Sara Shepard - Wanted

“Ali!” Emily cried out. The name echoed into the night. “Ali!” she called again.

“What?” came a voice.

Everyone whipped around. Ali was standing in the kitchen doorway, still dressed in her jeans and cashmere hoodie. She was looking at them like they were crazy.

“Where have you guys been ?” Ali laughed. “I just went to check the temperature in the hot tub, and I couldn’t find you anywhere!” She pretended to wipe sweat from her brow. “I was so scared!”

Emily walked back into the house, breathing a long sigh of relief. But as Ali held the door for her, giving her a huge, bright smile, Emily heard a branch snap from behind. She froze and glanced over her shoulder, certain she would see a pair of eyes gazing at her from the dense woods.

But everything was still and quiet. There was no one.

Spencer and the others followed Ali back into the house. “The hot tub is way too cold,” Ali decided. “But there are lots of other things to do.”

Spencer plopped her unused bath towel on the kitchen table, walked into the living room, and sat down on the leather couch. Her skin felt numb, both from the cold and the scare that something might have happened to Ali. An uneasy feeling nagged at her, too, one she couldn’t quite describe. How had Ali not heard them when they were calling for her? How had they not seen her go into the porch and test the water of the hot tub? What was that thump they’d heard inside the house? And where was Melissa, anyway?

The other girls gathered around the room. Ali sat in the wicker wing chair they used to call “The Duchess Chair”: whichever girl they deemed the “Duchess” got to sit in the chair and make the others do whatever she wanted for the entire day. Hanna sat on the old yellow beanbag near the TV. Emily perched cross-legged on the leather ottoman by the couch, absently poking her finger into a tiny hole in the upholstery. Aria sat on the couch next to Spencer and pulled a cherry-blossom-printed satin pillow into her chest.

Ali curled her hands around the Duchess Chair’s twisted, twiggy arms and took a big breath. “So. Now that the hot tub idea is a bust, I have a proposition for you.”

“What?” Spencer asked.

Ali shifted her weight, making the wicker creak. “Since our last sleepover went so badly, I think we should wipe it out of our minds for good. I’d like to re-create it. Minus a couple of details, of course.”

“Like you disappearing?” Emily said.

“Naturally.” Ali twirled a piece of hair around her finger. “And, well, for it to be accurate, I’ll have to hypnotize you.”

Spencer’s skin went cold. Emily lowered her glass to the table. Hanna froze, a handful of Cheez-Its halfway to her mouth. “Uh…” Aria started.

Ali cocked an eyebrow. “When I was in the hospital, they made me go to all these therapists. One of them told me that the best way to get over a terrible memory is to reenact it. I really think it will help me….” She sighed. “Maybe it will help all of us.”

Spencer rubbed her feet together, trying to warm them up. A sudden wind whistled outside. She stared again at the photo of them next to the canoe. Reenacting the hypnosis sounded awful, but maybe Ali was right. After everything they’d been through, maybe they needed to do something to get past it, once and for all. “I’m game,” she decided.

“Yeah, I guess I’m in, too,” Emily decided.

“Sure,” Hanna said.

Ali looked hopefully at Aria, and Aria nodded reluctantly. “Thank you.” Ali jumped to her feet. “Let’s do it in the upstairs bedroom, though. It’s more intimate. More like the barn was.”

They followed her up the pink-carpeted stairs to the second level. A huge, pale moon shone through the circular window on the landing. The yard was empty, the pine trees forming a thick barrier between the house and the road. There was a man-made pond off to the left, though it had been drained for the winter. Now it was merely a dry, deep ditch.

Ali led them to the back bedroom. The door was already ajar, as if someone had been in here recently. Spencer remembered the cross-stitch sampler on the wall, the Queen Anne’s lace curtains, and the twin brass beds. Her nose twitched. She’d expected the room to be redolent with lilac-scented air freshener and maybe mildew, but there was a rotting, curdling odor instead. “What’s that smell?” she cried.

Ali wrinkled her nose, too. “Maybe there’s something dead inside the walls. Remember when that happened the summer between sixth and seventh grades? I think it was a raccoon.”

Spencer racked her brain, but she didn’t remember smelling anything remotely like this before.

Then Aria froze. “Did you hear that?”

Everyone tensed, listening. “No…” Spencer whispered.

Aria’s eyes were wide. “I think I heard someone cough. Is there someone outside?”

Ali peeled back a wooden slat in the blinds. The driveway was deserted. There were tracks in the gravel from where the BMW had pulled in. “Nothing,” Ali whispered.

They all let out a long sigh. “We’re psyching ourselves out,” Spencer said. “We’ve got to calm down.”

They plopped on the round rug on the floor. Ali pulled out six vanilla candles from a plastic bag and positioned them on the nightstands and the bureau. The match made a spitting sound as it ignited. The room was already dark, but Ali twisted the blinds closed and pulled the curtains tight. The candles cast eerie shadows on the wall.

“Okay,” Ali said. “Um, everyone, just relax.”

Emily giggled anxiously. Hanna let out a breath. Spencer tried to make her arms go limp, but her blood still zoomed in her ears. She’d relived the moment Ali had hypnotized her so many times in her mind. Every time she thought about it, her body contorted with panic. You’ll be fine, she told herself.

“Your heartbeat’s slowing down,” Ali chanted. “Think calm thoughts. I’m going to count down from one hundred, and as soon as I touch all of you, you’ll be in my power.”

No one spoke. The candles snapped and danced. Spencer shut her eyes as Ali began to count. “One hundred…ninety-nine…ninety-eight…”

Spencer’s left leg twitched, then her right. She tried to think calm thoughts, but it was impossible not to return to the night they’d done this last. She’d sat on the round rug in her family’s barn, pissed off that Ali had yet again talked them into something they didn’t want to do. What if Ali’s hypnosis made her blurt out she’d kissed Ian…and Melissa heard? Melissa and Ian had just been in the barn—they still could be close by.

And maybe, just maybe, Melissa had been close by. Like at the window…with a camera.

“Eighty-five, eighty-four…” Ali lilted.

Her voice faded farther and farther away until it sounded like she was whispering from the end of a very long tunnel. Then smudged light appeared before Spencer’s eyes. Sound warped and twisted. The smell of sanded floorboards and microwave popcorn tickled her nose. She took a few long, deep breaths, trying to imagine air flowing in and out of her lungs.

When Spencer’s vision came into focus, she realized she was in her family’s old barn. She was sitting on the old, soft rug her parents had bought in New York. The scent of pine and early summer flowers wafted in from outside. She looked at her friends. Hanna’s stomach bulged. Emily was bone thin and freckly. Aria had streaks of pink in her hair. Ali tiptoed among them, touching their foreheads with the fleshy part of her thumb. When she got to Spencer, Spencer jumped up.

It’s too dark in here, she heard herself saying. The words spilled out of her mouth, beyond her control.