Sara Shepard - Unbelievable

Her mother pulled under the awning of the hospital’s main entrance and put the car into park. She let out a long, whinnying sigh, resting her head briefly against the steering wheel. “It scares me to death, driving in Philly.”

Emily stared at her mom, with her stiff gray hair, emerald-green cardigan, and prized pearl necklace that she wore every single day, kind of like Marge on The Simpsons. Emily suddenly realized that she had never seen her mother drive anywhere remotely near Philadelphia. And her mom had always been terrified about merging, even if no cars were coming. “Thanks for picking me up,” she said in a small voice.

Mrs. Fields studied Emily carefully, her lips wobbling. “We were so worried about you. The idea that we might have lost you forever really made us rethink some things. That wasn’t right, sending you to Helene’s the way we did. Emily, we might not accept the decisions you’ve made for…for your life, but we’re going to try and live with it as best we can. That’s what Dr. Phil says. Your father and I have been reading his books.”

Outside the car, a young couple wheeled a Silver Cross pram to their Porsche Cayenne. Two attractive, twenty-something black doctors shoved each other jokingly. Emily breathed in the honeysuckle air and noticed a Wawa market across the street. She was definitely in Rosewood. She hadn’t crash-landed in some other girl’s life.

“Okay,” Emily croaked. Her whole body felt itchy, especially her palms. “Well…thank you. That makes me really happy.”

Mrs. Fields reached into her purse and took out a plastic Barnes & Noble bag. She handed it to Emily. “This is for you.”

Inside was a DVD of Finding Nemo. Emily looked up, confused.

“Ellen DeGeneres is the voice of the funny fish,” Emily’s mother explained in a slightly uh-duh voice. “We thought you might like her.” Emily suddenly got it. Ellen DeGeneres was a fish—a lesbian swimmer, just like Emily.

“Thanks,” she said, clutching the DVD to her chest, oddly touched.

She tumbled out of the car and walked through the hospital’s automatic front door in a daze. As she passed by the check-in, the coffee bar, and the high-end gift shop, her mother’s words slowly sank in. Her family had accepted her ? She wondered if she should call Maya and tell her she was back. But what would she say? I’m home! My parents are cool now! We can date now! It seemed so…cheesy.

Hanna’s room was on the fifth floor. When Emily pushed open the door, Aria and Spencer were already sitting next to her bed, their hands wrapped around Venti Starbucks coffees. A row of ragged black stitches stood out on Hanna’s chin, and she wore a hulking cast on her arm. There was an enormous bouquet of flowers next to her bed, and the whole room smelled like rosemary aromatherapy oil. “Hey, Hanna,” Emily said, shutting the door softly. “How are you?”

Hanna sighed, almost annoyed. “Are you here to ask me about A too?”

Emily looked at Aria, then at Spencer, who was picking nervously at her coffee cup’s cardboard sleeve. It was strange to see Aria and Spencer together—didn’t Aria suspect that Spencer had killed Ali? She raised an eyebrow at Aria, indicating as much, but Aria shook her head, mouthing, I’ll explain later.

Emily looked back at Hanna. “Well, I wanted to see how you were, but yeah…” she started.

“Save it,” Hanna said haughtily, winding a tendril of hair around her finger. “I don’t remember what happened. So we might as well talk about something else.” Her voice wobbled with distress.

Emily stepped back. She looked beseechingly at Aria, her eyes saying, She really doesn’t remember? Aria shook her head no.

“Hanna, if we don’t keep asking, you’re never going to remember,” Spencer urged. “Did you get a text? A note? Maybe A put something in your pocket?”

Hanna glowered at Spencer, her lips smushed closed.

“You found out sometime during or after Mona’s party,” Aria encouraged. “Does it have something to do with that?”

“Maybe A said something incriminating,” Spencer said. “Or maybe you saw the person behind the wheel of the SUV that hit you?”

“Would you just stop?” Tears brimmed at the corners of Hanna’s eyes. “The doctor said pushing me like this isn’t good for my recovery.” After a pause, she ran her hands along her soft cashmere blanket and took a deep breath. “If you guys could go back to the time before Ali died, do you think you could prevent it from happening?”

Emily looked around. Her friends seemed as stunned by the question as she was. “Well, sure,” Aria murmured quietly.

“Of course,” Emily said.

“And you’d still want to?” Hanna goaded. “Would we really want Ali around? Now that we know Ali kept the secret about Toby from us and had been seeing Ian behind our backs? Now that we’ve grown up a little and realized that Ali was basically a bitch?”

“Of course I’d want her here,” Emily said sharply. But when she looked around, her friends were staring at the floor, saying nothing.

“Well, we certainly didn’t want her dead,” Spencer finally mumbled. Aria nodded and scratched at her purple nail polish.

Hanna had wrapped a Hermès scarf around part of her cast in what Emily imagined was an attempt to make it look prettier. The rest of the cast, Emily noticed, was filled with signatures. Everyone from Rosewood had signed already—there was a sweeping signature from Noel Kahn; a tidy one from Spencer’s sister, Melissa; a spiky one from Mr. Jennings, Hanna’s math teacher. Someone had signed the cast only with the word KISSES!, the dot in the exclamation point a smiley face. Emily ran her fingers over the word, as if it were Braille.

After a few more minutes of not saying much at all, Aria, Emily, and Spencer gloomily filed out of the room. They were silent until they reached the elevator bank. “What brought on all that stuff she was saying about Ali?” Emily whispered.

“Hanna had a dream about Ali while she was in the coma.” Spencer shrugged and punched the down button for the elevator.

“We have to get Hanna to remember,” Aria whispered. “She knows who A is.”

It was barely 8 A.M. when they emerged into the parking lot. As an ambulance raced past them, Spencer’s cell phone began to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She checked her pocket, irritated. “Who could be calling me this early in the morning?”

Then Aria’s cell phone buzzed too. And Emily’s.

A cold wind swept over all the girls. The hospital-logo flags that hung from the main awning billowed in the breeze. “No,” Spencer gasped.

Emily peeked at the text’s subject line. It said, KISSES!, just like on Hanna’s cast.

Miss me, bitches? Stop digging for answers, or I’ll have to erase your memories too.—A

That Wednesday afternoon, Spencer waited on Rosewood Country Club’s outdoor patio to begin planning Hanna’s welcome-back masquerade with Mona Vanderwaal. She absentmindedly flipped through the AP econ essay that had been nominated for a Golden Orchid. When she’d stolen the essay from Melissa’s arsenal of old high school papers, Spencer hadn’t understood half of it…and she still didn’t. But since the Golden Orchid judges were going to grill her at Friday’s breakfast, she’d decided to learn it word for word. How hard could it be? She memorized entire monologues for drama club all the time. Plus, she was hoping it would get her mind off A.

She closed her eyes and mouthed the first few paragraphs perfectly. Then she imagined the outfit she’d wear for her Golden Orchid interview—definitely something Calvin or Chanel, maybe with some clear-framed, academic-looking glasses. Maybe she’d even bring in the article the Philadelphia Sentinel had done about her and leave it sticking just slightly out of her bag. Then the interviewers would see it and think, My, she’s already been on the front page of a major newspaper!