Hanna stood up and stared in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair was strewn around her face, and her eyes were red and puffy. Slowly, she put the toothbrush back in the cup.

  “I’m Hanna and I’m fabulous,” she said to her reflection.

  But it didn’t sound convincing. Not at all.

  17

  DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE!

  “Okay.” Aria blew her long bangs out of her eyes. “In this scene, you have to wear this colander on your head and talk a lot about a baby we don’t have.”

  Noel frowned and brought his thumb to his pink, bow-shaped lips. “Why do I have to wear a colander on my head, Finland?”

  “Because,” Aria answered. “It’s an absurdist play. It’s supposed to be, like, absurd.”

  “Gotcha.” Noel grinned. It was Friday morning, and they were sitting on desks in English class. After yesterday’s Waiting for Godot disaster, Ezra’s next assignment had been for them to break up into groups and write their own existentialist plays. Existentialist was another way of saying, “silly and out there.” And if anyone could do silly and out there, it was Aria.

  “I know something really absurd we could do,” Noel said. “We could have this character drive a Navigator and, like, after a couple of beers, crash it into his duck pond. But he’s, like, fallen asleep at the wheel, so he doesn’t notice he’s in the duck pond until the next day. There could be ducks in the Navigator.”

  Aria frowned. “How could we stage all that? It sounds impossible.”

  “I don’t know.” Noel shrugged. “But that happened to me last year. And it was really absurd. And awesome.”

  Aria sighed. She hadn’t exactly chosen Noel to be her partner because she thought he’d be a good cowriter. She looked around for Ezra, but he unfortunately wasn’t watching them in fitful jealousy. “How about if we make one of the characters think he’s a duck?” she suggested. “He could randomly quack.”

  “Um, sure.” Noel wrote that down on a piece of lined paper with a gnawed-up Montblanc pen. “Hey, maybe we could shoot this with my dad’s Canon DV camera? And have this as a movie instead of a boring play?”

  Aria paused. “Actually, that would be kind of cool.”

  Noel smiled. “Then we could keep the Navigator scene!”

  “I guess.” Aria wondered if the Kahns really had a spare Navigator to crash. Probably.

  Noel nudged Mason Byers, who was paired up with James Freed. “Dude. We’re going to have a Navigator in our play! And pyrotechnics!”

  “Wait. Pyrotechnics?” Aria asked.

  “Nice!” Mason said.

  Aria clamped her lips shut. Honestly, she didn’t have the energy for this. Last night, she hardly slept. Plagued by yesterday’s cryptic text message, she’d spent half the night thinking and furiously knitting a purple hat with earflaps.

  It was awful to think that someone knew not only about her and Ezra, but also about that stuff with her dad. What if this A person sent her mom messages next? What if A already had? Aria didn’t want her mom to find out—not now, and not that way.

  Aria also couldn’t shake the idea that the A message might actually be from Alison. There just weren’t that many people who knew. A few faculty members maybe, and Meredith knew, obviously. But they didn’t know Aria.

  If the text was from Alison, that meant she was alive. Or…not. What if the texts were from Ali’s ghost? A ghost could have easily slid between the cracks of the women’s bathroom at Snooker’s. And spirits from the dead sometimes contacted the living to make amends, right? It was like their final homework assignment before graduating to heaven.

  If Ali needed to make amends, though, Aria could think of a more deserving candidate than her. Try Jenna. Aria put her hands over her eyes, blocking out the memory. Screw therapy that said you should face your demons: She tried to block out The Jenna Thing as much as she tried to block out her dad and Meredith.

  Aria sighed. At times like this, she wished she hadn’t drifted from her old friends. Like Hanna, a few desks over—if only Aria could walk up to Hanna and talk to her about this, ask her questions about Ali. But time really changed people. She wondered if it would be easier to talk to Spencer or Emily instead.

  “Hey there.”

  Aria straightened up. Ezra was standing in front of her desk. “Hi,” she squeaked.

  She met his blue eyes and her heart ached.

  Ezra tilted his hips awkwardly. “How are you?”

