Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

‘I’ll get it,’ Aria said.

She tentatively pulled open the front door, but it was only Emily Fields on the other side, her reddish-blond hair messy and her eyes swollen.

‘Hey,’ Emily croaked.

‘Hey,’ Aria answered.

Emily puffed up her cheeks with air – her old nervous habit. She stood there for a moment. Then she said, ‘I should go.’ She started to turn.

‘Wait.’ Aria caught her arm. ‘What? What’s going on?’

Emily paused. ‘Um. Okay. But . . . this is going to sound weird.’

‘That’s okay.’ Aria’s heart started to pound.

‘I was thinking about what you were saying yesterday at the party. About Ali. I was wondering . . . did Ali ever tell you guys something about me?’

Emily said it very quietly. Aria pushed her hair out of her eyes.

‘What?’ Aria whispered. ‘Recently?’

Emily’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean, recently?’

‘I—’

‘In seventh grade,’ Emily interrupted. ‘Did she tell you . . . like . . . something about me in seventh grade? Was she telling everybody?’

Aria blinked. At the party yesterday, when she’d seen Emily, she’d wanted more than anything to tell her about the texts. ‘No,’ Aria answered slowly. ‘She never talked behind your back.’

‘Oh.’ Emily stared at the ground. ‘But I—’ she started.

‘I’ve been getting these—’ Aria said at the same time.

Then Emily looked past her and her eyes grew still.

‘Miss Emily Fields! Hello!’

Aria turned. In the living room stood Byron. At least he’d thrown on a striped bathrobe. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages!’ Byron boomed.

‘Yeah.’ Emily puffed out her cheeks again. ‘How are you, Mr. Montgomery?’

He frowned. ‘Please. You’re old enough to call me Byron.’ He scratched his chin with the top edge of his coffee cup. ‘How’s your life? Good?’

‘Absolutely.’ Emily looked like she was about to cry.

‘Do you need something to eat?’ Byron asked. ‘You look hungry.’

‘Oh. No. Thanks. I, um, I guess I didn’t really sleep well.’

‘You girls.’ He shook his head. ‘You never sleep! I always tell Aria she needs eleven hours – she needs to bank sleep for when she gets to college and parties all night!’ He began climbing the stairs to the second floor.

As soon as he was out of sight, Aria whirled back around. ‘He’s so—’ she started. But then she realized Emily was halfway across her lawn, on the way to her bike. ‘Hey!’ she called. ‘Where are you going?’

Emily picked her bike up off the ground. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Wait! Come back! I . . . I need to talk to you!’ Aria called out.

Emily paused and looked up. Aria felt all of her words swarming like bees in her mouth. Emily seemed terrified.

But suddenly Aria was too afraid to ask. How would she talk about the texts from A without mentioning her secret? She still didn’t want anyone to know. Especially with her mom just upstairs.

Then she thought of Byron in his bathrobe and how uncomfortable Emily seemed around him just now. Emily had asked, Did Alison tell you something about me in seventh grade? Why would she ask that?

Unless . . .

Aria bit her pinkie nail. What if Emily already knew Aria’s secret? Aria clamped her mouth shut, paralyzed.

Emily shook her head. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she mumbled, and before Aria could compose herself, Emily was biking furiously away.

‘Ladies, discover yourselves!’

As Oprah’s audience clapped wildly, Hanna sank into her coffee-colored leather couch cushions, balancing the TiVo remote on her bare stomach. She could use a little self-discovery on this crisp Saturday morning.

Last night was pretty blurry – like she’d gone through the night without her contacts in – and her head was throbbing. Had it involved some sort of animal? She’d found some empty candy wrappers in her purse. Had she eaten them? All of them? Her stomach hurt, after all, and it looked a little puffy. And why did she have a distinct memory of a Wawa dairy truck? It felt like piecing together a puzzle, except Hanna was too impatient for puzzles – she always jammed pieces together that didn’t actually fit.

The doorbell rang. Hanna groaned, then rolled off the couch, not bothering to fix her army-green ribbed tank top, which was turned around and practically exposing her boob. She cracked the oak door and then slammed it shut again.

Whoa. It was that cop, Mr. April. Er, Darren Wilden.

‘Open up, Hanna.’

She checked him out through the peephole. He stood with his arms crossed, seeming all business, but then his hair was a mess and she didn’t see his gun anywhere. And what kind of cop worked at 10 A.M. on a cloudless Saturday morning like this?

