her head slightly. “I had no idea.”

“None of us did,” Spencer added.

Kelsey didn’t say anything, but she looked like she didn’t believe them.

Everyone shifted uncomfortably. Then, Spencer leaned forward. “Listen. I’m sorry, you know. About . . . what happened this summer. What I did at the police station.”

Kelsey stared down at the table, still not saying a word.

“And I’m sorry, too,” Hanna added. There was no way she could bottle it up any longer. “For putting those pills in your room. And for calling the cops and telling on you.”

Kelsey let out a choppy laugh. “I already had a bunch of pills in my room, but that was pretty shitty of you to call the cops. I don’t even know you.”

Hanna blinked hard. So . . . Kelsey deserved to go to jail after all?

Spencer looked equally blindsided. “Why didn’t you tell me you had pills that night? We wouldn’t have gone on that crazy drug deal. We wouldn’t have gotten in trouble!”

A sneaky smile appeared on Kelsey’s lips. “That was my secret stash, Spencer. My ticket to an Ivy League school—not yours. I never thought you’d have the balls to go to North Philly and buy drugs from someone. I mean, look at you.” She narrowed her eyes at Spencer’s blousy Elizabeth and James tunic and J Brand denim leggings, which Hanna had seen on a table at Otter for almost three hundred dollars.

Aria leaned forward. “Why did you do this to us?”

“Do what?” Kelsey asked dumbly, raising her heavy-lidded eyes to the group.

Torture us as A! Hanna wanted to scream.

“This is because of Tabitha, right?” Aria pressed.

“Who’s Tabitha?” Kelsey sounded bored.

“You know ,” Spencer urged. “You know everything!”

Kelsey stared at them for a beat, then squeezed her eyes shut. “My head really hurts. They have me on so many meds here.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “Frankly, this is kind of weird. I mean, thanks for apologizing and whatever. And . . . here.” She reached into the pocket of her pajama pants and pulled out a folded piece of lined paper. “I wrote this for you, too, Spencer.”

Kelsey pushed the letter into Spencer’s hands. “Have a nice life, guys.” And then she shuffled out of the room, her pajama bottoms dragging on the ground. A nurse stopped her outside the guest area and led her into a small office with transparent windows. The girls watched as she slumped onto a blue plastic chair. The nurse said something to her, and Kelsey nodded limply, her face expressionless.

Hanna leaned across the table. “What the hell was that?”

“She seemed so . . . different .” Emily stared at Kelsey across the hall. “So hopeless.”

Spencer twisted her silver ring around her finger. “Why did she say she didn’t know Tabitha? She has to know her. She had those pictures on her phone. She sent me that text!”

“She was lying,” Aria said matter-of-factly. “She had to be.”

Then Spencer unfolded the letter Kelsey had given her and laid it flat on the table. Everyone hitched forward in their seats to read it. A single paragraph was written in leaky black pen.

Dear Spencer,

Apparently one of the steps to getting better in rehab is letting go of bad blood between people, so I guess I’ll start with you. I’m not mad at you anymore. I mean, I was pissed at you for months after I went to juvie, wondering if you had something to do with getting me in trouble, but I never knew for sure until Emily told me on Friday. So you saved yourself; good for you. I don’t really blame you, I guess. When I texted you on Friday about how we needed to talk, I thought I could keep my cool, but then I saw you and I got so angry. Then again, you were angry, too. But I even forgive you for hurting me. I don’t know what your problem is, but you seriously need help.

Good luck with everything. Think of me when you’re at Princeton—yeah, right.

Kelsey

“Whoa,” Hanna said when she finished.

“I don’t understand.” Spencer looked at Emily. “She didn’t know what I did until you told her? If she’s A, how is that possible?”

“She did seem surprised when I told her at the cast party,” Emily murmured. “But then, at the quarry, I figured she was lying—that she knew all along.”

Hanna pointed to Emily’s letter. “What does yours say?”

Emily looked nervously at each of them, almost as if she’d rather read the missive in private, but then she shrugged and unfolded the letter.

Dear Emily,

I suppose I have some explaining to do. I totally screwed up, and I dragged you into it, and I’m so sorry. But I’m mad at you, too. You kept a huge secret from me.

When I met you, I was clean and sober. Happy. Excited to make a new friend. But then I made the connection of who you were and who you knew. That made me think of Spencer, and all the bad memories flooded back. So I started on pills again. I popped them before we hung out at the bowling alley and before we walked on the trail. I popped them at the play. You asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d try everything in your power to stop me, and I didn’t want to stop.