Sara Shepard - Wanted

“Not it,” Courtney repeated, still bobbing to the beat. Even her eyes danced. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our old favorite game, Spence.”

Our old favorite game? Spencer stepped away from Courtney, nearly colliding with a tall girl with waist-length brown hair. Lightning crackled through her veins. Something was wrong here. Very, very wrong.

Emily and Courtney exchanged another knowing look. Then Courtney took Spencer’s arm and guided her and Emily away from the dance floor to a quieter part of the bar. Spencer’s heart rocketed. Something about this seemed planned, staged.

They made her sit down in an empty booth. “Spence, I have something to tell you,” Courtney said, pushing a lock of hair out of her face. “Emily already knows.”

“Knows?” Spencer repeated. Emily smiled conspiratorially. “Knows what? What’s going on?”

Courtney reached out and grabbed her hands. “Spence. I’m Ali .”

Spencer’s head snapped up. “That’s not funny.”

But Courtney had a serious look on her face. Emily did, too.

The music warped. The strobe light was giving Spencer a migraine. She slid farther into the booth. “Stop it,” she demanded. “Stop it right now.”

“It’s true,” Emily said, her eyes wide and unblinking. “Honest. Just hear her out.”

Courtney began to explain what had happened. When Spencer heard the word switch , the martinis she’d downed crawled up the back of her throat. How was this possible? She didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

“How many times were you two in Rosewood together?” Spencer croaked, woozily gripping the edge of the banquette.

“Just once,” Courtney—Ali?—said, her eyes downcast. “The weekend my sister died.”

“No, wait.” Emily frowned, raising a finger. “Wasn’t she here one other time?” She reached into her black patent clutch, pulled out her phone, and showed them the old photo text A had sent. Ali, Jenna, and a third blond girl whose back was to the camera stood in the DiLaurentises’ yard on what looked like a late-summer afternoon. The third blond girl could definitely be Ali’s twin.

“Oh.” Courtney pushed her hair out of her eyes and snapped her fingers. “Right. I forgot. She was home for a couple hours when she was switching hospitals.”

Spencer counted the funky glass tiles on the wall along the back of the booth, trying to make some sense and order out of the chaos. “But if Courtney always pretended she was Ali, how do I know you aren’t Courtney?”

“She’s not ,” Emily urged. The blond girl shook her head, too.

“But what about the ring?” Spencer pressed, pointing to Courtney’s naked finger. “The girl in the hole was wearing Ali’s initial ring on her pinkie. If you’re Ali, why was Courtney wearing it?”

Courtney made a pinched face, as if she’d done a shot of Sour Apple Pucker schnapps. “I lost the ring the morning before our sleepover. I’m sure my sister stole it.”

“ I don’t remember you wearing it that night,” Emily said quickly.

Spencer shot Emily a look. Of course Emily wanted to believe this was Ali—this was what she’d wanted for the past four years. But as Spencer struggled to remember, she wasn’t sure, either. Had Ali worn her ring the night of their sleepover?

A bunch of spiky-haired guys in button-downs passed by, looking as though they wanted to approach and hit on them, but they must have sensed something weird was going down and ambled away. Courtney took Spencer’s hands. “Remember that day we fought in the barn? I’ve thought about that for three and a half years. I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry about other stuff I did, too—like hanging my JV hockey uniform in my window so you’d see. I knew it got to you. But I was jealous…and insecure. I always worried that you deserved to be on the hockey team, not me.”

Spencer clutched the seat of the leather-upholstered booth, trying to breathe. Anyone could’ve known about the fight in the barn—Spencer had had to relay that information to the police. But the hockey uniform in the window? That was something Spencer hadn’t even told her friends.

“And I’m sorry about all that stuff with Ian, too,” Courtney—or was it really Ali?—said. “I shouldn’t have said I was going to tell Melissa you two had kissed when I was the one in a relationship with him. And I shouldn’t have said that I’d made him kiss you. That wasn’t even true.”

Spencer gritted her teeth, all the shameful, angry feelings from that fight bubbling up again. “Gee, thanks.”

“I was bitchy, I know. I felt so bad afterward that I didn’t even bother to meet Ian. I ran up to my room instead. So in a way, you saved me, Spence. If we hadn’t had that fight, it would have been me out there in the woods, easy prey for Billy.” Ali wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I knew we were sisters. I only found out a little bit before our last sleepover, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

“How did you even find out?” Spencer asked weakly.

The music changed to a Lady Gaga song and the whole bar erupted into cheers around them. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said. “What matters right now is what I said to you yesterday at my house—I want to start fresh. To be the sisters we’ve always wanted.”

The room spun wildly. There was a clamoring, greedy crowd three-deep at the bar. Spencer stared at the girl sitting across from her in the booth, scrutinizing her small, pink hands, her round fingernails, and long neck. Could this be Ali? It was like looking at a very well-made knockoff Fendi bag, trying to distinguish it from a real one. The differences had to be there.

And yet…it made sense. Spencer had had a funny feeling the moment this girl had stepped onto the stage at the press conference that something was… off . The secret twin had looked at all of them so knowingly. She’d called Emily Killer. She’d decorated her room exactly as Ali had. She’d gotten every element of Ali right, something even a good impersonator—even a twin —couldn’t pull off. This was the girl who’d befriended her that day of the charity drive. The one who’d made her feel wanted, special.

But then she thought about the eerie photographs Billy had taken the night of the sleepover. If only Ali would have let Spencer open the blinds, if only she hadn’t insisted on doing everything her way, they would’ve seen who was out there. None of this might have happened.

“We spent every day together for two years. How come you never told us about your sister?” Spencer asked, lifting her hair off the back of her neck. It seemed like a hundred more people had just entered the bar. She felt trapped and panicky, like the time she and Melissa got stuck in an overstuffed Saks elevator on Black Friday.

Ali blew her blond bangs off her face. “My parents asked me not to. And also…I was ashamed. I didn’t want you guys to ask all kinds of uncomfortable questions.”

Spencer let out a frustrated sniff. “Like the kinds of questions you used to ask us?”

Ali stared at her helplessly. Emily pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. The music throbbed in the background.

“You knew all our secrets,” Spencer said, her voice trembling. Her anger was accumulating fast, like a snowball that grew bigger and bigger as it rolled down a hill. “You held them over us for power. You were afraid that if we knew this, we’d hold it over you. You wouldn’t have any leverage anymore.”

“You’re right,” Ali conceded. “I guess that’s true. I’m sorry.”

“And why didn’t you try to contact us from the hospital?” Spencer went on, her skin pulsing with fury. “We were your best friends. You should have said something. Do you have any idea what we went through after you vanished?”