Sara Shepard: Heartless

“Are you all right?” Aria exclaimed. No one had told her Spencer was hurt.

Spencer nodded weakly, using the little remote on the side of the bed to sit up straighter. “I’m much better now. They say smoke inhalation can sometimes affect people really differently.”

Aria looked around. The room smelled of sickness and bleach. There was a monitor in the corner tracking Spencer’s vital signs, and a small chrome sink with stacks of boxes of surgical gloves in the corner. The walls were wasabi green, and next to the floral-curtained window was a big poster explaining how to self-administer the monthly breast exam. Predictably, some kid had drawn a penis next to the woman’s boob.

Emily was perched on a child-size chair near the window, her reddish-blond hair tangled, her thin lips cracked. She shifted uncomfortably, her broad swimmer’s body too big for the seat. Hanna was by the door, leaning against a sign proclaiming that all hospital employees must wear gloves. Her hazel eyes were glazed and vacant. She looked even frailer than usual, her skinny, dark-denim jeans hanging loosely on her hips.

Wordlessly, Aria pulled Ali’s flag from her yak-fur bag and spread it on Spencer’s bed. Everyone moved in and stared. Shiny silver doodles covered the fabric. There was a Chanel logo, a Louis Vuitton luggage pattern, and Ali’s name in big bubble letters. A stone wishing well, complete with an A-frame roof and crank, was in the corner. Aria traced the outline of the well with her finger. She didn’t see any glaring, vital clues here about what might have happened to Ali the night she was killed. This was the same kind of stuff everyone drew on their Time Capsule flags.

Spencer touched the edge of the fabric. “I forgot Ali made bubble letters like that.”

Hanna shivered. “Just seeing Ali’s writing makes me think she’s here with us.”

Everyone raised their heads, exchanging a spooked glance. It was obvious they were all thinking the same thing. Just like she was with us in the woods a few hours ago.

At that, they all spoke at once. “We’ve got to—” Aria blurted.

“What did we—” Hanna whispered.

“The doctor said—” Spencer hissed a half-second later. They all stopped and looked at one another, their cheeks as pale as the pillowcases behind Spencer’s head.

It was Emily who spoke next. “We’ve got to do something, guys. Ali is out there. We need to figure out where she went. Has anyone heard anything about people looking for her in the woods? I told the cops we saw her, but they just stood there!”

Aria’s heart flipped. Spencer looked incredulous. “You told the cops?” she repeated, pushing a strand of dirty blond hair out of her eyes.

“Of course I did!” Emily whispered.

“But . . . Emily . . .”

“What?” Emily snapped. She glared at Spencer crazily, as if there was a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead.

“Em, it was just a hallucination. The doctors said so. Ali’s dead. ”

Emily’s eyes boggled. “But we all saw her, didn’t we? Are you saying we all had the exact same hallucination?”

Spencer stared unblinking at Emily. A few tense seconds passed. Outside the room, a beeper went off. A hospital bed with a squeaky wheel rolled down the hall.

Emily let out a whimper. Her cheeks had turned bright pink. She turned to Hanna and Aria. “You guys think Ali was real, right?”

“It could have been Ali, I guess,” Aria said, sinking into a spare wheelchair by the tiny bathroom. “But, Em, the doctor told me it was smoke inhalation. It makes sense. How else could she have just vanished after the fire?”

“Yeah,” Hanna said weakly. “And where would she have been hiding all this time?”

Emily slapped her arms to her sides violently. The IV pole next to her rattled. “Hanna, you said you saw Ali standing over you in your hospital bed the last time you were here. Maybe it really was her!”

Hanna fiddled with the high heel of her suede boot, looking uncomfortable.

“Hanna was in a coma when she saw Ali,” Spencer jumped in. “It was obviously a dream.”

Undaunted, Emily pointed at Aria. “You pulled someone out of the woods last night. If it wasn’t Ali, then who was it?”

Aria shrugged, running her hands along the spokes on one of the wheelchair’s wheels. Out the big window, the sun was just coming up. There was a line of shiny BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in the hospital parking lot. It was amazing how normal everything looked after such a crazy night. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The woods were so dark. And . . . oh shit. ” She dug in the inner pocket of her bag. “I found this last night.”

She opened her palm and showed them the familiar-looking Rosewood Day class ring with a bright blue stone. The inscription on the inside of the band said IAN THOMAS. When they’d discovered Ian’s supposedly dead body in the woods last week, the ring had been on Ian’s finger. “It was just lying there in the dirt,” she explained. “I don’t know how the cops didn’t find it.”

Emily gasped. Spencer looked confused. Hanna snatched the ring from Aria’s palm and held it to the light above Spencer’s bed. “Maybe it fell off Ian’s finger when he escaped?”

“What should we do with it?” Emily asked. “Turn it in to the cops?”

“Definitely not,” Spencer said. “It seems a little convenient that we see Ian’s body in the woods, make the cops search the place, they find nothing, and then voila! We find a ring just like that. It makes us look suspicious. You probably shouldn’t have picked it up at all. It’s evidence.”

Aria crossed her arms over her Fair Isle sweater. “How was I supposed to know that? So what should I do? Put it back where I found it?”

“No,” Spencer instructed. “The cops will be mobbing those woods again because of the fire. They might notice you putting it back and ask questions. Just hold on to it for now, I guess.”

Emily shifted impatiently in the little chair. “You saw Ali after you found the ring. Right, Aria?”

“I’m not sure,” Aria admitted. She tried to think about those frantic minutes in the woods. They were growing blurrier and blurrier. “I never actually touched her. . . .”

Emily stood up. “What is wrong with you guys? Why do you suddenly not believe what we saw?”

“Em,” Spencer said gently. “You’re getting really emotional.”

“I am not!” Emily cried. Her cheeks flushed bright pink, making her freckles stand out.

They were interrupted by a loud, squawking alarm in an adjacent room. Nurses yelled. There were frantic footsteps. A sick feeling welled in Aria’s stomach. She wondered if it was the alarm warning that someone was dying.

A few moments later, the wing fell silent again. Spencer cleared her throat. “The most important thing is figuring out who set that fire. That’s what the cops need to concentrate on right now. Someone tried to kill us last night.”

“Not just someone,” Hanna whispered. “ Them. ”

Spencer looked at Aria. “We got in touch with Ian in the barn. He told us everything. He’s sure Jason and Wilden did it. Everything we talked about last night is true, and they’re definitely out to keep us quiet.”

Aria’s chest heaved, remembering something else. “When I was in the woods, I saw someone set the fire.”

Spencer sat up even more, her eyes saucers. “ What? ”

“Did you see their face?” Hanna exclaimed.

“I don’t know.” Aria shut her eyes, calling back the horrible memory. Moments after she’d found Ian’s ring, she’d seen someone skulking through the woods only a few paces ahead of her, his hood pulled tight and his face in the shadows. Instantly, she felt in her bones that it was someone she knew. When she realized what he was doing, her limbs froze. She felt powerless to stop him. In seconds, the flames were speeding along the forest floor, making a hungry beeline for her feet.