Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

“Wait,” Aria squeaked, her voice still filled with tears. Ezra retreated into his kitchen, his back to her. She followed him in.

Ezra whirled around to face her. He was unshaven and looked exhausted. “What are you doing here?”

Aria chewed on her lip. “I’m here to see you. I got some news….” Her Treo sat on his sideboard. She picked it up. “Thanks. You found it.”

Ezra glared at the Treo. “Okay, you got it. Can you leave now?”

“What’s going on?” She walked toward him. “I got this news. I had to see—”

“Yeah, I got some news too,” he interrupted. Ezra moved away from her. “Seriously, Aria. I can’t…I can’t even look at you.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “What?” Aria stared at him, confused.

Ezra lowered his eyes. “I found what you said about me on your cell phone.”

Aria wrinkled her eyebrows. “My cell phone?”

Ezra raised his head. His eyes flashed with anger. “Do you think I’m stupid? Was this all just a game? A dare ?”

“What are you…?”

Ezra sighed angrily. “Well, you know what? You got me. Okay? I’m the brunt of your big joke. You happy? Now get out.”

“I don’t understand,” Aria said loudly.

Ezra slapped his palm against the wall. The force of it made Aria jump. “Don’t play dumb! I’m not some boy, Aria!”

Aria’s whole body started to tremble. “I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you explain, please? I’m kind of falling apart here!”

Ezra took his hand off the wall and started to pace around the tiny room. “Fine. After you left, I tried to sleep. There was this…this beeping . You know what it was?” He pointed to the Treo. “Your cell phone thing. The only way to shut it up was to open your text messages .”

Aria wiped her eyes.

Ezra crossed his arms over his chest. “Shall I quote them for you?”

Then Aria realized. The text messages. “Wait! No! You don’t understand!”

Ezra trembled. “ Student-teacher conference? Extra credit? This sound familiar?”

“No, Ezra,” Aria stammered. “You don’t understand.” The world was spinning. Aria gripped the edge of Ezra’s kitchen table.

“I’m waiting,” Ezra said.

“This friend of mine was killed,” she began. “They just found her body.” Aria opened her mouth to say more, but couldn’t find the words. Ezra stood at the farthest point in the room from her, behind the bathtub.

“It’s all so silly,” Aria said. “Can you please come over here? Can you at least hug me?”

Ezra crossed his arms over his chest and looked down. He stood that way for what felt like a long time. “I really liked you,” he finally said, his voice thick.

Aria choked back a sob. “I really like you, too….” She walked over to him.

But Ezra stepped away. “No. You have to get out of here.”

“But…”

Ezra clapped his hand over her mouth. “Please,” he said a little desperately. “ Please leave.”

Aria widened her eyes and her heart started to pound. Alarms went off in her head. This felt… wrong. On impulse, she bit down into Ezra’s hand.

“What the fuck ?” he shrieked, pulling away.

Aria stood back, dazed. Blood dripped out of Ezra’s hand onto the floor.

“You’re insane!” Ezra cried.

Aria breathed heavily. She couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. So she turned and ran for the door. As her hand turned the doorknob, something screamed past her, bounced off the wall, and landed next to her foot. It was a copy of Being and Nothingness , by Jean-Paul Sartre. Aria turned back to Ezra, her mouth open in shock.

“Get out !” Ezra boomed.

Aria slammed the door behind her. She tore down across the lawn as fast as her legs would carry her.

The next day, Spencer stood at her old bedroom window, smoking a Marlboro and looking across her lawn into Alison’s old bedroom. It was dark and empty. Then, her eyes moved to the DiLaurentises’ yard. The flashing lights hadn’t stopped since they found her.

The police had put up DO NOT CROSS tape all around the concrete area of Alison’s old backyard, even though they had already removed her body from the ground. They’d put huge tents around the area while doing that, too, so Spencer hadn’t seen anything. Not that she’d have wanted to. It was beyond awful to think that Ali’s body had been next door to her, rotting in the ground for three years. Spencer remembered the construction before Ali disappeared. They dug the hole right around the night she went missing. She knew, too, that they’d filled it after Ali disappeared but wasn’t sure when. Someone had just dumped her there.

She stubbed out her Marlboro in the brick siding of her house and turned back to Lucky magazine. She’d hardly exchanged a word with her family since yesterday’s confrontation and she’d been trying to calm herself down by going methodically through it and marking everything she wanted to buy with the magazine’s little YES stickers. As she looked at a page on tweed blazers, though, her eyes glazed over.

She couldn’t even talk to her parents about this. Yesterday, after they confronted her at breakfast, Spencer had wandered outside to see what the sirens were all about—ambulances still made her nervous, from both The Jenna Thing and Ali’s disappearance. As she walked across her lawn to the DiLaurentis house, she sensed something and turned back. Her parents had come out to see what was going on too. When they saw her turn, they quickly looked away. The police told her to stand back, that this area was off limits. Then Spencer saw the morgue van. One of the policeman’s walkie-talkies crackled, “Alison.”

Her body had grown very cold. The world spun. Spencer slumped down on the grass. Someone spoke to her, but she couldn’t understand him. “You’re in shock,” she finally heard. “Just try to calm down.” Spencer’s field of vision was so narrow, she wasn’t sure who it was—only that it wasn’t her mom or dad. The guy came back with a blanket and told her to sit there for a while and keep warm.

Once Spencer felt well enough to get up, whoever had helped her was gone. Her parents had left too. They hadn’t even bothered to see if she was okay.

She’d spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday in her room, only going out into the hall to the bathroom when she knew no one else was around. She hoped someone would come up and check on her, but when she heard a small, tentative knock on her door earlier this afternoon, Spencer didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure why. She listened to whoever it was sigh and pad back down the hall.

And then, only a half hour ago, Spencer had watched her dad’s Jaguar back out of the driveway and turn toward the main road. Her mom was in the passenger seat; Melissa was in the back. She had no idea where they were going.

She slumped down in her computer chair and pulled up that first e-mail from A, the one talking about coveting things she couldn’t have. After reading it a few times, she clicked REPLY. Slowly she typed, Are you Alison?

She hesitated before hitting SEND. Were all the police lights making her trippy? Dead girls didn’t have Hotmail accounts. Nor did they have Instant Messenger screen names. Spencer had to get a grip—someone was pretending to be Ali. But who?

She stared up at the Mondrian mobile she’d bought last year at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Then she heard a plink sound. There it was again.

Plink .

It sounded really close, actually. Like at her window. Spencer sat up just as a pebble hit her window again. Someone was throwing rocks.