Sara Shepard - Heartless

Which meant this quack wasn’t talking to Ali at all.

Aria leapt up, almost banging her head on a low-hanging lantern. She fumbled her way through the haze of incense smoke and dry ice vapor toward the exit. “Hey!” Equinox called.

“Aria, wait!” Noel said, but she ignored them.

A cardboard cutout of a warlock pointed the way to the store’s bathroom. Aria ran for it, slammed the door, and collapsed against the sink, not caring that she’d knocked a cake of hand-milled dragon’s blood soap to the floor. Idiot, she told herself. Of course Ali wasn’t here. Of course seances were scams. This guy had probably approached her about Ali because he’d recognized Aria from the news. What had she been thinking?

Aria stared at her reflection in the round, streaky mirror above the sink. Her skin was milk-pale. But even though Equinox was a quack, he’d pointed out something awful—and something that was kind of true. Aria had wanted Ali gone.

Ali had been with Aria when Aria saw her dad making out with Meredith in the Hollis parking lot in seventh grade. In the weeks after, she just wouldn’t let it drop. She cornered Aria between classes to ask her if there had been any updates. She invited herself over to Aria’s house for dinner, giving Byron damning looks and Ella sympathetic ones. Whenever the five best friends were together, Ali dropped hints that she would tell Aria’s secret any minute unless Aria did exactly what Ali wanted. Aria had reached a boiling point and, in the weeks before Ali’s death, had started to avoid her as much as possible.

It made her very sad, the medium said. Could Ali have known how much Aria wanted her gone? A memory had popped into Aria’s mind, suddenly: The day after Ali went missing, Mrs. DiLaurentis had invited Aria and her friends over and grilled them about where Ali might have gone. At one point, Mrs. DiLaurentis leaned forward on her elbows and asked, “Did Ali ever seem . . . sad?” The girls immediately protested—Ali was beautiful and smart and irresistible. Everyone adored her. Sad wasn’t in Ali’s emotional vocabulary.

Aria had always thought of herself as the victim and Ali the predator, but what if Ali had been going through stuff of her own? What if Ali needed someone to talk to—and Aria just pushed her away?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, starting to weep. Clumps of mascara skidded down her cheeks. “Ali, I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to die.”

There was a sharp sfft sound, like steam escaping from a radiator. Then the bulb over the mirror flicked off, bathing the room in darkness. Aria froze, her heart in her throat. Then, her nose twitched. There was a sudden fragrance in the air, chokingly pungent. Vanilla soap.

Aria grabbed the sides of the sink to steady herself. Then, without warning, the light snapped back on with a sizzle. Aria’s frightened eyes stared back at her in the mirror. But her face wasn’t the only one reflected there.

In the space behind her own ice blue eyes was a girl with a heart-shaped face, two wide, blue eyes, and a dazzling smile. Aria gasped and whirled around. Tacked to a corkboard on the back of the bathroom door, layered on top of other posters for upcoming poetry slams, futons for sale, and available rooms for rent, was a color photo of Ali.

Aria leaned closer, Ali’s eyes drawing her in. Her breath caught in her throat. It was the Missing Persons flyer from when Ali vanished, the same picture that was splashed across milk cartons and local public service announcement commercials. MISSING, 72-point font said. ALISON DILAURENTIS. BLUE EYES, BLOND HAIR, 5'0'', 90 POUNDS. LAST SEEN JUNE 20. Aria hadn’t seen it in years. She searched frantically along every inch of the poster, even turning it over, for a clue as to why it was here—and who had put it up. But there was nothing.

Later that same day, Emily stood in front of a black-and-white clapboard farmhouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Instead of a car in the driveway, there was a black buggy with giant wheels and a red triangular SLOW-MOVING VEHICLE sign on the back. She fingered the cuffs of the gray cotton dress A had given her and adjusted the white cloth cap on her head. Next to her was a hand-painted wooden sign that said ZOOK FARM.

Emily bit her lip. This is crazy. A few hours earlier, she’d told her parents she was going on the youth group trip to Boston. Then she’d boarded a Greyhound for Lancaster, changing into the dress, cap, and boots in the tiny, chemical-scented bathroom at the back of the bus. She sent her old friends short texts to let them know she’d be in Boston until Friday—if she told them the truth, they’d think she was nuts. And just in case her parents became suspicious, she’d turned off her cell phone so they couldn’t activate its GPS child-tracking function and discover she was in Lancaster pretending to be Amish.

Emily had been idly curious about Amish people her whole life, but she knew nothing about what it was like to really be Amish. From what she understood, the Amish just wanted to be left alone. They didn’t like tourists to take their pictures, they didn’t take kindly to non-Amish trespassing on their land, and the few Amish people Emily had seen up close looked humorless and stern. So why was A sending her to an Amish community? Did Lucy Zook know Ali? Had Ali run away from Rosewood and secretly become Amish? That seemed impossible, but hope fluttered at the edge of Emily’s thoughts. Was it possible that Lucy . . . was Ali?

With each passing moment, Emily thought of more reasons why—and how—Ali might still be out there. There was the time when Emily and her friends met with Mrs. DiLaurentis the day after Ali vanished, and Mrs. DiLaurentis asked if Ali had run away. Emily had dismissed the notion, but the truth was she and Ali did used to talk about leaving Rosewood forever. They made all kinds of wistful plans—they’d go to the airport and pick the first flight that was leaving. They’d take Amtrak to California and find roommates in L.A. Emily couldn’t imagine why Ali would want to leave Rosewood; she always secretly hoped that it was because Ali wanted Emily all to herself.

Then the summer between sixth and seventh grade, Ali had dropped off the face of the earth for two weeks. Every time Emily called Ali’s cell phone it went to voice mail. Whenever she rang Ali’s house, the answering machine picked up. And yet, the DiLaurentises were definitely home—Emily biked by their house and saw Mr. DiLaurentis washing his car in the driveway and Ali’s mom pulling weeds in the front yard. She became convinced Ali was angry at her, though she had no idea why. And she couldn’t talk to her other best friends about it. Spencer and Hanna were vacationing with their families, and Aria was at an art camp in philly.

Then, two weeks later, Ali called out of the blue. “Where were you?” Emily demanded. “I ran away!” Ali chirped. When Emily didn’t answer, she laughed. “I’m kidding. I went to the poconos with my aunt Giada. There’s no cell service up there.”

Emily glanced at the handwritten sign again. As much as she didn’t trust A’s cryptic instructions about going to Lancaster—after all, A had misled them into believing that Wilden and Jason were Ali’s killers, when Ali was in fact still alive—one tiny sentence fragment kept swirling in her head: What wouldyou do to find her? She’d do anything, of course.

Taking a deep breath, Emily climbed the steps to the front porch of the farmhouse. A bunch of shirts hung from the laundry line, though it was so cold out that they looked half-frozen. Smoke poured from the chimney, and a big windmill in the back of the property churned. The yeasty smell of freshly baked bread wafted through the frigid air.