Burned (Pretty Little Liars #12)

“If that’s okay, that is,” Reefer added in a lower voice. “Do you want to be my partner?”

Spencer pretended to think about it. “I suppose. But you owe me for ditching out on dinner last night.”

“How about I take you out to dinner?” Reefer asked, looping his arm in her elbow. “Somewhere on an island. I don’t know about you, but I’m already getting sick of those organic sweet-potato fries and all the garlic they put in the veggie burger.”

A brief flurry of guilt washed over Spencer—it seemed crazy to want to go on a date when A was so close to telling on them. But maybe she should enjoy these last few moments of freedom. She’d probably never get to do this again. “Sounds good,” she answered.

They climbed into the van together and took seats next to each other in the middle row, while Naomi was relegated to a back seat by the equipment. As they pulled out of the parking lot, the sun came out from behind a cloud. The warmth felt delicious on Spencer’s skin. And for the first time in weeks, at least for a minute, she felt at peace.

11

ARIA’S PYGMALION

That morning, Aria stood with Graham on a street corner of the French section of the island of St. Martin. Rickety-looking buses whizzed past at alarming speeds. Old, sun-weathered men sat at an outdoor café, drinking cappuccino. The surf pounded in the distance, and there were about a hundred seagulls in a nearby parking lot, fighting over an open bag of potato chips.

Aria took a deep breath and stared at the Eco Scavenger Hunt clue again. It was written in poem form and attached to a large lump of coal.

“Use me for jam, cabinets, and wood,” Graham read aloud. “And when I’m a barrier, I protect sea turtles—that’s good!” He looked at Aria. “Any ideas?”

Aria touched the coal. Black dust came off on her fingers. “How can a piece of charcoal also make jam?”

Graham fiddled with a string on his hooded sweatshirt, which smelled overpoweringly like flowery fabric softener. “Maybe it’s a plant. One part of it is used for charcoal, but maybe another part—the berries—makes good jam.”

“That makes sense!” Aria grinned. “How did you think of that?”

Graham shrugged. “We have to be resourceful at our SCA meet-ups in the woods. I can almost guarantee you that part of this tree we’re looking for probably could provide a decent component for gunpowder, too.” He smiled proudly. “I’m in charge of ammunition within my unit.”

Aria wanted to comment that she was pretty sure people in medieval times didn’t have gunpowder, but she held her tongue. She looked around. “Maybe a local would know what tree around here could be used to make jam.”

Graham nodded, then headed down the uneven sidewalk in the direction of a sign that Aria was pretty sure said juice bar in French. She took in the drawing of a knight on the back of his T-shirt. Besides the gunpowder trivia, she’d had to listen to a long aside about the virtues of makeshift toilets and cooking over a cauldron at his Society of Creative Anachronism gatherings.

It still hadn’t really sunk in that Graham had dated Tabitha. After Gretchen had dismissed them, she’d run back to her cabin and scoured the Tabitha memorial sites for Graham’s posts. Most of them were vague, innocuous—just saying things like RIP and Miss you, Tab. But when Tabitha’s father spoke out about the resort’s negligence, Graham had chimed in, saying he thought The Cliffs shouldn’t have served alcohol to minors. When the news broke that Tabitha hadn’t died an alcohol-related death, Graham’s posts had turned irate. Whoever did this, the cops are going to find you and take you down.

Just reading that post had made the vegetarian chili Aria had eaten for dinner rise up in her throat. Last night, she had a dream of finding Tabitha in the sand. As she’d turned Tabitha’s limp body over, Graham had come up behind her. “Aria?” He’d seemed so surprised. “What are you doing here?” And then, slowly, his face had registered what she’d done. “It was an accident!” Aria had cried. “It was almost like she pitched herself over the side—I hardly pushed her!” Tears had welled in Graham’s eyes. And then he reached out his arms to strangle her. That was when she woke up.

She felt like she needed to do something for Graham. Her friends might have been dead-set against her seeing Graham again, but she’d meant what she said the night before about how this was the only way she could think of to make the overpowering guilt lift. By being Graham’s friend, by being his shoulder to cry on about Tabitha—if that was what he needed—maybe she could make small amends for everything she’d done.

Bells jingled, and Graham emerged from the juice bar, looking triumphant. “The guy running the place says that the sea grape makes good jam. He says sometimes they serve as a natural barrier for sea turtles, too.”

Aria frowned. “I’ve never heard of a sea grape tree.”

Graham pulled out his cell phone, pressed the BROWSE button, and typed sea grape into Google. Pictures of a large-fronded tree with green grape clusters appeared on the screen. “The largest group of sea grape trees is on the southernmost tip of the island,” he read aloud.

“I guess that’s where we’re going,” Aria said, then turned on the sidewalk toward the ocean.

Graham exited out of Google, and his phone returned to the main screen. When Aria saw that the wallpaper was a picture of Tabitha, a scream froze in her throat. Tabitha was sitting on a stone wall, dressed in a pink shirt and skinny jeans.

