Sara Shepard - Unbelievable

She did it, you know.

Spencer’s eyes sprang open. Her judges seemed to be on pause. Quentin held a croissant an inch from his face. Amanda’s head was cocked at an awkward angle. Jeffrey kept his napkin at his lips. Spencer wondered, suddenly, if she’d just voiced her newly recalled memory out loud.

“Well,” Jeffrey said finally. “Thank you, Spencer.”

Amanda stood, tossing her napkin on her plate. “This has been very interesting.” Spencer was pretty sure that was shorthand for You have no chance of winning.

The other interviewers snaked away, as did most of the rest of the candidates. Quentin was the only one who remained sitting. He studied her carefully, a proud smile on his face. “You’re a breath of fresh air, giving us an honest answer like that,” he said in a low, confidential voice. “I’ve followed your friend’s story for a while now. It’s just awful. Do the police have any suspects?”

The air-conditioning vent far above Spencer’s head showered cold air on her full force, and the image of Melissa beheading a Barbie doll popped into her mind. “They don’t,” she whispered.

But I might.

After school on Friday, Emily wrung out her still-wet-from-swim-practice hair and walked into the yearbook room, which was plastered with snapshots of Rosewood Day’s finest. There was Spencer from last year’s graduation-pin ceremony, accepting the Math Student of the Year award. And there was Hanna, emceeing last year’s Rosewood Day charity fashion show, when she really should’ve been a model herself.

Two hands clapped over Emily’s eyes. “Hey there,” Maya whispered in her ear. “How was swimming?” She said it teasingly, sort of like a nursery rhyme.

“Fine.” Emily felt Maya’s lips brush against hers, but she couldn’t quite kiss back.

Scott Chin, a closeted-but-not-really yearbook photographer, swept into the room. “Guys! Congratulations!” He air-kissed both of them, then reached out to turn Emily’s collar out and sweep a stray kinky hair out of Maya’s face.

“Perfect,” he said.

Scott pointed Maya and Emily toward the white backdrop on the far wall. “We’re taking all the Most Likely To photos there. Personally, I would love to see the two of you against a rainbow background. Wouldn’t that be awesome? But we have to be consistent.”

Emily frowned. “Most likely to…what? I thought we were voted best couple.”

Scott’s houndstooth newsboy cap slipped over one of his eyes as he bent over the camera tripod. “No, you were voted most likely to be together at the five-year reunion.”

Emily’s mouth fell open. At the five-year reunion ? Wasn’t that a tad extreme?

She massaged the back of her neck, trying to calm down. But she hadn’t felt calm since she found A’s note in the restaurant bathroom. Not knowing what else to do with it, she’d stashed it in the front pocket of her bag. She’d been taking it out periodically through her classes, each time pressing it to her nose to smell the sweet scent of banana gum.

“Say gouda!” Scott cried, and Emily moved toward Maya and tried to smile. The flash from Scott’s camera left spots in front of her eyes, and she suddenly noticed that the yearbook room smelled like burning electronics. In the next shot, Maya kissed Emily on the cheek. And in the next, Emily willed herself to kiss Maya on the lips.

“Hot!” Scott encouraged.

Scott peeked into his camera’s preview windowpane. “You’re free to go,” he said. Then, he paused, looking curiously at Emily. “Actually, before you do, there’s something you might want to see.”

He led Emily to a large drafting table and pointed to a bunch of pictures arranged in a two-page layout. Missing You Terribly, said the headline across the top of the mock-up. A familiar seventh-grade portrait stared at Emily—not only did she have a copy in the top drawer of her nightstand, but she’d also seen it nearly every night on the news for months now.

“The school never did a page for Alison when she went missing,” Scott explained. “And now that she…well…we thought we should. We might even have a commemorative event to show off all these old Ali photos. Sort of an Ali retrospective, if you will.”

Emily touched the edge of one of the photos. It was of Emily, Ali, Spencer, Aria, and Hanna at a lunch table. In the photo, they all clutched Diet Cokes, their heads thrown back in hysterical laughter.

Next to it was a photo of just Ali and Emily, walking down the hall with their books clutched to their chests. Emily towered over the petite Ali, and Ali was leaning up to her, whispering something in her ear. Emily bit down on her knuckles. Even though she’d found out lots of things about Ali, things that she wished Ali had shared with her years ago, she still missed her so much that it ached.

There was someone else in the background of the photo that Emily hadn’t noticed at first. She had long, dark hair and a familiar apple-cheeked face. Her eyes were round and green, and her lips were pink and bow-shaped. Jenna Cavanaugh.

Jenna’s head was turned toward someone beside her, but Emily could only see the edge of the other girl’s thin, pale arm. It was strange to see Jenna…sighted. Emily glanced at Maya, who had moved on to the next photo, obviously not seeing this one’s significance. There was so much Emily hadn’t told her.

“Is that Ali?” Maya said. She pointed to a shot of Ali and her brother, Jason, embracing on the Rosewood Day commons.

“Uh, yeah. ” Emily couldn’t control the annoyance in her voice.

“Oh.” Maya stood back. “It just doesn’t look like her, is all.”

“It looks like every other picture of Ali here.” Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes as she glanced at the picture. Ali looked impossibly young, maybe only ten or eleven. It had been taken before they’d become friends. It was hard to believe that once upon a time, Ali had been the leader of a completely different clique—Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe had been her underlings. They’d even teased Emily and the other girls from time to time, making fun of Emily’s hair, which was tinged green from hours spent in chlorinated water.

Emily studied Jason’s face. He seemed so delighted to be giving Ali a bear hug. What in the world had he meant in that news interview yesterday, when he said his family was messed up?

“What’s this?” Maya pointed to the photos on the next desk.

“Oh, that’s Brenna’s project.” Scott stuck his tongue out, and Emily couldn’t help but giggle. The bitter rivalry between Scott and Brenna Richardson, another yearbook photographer, was the stuff of reality TV. “But for once, I think it’s a good idea. She took pictures of the insides of people’s bags to show what a typical Rosewood student carries around each day. Spencer hasn’t seen it yet, though, so she might not approve.”

Emily leaned over the next desk. The yearbook committee had written each bag’s owner’s name next to each photo. Inside Noel Kahn’s lacrosse duffel bag were a bacteria-laden towel, the lucky squirrel stuffed animal he always talked about, and Axe body spray. Ick. Naomi Zeigler’s elephant-gray quilted tote held an iPod Nano, a Dolce & Gabbana glasses case, and a square object that was either a tiny camera or a jeweler’s loupe. Mona Vanderwaal carried around M.A.C. lip gloss, a pack of Snif tissues, and three different organizers. Part of a photo showing a slim arm with a frayed sleeve cuff poked out of the blue one. Andrew Campbell’s backpack contained eight textbooks, a leather day planner, and the same Nokia Emily had. The photo showed the start of a text message he had either written or received, but Emily couldn’t tell what it said.