Sara Shepard - Wanted

“Class,” the teacher says, touching the new girl’s arm. “This is Laura St. DeLions.”

Or Sara Dillon Tunisi.

Or Lanie Lisia Dunstor.

Or Daniella Struision.

Your brain stalls for a moment. There’s something familiar about those names, isn’t there? Sort of like a scrambled version of your favorite song, or an anagram of a common phrase. The girl looks familiar, too—you’ve seen that sparkly, I-know-something-you-don’t smirk before. You think of a picture on a milk carton you saw long ago. You think of that girl on the news. Could it be…?

Nah, you decide. That’s crazy. You wave at her and she waves back. Suddenly, you have a feeling she’s going to pick you as her brand-new very best friend. You have a feeling your whole life is going to change.

And just like that, it does.

It’s with a heavy heart that I write the acknowledgments for the last book in the Pretty Little Liars series. Writing these books has been a thrilling adventure from beginning to end, and I’m still pinching myself that this has been my life for the past four years.

There are many of you who help to make these books what they are, and I can’t thank any of you enough. First, Lanie Davis, my day-to-day editor, is always bursting with smart, insightful ideas. Lanie sharpens each book—each chapter and sometimes each sentence!—until it’s lean and mean. Sara Shandler, Les Morgenstein, and Josh Bank are all so fully invested in the characters, their stories, and the series as a whole. Kristin Marang creates superb series buzz online—always such a tricky thing! Farrin Jacobs and Kari Sutherland give continued support and fantastic editorial suggestions. And Andy McNicol and Anais Borja at William Morris cheer on the series from start to finish…and send me extra books when I accidentally leave my copy at a bookstore or give it to a rabid reader.

Much love to my parents, Shep and Mindy, who are, at present, obsessed with Wii Fit. Go archery! Hugs to my sister, Alison, who is nothing like the Alison (or Courtney) in these books. Glad we didn’t die in the ocean that day! Kisses to my husband, Joel, who was on the phone with me the day I found out that Pretty Little Liars would be a series four years ago. Welcome to Josephine, who has a pinecone tail, and good-bye to Zelda, who sounded like a barge when she paddled in the bay. We will miss you so, so much.

I also want to thank each and every fan of the series. Those of you who pass the books around at school, those of you who make YouTube videos of your ideal PLL cast, those of you who reach out on Facebook and Twitter or share your thoughts on Goodreads, wherever you are, whoever you are, you all have a special place in my heart. And finally, a shout-out to my English teachers at Downingtown Senior High School: the late Mary French, Alice Campbell, and Karen Bald Mapes. You taught me to fear the run-on sentence, you opened my eyes to absurdist drama, bildungsroman novels, and bad Hemingway parodies, and, last but not least, you encouraged me—vehemently, sometimes—to write. You made a huge difference, and I thank you so much.

I woke up in a dingy claw-foot bathtub in an unfamiliar pink-tiled bathroom. A stack of Maxim s sat next to the toilet, green toothpaste globbed in the sink, and white drips streaked the mirror. The window showed a dark sky and a full moon. What day of the week was it? Where was I? A frat house at the U of A? Someone’s apartment? I could barely remember that my name was Sutton Mercer, or that I lived in the foothills of Tucson, Arizona. Had someone slipped me something?

“Emma?” a guy’s voice called from another room. “You home?”

“I’m busy!” called a voice close by.

A tall, thin girl opened the bathroom door, her tangled dark hair hanging in her face. “Hey!” I leapt to my feet. “Someone’s in here already!” My body felt tingly, as if it had fallen asleep. When I looked down, it seemed like I was flickering on and off, like I was under a strobe light. Freaky. Someone definitely slipped me something.

The girl didn’t seem to hear me. She stumbled forward, her face covered in shadows.

“Hel lo ?” I cried, climbing out of the tub. She didn’t look over. “Are you deaf?” Nothing. She pumped a bottle of lavender-scented lotion and rubbed it on her arms.

The door flung open again, and a snub-nosed, unshaven teenage guy burst in. “Oh.” His gaze flew to the girl’s tight-fitting T-shirt, which said new york new york roller coaster on the front. “I didn’t know you were in here, Emma.”

“That’s maybe why the door was closed ?” Emma pushed him out and slammed it shut. She turned back to the mirror. I stood right behind her. “Hey!” I cried again.

Finally, she looked up. My eyes darted to the mirror to meet her gaze. But when I looked into the glass, I screamed.

Because Emma looked exactly like me.

And I wasn’t there.

Emma turned and walked out of the bathroom, and I followed as if something was yanking me along behind her. Who was this girl? Why did we look the same? Why was I invisible? And why couldn’t I remember, well, anything ? The wrong memories snapped into aching, nostalgic focus—the glittering sunset over the Catalinas, the smell of the lemon trees in my backyard in the morning, the feel of cashmere slippers on my toes. But other things, the most important things, had become muffled and fuzzy, as if I’d lived my whole life underwater. I saw vague shapes, but I couldn’t make out what they were. I couldn’t remember what I’d done for any summer vacations, who my first kiss had been with, or what it felt like to feel the sun on my face or dance to my favorite song. What was my favorite song? And even worse, every second that passed, things got fuzzier and fuzzier. Like they were disappearing.

Like I was disappearing.

But then I concentrated really hard and I heard a muffled scream. And suddenly it was like I was somewhere else. I felt pain shooting through my body, before a final, sleepy sensation of my muscles surrendering. As my eyes slowly closed, I saw a blurry, shadowy figure standing over me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

No wonder Emma didn’t see me. No wonder I wasn’t in the mirror. I wasn’t really here.

I was dead.

Emma Paxton carried her canvas tote and a glass of iced tea out the back door of her new foster family’s home on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Cars swished and grumbled on the nearby expressway, and the air smelled heavily of exhaust and the local water treatment plant. The only decorations in the backyard were dusty free weights, a rusted bug zapper, and kitschy terra-cotta statues.

It was a far cry from my backyard in Tucson, which was desert-landscaped to perfection and had a wooden swing set I used to pretend was a castle. Like I said, it was weird and random which details I still remembered and which ones had evaporated away. For the last hour, I’d been following Emma trying to make sense of her life and willing myself to remember my own. Not like I had a choice. Everywhere she went, I went. I wasn’t entirely sure how I knew these things about Emma, either—they just appeared in my head as I watched her like a text message popping in an inbox. I knew the details of her life better than I did my own.

Emma dropped the tote on the faux wrought-iron patio table, plopped down in a plastic lawn chair, and craned her neck upward. The only nice thing about this patio was that it faced away from the casinos, offering a large swath of clear, uninterrupted sky. The moon dangled halfway up the horizon, a bloated alabaster wafer. Emma’s gaze drifted to two bright, familiar stars to the east. At nine years old, Emma had wistfully named the star on the right the Mom Star, the star on the left the Dad Star, and the smaller, brightly twinkling spot just below them the Emma Star. She’d made up all kinds of fairy tales about these stars, pretending that they were her real family and that one day they’d all be reunited on earth like they were in the sky.