Sara Shepard: Perfect

The girls hated to think of what eighth grade would be like if things kept going like this. But it didn’t mean they hated Ali .

Aria wound a piece of long, dark hair around her fingers and laughed nervously. “Kill her because she’s so cute, maybe.” She hit the camera’s power switch, turning it on.

“And because she wears a size zero,” Hanna added.

“That’s what I meant.” Spencer glanced at Ali’s phone, which was wedged between two couch cushions. “Want to read her texts?”

“I do,” Hanna whispered.

Emily stood up from her perch on the couch’s arm. “I don’t know….” She started inching away from Ali’s phone, as if just being close to it incriminated her.

Spencer scooped up Ali’s cell. She looked curiously at the blank screen. “C’mon. Don’t you want to know who texted her?”

“It was probably just Katy,” Emily whispered, referring to one of Ali’s hockey friends. “You should put it down, Spence.”

Aria took the camera off the tripod and walked toward Spencer. “Let’s do it.”

They gathered around. Spencer opened the phone and pushed a button. “It’s locked.”

“Do you know her password?” Aria asked, still filming.

“Try her birthday,” Hanna whispered. She took the phone from Spencer and punched in the digits. The screen didn’t change. “What do I do now?”

They heard Ali’s voice before they saw her. “What are you guys doing?”

Spencer dropped Ali’s phone back onto the couch. Hanna stepped back so abruptly, she banged her shin against the coffee table.

Ali stomped through the door to the family room, her eyebrows knitted together. “Were you looking at my phone?”

“Of course not!” Hanna cried.

“We were,” Emily admitted, sitting on the couch, then standing up again. Aria shot her a look and then hid behind the camera lens.

But Ali was no longer paying attention. Spencer’s older sister, Melissa, a senior in high school, burst into the Hastings’ kitchen from the garage. A takeout bag from Otto, a restaurant near the Hastings’ neighborhood, hung from her wrists. Her adorable boyfriend, Ian, was with her. Ali stood up straighter. Spencer smoothed her dirty-blond hair and straightened her tiara.

Ian stepped into the family room. “Hey, girls.”

“Hi,” Spencer said in a loud voice. “How are you, Ian?”

“I’m cool.” Ian smiled at Spencer. “Cute crown.”

“Thanks!” Spencer fluttered her coal-black eyelashes.

Ali rolled her eyes. “Be a little more obvious,” she singsonged under her breath.

But it was hard not to crush on Ian. He had curly blond hair, perfect white teeth, and stunning blue eyes, and none of them could forget the recent soccer game where he’d changed his shirt midquarter and, for five glorious seconds, they’d gotten a full-on view of his naked chest. It was almost universally believed that his gorgeousness was wasted on Melissa, who was totally prudish and acted way too much like Mrs. Hastings, Spencer’s mother.

Ian plopped down on the edge of the couch near Ali. “So, what are you girls doing?”

“Oh, not much,” Aria said, adjusting the camera’s focus. “Making a film.”

“A film?” Ian looked amused. “Can I be in it?”

“Of course,” Spencer said quickly. She plopped down on the other side of him.

Ian grinned into the camera. “So what are my lines?”

“It’s a talk show,” Spencer explained. She glanced at Ali, gauging her reaction, but Ali didn’t respond. “I’m the host. You and Ali are my guests. I’ll do you first.”

Ali let out a sarcastic snort and Spencer’s cheeks flamed as pink as her Ralph Lauren T-shirt. Ian let the reference pass by. “Okay. Interview away.”

Spencer sat up straighter on the couch, crossing her muscular legs just like a talk show host. She picked up the pink microphone from Hanna’s karaoke machine and held it under her chin. “Welcome to the Spencer Hastings show. For my first question—”

“Ask him who his favorite teacher at Rosewood is,” Aria called out.

Ali perked up. Her blue eyes glittered. “That’s a good question for you, Aria. You should ask him if he wants to hook up with any of his teachers. In vacant parking lots.”

Aria’s mouth fell open. Hanna and Emily, who were standing off to the side near the credenza, exchanged a confused glance.

“All my teachers are dogs,” Ian said slowly, not getting whatever was happening.

“Ian, can you please help me?” Melissa made a clattering noise in the kitchen.

“One sec,” Ian called out.

“Ian.” Melissa sounded annoyed.

“I got one.” Spencer tossed her long blond hair behind her ears. She was loving that Ian was paying more attention to them than to Melissa. “What would your ultimate graduation gift be?”

“Ian,” Melissa called through her teeth, and Spencer glanced at her sister through the wide French doors to the kitchen. The light from the fridge cast a shadow across her face. “I. Need. Help.”

“Easy,” Ian answered, ignoring her. “I’d want a base-jumping lesson.”

“Base-jumping?” Aria called. “What’s that?”

“Parachuting from the top of a building,” Ian explained.

As Ian told a story about Hunter Queenan, one of his friends who had base-jumped, the girls leaned forward eagerly. Aria focused the camera on Ian’s jaw, which looked hewn out of stone. Her eyes flickered for a moment to Ali. She was sitting next to Ian, staring off into space. Was Ali bored ? She probably had better things to do—that text was probably about plans with her glamorous older friends.

Aria glanced again at Ali’s cell phone, which was resting on the cushion of the couch next to her arm. What was she hiding from them? What was she up to?

Don’t you sometimes want to kill her? Spencer’s question floated through Aria’s brain as Ian rambled on. Deep down, she knew they all felt that way. It might be better if Ali were just…gone, instead of leaving them behind.

“So Hunter said he got the most amazing rush when he base-jumped,” Ian concluded. “Better than anything. Including sex.”

“Ian,” Melissa warned.

“That sounds incredible.” Spencer looked to Ali on the other side of Ian. “Doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Ali looked sleepy, almost like she was in a trance. “Incredible.”

The rest of the week had been a blur: final exams, planning parties, more get-togethers, and more tension. And then, on the evening of the last day of seventh grade, Ali went missing. Just like that. One minute she was there, the next…gone.

The police scoured Rosewood for clues. They questioned the four girls separately, asking if Ali had been acting strangely or if anything unusual had happened recently. They all thought long and hard. The night she disappeared had been strange—she’d been hypnotizing them and had run out of the barn after she and Spencer had a stupid fight about the blinds and just… never came back. But had there been other strange nights? They considered the night they tried to read Ali’s texts, but not for very long—after Ian and Melissa left, Ali had snapped out of her funk. They’d had a dance contest and played with Hanna’s karaoke machine. The mystery texts on Ali’s phone had been forgotten.

Next, the cops asked if they thought anyone close to Ali might have wanted to hurt her. Hanna, Aria, and Emily all thought of the same thing: Don’t you sometimes want to kill her? Spencer had snarled. But no. She’d been kidding. Hadn’t she?

“Nobody wanted to hurt Ali,” Emily said, pushing the worry out of her mind.

“Absolutely not,” Aria answered too, in her own separate interview, darting her eyes away from the burly cop sitting next to her on the porch swing.