Wicked (20 page)

“You know, she’s pretty sexy for a blind chick,” Mike remarked. “I’d do her.”

Aria groaned and smacked her brother with a pillow. Then, Mike’s iPhone bleated, and he jumped up and rushed out of the room. As he clomped up the stairs, Aria turned her attention back to the television. Ian’s mug shot popped up. His hair was a mess and he wasn’t smiling. After that, a camera panned over the snowy hole in the DiLaurentises’ backyard where Ali’s body had been found. The wind made the police tape flap and dance. A blurry shadow shimmered between two enormous pine trees. Aria leaned forward, her pulse suddenly racing. Was that…a
person
? The picture changed again, back to another shot of the reporter in front of the courthouse. “The case is proceeding as planned,” the reporter said, “but many are still saying the evidence is too thin.”

“You shouldn’t put yourself through this torture.”

Aria whirled around. Xavier leaned against the doorway. He was wearing an untucked striped button-down, baggy jeans, and Adidas sneakers. A chunky watch dangled from his left wrist. His eyes flicked from the TV screen to Aria’s face.

“I, um, think Ella is still at the gallery,” Aria said. “She had to work a private show.”

Xavier took a step into the room. “I know. We had coffee before she had to go back. There’s no electricity at my place, though—I guess ice knocked down some power lines. She said I could hang out here until we’re sure it’s back on.” He grinned. “Is that okay? I could make dinner.”

Aria ran her hands through her hair. “Sure,” she said, trying to act natural. Things were fine between them, after all. She scooted to the corner of the couch and put the bowl of cheese curls on the coffee table. “You want to sit?”

Xavier plopped down two cushions away. The news was walking through their projection of the night of Ali’s murder, complete with reenactments.
“Ten thirty
P
.
M
., Alison and Spencer Hastings get into an argument. Alison leaves the barn,”
a voice-over said. The girl who played Spencer looked pinched and sour. The petite blond girl who played Ali wasn’t nearly as pretty as the real Ali was.
“Ten forty
P
.
M
., Melissa Hastings wakes up from a nap and notices that Ian Thomas is missing.”
The girl who played Spencer’s sister looked like she was about thirty-five.

Xavier looked at her hesitantly. “Your mom said you were with Alison that night.”

Aria winced and nodded.
“Ten fifty
P
.
M
., Ian Thomas and Alison are near the hole in the DiLaurentises’ backyard,”
continued the voice-over. A shadowy Ian fought with Ali.
“It’s alleged that there was a struggle, Thomas pushed DiLaurentis in and was back inside the house by eleven-oh-five.”

“I’m so sorry,” Xavier said softly. “I can’t even imagine what this must be like.”

Aria bit her lip, hugging one of the couch’s chenille throw pillows to her chest.

Xavier scratched his head. “I gotta say, I was really surprised when they announced Ian Thomas was their suspect. It seems like that kid had it all.”

Aria bristled. So what if Ian was a groomed, well-mannered rich kid? It didn’t make him a saint.

“Well, he
did
,” Aria snapped. “End of story.”

Xavier nodded sheepishly. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. Goes to show that you don’t really know anything about anyone, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Aria groaned.

Xavier took a long sip from his water bottle. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Aria stared blankly across the room. Her mother still hadn’t taken down any of the family photos with Byron in them, including Aria’s favorite, one of all four of them standing on the edge of the Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland. They’d walked all the way out to the slippery edge of the cliff above the waterfall.

“You could beam me back to Iceland,” Aria said wistfully. “Because, unlike you and my brother,
I
loved it there. Puny horses and all.”

Xavier smirked. His eyes twinkled. “Actually, I have a secret for you. I really like Iceland too. I said that stuff to get on Mike’s good side.”

Aria’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe it!” She smacked him with her pillow. “You’re such a kiss-ass!”

Xavier grabbed the pillow on his side of the couch and held it menacingly over his head. “A kiss-ass, huh? You’d better take that back!”

“Okay, okay.” Aria giggled, raising a finger. “Truce.”

“It’s too late for that,” Xavier cackled.

He lowered down to his knees, his face close.
Too
close. And all of a sudden, his lips were pressed to hers.

It took Aria a few stunned seconds to realize what was going on. Her eyes bulged. Xavier held her shoulders, his hands digging into her skin. Aria let out a small squeak and wrenched her head away. “What the hell?” she gasped.

