Pretty Little Liars (14 page)

“Finland! I've been looking everywhere for you!”

It was an hour later, and Aria was just stepping out of the photo booth. Noel Kahn stood in front of her, naked except for his Calvin Klein boxers, which were wet and clingy. He was holding a yellow plastic cup of beer and her just-developed strip of pictures. Noel shook his hair around a little, and water from his hair sprayed onto her APC miniskirt.

“Why are you all wet?” Aria asked.

“We were playing water polo.”

Aria glanced at the pond. The boys were batting one another in the heads with pink fun-noodles. On the banks, girls in nearly identical Alberta Ferrari minidresses huddled together, gossiping. Over by the hedges, not that far from them, she spied her brother, Mike. He was with a petite girl in a plaid micromini and platform heels.

Noel followed her gaze. “That's one of those Quaker school girls,” he murmured. “Those chicks are nuts.”

Mike glanced up and saw Aria and Noel together. He gave Aria an approving nod.

Noel tapped Aria's photo strip with his thumb. “These are gorgeous.”

Aria looked at them. Bored out of her skull, she'd been taking pictures of herself in the booth for twenty minutes. This round, she'd made sultry, sex-kitten expressions.

Très
sigh. She'd come here thinking that Ezra, jealous and lustful, would come and whisk her away. But, duh, he was a teacher, and a teacher wouldn't go to a students' party.

“Noel!” James Freed called from across the lawn. “Keg's tapped!”

“Shit,” Noel said. He gave Aria a wet kiss on her cheek. “This beer's for you. Don't leave.”

“Uh-huh,” Aria said drolly, watching him scamper away, his boxers slowly sliding down to reveal his pale, defined-from-running butt.

“He really likes you, you know.”

Aria turned. Mona Vanderwaal sat on the ground a few feet away. Her blond hair was in coils around her face and her gold-rimmed bug-eye sunglasses had slid down her nose. Noel's older brother, Eric, had his head in her lap.

Mona blinked slowly. “Noel's awesome. He'd make such a good friendboy.”

Eric burst out laughing. “What?” Mona bent down to him. “What's so funny?”

“She's so stoned,” Eric said to Aria.

As Aria scoured her brain for something to say, her Treo beeped. She wrenched it out of her purse and looked at the number. Ezra.
Oh my God, oh my God!

“Um, hello?” she answered quietly.

“Hey. Um, Aria?”

“Oh. Hey! What's up?” She tried to sound as controlled and cool as possible.

“I'm at home, having a Scotch, thinking about you.”

Aria paused, closed her eyes, and a glow passed through her. “Really?”

“Yep. You at that big party?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You bored?”

She laughed. “A little.”

“Wanna come by?”

“Okay.” Ezra started to give her directions, but Aria already knew where it was. She'd looked up his address on MapQuest and Google Earth, but she couldn't exactly tell
him
that.

“Cool,” she said. “See you soon.”

Aria shoved the phone back into her purse as calmly as she could, and then banged the rubbery soles of her boots together.
Yesssss!!!

“Hey, I know where I know you from.”

Aria looked over. Noel's brother, Eric, was squinting
at her while Mona kissed his neck. “You're the friend of that chick who disappeared, right?”

Aria looked at him and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I don't know who you're talking about,” she said, and walked away.

 

A lot of Rosewood was gated estates and renovated fifty-acre horse farms, but near the college there was a series of rambling, cobblestone streets lined with falling-to-pieces Victorian houses. The houses in Old Hollis were painted crazy colors like purple, pink, and teal and were usually split into apartments and leased to students. Aria's family had lived in an Old Hollis house until Aria was five, which was when her dad got his first teaching job at the college.

As Aria drove slowly down Ezra's street, she noticed one house with Greek letters mounted onto its siding. Toilet paper wound through its trees. Another house had a half-finished painting on an easel in the front yard.

She pulled up to Ezra's house. After parking, she climbed up the stone front steps and rang the bell. The door flung open, and there he was.

“Wow,” he said. “Hey.” His mouth spread into a wiggly smile.

“Hi,” Aria answered, smiling back at him in the same way.

Ezra laughed. “I…um, you're here. Wow.”

“You already said wow,” Aria teased.

They entered into a hallway. Ahead of her, a creaky staircase with a different swatch of carpet on each step wound its way upstairs. On the right, a door was ajar. “This apartment's mine.”