She turned away, but not before Graham caught her looking. “Oh. That was my girlfriend. The one who was … you know.”

Aria nodded, taking in Tabitha’s familiar blond hair, big blue eyes, and the faint burn scars on her neck from a childhood fire. “She’s, um, pretty.”

“Yeah.” Graham sighed heavily. “She was gorgeous.” His voice got a little choked up.

Aria paused at a corner. “You miss her, huh?”

Graham nodded. “It’s … hard. And weird. I don’t know anyone our age that’s died, you know? I’ve sort of had a hard time with it, which is totally lame, because we weren’t even together when she passed away.”

A car whizzed past, kicking up the ends of Aria’s hair. “You weren’t?”

He shook his head. “We dated in tenth grade, but I always felt like she was just waiting for something better to come along. Even when I asked her to the tenth-grade dance, she was so blasé about it, like she would’ve rather gone with someone else.” He kicked a loose pebble on the ground. “I said some pretty awful things when we broke up, mostly about her being crazy. But then, after she went to the hospital again, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.”

“S-she was in the hospital?” Aria asked, hoping she sounded surprised.

“Yeah. She was in and out of a hospital for years,” Graham answered, stepping back from the edge of a curb to avoid getting clipped by a fast-moving scooter.

“For what?”

“Depression. She had a lot of problems with her family.”

There were no more cars coming at the corner, so they crossed the street. “Did you ever visit her?” Aria asked.

“Once.” He made a wry face. “The place she was in looked really beautiful on the outside and had this amazing lobby, but once you went to the patient rooms, it was pretty miserable.”

“Huh,” Aria said, keeping her features completely neutral. That sounded like The Preserve at Addison-Stevens, all right. “Did she have any friends there?”

Graham stared up at the sky for a moment, thinking. “There were these two blond girls who were, like, the queen bees of the place. They insisted on hanging out with Tabitha when I visited her—I think they were sizing me up, deeming if I was worth talking to or not.”

Even though the sun was blaring down hard on the top of her head, Aria shivered. She wondered if one of them was Ali.

“There was a guy, too,” Graham went on. “I could tell he was into her—he kept giving me these nasty looks across the room.” He set his jaw. “She was probably hooking up with him. All the girls thought he was pretty hot.”

Then he glanced at Aria. “I’m making her sound crazy, but she wasn’t—she was pretty awesome. Everyone was after her—I don’t know why she picked me.” There was another sigh. “I’ve talked to a therapist about it. She was actually the one who told me to go on this trip. She thought it would help me get over what happened, separate from the craziness surrounding Maplewood right now.”

“I hear that.” Aria’s skin felt so prickly she just wanted to scratch and scratch. What would Graham think if he knew he was standing next to Tabitha’s murderer?

They approached a public beach with a small boardwalk. A weathered man stood under a striped umbrella, selling sodas out of a cooler. Two tanned boys sat on a lifeguard stand, gazing at a few swimmers in the water. To the left was a heavy thicket of trees. Green, globelike fruit hung in bunches from the branches, and a sweet, pleasant odor filled the air. The trees looked just like the search images on Graham’s phone.

Thick leaves waved over their heads, and Aria spied an envelope pinned to one of the trunks. It had the cruise line’s logo in the upper right corner. “The next clue!” she cried.

She tore it off the trunk. Inside were instructions to put the clue back in the envelope for other hunters to find it, and then a link to a website that would tell them where to go next.

She showed Graham what she’d found. “We rock! High five!”

She raised her palm in the air, and Graham slapped it. Suddenly, his eyes widened at something on the beach. Aria swiveled. Two girls stood near the lifeguard stand, slathering sunscreen on their bare legs.

“What is it?” she asked.

Graham stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned away. “Nothing.”

Aria squinted at him, then back at the girls. One had long, hippie-wild hair and wore Birkenstocks, and the other had pixie-short brown hair and a nose ring. She recognized both of them from the cruise ship—they’d been behind her in the waffle line at breakfast this morning. “Do they go to your school?”

“Uh-huh,” Graham mumbled.

“They’re cute.”

Graham looked tortured. “Yeah, but whatever.”

“You wouldn’t ask one of them out?”

Graham snorted. “Like they’d say yes.”

“Why not?”

Graham chuckled sadly. “Honestly? I don’t know how to talk to girls—especially after Tabitha dumped me. And I don’t know why they’d want to go out with a dork who pretends he’s a knight.”

Aria stopped next to a French-language No Parking sign and stared at him. “You’re not a dork! Look at you! You’re cute, you’re funny, you’re smart—so many girls would be dying to go out with you!”

Graham blushed. “I doubt that.”

Aria placed her hands on her hips. “I don’t. And you know what? I’m going to prove it to you. With my help, you’re going to be dating one of those hotties by the end of this trip.”