Wicked (Pretty Little Liars #5)

Aria picked up the pencil drawing she’d brought, a sketch of Ali standing outside Rosewood Day. “I drew this before we were even friends.”

Spencer gingerly held the edges of the Jenna Thing bracelet between her index finger and thumb as if it were covered in snot. “Good-bye,” she whispered firmly. Hanna rolled her eyes as she tossed in her folded-up piece of paper. She didn’t bother explaining what it was.

Emily watched as Spencer picked up the black-and-white photo. It was a candid of Ali standing next to a much younger-looking Noel Kahn. Both were laughing. There was something familiar about it. Emily grabbed Spencer’s arm before she could drop it in the bag as well.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Yearbook, before they tossed me out,” Spencer admitted sheepishly. “Remember how they did that whole spread of Ali pictures? This was on the cutting-room floor.”

“Don’t throw that in,” Emily said, ignoring Marion’s stern look. “It’s a really good picture of her.”

Spencer raised an eyebrow but wordlessly put the photo on the mahogany credenza next to a large, wrought-iron statue of the Eiffel Tower. Out of all Ali’s old friends, Emily was definitely having the toughest time handling Ali’s death. It was just that she’d never had a best friend like Ali, before or since. It didn’t help, either, that Ali had also been Emily’s first love, the very first girl she’d ever kissed. If it were up to Emily, she wouldn’t be burying Ali at all. She was perfectly fine with keeping her Ali memorabilia on her nightstand forever and ever.

“We good?” Marion pursed her merlot-colored lips. She cinched the bag tight and handed it to Spencer. “Promise me you’ll bury this. It will help. Honest. And I think you girls should meet Tuesday afternoon, okay? It’s your first week back at school, and I want you to stay connected and check up on one another. Can you all do that for me?”

Everyone nodded glumly. They followed Marion out of the media room, down the Hastingses’ grand marble hall, and into the foyer. Marion said good-bye and climbed into her navy Range Rover, turning on the wipers to knock the excess snow off her windshield.

The big grandfather clock in the foyer began to strike the hour. Spencer shut the door and turned around to face Emily and the others. The trash bag’s red plastic ties dangled from her wrist. “Well?” Spencer said. “Should we bury this?”

“Where?” Emily asked quietly.

“What about by the barn?” Aria suggested, picking at a hole in her red leggings. “It’s appropriate, right? It’s the last place we…saw her.”

Emily nodded, a huge lump in her throat. “What do you think, Hanna?”

“Whatever,” Hanna mumbled in a monotone, as if she’d rather have been anywhere else.

Everyone pulled on their coats and boots and tromped through the Hastingses’ snowy yard to the back of the property. They were silent the whole way. Although they’d grown close again during A’s awful notes, Emily hadn’t seen much of her old friends since Ian’s arraignment. Emily had tried to arrange outings at the King James Mall, and even between-classes meetings at Steam, Rosewood Day’s coffee bar, but the others hadn’t seem interested. She suspected they were avoiding one another for the same reasons they’d drifted apart after Ali went missing—it was just too weird to be together.

The old DiLaurentis house was on their right. The trees and shrubs that divided the yards were bare, and there was a crusty layer of ice on Ali’s back porch. The Ali Shrine, which consisted of candles, stuffed animals, flowers, and curling photos, was still on the front curb, but the news vans and camera crews that had camped out for a month after Ali’s body had been found had thankfully vanished. These days, the media were hanging around the Rosewood courthouse and the Chester County prison, hoping to get more news about Ian Thomas’s upcoming trial.

The house was also the new home of Maya St. Germain, Emily’s ex. The St. Germains’ Acura SUV was in the driveway, which meant they’d moved back in—the family had steered clear of the house during the height of the media circus. Emily felt a pang as she looked at the cheerful wreath on the front door and the overflowing garbage bags of Christmas wrapping paper at the curb. When they were together, she and Maya had discussed what they’d get each other for Christmas—Maya wanted tripped-out, DJ-style headphones, and Emily wanted an iPod shuffle. Breaking up with Maya had been for the best, but it felt strange to be completely disconnected from Maya’s life.

The others were ahead of her, approaching the back of the two yards. Emily jogged to catch up, her big toe dipping in a muddy slush puddle. To the left was Spencer’s barn, the site of their very last sleepover. It bordered the thick woods that stretched for more than a mile. To the right of the barn was the partially dug hole in the DiLaurentises’ old yard where Ali’s body had been found. Some of the yellow police tape had fallen down and was now half-buried in the snow, but there were a lot of fresh footprints, probably belonging to curious gawkers.

Emily’s heart pounded as she dared to look at the hole. It was so dark. Her eyes filled with tears as she imagined Ian savagely shoving Ali down there, leaving her to die.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Aria remarked quietly, looking into the hole, too. “Ali was here all along.”

“It’s a good thing you remembered, Spence,” Hanna said, shivering in the frigid, late-afternoon air. “Otherwise, Ian would still be out there.”

Aria paled, looking worried. Emily bit her fingernail. The night of Ian’s arrest, they’d told the cops that everything they needed to know about what happened that night was in Ali’s diary—her very last entry was about how she was planning to meet up with Ian, her secret boyfriend, the night of their seventh-grade sleepover. Ali had given Ian an ultimatum—either he break up with Spencer’s sister, Melissa, or Ali was going to tell the world they were in love.