Aria walked in and noticed a claw-foot bathtub in the middle of Ezra's living room. She pointed at it.

“It's too heavy to move,” Ezra said sheepishly. “So I store books in there.”

“Cool.” Aria looked around, taking in Ezra's gigantic bay window, dusty built-in bookshelves, and yellow crushed velvet sofa. It smelled faintly of macaroni and cheese but there was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a funky mosaic tile around the mantel, and real logs in the fireplace. This was so much more Aria's style than the Kahns' million-dollar duck pond and twenty-seven-room estate.

“I totally want to live here,” Aria said.

“I can't stop thinking about you,” Ezra said at the same time.

Aria looked over her shoulder. “Really?”

Ezra came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. Aria leaned slightly into him. They stood there for a moment, and then Aria turned. She stared at his clean-shaven face, at the bump at the edge of his nose, the green flecks in his eyes. She touched a mole on his earlobe and felt him shudder.

“I just…couldn't ignore you in class,” he whispered. “It was torture. When you were giving that report…”

“You touched my hand today,” Aria teased. “You were looking at my notebook.”

“You kissed Noel,” Ezra said back. “I was so jealous.”

“Then it worked,” Aria whispered.

Ezra sighed and wrapped his arms around her. She met his mouth with hers and they kissed feverishly, their hands crawling up each other's backs. They backed up for a second, breathlessly staring into each other's eyes.

“No more talk about class,” Ezra said.

“Deal.”

He guided her into a tiny back bedroom that had clothes all over the floor and an open bag of Lay's on the nightstand. They sat down on his bed. The mattress was barely bigger than a twin, and even though the comforter was made of stiff denim and the mattress probably had potato chip crumbs in the cracks, Aria had never felt anything so perfect in her life.

 

Aria was still on the bed, staring up at a crack in the ceiling. The streetlight outside the window cast long shadows across everything, turning Aria's bare skin a weird shade of pink. A stiff, chilly breeze from the open window blew out the sandalwood candle next to the bed. She heard Ezra turn on the faucet in the bathroom.

Wow. Wow wow
wow
!

She felt alive. She and Ezra had nearly had sex…but then, at exactly the same time, they'd agreed that they
should wait. So then they'd snuggled up to each other, naked, and started to talk. Ezra told her about the time he was six and sculpted a red squirrel out of clay, only to have his brother squash it. How he used to smoke a lot of pot after his parents got divorced. About the time he had to take the family's fox terrier to the vet to have her put to sleep. Aria told him about how when she was little, she kept a can of split pea soup named Pee as a pet and cried when her mom tried to cook Pee for dinner. She told him about her furious knitting habit and promised to knit him a sweater.

It was easy to talk to Ezra—so easy she could imagine doing it forever. They could travel together to faraway places. Brazil would be amazing…. They could sleep in a tree and eat nothing but plantains and write plays for the rest of their lives….

Her Treo beeped.
Ugh.
It was probably Noel, wondering what happened to her. She hugged one of Ezra's pillows close to her—mmm, it smelled just like him—and waited for him to come out of the bathroom and kiss her some more.

Then it beeped again. And again and again.

“Jesus,” Aria groaned, leaning her naked body off the bed to pull it out of her bag. Seven new text messages. More kept beeping in.

Opening her inbox, Aria frowned. The messages all had the same title:
STUDENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE
! Her stomach turned as she opened the first one.

Aria read the next text message and the next and the next.
All the messages said the same thing.
She dropped the Treo on the floor. She had to sit down.

No. She had to get out of here.

“Ezra?” She frantically peered out Ezra's windows. Was she watching, right this second? What did she want? Was it really
her
? “Ezra, I have to go. It's an emergency.”

“What?” Ezra called from behind the bathroom door. “You're leaving?”

Aria couldn't quite believe it, either. She yanked her shirt over her head. “I'll call you, okay? I just have to go do something.”

“Wait. What?” he asked, opening the bathroom door.

Aria grabbed her bag and tore out the door and across the yard. She needed to get away. Now.

“The limit of x is…,” Spencer murmured to herself. She propped herself up on one elbow on her bed and stared at her brand-new, just-covered-with-a-brown-bag calculus book. Her lower back still burned with Icy Hot.