  “Um, I’m…great. Really awesome.” She sat up straight. On the plane back from Iceland, Aria had read in a Seventeen she found in her seat pocket that boys liked enthusiastic, positive girls. And since brilliant hadn’t worked yesterday, why not try out peppy?

  Ezra clicked and unclicked his Bic pen. “Listen, sorry to cut you off yesterday in the middle of your speech. Do you want to give me your index cards so I can take a look at them and grade you?”

  “Okay.” Huh. Would Ezra do that for the other students? “So…how are you?”

  “Good.” Ezra smiled. His lips twitched as if he wanted to say more. “What’re you working on, there?” He placed his hands on her desk and leaned over to look at her notebook. Aria stared at his hands for a moment, then slid her pinkie finger up against his. She tried to make it look like an accident, but he didn’t pull away. It felt like electricity was surging between their two pinkies.

  “Mr. Fitz!” Devon Arliss’s hand shot up in the back row. “I have a question.”

  “Be right there,” Ezra said, straightening up.

  Aria put the pinkie finger that had touched Ezra’s into her mouth. She watched him for a few seconds, thinking he might come back to her, but he didn’t.

  Well then. Back to plan J, for Jealous. She turned to Noel. “I think our movie should have a sex scene in it.”

  She said it really loud, but Ezra was still bent over Devon’s desk.

  “Awesome,” Noel said. “Does the guy who thinks he’s a duck get some?”

  “Yep. With a woman who kisses like a goose.”

  Noel laughed. “How does a goose kiss?”

  Aria turned toward Devon’s desk. Ezra was facing them now. Good.

  “Like this.” She leaned over and smacked Noel on the cheek with her lips. Surprisingly, Noel smelled pretty good. Like Kiehl’s Blue Eagle shaving cream.

  “Nice,” Noel whispered.

  The rest of the class burbled with activity, unaware of any goose kissing, but Ezra, still next to Devon’s desk, stood absolutely still.

  “So did you know I’m having a party tonight?” Noel put his hand on Aria’s knee.

  “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

  “You should totally come. We’re going to have a lot of beer. And other things…like Scotch. Do you like Scotch? My dad has a collection, so…”

  “I love Scotch.” Aria felt Ezra’s eyes burning into her back. Then she leaned over to Noel, and said: “I’ll totally come to your party tonight.”

  By the way his pen fell out of his hand and clattered to the ground, it wasn’t hard to guess whether or not Ezra had heard them.

  18

  WHERE’S OUR OLD EMILY AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?

  “Are you going to the Kahn party later?” Carolyn asked, steering the car into the Fieldses’ driveway.

  Emily ran a comb through her still-wet hair. “I don’t know.” Today at practice, she and Ben hadn’t said two words to each other, so she wasn’t exactly sure about going with him. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. Topher and I might just go to Applebee’s instead.”

  Of course Carolyn would have a hard time deciding between a Friday night field party and Applebee’s.

  They slammed the doors of the Volvo and walked up the stone path to the Fieldses’ thirty-year-old colonial-style house. It wasn’t nearly as big or flashy as most of the houses in Rosewood. The blue-painted shingles were chipping a little and some of the stones in the front path had disappeared. The deck furniture looked kind of outdated.

  Their mother greeted them at the front door, holding the cordless phone. “Emily, I need to speak with you.”

  Emily glanced at Carolyn, who ducked her head and ran upstairs. Uh-oh. “What’s up?”

  Her mom smoothed her hands over her gray pleated slacks. “I was on the phone with Coach Lauren. She said your head seems to be somewhere else, not focused on swimming. And…you missed practice on Wednesday.”

  Emily swallowed hard. “I was tutoring some kids in Spanish.”

  “That’s what Carolyn told me. So I called Ms. Hernandez.”

  Emily stared down at her green Vans. Ms. Hernandez was the Spanish teacher in charge of tutoring.

  “Don’t lie to me, Emily.” Mrs. Fields frowned. “Where were you?”

