Sara Shepard - Wicked

Emily poked Aria’s side. “You know the night you called me saying you got a note from New A? I got one that night too.”

A shiver ran up Aria’s back. “What did it say?”

Emily ducked her head, fiddling with a loose button on her blouse. “Just…nothing, really. Did Wilden ever get back to you about who they could be from?”

“No.” Aria scanned the courtroom, thinking Wilden might be here. She didn’t see him. She peered around Emily to look at Hanna. “Have you gotten any?”

Hanna’s expression became guarded. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

Aria frowned. Did that mean she had or she hadn’t? “What about you, Spencer?”

Spencer looked at them nervously. She didn’t answer. A sour taste welled in Aria’s mouth. Did this mean they’d all gotten more notes from this new A?

Emily chewed nervously on her bottom lip. “Well, I guess it won’t matter soon, right? If it’s Ian, it’ll be over as soon as he’s back in jail….”

“Hopefully,” Aria murmured.

The DiLaurentises finally paraded in and sat on the bench right in front of them. Jason settled next to his parents, but he kept fidgeting, first buttoning his jacket, then unbuttoning it, then reaching for his cell phone, checking the screen, turning it off, and turning it on again. Then, suddenly, Jason turned around and stared right at Aria. His blue eyes lingered on her for a good three seconds. He had the same exact eyes as Ali—it was like looking at a ghost.

One corner of Jason’s mouth curled into a smile of recognition. He gave Aria—but seemingly only Aria—a little wave, as if he remembered her better than he did the other girls. Aria checked to see whether any of her old friends had noticed, but Hanna was reapplying her lipstick, and Spencer and Emily were whispering about how Mrs. DiLaurentis had told them that the family had moved a few towns away from Rosewood for the trial. When Aria looked back at Jason, his back was to her again.

Twenty more minutes slowly passed. Ian’s side was still empty. “Shouldn’t he be here by now?” Aria whispered to Spencer.

Spencer’s eyebrows knitted together. “Why are you asking me?” she hissed. “Why would I know?”

Aria held up her hands and sat back. “Sorry,” she whispered sharply. “I wasn’t asking you specifically .”

Spencer let out a huffing sigh and faced forward. She was clenching her jaw very tightly.

Ian’s lawyer stood up and walked to the back of the courtroom, a worried look on his face. Aria looked at the wooden doors to the lobby, expecting Ian and his police escorts to burst through at any second, ready to commence the trial. But the doors remained closed. She ran her hand over the back of her neck, uneasy. The murmurs in the courtroom grew louder.

Aria stared out the side window in an attempt to calm down. The courthouse was on a snowy hill overlooking the Rosewood Valley. In the summer, the thick foliage blocked the view, but now that the trees were bare, all of Rosewood was splayed out below. The Hollis spire looked so small, Aria could squish it between her thumb and pointer finger. The tiny Victorian houses below were like dollhouse toys, and Aria could even make out the star-shaped neon sign outside of Snooker’s, where she’d first met Ezra. Beyond that were the vast, untouched fields of the Rosewood Country Club golf course. She, Ali, and the others had spent every day of that first summer they were friends around the country club pool, ogling the older lifeguards. The lifeguard they ogled most was Ian.

She wished she could go back to that summer and revise everything that had happened to Ali—go back to before the workers even started digging that hole for the DiLaurentises’ big twenty-person gazebo. The first time Aria had been in Ali’s backyard, she’d stood almost precisely where that hole—and Ali’s body—would end up being, way at the back of the property near the woods. It was that fateful Saturday at the beginning of sixth grade, when they’d all shown up in Ali’s yard to steal the piece of her Time Capsule flag. Aria wished she could go back and change what had happened that day, too.

Judge Baxter emerged from his chamber. He was portly and red-faced, and had a squished-down nose and small, beady eyes. Aria suspected he’d smell like a cigar if she were closer. When Baxter summoned the two lawyers to the bench, Aria sat up straighter. The three of them talked heatedly, pointing every so often at Ian’s empty seat.

“This is crazy,” Hanna murmured, glancing over her shoulder. “Ian’s really late.”

The courtroom doors burst open, and the girls jumped. A cop Aria recognized from Ian’s arraignment strode up the aisle, right through the saloon-style doors and straight to the bench. “I just reached his family,” he said in a gruff voice. Sunlight glimmered off his silvery badge, bouncing shards of light all over the room. “They’re looking.”

Aria’s throat went dry. “Looking?” She exchanged a look with the others.

“What do they mean by that?” Emily squeaked.

Spencer bit her thumbnail. “Oh my God.”

Through the still-open door, Aria could see a black sedan pulled up to the curb. Ian’s father got out of the backseat. He was wearing funeral black and had a solemn, terrified look on his face. Aria assumed his mother wasn’t there because she was in the hospital.

A police car pulled up behind the sedan, but only two Rosewood police officers got out.

In seconds, Ian’s father walked up the aisle to the bench. “He was in his bedroom last night,” Mr. Thomas murmured quietly to Baxter—but not quietly enough. “I don’t know how this could happen.”

The judge’s face twitched for a moment. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Ian’s father hung his head solemnly. “He’s…gone.”

Aria’s mouth dropped open, her heart ricocheting around in her chest. Emily let out a moan. Hanna clutched her stomach, a gurgling noise escaping from the back of her throat. Spencer stood up halfway. “I think I should…,” she started, but trailed off and sat back down.

Judge Baxter banged his gavel. “I’m calling a recess,” he shouted to the crowd. “Until further notice. We’ll call you back when we’re ready.”

He made a motioning signal with his hands. All at once, about twenty Rosewood cops approached the bench, walkie-talkies blaring, guns poised in their holsters, ready to be pulled out and fired. After a few instructions, the cops turned away from the bench and started marching out of the courtroom to their cars.

He’s gone. Aria glanced out the window again, into the valley. There was a lot of Rosewood down there. Plenty of places for Ian to hide.

Emily sank onto the bench, raking her hands through her hair. “How could this happen?”

“Wasn’t there a cop watching him at all times?” Hanna echoed. “I mean, how could he have slipped out of the house without them seeing? It’s not possible!”

“Yes, it is.”

They all looked over at Spencer. Her eyes darted back and forth mechanically, and her hands fluttered. She slowly raised her head and gazed at the three of them, her face dripping with guilt. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she whispered. “About…Ian. And you’re not going to like it.”

“On your left!” Hanna screamed.

A woman walking a wiener dog jumped and scuttled out of Hanna’s way. It was Friday evening after dinner, and Hanna was running the Stockbridge Trail, a three-mile loop that wound behind the old stone mansion that was now owned by the Rosewood Y. It probably wasn’t the safest thing, running on a secluded path with Ian Thomas allegedly on the loose. Although if Spencer had just sucked it up and told the cops Ian had broken house arrest and visited her the day before, he wouldn’t have escaped.