Twisted (2 page)

“Right behind you!” Aria Montgomery called, kicking off her Havaianas flip-flops and winding her long, blue-black hair into a bun. She didn’t bother taking off the bracelets on each arm or the feather earrings dangling from her earlobes.

“Out of my way!” Hanna Marin smoothed her hands over her narrow hips—well,
hopefully
they were still narrow after the massive plate of fried clams she’d eaten at the welcome-to-Jamaica fish fry that afternoon.

Emily Fields pulled up the rear, leaving her T-shirt on a large, flat rock. As she reached the edge and peered down, a wave of wooziness hit her. She halted in her tracks and covered her mouth until the feeling passed.

The girls jumped off the cliff and hit the warm, tropical water at exactly the same time. They surfaced, giggling—they’d
all
won and lost!—and staring at the The Cliffs, the Jamaican resort high above their heads. The pink stucco building, which housed the rooms, yoga studio, dance club, and spa, towered into the clouds, and several people loitered on their shaded balconies or swilled cocktails on the deck. Palm trees swayed, and island birds cawed. The faintest tinkling of a steel drum rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” floated through the air.

“Paradise,” Spencer whispered. The others murmured in agreement.

This was the ideal spring break retreat, the complete opposite of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where the four girls lived. Sure, the Philadelphia suburb was like a picture-postcard, resplendent with thick, lush woods, expansive mansions, idyllic horse trails, quaint old barns, and crumbling seventeenth-century estates, but after what had happened just a few months before, the girls needed a change of scenery. They needed to forget that Alison DiLaurentis, the girl they used to admire and adore, the girl everyone wanted to be, had almost killed them.

Forgetting was impossible, though. Even though two months had passed since it happened, the memories haunted them, visions rising up like ghosts. Like how Alison took their hands and told each of them she wasn’t her twin sister, Courtney, as her parents had claimed, but their best friend back from the grave. Or how Ali invited them into her family’s Poconos house, saying it would be the perfect reunion. How, shortly after they’d arrived, Ali led them to an upstairs bedroom and begged them to let her hypnotize them just like she had done the night she disappeared in seventh grade. Then she slammed the door, locked it from the outside, and slid a note underneath telling them exactly who she was . . . and who she wasn’t.

Her name was Ali, all right. But it turned out they hadn’t been friends with the
real
Ali at all. The girl who wrote that note at the Poconos house wasn’t the same girl who’d plucked Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna out of obscurity at the Rosewood Charity Drive at the beginning of sixth grade. Nor was she the girl with whom they’d swapped outfits, gossiped, competed, and crushed on for a year and a half. That had been Courtney all along, posing as Ali, stepping into her life shortly after sixth grade began.
This
Ali, the
real
Ali, was a stranger. A girl who hated them with every ounce of her being. A girl who was A, the evil text-messager who’d killed Ian Thomas, burned down the woods behind Spencer’s house, got the girls arrested, murdered Jenna Cavanaugh for knowing too much, and killed her twin sister Courtney—
their
Ali—the fateful night of the girls’ seventh-grade sleepover. And she planned on offing them next.

As soon as the girls read the last horrible sentence of the letter, their noses twitched with the scent of smoke—the real Ali had doused the house in gas and lit a match. They’d escaped just in time, but Ali hadn’t been as lucky. When the cabin exploded, Ali was still inside.

Or
was
she? There were lots of rumors that she’d made it out alive. The whole story was public now, including the twin switch, and even though she was a cold-blooded killer, some people were still fascinated with the real Ali all the same. There had been claims of Ali sightings in Denver, or Minneapolis, or Palm Springs. The girls tried not to think of that, though. They had to move on. They had nothing to fear anymore.

Two figures appeared at the top of the cliff. One was Noel Kahn, Aria’s boyfriend; the other was Mike Montgomery, her brother and Hanna’s boyfriend. The girls paddled for the steps carved into the rock.

Noel handed Aria a big fluffy towel that had
THE CLIFFS, NEGRIL, JAMAICA
stitched at the bottom in red thread. “You’re so sexy in that bikini.”

“Yeah, right.” Aria ducked her head and stared at her pale limbs. Certainly not as hot as the blond goddesses just down the beach who’d spent the whole day rubbing tanning oil on their long arms and legs. Had she caught Noel checking them out, or was that just her jealous paranoia getting the best of her?