  Emily walked into the kitchen and slumped into a chair. Her mom was a rational person. They could discuss this.

  She fiddled with the silver loop at the top of her ear. Years ago, Ali had asked Emily to come to the Piercing Palace with her when she got her belly button pierced, and they’d ended up getting matching piercings at the top of their ears, too. Emily still wore the same little silver hoop. Afterward, Ali bought Emily a pair of leopard-print earmuffs to hide the evidence. Emily still wore those earmuffs on the coldest days in the winter.

  “Look,” she finally said. “I was just hanging out with that new girl, Maya. She’s really nice. We’re friends.”

  Her mother looked confused. “Why didn’t you just do something after practice, or on Saturday?”

  “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” Emily said. “I missed one day. I’ll swim a double this weekend—I promise.”

  Her mother pursed her thin lips in a straight line and sat down. “But Emily…I just don’t understand. When you signed up for swimming this year, you made a commitment. You can’t go running off with friends if you’re supposed to be swimming.”

  Emily stopped her. “Signed up for swimming? Like I had a choice?”

  “What’s going on with you? You’re using a strange tone of voice; you’re lying about where you’ve been.” Her mother shook her head. “What’s with this lying? You’ve never lied before.”

  “Mom…” Emily paused, feeling very tired. She wanted to point out that yes, she had lied, plenty. Even though she’d been the good girl of her seventh-grade friends, she’d done all kinds of stuff her mom never knew about.

  Right after Ali went missing, Emily worried that Ali’s disappearance was somehow…cosmically…her fault—as punishment, maybe, for how Emily had secretly disobeyed her parents. For getting that piercing. For The Jenna Thing. Since then, she’d tried to be perfect, to do everything her parents asked. She’d made herself into this model daughter, inside and out.

  “I just like to know what’s going on with you,” her mother said.

  Emily laid her hands on the place mat, remembering how she’d become this version of herself that wasn’t really her. Ali wasn’t gone because Emily had disobeyed her parents—she realized that now. And the same way she couldn’t imagine sitting on Ben’s itchy couch, feeling his slimy tongue on her neck, she also couldn’t see herself spending the next two years of high school—and then the next four years of college—in a pool for hours every day. Why couldn’t Emily just be…Emily? Couldn’t her time be better served studying or—God forbid—having some fun?

  “If you want to know what’s going on with me,” Emily started, pushing her hair out of her face. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think I want to swim anymore.”

  Mrs. Fields’s right eye twitched. Her lips parted slightly. Then she spun around to face the fridge, staring at all the chicken magnets on the freezer. She didn’t speak, but her shoulders shook. Finally, she turned. Her eyes were slightly red, and her face looked saggy, as if she’d aged ten years in just a few moments. “I’m calling your father. He’ll talk some sense into you.”

  “I’ve already made up my mind.” As she said it, she realized she had.

  “No you haven’t. You don’t know what’s best for you.”

  “Mom!” Emily suddenly felt tears fill her eyes. It was scary and sad to have her mother angry with her. But now that she’d made the decision, she felt like she’d finally been allowed to take off a big goose down jacket in the middle of a heat wave.

  Her mom’s mouth trembled. “Is it because of that new friend of yours?”

  Emily cringed and wiped her nose. “What? Who?”

  Mrs. Fields sighed. “That girl who moved into the DiLaurentis house. She was the one you skipped practice to spend time with, right? What were you two doing?”

  “We…we just went to the trail,” Emily whispered. “And talked.”

  Her mother looked down. “I don’t have a good feeling about girls…like that.”

  Wait. What? Emily stared at her mother. She…knew? But how? Her mom hadn’t even met Maya. Unless you could look at her and just know?

  “But Maya’s really nice,” Emily managed. “I forgot to tell you, but she said the brownies were great. She said thank you.”

  Her mother pinched her lips together. “I went over there. I was trying to be neighborly. But this…this is too much. She’s not a good influence for you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Please, Emily,” her mom interrupted.

  Emily’s words stuck in her throat.