But what really convinced the cops was the repressed memory Spencer had recalled from that night. After Spencer and Ali had fought outside the Hastingses’ barn, Ali had run to someone—Ian. It was the last anyone saw of Ali, ever, and everyone assumed exactly what happened next. Emily would never forget how Ian had stumbled into the courtroom the day of his arraignment and dared to plead innocent to Ali’s murder. After the judge ordered Ian to prison without bail and the bailiffs walked him back down the aisle, she caught Ian shooting them a searing, bitter glare. You girls picked the wrong person to mess with, his look seemed to say, loud and clear. It was obvious that he blamed them for his arrest.

Emily let out a little whimper and Spencer looked at her sternly. “Stop. We’re not supposed to dwell on Ian…or any of this.” She stopped at the back of the property, pulling her blue and white Fair Isle earflap hat farther down her forehead. “Is this a good spot?”

Emily blew on her fingers as the others nodded numbly. Spencer began to dig up mounds of half-frozen dirt with the shovel she’d grabbed from the garage. After the hole was sufficiently deep, Spencer dropped the trash bag inside. It made a heavy plop in the snow. They all kicked the dirt and snow back on top of it.

“Well?” Spencer leaned against the shovel. “Should we say something?”

They all looked at one another. “Bye, Ali,” Emily said finally, her eyes filling with tears for about the millionth time that month.

Aria glanced at her, and then smiled. “Bye, Ali,” she echoed. She looked at Hanna next. Hanna shrugged, but then said, “Bye, Ali.”

As Aria took her hand, Emily felt…better. Her stomach unknotted and her neck relaxed. Suddenly it smelled so good back here, like fresh flowers. She felt that Ali—the sweet, wonderful Ali from her memories—was here, telling them that everything would be okay.

She glanced at the others. They all had placid smiles on their faces, as if they sensed something too. Maybe Marion was right. Maybe there was something to this ritual. It was time to put the whole dreadful fall to rest—Ali’s killer had been caught, and the whole A nightmare was behind them. The only thing left to do was look toward a calmer, happier future.

The sun was sinking through the trees fast, turning the sky and snowdrifts a milky lavender. The Hastingses’ windmill slowly rotated in the breeze, and a group of squirrels began fighting near a large pine. If one of the squirrels climbs the tree, things have settled down for good, Emily said to herself, playing the superstitious game she’d relied on for years. And just like that, a squirrel scampered up the pine, all the way to the top.

2

WE ARE FAMILY

A half hour later, Hanna Marin burst through the front door of her house, nuzzled her mini Doberman, Dot, and flung her embossed-snakeskin satchel on the living room couch. “Sorry I’m late,” she called.

The kitchen smelled like tomato sauce and garlic bread, and Hanna’s father; his fiancée, Isabel; and Isabel’s daughter, Kate, were already seated in the dining room. There were big ceramic bowls of pasta and salad in the center of the table, and a scallop-edged plate, napkin, and tall flute of Perrier waited at Hanna’s empty seat. On her arrival Christmas Day—practically seconds after Hanna’s mother had boarded a jumbo jet to her new job in Singapore—Isabel had decided that every Sunday dinner would be in the dining room, to make things feel more special and “family-esque.”

Hanna slumped in her seat, trying to ignore everyone’s looks. Her father was shooting her a hopeful smile, and Isabel was making a face that indicated that she was either trying to contain a fart or was disappointed that Hanna was tardy to Family Time. Kate, on the other hand, tilted her head pityingly. And Hanna just knew which of them would speak first.

Kate smoothed her irritatingly straight chestnut-colored hair, her blue eyes round. “Were you with your grief counselor?”

Ding ding ding!

“Uh-huh.” Hanna took a giant gulp of Perrier.

“How did it go?” Kate asked in her best Oprah voice. “Is it helping?”

Hanna sniffed haughtily. Honestly, she thought the meetings with Marion were bullshit. Maybe the rest of her old best friends could get on with their lives post–Ali and A, but Hanna was struggling with not one best friend’s death, but two. Hanna was reminded of Mona practically every moment of her day: when she let out Dot to run around the frozen backyard in the Burberry plaid doggy coat Mona had gotten him as a birthday gift last year. When she opened her walk-in closet and saw the silver Jill Stuart skirt she’d borrowed from Mona but never returned. When she looked in the mirror, attempting to say Marion’s lame-ass chants, and saw the teardrop earrings she and Mona had stolen from Banana Republic last spring. She saw something else, too: the faded, Z-shaped scar on her chin from when Mona had hit Hanna with her SUV, after Hanna realized that Mona was A.

She hated that her future stepsister knew every detail of what happened to her this fall—especially that her best friend had tried to kill her. Then again, all of Rosewood knew; the local media had talked of little else since. Even weirder, the country had been infected with A mania. Kids across the country had reported receiving texts from someone called A, all of which ended up being from jilted ex-boyfriends or jealous classmates. Hanna had even received a few faux-A texts of her own, but they were obviously spam—I know all your dirty secrets! And hey, wanna purchase three ringtones for a dollar? So lame.