“I’m serious.” Noel pinched Aria’s butt. “I’m holding you to skinny-dipping on this trip. And when we go to Iceland, we’re getting naked in those geothermal pools.”

Aria blushed.

Noel elbowed her. “You
are
excited about Iceland, aren’t you?”

“Of course!” Noel had surprised Aria with tickets for her, himself, Hanna, and Mike to go to Iceland this summer—all expenses paid by the über-rich Kahn family. Aria certainly couldn’t say no—she’d spent an idyllic three years in Iceland after Ali,
their
Ali, vanished. But she felt a strange resistance about the trip, an eerie premonition that she shouldn’t go. Why, she wasn’t sure.

After the girls slipped on their sarongs, beach dresses, and, in Emily’s case, an oversized Urban Outfitters tee with the words
MERCI BEAUCOUP
printed across the front, Noel and Mike led them to a table at the tropical rooftop restaurant. Tons of other kids also on spring break stood at the bar, flirting and doing shots. A knot of girls in mini-dresses and high, strappy heels giggled in a corner. Tall, sunburned guys in board shorts, snug-fitting polos, and sockless Pumas clinked beer bottles and talked sports. The air had an electric pulse, sparkling with the promise of illicit hookups, drunken memories, and late-night swims in the resort’s saltwater pool.

The air throbbed with something else, too, something the four girls noticed instantly. Excitement, certainly . . . but also a hint of danger. It felt like one of those nights that could go either wonderfully right . . . or terribly wrong.

Noel stood. “Drinks? What do we want?”

“Red Stripe,” Hanna answered. Spencer and Aria nodded in agreement.

“Emily?” Noel turned to her.

“Just a ginger ale,” Emily said.

Spencer touched her arm. “Are you okay?” Emily wasn’t a big partier, but it was weird that she wasn’t splurging even a little on vacation.

Emily pressed her hand to her mouth. Then she rose clumsily from the table and wheeled toward the small bathroom in the corner. “I just have to . . .”

Everyone watched as she wove around the kids on the dance floor and shoved hurriedly through the pink bathroom door. Mike winced. “Is it Montezuma’s revenge?”

“I don’t know . . .” Aria said. They’d been careful not to drink tap water here. But Emily hadn’t been herself since the fire. She’d been in love with Ali. To have the girl she thought was her best friend and longtime crush return, break her heart, and try to kill her must have been doubly devastating.

Hanna’s cell phone buzzed, breaking the silence. She pulled it out of her straw beach bag and groaned. “Well, it’s official. My dad’s running for Senate. This dork on his campaign staff is already asking to meet with me when I get back.”

“Really?” Aria looped her arm around Hanna’s shoulders. “Hanna, that’s amazing!”

“If he wins, you’ll be a First Daughter!” Spencer said. “You’ll be in the society magazines!”

Mike skootched his chair closer to Hanna. “Can I be your personal Secret Service agent?”

Hanna reached for a handful of plantain chips from a bowl on the table and shoved them into her mouth. “I won’t be the First Daughter.
Kate
will.” Her dad’s stepdaughter and new wife were his true family now. Hanna and her mother were the rejects.

As Aria playfully slapped Hanna’s hand, the bracelets on her wrist rattled. “You’re better than she is, and you know it.”

Hanna rolled her eyes dismissively, though she was grateful to Aria for trying to cheer her up. That was the one good thing that had come out of the Ali disaster: The four of them were best friends again, their bond even stronger than it was in seventh grade. They’d vowed to remain friends forever. Nothing would ever come between them again.

Noel returned with the drinks, and everyone clinked glasses and said “Yeah,
mon
!” in faux-Jamaican accents. Emily staggered back from the bathroom, still looking seasick, but smiled cheerfully as she sipped her ginger ale.

After dinner, Noel and Mike wandered over to an air hockey table in the corner and began to play. The DJ cranked up the music, and Alicia Keys blasted over the stereo. Several people writhed on the dance floor. A boy with wavy brown hair and a buff physique caught Spencer’s eye and beckoned her to join him.

Aria nudged her. “Go for it, Spence!”

Spencer turned away, blushing. “
Uch
, skeevy!”

“He looks like the perfect Andrew cure,” Hanna urged. Andrew Campbell, Spencer’s boyfriend, had broken up with her a month ago—apparently, Spencer’s ordeal with Ali and A was “just too intense” for him to handle.
Wuss.