  Her mom sighed. “There are just so many cultural differences with…her…and I just don’t understand what you and Maya have in common, anyway. And who knows about her family? Who knows what they could be into?”

  “Wait, what?” Emily stared at her mother. Maya’s family? As far as Emily knew, Maya’s father was a civic engineer and her mom worked as a nurse practitioner. Her brother was a senior at Rosewood and a tennis prodigy; they were building a tennis court for him in the backyard. What did her family have to do with anything?

  “I just don’t trust those people,” her mother said. “I know that sounds really narrow-minded, but I don’t.”

  Emily’s mind screeched to a halt. Her family. Cultural differences. Those people? She went over everything her mother just said. Oh. My. God.

  Mrs. Fields wasn’t upset because she thought Maya was gay. She was upset because Maya—and the rest of her family—were black.

  19

  SPICY HOT

  Friday evening, Spencer lay on her maple four-poster bed in the middle of her brand-new converted barn bedroom with Icy Hot slathered on her lower back, staring at the gorgeous beamed ceiling. You’d never guess that fifty years ago, cows slept in this barn. The room was huge, with four gigantic windows and a little patio. After dinner last night, she’d moved all of her boxes and furniture there. She’d organized all of her books and CDs according to author and artist, set up her surround-sound, and even reset TiVo to her preferences, including her brand-new favorite programs on BBC America. It was perfect.

  Except, of course, for her throbbing back. Her body ached as if she’d gone bungee jumping without a ripcord. Ian had made them run three miles—at a sprint—followed by practice drills. All the girls had been talking about what they were wearing to Noel’s party tonight, but after the hellish practice, Spencer was just as happy to stay home with some calc homework. Especially since home was now her very own little barn utopia.

  Spencer reached for the jar of Icy Hot and realized it was empty. She sat up slowly, and put her hand on her back like an old woman. She’d just have to get some more from the main house. Spencer just loved that she could now call it the main house. It felt terribly grown up.

  As she crossed her long, hilly lawn, she let her mind return to one of her favorite topics du jour, Andrew Campbell. Yes, it was a relief that A was Andrew and not Ali, and yes, she felt a billion times better and a zillion times less paranoid since yesterday, but still—what a horrible, meddling spy! How dare he ask such intrusive, gossipy questions in the reading room and write her a creepy e-mail! And everyone thought he was so sweet and innocent, with his perfectly knotted tie and his luminous skin—he was probably the type who brought Cetaphil to school and washed up after gym class. Weirdo.

  Shutting the door of the upstairs bathroom, she found the jar of Icy Hot in the closet, pulled down her Nuala Puma warm-up pants, twisted around to see herself in the mirror, and started rubbing the balm all over her back and hamstrings. The Icy Hot’s stinky menthol smell instantly wafted around the room, and she closed her eyes.

  The door burst open. Spencer tried to pull her pants up as quickly as she could.

  “Oh my God,” Wren said, his eyes wide. “I…shit. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Spencer said, scrambling to tie her waistband.

  “I’m still confused about this house….” Wren was wearing his blue hospital scrubs, which consisted of a V-neck draped top and tie-waist wide-leg pants. He looked all ready for bed. “I thought this was our bedroom.”

  “Happens all the time,” Spencer said, even though it obviously didn’t.

  Wren paused in the doorway. Spencer felt him looking at her and quickly looked down to make sure her boob wasn’t hanging out and there wasn’t a glob of Icy Hot on her neck.

  “So, um, how’s the barn?” Wren asked.

  Spencer grinned, then self-consciously covered her mouth. Last year, she’d had her teeth whitened at the dentist and they’d come out looking a little too white. She’d had to purposely dull them with tons of coffee. “Awesome. How’s my sister’s old bedroom?”

  Wren smiled wryly. “Um. It’s rather…pink.”

  “Yeah. All those frilly curtains,” Spencer added.

  “I found a disturbing CD, too.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  “Phantom of the Opera.” He grimaced.

  “But aren’t you into plays?” Spencer blurted out.

  “Well, Shakespeare and stuff.” Wren raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know that?”