Hanna glanced at her reflection in the round mirror across the room. Jesus. Sleep marks from the pillow? Yes. Puffy eyes, lips in need of gloss? Absolutely. She quickly ran her hands over her face, pushed her hair into a ponytail, and put on her round Chanel sunglasses. Then she flung open the door.

‘Hey!’ she said brightly. ‘How are you?’

‘Is your mom home?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ Hanna said flirtatiously. ‘She’s out all morning.’

Wilden pursed his lips together, looking stressed. Hanna noticed Wilden had a little clear Band-Aid right above his eyebrow. ‘What, did your girlfriend deck you?’ she asked, pointing at it.

‘No . . .’ Wilden touched the Band-Aid. ‘I banged it on my medicine cabinet when I was washing my face.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not the most graceful person in the morning.’

Hanna smiled. ‘Join the club. I fell on my ass last night. It was so random.’

Wilden’s kind expression was suddenly grim. ‘Was that before or after you stole the car?’

Hanna stood back. ‘What?’

Why was Wilden looking at her as if she were the love child of space aliens? ‘There was an anonymous tip that you stole a car,’ he enunciated slowly.

Hanna’s mouth fell open. ‘I . . . what?’

‘A black BMW? Belonging to a Mr. Edwin Ackard? You crashed it into a phone pole? After you drank a bottle of Ketel One? Any of this sound familiar?’

Hanna shoved her sunglasses up her nose. Wait, that was what happened? ‘I wasn’t drunk last night,’ she lied.

‘We found a vodka bottle on the driver’s-side floor in the car,’ Wilden said. ‘So, someone was drunk.’

‘But—’ Hanna started.

‘I have to bring you into the station,’ Wilden interrupted, sounding a little disappointed.

‘I didn’t steal it,’ Hanna squeaked. ‘Sean – his son – said I could take it!’

Wilden raised an eyebrow. ‘So you admit you were driving it?’

‘I—’ Hanna started. Shit. She took a step back into the house. ‘But my mom’s not even here. She won’t know what happened to me.’ Embarrassingly, tears rushed to her eyes. She turned away, trying to get her shit together.

Wilden shifted his weight uncomfortably. It seemed like he didn’t know what to do with his hands – first he put them in his pockets, then they hovered near Hanna, then he wrung them together. ‘Listen, we can call your mom at the station, all right?’ he said. ‘And I won’t cuff you. And you can ride up front with me.’ He walked back to his car and opened the passenger door for her.

An hour later, she sat on the police station’s same yellow plastic bucket seats, staring at the same Chester County’s Most Wanted poster, fighting back the urge to start crying again. She’d just been given a blood test to see if she was still drunk from last night. Hanna wasn’t sure if she was – did alcohol stay in your body for that long? Now Wilden was hunching over his same desk, which held the same Bic pens and a metallic Slinky. She pinched her palm with her fingernails and swallowed.

Unfortunately, the events of last night had coalesced in her head. The Porsche, the deer, the airbag. Had Sean said she could take the car? She doubted it; the last thing she could remember was his little self-esteem speech before he’d ditched her in the woods.

‘Hey, were you at the Swarthmore battle of the bands last night?’

A college-age guy with a buzz cut and a uni-brow sat next to her. He wore a ripped flannel surfer’s shirt, paint-spattered jeans, and no shoes. His hands were cuffed. ‘Um, no,’ Hanna muttered.

He leaned close to her, and Hanna could smell his beery breath. ‘Oh. I thought I saw you there. I was and I drank too much and started terrorizing someone’s cows. That’s why I’m here! I was trespassing!’

‘Good for you,’ she answered frostily.

‘What’s your name?’ He jingled his cuffs.

‘Um, Angelina.’ Like hell she was giving him her real name.

‘Hey, Angelina,’ he said. ‘I’m Brad!’

Hanna cracked a smile at how lame that line was.

Just then, the station’s front door opened. Hanna jerked back in her seat and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Great. It was her mom.

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ Ms. Marin said to Wilden.

This morning, Ms. Marin wore a simple white boat-neck tee, low-waisted James jeans, Gucci slingbacks, and the exact same Chanel shades that Hanna was wearing. Her skin radiated – she’d been at the spa all morning – and her red-gold hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. Hanna squinted. Had her mom stuffed her bra? Her boobs looked like they belonged to someone else.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Ms. Marin said to Wilden in a low voice.

Then she walked over to Hanna. She smelled of seaweed body wrap. Hanna, certain that she smelled of Ketel One and Eggo waffles, tried to shrink in her seat.