Sara Shepard - 0.5 Ali's Pretty Little Lies

But this morning, with her parents staring at her and calling her Courtney, doubt crept into her mind. Maybe her panic had seemed too staged. Maybe she’d grabbed a pair of pajamas that her sister would have never chosen. Maybe they were hung up on that missing A ring. And she had heard them downstairs until all hours of the night, pacing, murmuring into the phone, opening the front door and shutting it again. She’d heard them moving around at midnight, and then two, and then four, and then five thirty. They might not have slept at all.

“Go upstairs, okay?” Mrs. DiLaurentis’s patience was wearing thin. “Spencer and the other girls are coming over soon. I’d like to ask them questions without explaining anything.”

Ali made her breathing quicken like she was afraid. “So Courtney did take off? See? This is why I didn’t want her back! She’s totally mental, Mom. That’s why you locked her up. Who knows what she’s going to do now! What if she tries to hurt me?”

Mrs. DiLaurentis gave her husband a plaintive glance. Mr. DiLaurentis just looked at her helplessly. She turned back to Ali. “Just go upstairs until we figure all this out.”

Sighing dramatically, Ali thumped up the stairs, trying to hold it together. Once in her old bedroom, though, she sank to her knees, her mind thrumming. Why wasn’t this working? Why didn’t they believe her? She needed an airtight alibi. If those girls were coming over, they were probably going to ask where she’d gone last night, and when. There were probably twenty minutes that were unaccounted for—her parents would ask where she was. Talking on the phone , she could say. Walking around, blowing off steam.

But they were supposed to just believe her. They weren’t supposed to shoo her away or question those girls without her around.

The doorbell rang. The door squeaked open, and the sounds of Mrs. DiLaurentis’s and the girls’ voices rang through the foyer. There were footsteps, and then the scrape of the chairs being pulled back for everyone to sit. Ali crept out of her room and slipped to the bottom of the stairs. All four girls sat around the table, staring at their hands. All of them were quiet, as though they were hiding something. Emily picked at her cuticles. Spencer drummed her fingers on the table. Aria inspected a pineapple-shaped napkin holder, and Hanna chewed voraciously on a piece of gum.

“Alison hasn’t come home,” Mrs. DiLaurentis said.

The girls all looked up, shocked. Ali clapped a hand over her mouth by the stairs. How was this happening?

“Now, I don’t know if you girls had a fight or what, but did she give you any hints as to where she might have gone?” Mrs. DiLaurentis continued.

Hanna twisted a piece of hair around her ear. “I think she’s with her field hockey friends.”

Mrs. DiLaurentis shook her head. “She’s not. I’ve already called them.” She cleared her throat. “Has Ali ever talked about someone teasing her?”

The girls glanced at one another, then looked away. “No one would do that,” Emily said. “Everyone loves Ali.”

“Did she ever seem sad?” Mrs. DiLaurentis pressed.

Spencer wrinkled her nose. “Like depressed? No.” But then a troubled look came across her face. She stared blankly out the window.

“You wouldn’t know where her diary is, would you?” Mrs. DiLaurentis asked. “I’ve looked everywhere for it, but I can’t find it.”

“I know what her diary looks like,” Hanna offered. “Do you want us to go upstairs and search?”

Alison scampered halfway up the stairs, picturing the diary in her mind’s eye. She knew where it was—somewhere very, very safe. But she wasn’t telling.

“No, no, that’s all right,” Mrs. DiLaurentis answered.

“Really.” Hanna scraped back her chair. There were footsteps in the hall. “It’s no trouble.”

“Hanna,” Ali’s mom barked, her voice suddenly razor-sharp. “I said no.”

There was a pause. Ali wished she could see the looks on everyone’s faces, but her view was obstructed. “Okay,” Hanna said quietly. “Sorry.”

After a while, the girls filed out. Mrs. DiLaurentis shut the door behind them and stood for a moment in the hall, just staring. Ali crouched behind the wall on the second floor, barely breathing. She had to think—and fast. She needed to convince everyone she was the real Ali.

She ran to her old bedroom window and watched her sister’s friends as they stood in a circle in the yard. They looked worried, maybe even guilty—especially Spencer. Emily burst into tears. Hanna gnawed nervously on a handful of Cheez-It’s. It seemed like they were arguing, but Ali couldn’t really tell. Should she go outside and talk to them? Maybe she could tell the truth—that there were twins, that the other girl was a crazy Ali impersonator, that she’d gotten out last night but her parents were confused and thought the girls had switched places. She needed those stupid bitches to convince the world, just as her sister had used them a year and a half before.

She started down the stairs, but suddenly there was a deafening grumble from the backyard. It was the bulldozer. It barreled toward the hole, its huge tires ripping up the grass.

“Just what we need right now,” Mrs. DiLaurentis groaned. “That thing is so loud I can hardly hear myself think.”

“Do you want me to tell them to stop?” Mr. DiLaurentis asked.

The words rippled through Ali. A horrible thought gonged in her brain. Her parents could not go out there. What if they saw her sister at the bottom of the hole? She’d piled a lot of dirt on her, but it had been dark out—maybe she hadn’t been thorough enough.

She sprinted to the window in the bathroom and looked out. Men stood around the hole, positioning a chute that connected from the cement truck to a spot just inside. No one looked down the hole. There were no shouts of terror or backward steps of surprise. Ali thought again of the handfuls of dirt she’d thrown on the body, then about the person who’d helped her. She was glad her accomplice had shown up, just as she’d asked. For a few weeks there, she wasn’t sure if it was going to happen.

The mixer started to turn. Gray cement poured down a chute into the hole, slowly filling it. The men stood around, smoking cigarettes. One of them told a joke, and a few of them laughed. Ali kept expecting them to turn toward the hole and suddenly scream out in terror, but no one did. The mixer whirled and whirled. The sludgy cement rolled down the chute. Ali assessed her feelings, but she didn’t know what she felt. Relief, sort of. But also worry.

There was a knock on the bathroom door, which was ajar. Mrs. DiLaurentis stood in the hallway, fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt. “You have to tell us what you know, honey,” she begged, her eyes full of tears.

Ali shrugged. “Why would you think I’d know something?”

Mrs. DiLaurentis blinked at her. Ali looked down, trying to remain calm, and reached for her sister’s cell phone, which she’d found on the grass last night. But then she heard the mixer click off. It was all over. The hole was filled. Her sister was buried. Gone. Done.

Her fingers started to shake uncontrollably.

She shoved her hand under her thighs. Then she caught a glimpse of her freaked-out expression in the mirror. When she looked up, Mrs. DiLaurentis’s mouth hung open. All the blood had drained from her face. In an instant, Ali knew that she knew.

Mrs. DiLaurentis set her mouth in a line. “Pack. Now .”

Ali blinked. “Why?”

Mrs. DiLaurentis turned toward the stairs. “Kenneth?” she screeched. “Kenneth, I need you.”

Mr. DiLaurentis bounded up the stairs fast. Mrs. DiLaurentis whipped around and pointed shakily at Ali. “Honey, she . . . Alison . . . she . . .” And then she burst into tears.