Xavier shot back. For a moment, Aria was too baffled to move. Then she shot up as fast as she could.

“Aria…” Xavier’s face crumpled. “Wait. I’m…”

She couldn’t answer. Her knees buckled out from under her, and she nearly twisted her ankle as she climbed off the couch. “Aria!” Xavier called again.

But Aria kept going. As she reached the top of the stairs, her Treo, which was sitting on the desk in her bedroom, started to chime.
One new text message,
the screen taunted.

Gasping, she pounced on it and opened it up. The text was one simple word:
Gotcha!

And, as usual, it was punctuated with a crisp, concise letter
A.

21

SPENCER HOLDS HER BREATH

The flyer was pinned above the bike rack for everyone to see.
Time Capsule Starts Tomorrow,
it said in big black letters.
Get ready!

The final bell of the day rang. Spencer noticed Aria sitting on the stone wall, scribbling. Hanna stood next to Scott Chin, her cheeks round and puffy. Emily was whispering to some other swimmers, Mona Vanderwaal was unlocking her scooter, and Toby Cavanaugh was crouched under a distant tree, shoving a stick into a small pile of dirt.

Ali pushed through the crowd and snatched down the flyer. “Jason’s hiding one of the pieces. And he’s going to tell me where it is.”

Everyone cheered. Ali pranced through the throng of kids and gave Spencer a high five. Which was startling—Ali had never paid attention to Spencer before, even though they lived next to each other.

But today, it appeared they were friends. Ali bumped Spencer’s hip. “Aren’t you excited for me?”

“Uh, sure,” Spencer stammered.

Ali narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to try and steal it, are you?”

Spencer shook her head. “No! Absolutely not!”

“Yeah, she is,” said a voice behind them. A second, older Ali stood on the sidewalk. She was a little taller and her face was a little thinner. A blue string bracelet was tied around her wrist—the very bracelet Ali had made for them after The Jenna Thing—and she wore a pale blue American Apparel T-shirt and a rolled-up-at-the-waist hockey kilt. It was the same outfit Ali had worn to the end-of-seventh-grade sleepover in Spencer’s barn.

“She’s totally going to try and steal it from you,” the second Ali confirmed, giving Younger Ali a sidelong glance. “But she doesn’t. Someone else does.”

Younger Ali narrowed her eyes. “
Right.
Someone’s going to have to kill me to get my flag.”

The crowd of Rosewood Day students parted, and Ian slipped through. He opened his mouth, an evil look on his face.
If that’s what it takes,
he was about to tell Ali. But when he breathed in to speak, he made a fire engine sound instead, shrill and piercingly loud.

Both Alis covered their ears. Younger Ali took a step back.

Older Ali put her hands on her hips, kicking Younger Ali with the side of her foot. “What’s wrong with you? Go flirt with him. He’s gorgeous.”

“No,” Younger Ali said.

“Yes,” Older Ali insisted. They were fighting as bitterly as Spencer and Melissa did.

Older Ali rolled her eyes and faced Spencer. “You shouldn’t have thrown it away, Spencer. Everything you needed was there. All the answers.”

“Thrown…
what
away?” Spencer asked, confused.

Younger Ali and Older Ali exchanged a glance. A frightened look washed over Younger Ali’s face, like she suddenly understood what Older Ali was talking about.
“It,”
Younger Ali said. “That was a huge mistake, Spencer. And it’s almost too late.”

“What do you mean?” Spencer cried. “What is
it
? And why am I almost too late?”

“You’re going to have to fix this,” Younger Ali and Older Ali said in unison, their voices identical now. They joined hands and fused back into one Ali. “It’s up to you, Spencer. You shouldn’t have thrown it away.”

Ian’s siren grew louder and louder. A gust of wind kicked up, blowing the Time Capsule flyer right out of Ali’s hands. It hung in the air for a moment, then blew straight for Spencer, smacking her square in the face hard, feeling more like a rock than a piece of paper.
Get ready!
it said, right in front of Spencer’s eyes.

Spencer shot up in bed, sweat drenching her neck. Ali’s vanilla body cream tickled her nose, but she wasn’t in the Rosewood Day commons anymore—she was in her spotless, silent bedroom. The sun streamed through the window. Her dogs were racing around the front yard, filthy from the dirty slush. It was Friday, the first day of Ian’s trial.

