Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

She heard Maya breathe out and nervously took another sip of Jack Daniel’s from the bottle.

“We were best friends,” Emily said, rubbing her fingers between the ratty blue fabric of the photo booth curtain. “I cared about her so much. So this one day, sort of out of the blue, I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Well, Ali and I were in this tree house in her backyard—we went there a lot to talk. We were sitting up there, talking about this guy that she liked, some older boy whose name she wouldn’t say, and I just felt like I couldn’t hold any of it in anymore. So I leaned over…and kissed her.”

Maya made a small sniffing noise.

“She wasn’t into it, though. She was even kind of distant and said, like, ‘Well, now I know why you get so quiet when we’re changing for gym!’”

“God,” Maya said.

Emily took another sip of whiskey and felt dizzy. She’d never had this much to drink. And here was one of her biggest secrets, hanging out like granny underwear on a clothesline. “Ali said she didn’t think best friends should kiss,” she went on. “So I tried to play it off as a joke. But when I went home, I realized how I really felt. So I wrote her this letter, telling her that I loved her. I don’t think she ever got it, though. If she did, she never said anything.”

A tear plopped on Emily’s bare knee. Maya noticed it, and smeared it with her finger.

“I still think about her a lot.” Emily sighed. “I’d sort of pushed that memory back, told myself it was just about her being my very best friend but not anything, you know… else …but now I don’t know.”

They sat there for a few minutes. The party sounds filtered in. Every few seconds, Emily heard the rough flicker of someone’s Zippo lighting a cigarette. She wasn’t that surprised about what she’d just said about Ali. It was scary, of course—but it was also the truth. In a way, it felt good to have finally figured it out.

“Since we’re sharing,” Maya said quietly, “I have something to tell you, too.”

She turned her forearm over to show Emily the white, raised scar on her wrist. “You might have seen this.”

“Yeah,” Emily whispered, squinting at it in the pale, semidarkness of the booth.

“It’s from one of the times I cut myself with a razor blade. I didn’t know it was going to go so deep. There was so much blood. My parents took me to the emergency room.”

“You cut yourself on purpose?” Emily whispered.

“Um…yeah. I mean, I don’t really do it anymore. I try not to.”

“Why do you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Maya said. “Sometimes I just…feel like I need to. You can touch it, if you want.”

Emily did. It was puckered and smooth, not like real skin at all. Touching it felt like the most intimate thing Emily had ever done. She reached over to hug Maya.

Maya’s body shook. She buried her head in Emily’s neck. Like before, she smelled like artificial bananas. Emily pressed herself to Maya’s slight chest. What was it like to cut yourself, to watch yourself bleed like that? Emily had her fair share of baggage, but even in the wake of her absolute worst memories—like of when Ali rejected her, or of The Jenna Thing—she’d felt guilty and horrible and strange, but she’d never wanted to hurt herself.

Maya raised her head and met Emily’s eyes. Then smiling a little sadly, she kissed Emily’s lips. Emily blinked at her, surprised.

“Sometimes best friends do kiss,” Maya said. “See?”

They hung apart, nose practically touching nose. Outside, the crickets sawed away furiously.

Then Maya reached for her. Emily melted into her lips. Their mouths were open and she felt Maya’s soft tongue. Emily’s chest clenched up excitedly as she raked her hands through Maya’s rough hair, then down to her shoulders, then her back. Maya stuck her hands under Emily’s polo shirt and pressed her fingers flat against her belly. Emily self-consciously flinched but then relaxed. This felt a zillion times different than kissing Ben.

Maya’s hands traveled up her body and felt over her bra. Emily shut her eyes. Maya’s mouth tasted delicious, like Jack Daniel’s and licorice. Next, Maya kissed Emily’s chest and shoulders. Emily threw her head back. Someone had painted a moon and a bunch of stars on the photo booth’s ceiling.

Suddenly, the curtain started to open. Emily jumped, but it was too late—someone had torn the curtain back completely. Then Emily saw who it was. “Oh my God,” she sputtered.

“Shit,” Maya echoed. The Jack Daniel’s bottle swished onto the floor.

Ben held two cups of beer, one in each hand. “Well. This explains things.”

“Ben…I…” Emily scrambled out of the booth, bumping her head on the door.

“Don’t get up for me,” Ben said in a horrible, mocking, angry-yet-hurt voice Emily had never heard before.

“No…,” Emily squeaked. “You don’t understand.”

She climbed out of the booth completely. So did Maya. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily noticed Maya pick up their strip of photos and stuff it into her pocket.

“Don’t even talk,” Ben spat. Then he turned and threw one of the cups of beer at her. It splashed warmly all over Emily’s legs, her shoes, and her shorts. The cup bounced crazily into the bushes.

“Ben!” Emily cried.

Ben hesitated, then threw the other one more directly at Maya. It splashed her face and hair. Maya screamed.

“Stop it!” Emily gasped.

“You fucking dykes,” Ben said. She heard the crackly tears in his voice. Then he turned and ran crookedly into the darkness.

“Finland! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

It was an hour later, and Aria was just stepping out of the photo booth. Noel Kahn stood in front of her, naked except for his Calvin Klein boxers, which were wet and clingy. He was holding a yellow plastic cup of beer and her just-developed strip of pictures. Noel shook his hair around a little, and water from his hair sprayed onto her APC miniskirt.

“Why are you all wet?” Aria asked.

“We were playing water polo.”

Aria glanced at the pond. The boys were batting one another in the heads with pink fun-noodles. On the banks, girls in nearly identical Alberta Ferrari minidresses huddled together, gossiping. Over by the hedges, not that far from them, she spied her brother, Mike. He was with a petite girl in a plaid micromini and platform heels.

Noel followed her gaze. “That’s one of those Quaker school girls,” he murmured. “Those chicks are nuts.”

Mike glanced up and saw Aria and Noel together. He gave Aria an approving nod.

Noel tapped Aria’s photo strip with his thumb. “These are gorgeous.”

Aria looked at them. Bored out of her skull, she’d been taking pictures of herself in the booth for twenty minutes. This round, she’d made sultry, sex-kitten expressions.

Très sigh. She’d come here thinking that Ezra, jealous and lustful, would come and whisk her away. But, duh, he was a teacher, and a teacher wouldn’t go to a students’ party.

“Noel!” James Freed called from across the lawn. “Keg’s tapped!”

“Shit,” Noel said. He gave Aria a wet kiss on her cheek. “This beer’s for you. Don’t leave.”

“Uh-huh,” Aria said drolly, watching him scamper away, his boxers slowly sliding down to reveal his pale, defined-from-running butt.

“He really likes you, you know.”

Aria turned. Mona Vanderwaal sat on the ground a few feet away. Her blond hair was in coils around her face and her gold-rimmed bug-eye sunglasses had slid down her nose. Noel’s older brother, Eric, had his head in her lap.