Sara Shepard - Heartless

But before she could say a word, there was a sharp knock on the passenger door. Aria hadn’t realized they’d already pulled to the curb of Rosewood Day. Three reporters swarmed around the car, snapping photos and pressing their faces against the window. “Miss Montgomery?” a woman called, her voice loud through the glass.

Aria gaped at them and then looked desperately at her dad. “Ignore them,” Byron urged. “Run.”

Taking a deep breath, Aria pushed the door open and barreled her way through the throng. Cameras flashed. Reporters babbled. Behind them, Aria saw students gaping, perversely fascinated by the commotion. “Did you really see Alison?” the reporters called. “Do you know who set the fire?” “Did someone set that fire in the woods to cover up a vital clue?”

Aria swiveled around at the last question but kept her mouth shut.

“Did you set the fire?” a dark-haired thirtysomething man shouted. The reporters moved in closer.

“Of course not!” Aria shouted, alarmed. Then she elbowed past them, scampering up the walk and bursting through the first available door, which led to the back stage of the auditorium.

The doors banged shut, and Aria let out a held breath and looked around. The big, high-ceilinged theater was empty. Boat sets from South Pacific, the school’s recent musical, were stacked in a corner. Sheet music was strewn haphazardly on the floor. The red velvet auditorium chairs spread out before her, every single seat folded up and unoccupied. It was too quiet in here. Eerily quiet.

When the wood floor squeaked, Aria stiffened. A shadow disappeared behind the curtain. She whipped around, a horrible possibility darting through her mind. It’s the person who set the fire. The person who tried to kill us. They’re here. But when she moved closer, there was no one there.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was Ali’s spirit, lurking close, desperate. If what Byron said was true—if a dead person couldn’t rest until her message had been heard—then maybe Aria needed to figure out how to communicate with her. Maybe it was time to hear what Ali had to say.

Emily slammed her locker door Monday afternoon and hefted her biology, trig, and history books into her arms. A piece of paper slid out from inside one of her notebooks. HOLY TRINITY YOUTH GROUP BOSTON TRIP said big, curly letters.

She scowled. This paper had been lodged in her notebook since the week before when her then-boyfriend, Isaac, had asked her to come. Emily had even gotten permission from her parents—she’d thought it would be the perfect way to spend time with Isaac alone.

Not anymore.

Her chest tightened. It was hard to believe that just a few days ago, Emily had really and truly thought she and Isaac were in love—enough, in fact, to sleep with him, for her very first time. But then everything had gone horribly, dreadfully wrong. When Emily tried to tell Isaac about his mom’s evil glares and hurtful remarks, he’d broken up with her on the spot, more or less telling Emily she was psycho.

A few sophomores passed behind her, giggling and comparing lip glosses. How could Emily have thought he loved her? How could she have slept with him? By the time Isaac had found her at the Radley party on Saturday night and apologized, she wasn’t sure if she wanted him back anymore. Since the fire, he’d texted and called her several times, wanting to know if she was okay, but Emily hadn’t replied to those messages either. Things felt ruined between them. Isaac hadn’t even listened to her side of the story. Now, whenever she thought about what they’d done that day after school in Isaac’s bedroom, she wished she could grab a big bar of soap and scrub the deed off her skin.

Balling up the flyer in her hands, she tossed it in the nearest trash can and continued down the hall. The classical between-classes music lilted through the overhead speakers. Red-and-pink posters for the upcoming Rosewood Day valentine’s Ball wallpapered the halls. There was the usual traffic jam on the stairs, and someone had farted in the stairwell. It was a status quo Monday at school . . . except for one thing: Everyone was staring at her.

Literally everyone. Two senior boys on the baseball team mouthed freak as she passed. Mrs. Booth, Emily’s creative writing teacher from the year before, poked her head out of her classroom door, widened her eyes at Emily, and then scuttled back inside, like a mouse darting back into a hole. The only person who didn’t stare was Spencer. Instead, Spencer pointedly turned her head in the opposite direction, obviously still annoyed that Emily had told the police they’d seen Ali in her backyard.

Whatever. Her friends might be convinced they’d collectively hallucinated, the DNA report might allegedly say the body in the hole was Ali’s, and all of Rosewood might think Emily was delusional, but she knew what she saw. Last night while she slept, she’d endured dream after dream about Ali, like Ali was begging Emily’s subconscious to come find her. In the first one, Emily had walked into her church and found Ali and Isaac sitting together in the back pew, giggling and whispering. In the dream after that, Emily and Isaac had been naked under the covers in Isaac’s bed, just like they’d been the week before. They heard footsteps on the stairs. Emily thought it was Isaac’s mother, but Ali had walked into the room instead. Her face was covered with soot, and her eyes were huge and frightened. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” she said. And then she disintegrated into a pile of ash.

Ali was out there. But . . . whose body was in the hole then? And why was Wilden insisting it was Ali’s DNA if it really wasn’t? Someone had obviously set that fire to cover something up. Sure, Wilden had an alibi for when the fire started, but who was to say that receipt from CVS was even his? And wasn’t it a little convenient that he had the receipt at the ready? Emily thought of the lone police car she’d seen sneaking away from the Hastingses’ house the night of the fire, almost like whoever was driving didn’t want to be noticed. Wilden wasn’t on the scene that night . . . or was he?

She entered her biology classroom. It smelled of its usual jumble of leaky Bunsen burner gas, formaldehyde, and marker-board bleach. The teacher, Mr. Heinz, wasn’t there yet, and the students were gathered around one desk in the middle of the room, looking at something on a silver MacBook Air. When Sean Ackard noticed Emily, he paled and broke from the crowd. Lanie Iler, one of Emily’s friends from swimming, saw Emily next and opened and closed her mouth like a fish.

“Lanie?” Emily tried, her heart starting to thud. “What is it?”

Lanie had a conflicted expression on her face. After a moment, she pointed at the laptop.

Emily took a few steps toward the computer. A hush fell over the room and the crowd parted. The local news web page glowed on the screen. POOR, POOR PRETTY LITTLE liars read the headline under Emily, Aria, Spencer, and Hanna’s school pictures. Farther down on the page was a blurry picture of the girls in Spencer’s hospital room. They were all gathered over Spencer’s bed, talking worriedly.

Emily’s pulse raced. Spencer’s hospital room had been on the second floor, so how had the paparazzi gotten this photo?

Her eyes returned to their new nickname. Pretty Little Liars. A couple of kids behind her tittered. They thought this was funny. They thought Emily was a joke. She took a big step back, almost bumping into Ben, her old boyfriend from swimming. “I guess I should watch out for you, Little Liar,” he teased, smirking.

That was it. Without another glance at her classmates, she rushed out of the room and headed straight for the bathroom, her rubber Vans squeaking on the polished floor. Luckily, there was no one inside. The air smelled like freshly smoked cigarettes, and water dripped from one of the faucets into a pale blue basin. Leaning against the wall, Emily took heaving breaths.