“Spencer?” Melissa’s face swam into view. She hovered over Spencer’s bed, her blunt-cut blond hair hanging down over her face, the strings of her blue-and-white striped hoodie almost grazing Spencer’s nose. “Are you okay?”

Spencer shut her eyes and remembered last night. How Ian had materialized on the porch, smoking that cigarette, saying all of those crazy, terrifying things. And then that note:
If Poor Little Miss Perfect were to suddenly vanish, would anyone even care?
As much as she wanted to, Spencer had been too afraid to tell anyone about it. Calling Wilden and telling him that Ian had broken his house arrest would probably have gotten him thrown back in jail, but Spencer was afraid that as soon as she told Wilden, something awful would happen to her—or to someone else. After what had happened to Mona, she couldn’t bear to have any more blood on her hands.

Spencer swallowed hard, facing her sister. “I’m going to testify against Ian. I know you don’t want him to go to prison, but I’m going to have to tell the truth on the witness stand about what I saw.”

Melissa’s face remained placid. Light bounced off her Asscher-cut diamond earrings. “I know,” she said vaguely, like her mind was elsewhere. “I’m not asking you to lie.”

With that, Melissa patted Spencer’s shoulder and walked out of the room. Spencer stood up slowly, taking deep yoga fire breaths. Both Ali voices still bonged in her ears. She took one more careful look around her bedroom, half expecting one of them to be standing over her. But of course no one was there.

An hour later, Spencer pulled her Mercedes into a parking space at Rosewood Day and hurried to the elementary school. Most of the snow had melted, but there were still a couple of die-hard little kids outside, making pathetic little snow angels and playing Find the Yellow Snow. Her friends were waiting by the elementary school swings, their old secret meeting spot. Ian’s trial was starting at 1
P.M
., and they wanted to talk before it began.

Aria waved as Spencer jogged toward her friends, visibly shivering in her fur-lined hooded jacket. Hanna had purple circles under her eyes and was nervously tapping the pointy toe of her Jimmy Choo boot. Emily looked as if she was about to cry. Seeing them together in their old spot made something inside Spencer break.
You should tell them what happened,
she thought. It didn’t feel right keeping Ian’s visit a secret. But Ian’s message was ever-present in her mind:
If you tell anyone about me…

“So, are we ready?” Hanna asked, chewing nervously on her lips.

“I guess,” Emily answered. “It’s going to be weird to…you know. See Ian.”

“Seriously,” Aria whispered.

“Uh-huh,” Spencer stammered nervously, keeping her eyes glued on a zigzagging crack in the pavement.

The sun poked through a cloud, reflecting blindingly against the remaining snow. A shadow moved behind the jungle gym, but when Spencer turned, it was only a bird. She thought about the dream she’d had this morning. Younger Ali had seemed uninterested, but Older Ali had urged her to flirt with Ian—he was gorgeous. It was a lot like what Ian had said to Spencer yesterday. At first, Ali hadn’t taken him very seriously. When she started liking him, it was instantaneous, like a light had switched on.

“Do you guys happen to remember Ali ever saying anything…
negative
…about Ian?” Spencer blurted out. “Like maybe that she thought he was too old or too skeevy?”

Aria blinked, looking confused. “No…”

Emily shook her head too, her blondish-red ponytail swishing from side to side. “Ali talked to me about Ian a couple times. She never said his name, only that he was older, and she was totally into him.” She shuddered, staring down at the muddy ground.

“That’s what I thought,” Spencer said, satisfied.

Hanna ran her fingers over her scar. “Actually, I heard something weird on the news the other day. They were interviewing people at the train station about Ian’s bail hearing. And this girl, Alexandra something, she said she was pretty sure Ali thought Ian was perverted.”

Spencer stared at her. “Alexandra Pratt?”

Hanna nodded, shrugging. “I think so. She’s a lot older?”

Spencer let out a shaky breath. Alexandra Pratt had been a senior when Spencer and Ali were sixth-graders. As the captain of the varsity field hockey team, Alexandra had been the main student judge for JV tryouts. At Rosewood Day, sixth-graders were allowed to try out for JV, but only one would make the team any given year. Ali boasted she might have a leg up because she’d practiced with Alexandra and the other older players a couple of times in the fall, but Spencer had simply laughed it off—Ali wasn’t nearly as good as she was.