Sara Shepard - Crushed

“Does she really want to apologize?”

Mrs. Fields’s eyelid twitched. “We should concentrate on you and me, don’t you think? I’m so happy that we’re out together. I hope we can do this more often.”

Emily cocked her head. “So . . . that means Carolyn is still really mad?”

Mrs. Fields’s cell phone blared, and she made a big production of rooting through her bag to find it. “I need to take this,” she said briskly, even though Emily was pretty sure it was only her dad . . . or maybe Carolyn herself.

Emily leaned against a rack of jackets and sighed. Okay, so things weren’t perfect yet. Mrs. Fields had told her that Carolyn wanted to let bygones be bygones, but Emily had seen no indication of that yet. Nor had she and her family had a conversation about Emily’s pregnancy or the baby. But these things took time, right? Banana pancakes were still a huge gesture.

As her mom slipped through the front door, Emily pulled out her own phone and checked her e-mail. There was one new message from the Rosewood Day May Day Senior Prom Committee: Don’t forget to buy a ticket for the Senior Prom! May 7, 7 PM . The Four Seasons Hotel, 1 Logan Square, Philadelphia. Dinner and dancing.

A lonely feeling swept through her. She’d already bought a ticket for prom; her friends were making her go. But the only person Emily wanted to invite—a girl named Jordan Richards she’d met on the cruise—couldn’t come.

Thankfully, there were no new alerts about Tabitha. Emily’s finger bumped the button to her photo gallery, and suddenly, a picture of Alison DiLaurentis stared back. It was the real Alison DiLaurentis, the girl who’d come back to Rosewood last year and later revealed herself as A. Emily had snapped the photo of Ali in her bedroom the day Ali had kissed her. It’s me, Em , Emily could practically hear Ali saying. I’m back. I’ve wanted to do that again for so long. I’ve missed you so much.

Emily had continued to love Ali despite everything. Even after Ali had confessed that she’d killed her own sister, Emily held out hope that she’d come to her senses and atone for what she’d done. Her love for Ali had been so intense that she’d left the door open for her in the Poconos instead of barricading it shut and letting the girls’ would-be killer burn.

She’d kept the secret for a while, but she finally told her friends last week. Now, they were starting to believe what Emily knew all along: Real Ali wasn’t dead, and she was their New A. That meant that Real Ali had witnessed all of the girls’ transgressions last summer, including Emily smuggling her baby out of the hospital and away from Gayle Riggs, a woman she’d thought was crazy—and a woman who was now dead. Ali might have been in Jamaica, too, and she might be Tabitha’s real killer. It also meant Real Ali had been on the cruise ship last week. How had they not seen her? How had no one seen her?

Emily’s thumb hovered over DELETE. After A had threatened her baby’s life, she’d finally come to hate Real Ali. And yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to get rid of the one photo she had of her. Sighing, Emily scrolled to the end of her photo gallery and looked at a picture of another girl she was pretty sure she loved. Jordan grinned into the camera. Her body was backlit by the blazing Puerto Rican sun, and blue water stretched behind her for miles. Emily touched the screen, wishing she could feel Jordan’s soft cheek one more time.

“She’s hot.” The shaved-head salesgirl glanced over Emily’s shoulder at Jordan’s photo. “That your girlfriend?”

Emily smiled bashfully. “Kind of.”

One corner of the girl’s lip curled into a smile. “What’s that mean?”

Emily slipped the phone into her pocket. It means she’s a fugitive . It means she jumped off a cruise ship in Bermuda to avoid the FBI, and I have no idea where she is now or when I’ll see her again.

She wandered toward the shoe section, which smelled heavily of leather and rubber. She would never forget those last few minutes she and Jordan were together. In Jordan’s past life, she’d been Katherine DeLong, the Preppy Thief, the girl who stole boats, cars, and planes. When Emily met her, she’d just escaped from prison and changed her name, and was ready for a new start. The FBI agents, probably alerted by Real Ali/New A, chased both of them to the ship’s railing. Jordan had given Emily one last look, then dived into the bay to escape.

When Emily returned home, she’d received a postcard from Jordan. We’ll see each other again . Emily was dying to write back, but Jordan wasn’t stupid enough to include a return address. Wherever she was—Thailand, Brazil, some teeny island off the coast of Spain—she was hopefully hiding well enough to evade the cops.

Emily ran her fingers over the smooth leather of a display pair of Doc Martens, getting an idea. She pulled out her phone again, opened the Twitter app, and logged into her account. Then she copy-pasted the prom invite into a new tweet. PROM IS IN TWO WEEKS, she typed. WISH I COULD TAKE MY TRUE LOVE.

She hit TWEET, feeling satisfied. Hopefully Jordan would see it and understand what it meant. And even though Jordan probably wouldn’t reply, at least she’d know Emily was thinking about her.

When her phone buzzed a second later, her spirits soared— Jordan already! But the e-mail was from someone named Special Agent Jasmine Fuji. NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU ABOUT TABITHA CLARK.

Emily’s vision narrowed. The growling voices in the song pumping through the store’s speakers suddenly sounded like vicious dogs. Pressing herself into a back corner, she opened the e-mail. Dear Miss Fields , it read. I’m a special agent in charge of the Tabitha Clark murder investigation. Your name was on a list of guests at The Cliffs resort in Negril, Jamaica, at the same time Miss Clark was there. Procedure dictates that I interview everyone to get a better picture of what happened that night. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. Sincerely, Special Agent Jasmine Fuji.

“Emily?”

Her mother was staring at her, her faux-croc purse tucked under her arm. “Are you okay?”

Emily licked her dry lips. There was no way she could talk to a cop. Jasmine Fuji would know instantly she was lying.

Mrs. Fields took her arm. “You’re so pale. Let’s get some air.”

The street smelled of car exhaust and stale beer from the dive bar next door. Emily took heaving breaths, trying to tell herself this wasn’t a big deal. But it was. She couldn’t lie to a federal agent.

Beep.

Dizzily, she glanced at her phone again. As if on cue, a text message from an anonymous sender had come in. Emily gasped as she read the note.

Wait until I tell Agent Fuji that you and your GF are perfect for each other—you’re both cold-blooded criminals.

—A

“Go, Noel, go !” Aria Montgomery screamed from the sidelines of the lacrosse field the following afternoon at lunchtime. Her boyfriend, Noel Kahn, dashed across the grass and tried for his fifth goal in a row. Aria held her breath as the ball sailed into the net.

“Yes!” she screamed, slapping hands with Hanna. The lacrosse team was raising money for the local homeless shelter, and people had placed donation bets on which player could get the most balls past the goalie in under a minute. Naturally, Aria had ten bucks on Noel.

Once the minute was up—Noel was in second place after Jim Freed—Noel trotted over to her. “You were amazing!” Aria squealed, wrapping her arms around him.