Spencer gazed at the guy on the dance floor again. Admittedly, he was cute in his long khaki shorts and laceless boat shoes. Then she spied the insignia on his polo.
PRINCETON CREW
.
Princeton was her top-choice school.

Hanna brightened, noticing the polo, too. “Spence! It’s a sign! You guys could end up being dorm mates!”

Spencer looked away. “It’s not like I’m going to get in.”

The girls exchanged a surprised glance. “Of course you will,” Emily said quietly.

Spencer reached for her beer and took a hearty swig, ignoring their inquisitive stares. The truth was, she’d let her schoolwork go in the past few months—wouldn’t anyone, after their supposed BFF tried to kill them? The last time she checked with her guidance counselor about her class rank, she’d slipped to twenty-seventh place. No one ranked that low ever got into an Ivy.

“I’d rather hang out with you guys,” Spencer said. She didn’t want to think about school on vacation.

Aria, Emily, and Hanna shrugged, then raised their glasses once more. “To us,” Aria said.

“To friendship,” Hanna agreed.

Each of the girls let their minds go to a Zen-like place, and for the first time in days they didn’t automatically think of their horrible past. No A notes blinked in their minds. Rosewood felt like it was in a different solar system.

The DJ put on an old Madonna song, and Spencer rose from her seat. “Let’s dance, guys.”

The others started to jump up, too, but Emily grabbed Spencer’s arm tightly, pulling her back down. “Don’t move.”

“What?” Spencer stared at her. “Why?”

Emily’s eyes were saucers, her gaze fixed on something by the spiral staircase. “
Look.
”

The girls turned and squinted. A thin blond girl in a bright yellow sundress had appeared on the landing. She had striking blue eyes, pink-lined lips, and a scar over her right eyebrow. Even from where they were sitting they could make out more scars on her body: puckered skin on her arms, lacerations on her neck, withered flesh on her bare legs. But despite the scars, she radiated beauty and confidence.

“What is it?” Aria murmured.

“Do you know her?” Spencer asked.

“Can’t you see?” Emily whispered, her voice quivering. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Aria said softly, worriedly.

“That girl.” Emily turned to them, her face pale, her lips bloodless. “It’s . . .
Ali
.”

TEN MONTHS LATER

Chapter 1

Pretty Little Party

A pudgy caterer with impeccably manicured hands thrust a tray of steaming, gooey cheese into Spencer Hastings’s face. “Baked Brie?”

Spencer selected a cracker and took a big bite.
Delicious.
It wasn’t every day that a caterer served her baked Brie in her very own kitchen, but on this particular Saturday night, her mother was throwing a party to welcome a new family to the neighborhood. Mrs. Hastings hadn’t been in the mood to play hostess the last few months, but she’d had a burst of social enthusiasm.

As if on cue, Veronica Hastings bustled into the room in a cloud of Chanel No. 5, fastening dangling earrings to her earlobes and sliding a large diamond ring onto her right finger. The ring was a recent purchase—her mother had exchanged every piece of jewelry Spencer’s dad had ever bought her for all-new baubles. Her ash-blond hair hung straight and smooth to her chin, her eyes looked wide and huge thanks to expertly applied makeup, and she wore a fitted black sheath dress that showed off her Pilates-toned arms.

“Spencer, your friend’s here to work coat check,” Mrs. Hastings said hurriedly as she put a couple of stray dishes from the sink into the dishwasher and gave the island yet another spray with Fantastik, even though she’d had a team scour the house only an hour before. “Maybe you should see if she needs anything.”

“Who?” Spencer wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t asked anyone to work tonight’s event. Usually her mom hired students from Hollis College, the university down the road, to do it.

Mrs. Hastings let out an impatient sigh and checked her flawless reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator door. “Emily Fields. I’ve set her up by the study.”

Spencer stiffened. Emily was here?
She
certainly hadn’t invited her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to Emily—it had to be months. But her mother—and the rest of the world—still thought they were close friends. The
People
magazine cover was to blame—it hit newsstands shortly after the Real Ali tried to kill them and featured Spencer, Emily, Aria, and Hanna entangled in a four-girl hug.
VERY PRETTY, BUT DEFINITELY NOT LIARS
, the headline said. Recently, a reporter called the Hastings house to request a reunion interview with Spencer—the anniversary of that terrible night in the Poconos was next Saturday, and the public wanted to know how the girls were doing a year later. Spencer had declined. She was sure the others had, too.