She checked her watch: It was after midnight. Was she crazy to stress over her calc homework on the school year's first Friday night? The Spencer of last year would've whizzed over to the Kahns' in her Mercedes, drunk bad keg beer, and maybe made out with Mason Byers or some other cute lax boy. But not the Spencer of now. She was the Star, and the Star had homework to do. Tomorrow, the Star was visiting home design stores with her mom to properly accessorize the barn. She might even hit Main Line Bikes with her dad in the afternoon—he'd pored over some bicycling catalogues with her
during dinner, asking her which Orbea frame she liked better. He'd never asked her opinion about bikes before.

She cocked her head. Was that a tiny, tentative knock at the door? Putting down her mechanical pencil, Spencer gazed out the barn's large front window. The moon was silvery and full, and the windows of the main house blazed a warm yellow. There was the knock again. She padded over to the heavy wooden door and opened it a crack.

“Hey,” Wren whispered. “Am I interrupting?”

“Of course not.” Spencer opened the door wider. Wren was barefoot, in a slim-fitting white T-shirt that said,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MEDICAL
, and baggy khaki shorts. She looked down at her black French Connection baby tee, short track-star gray sweat shorts from Villanova, and bare legs. Her hair was pulled back in a low, messy ponytail; wisps hanging around her face. It was a completely different look from her everyday Thomas Pink striped button-down and Citizens jeans. That look said,
I'm sophisticated and sexy
, this look said,
I'm studying…but still sexy
.

Okay, so maybe she'd planned for the off chance this would happen. But it goes to show you shouldn't just throw on your high-waisted underwear and old, ratty
I HEART PERSIAN CATS
T-shirt.

“How's it going?” she asked. A warm breeze lifted the wispy ends of her hair. A pine cone fell out of a nearby tree with a thump.

Wren hovered in the doorway. “Shouldn't you be out partying? I heard there was a huge field party somewhere.”

Spencer shrugged. “Not into it.”

Wren met her eyes. “No?”

Spencer's mouth felt cottony. “Um…where's Melissa?”

“She's sleeping. Too much renovating, I guess. So I thought maybe you could give me a tour of this fabulous barn I don't get to live in. I never even got to see it!”

Spencer frowned. “Do you have a housewarming gift?”

Wren paled. “Oh. I…”

“I'm kidding.” She opened the door. “Enter the Spencer Hastings barn.”

She'd spent some of the night daydreaming about all the potential scenarios of being alone with Wren, but nothing compared to actually having him right here, next to her.

Wren strolled over to her Thom Yorke poster and stretched his hands behind his head. “You like Radiohead?”

“Love.”

Wren's face lit up. “I've seen them like twenty times in London. Every show gets better.”

She smoothed down the duvet on her bed. “Lucky. I've never seen them live.”

“We have to remedy that,” he said, leaning against her couch. “If they come to Philly, we're going.”

Spencer paused. “But I don't think…” Then she stopped. She was about to say
I don't think Melissa likes them
, but…maybe Melissa wasn't invited.

She led him to the walk-in closet. “This is my, um, closet,” she said, accidentally bumping into the doorjamb. “It used to be a milking station.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. This is where the farmers squeezed the cow's nipples or whatever.”

He laughed. “Don't you mean
udders
?”

“Uh, yeah.” Spencer blushed. Oops. “You don't have to look in there to be polite. I mean, I know closets aren't that interesting to guys.”

“Oh no.” Wren grinned. “I've come all this way; I absolutely want to see what Spencer Hastings has in her closet.”

“As you wish.” Spencer flicked on the closet light. The closet smelled like leather, mothballs, and Clinique Happy. She'd stashed all her undies, bras, nightgowns, and grubby hockey clothes in wicker pull-out baskets, and her shirts hung in neat rows, arranged according to color.

Wren chuckled. “It's like being in a shop!”

“Yeah,” Spencer said bashfully, running her hands against her shirts.

“I've never heard of a window in a closet.” Wren pointed to the open window on the far wall. “Seems funny.”

“It was part of the original barn,” Spencer explained.

“You like people watching you naked?”

“There are
blinds
,” Spencer said.

“Too bad,” Wren said softly. “You looked so beautiful in the bathroom…. I hoped I'd get to see you…like that…again.”

When Spencer whirled around—
what
did he just say?—Wren was staring at her. He rubbed his fingers over the cuff of a hung-up pair of Joseph trousers. She slid her Tiffany Elsa Peretti heart ring up and down her finger, afraid to speak. Wren took a step forward, then another, until he was right next to her. Spencer could see the light smattering of freckles over his nose. The well-behaved Spencer of a parallel universe would have ducked around him and shown him the rest of the barn. But Wren kept staring at her with his huge, gorgeous brown eyes. The Spencer who was here now rubbed her lips together, afraid to speak, yet dying to do…something.

