Sara Shepard - Wicked

Aria blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. She thought about how Ian hadn’t shown up at his trial yesterday. The cops had run out of the room, vowing to find him. Ian could have been here all along.

Emily dry-heaved. Hanna took a huge step back, crying out. It was so quiet out in the woods, it was easy to hear Spencer’s shaky swallow. She shook her head. “He was like this when I got here,” she whimpered. “I swear.”

Aria was afraid to move any closer to Ian, and kept her eyes fixed on his immobile hand, almost certain he was going to spring up and grab her. The air around him was absolutely dead and still. Far off in the distance, she swore she heard someone giggle.

And then Aria’s cell phone, tucked inside her small, clam-shaped clutch, started to ring. She let out a small “eep,” surprised. Then Spencer’s buzzed, and Aria’s chimed. Hanna’s cell phone, which was nestled inside her now-muddy clutch, let out a bleat.

The girls stared at one another in the darkness. “There’s no way,” Spencer whispered.

“It can’t….” Hanna held her phone by the very tips of her fingers, as if afraid to really touch it.

Aria stared at her Treo’s screen in disbelief. One new text message.

She glanced back at Ian, his stiff limbs twisted, his beautiful face vacant and lifeless. With a shudder, she looked down at the screen again and forced herself to read the text.

He had to go.

—A

Yup, Ian’s dead. And our favorite foursome probably wish they were. Hanna’s daddy hates her. Spencer’s broke. Aria’s a hot mess. And Emily’s switched teams so many times I’m getting whiplash. I’d feel bad for them, but y’know, that’s life. Or, um, death, in Ian’s case.

I suppose I could let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, yadda yadda. But where’s the fun in that? These pretty little bitches got everything I ever wanted, and now I’m going to make sure they get exactly what they deserve. Does that make me sound awful? Sorry, but as every pretty little liar knows, sometimes the truth’s ugly—and it always hurts.

I’ll be watching….

Mwah!

—A

I am overjoyed to be writing yet another acknowledgment letter for the next Pretty Little Liars adventure. Thanks, as usual, to those at Alloy who help flesh out the creepy, thrilling world of Rosewood: Josh Bank and Les Morgenstein, whose ideas are beyond compare, Sara Shandler, who is thoughtful and incredibly smart, Kristin Marang, who brought PLL to online fans, and Lanie Davis, who nurtured Wicked from start to finish with such clever, poignant insights and suggestions. Thank you all for caring so much about this series! Words cannot properly express my gratitude. Thanks too to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris, and to the lovely team at HarperCollins: Farrin Jacobs, Elise Howard, and Gretchen Hirsch. All of you give these books that extra-special sparkle. Love to my parents, Shep and Mindy, to my sister, Ali, and her killer cat, Polo, and to my husband, Joel, for yet again reading various drafts of this book—and providing me with a few factual tidbits woven through the pages. And last but not least, a huge shout out to my fabulous cousins: Greg Jones, Ryan Jones, Colleen Lorence, Brian Lorence, and Kristin Murdy. Here’s to plenty more human pyramids and feats of strength in the very near future!

Credits

Hand Lettering by Peter Horridge

Doll design by Tina Amantula

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.