So then she did. She closed her eyes, reached up, and kissed him right on the lips.

Wren didn't hesitate. He kissed her back, then held on to the back of her neck and kissed her harder. His mouth was soft, and he tasted a tiny bit like cigarettes.

Spencer sank back into her wall of shirts. Wren followed. A few slipped off the hangers, but Spencer didn't care.

They sank down onto the soft carpeted floor. Spencer kicked her field hockey cleats out of the way. Wren rolled
on top of her, groaning slightly. Spencer grabbed fistfuls of his worn T-shirt in her hands and pulled it over his head. He took hers off next and ran his feet up and down her legs. They rolled over and now Spencer was on top of him. A huge, overwhelming surge of—well, she didn't know what—overcame her. Whatever it was, it was so intense it didn't occur to her to feel guilty. She paused over him, breathing hard.

He reached up and kissed her again, then kissed her nose and her neck. Then he pushed himself up. “I'll be right back.”

“Why?”

He motioned his eyes to his left, the direction of her bathroom.

As soon as she heard Wren shut the door, Spencer threw her head back onto the floor and stared dizzily up at her clothes. Then she scrambled up and examined herself in the three-way mirror. Her hair had come out of its ponytail and cascaded over her shoulders. Her bare skin looked luminous, and her face was slightly flushed. She grinned at the three Spencers in the mirror. This. Was.
Unbelievable
.

That was when the reflection of her computer screen, directly opposite her closet, caught her eye.

It was flashing. She turned around and squinted. It looked like she had hundreds of instant messages, piled one on top of the other. Another IM popped on the screen, this time written in 72-point font. Spencer blinked.

Spencer ran up to her computer screen and read the IM again. She turned and glanced toward the bathroom; a tiny strip of light shone from underneath the door.

A was definitely not Andrew Campbell.

When she kissed Ian back in seventh grade, she told Alison about it, hoping for some advice. Ali examined her French-manicured toenails for a long moment before she finally said, “You know, I've been in your corner when it comes to Melissa. But this is different. I think you should tell her.”

“Tell her?”
Spencer shot back. “No way. She'd kill me.”

“What, do you think Ian's going to go out with you?” Ali said nastily.

“I don't know,” Spencer said. “Why not?”

Ali snorted. “If you don't tell her, maybe I will.”

“No you won't!”

“Oh yeah?”

“If you tell Melissa,” Spencer said after a moment, her heart pounding wildly, “I'll tell everyone about The Jenna Thing.”

Ali barked out a laugh. “You're just as guilty as I am.”

Spencer stared at Ali long and hard. “But no one saw
me
.”

She turned to Spencer and gave her a fierce, angry look—scarier than any look she'd ever given any of the
girls before. “You know I took care of that.”

Then there was that sleepover in the barn on the last day of seventh grade. When Ali said how cute Ian and Melissa were together, Spencer realized Ali really might tell on her. Then, strangely, a light, free feeling swept over her.
Let her,
Spencer thought. She suddenly didn't care anymore. And even though it sounded horrible to say now, the truth was, Spencer wanted to be free of Ali, right then and there.

Now Spencer felt nauseous. She heard the toilet flush. Wren strode out and stood in the closet's doorway. “Now, where were we?” he cooed.

But Spencer still had her eyes on her computer screen. Something on it—a flicker of red—just moved. It looked like…a reflection.

“What's the matter?” Wren asked.

“Shh,” Spencer said. Her eyes focused. It
was
a reflection. She spun around. There was someone outside her window.

“Holy shit,” Spencer said. She held her T-shirt up against her naked chest.

“What is it?” Wren asked.

Spencer stepped back. Her throat was dry. “Oh,” she croaked.

“Oh,” Wren echoed.

Melissa stood outside the window, her hair messy and Medusa-like, her face absolutely expressionless. A
cigarette shook in her tiny, usually steady fingers.

“I didn't know you smoked,” Spencer finally said.

Melissa didn't answer. Instead, she took one more drag, threw the butt in the dewy grass, and turned back toward the main house.

“You coming, Wren?” Melissa called frostily over her shoulder.