Twisted (25 page)

That same morning, Aria pulled on her ski pants, layered on an extra pair of socks and a wooly sweater, strapped on her ski boots, and waddled out to the slopes. The Kahn boys were milling around outside the lodge, gearing up and surveying the latest snowfall. Klaudia sat alone on a green bench, strapping on her skis.

When Noel noticed Aria, a tiny, repentant smile crossed his face. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Aria crunched over to him.

“You sleep okay?” Noel said in a stilted, overly polite voice.

Aria nodded. “Just fine.” Then she turned to Klaudia. “I want to talk to you.”

Klaudia glanced at Aria for a split second, then looked away. “I busy.”

Aria gritted her teeth. This was going to be harder than she thought. But she had to talk to Klaudia. She’d come to a decision.

After she’d gone up to her room last night, she’d had horrible waking nightmares of the Kahn boys having their way with Klaudia in the tub. She’d picked up her phone a million times, daring herself to compose an
It’s over
text to Noel, but she kept putting it down, something inside her not quite ready.

Then, about forty-five minutes later, she’d heard footsteps in the hallway and ran to the peephole and looked out. Noel plunged the keycard into his room across the hall. He was alone. There was no sign of his brothers or Klaudia. And then, five minutes later, a text appeared on Aria’s phone:
Good night. See you tomorrow. XX, Noel.

Nothing had happened between Noel and Klaudia. The jealousy that had been present in Aria ever since she was friends with Ali was eating her alive. It had almost destroyed her relationship with Noel once; she couldn’t let it happen again. Klaudia was going to be living with the Kahns until June. If Aria ever wanted to feel comfortable at the Kahns’ again—with
Noel
again—she had to make peace with her.

“Please?” Aria placed a hand on Klaudia’s shoulder. “I need to apologize.”

Klaudia shook her off. “I have nothing to say to you. I embarrassed and hurt.” Then she skied over to one of the chairlifts and waited for the next gondola.

“Wait!” Aria cried, snapping on her own skis and sliding after her. Just as Klaudia sat down on the gondola, Aria jumped on, too.

“Idiot!” Klaudia spat, moving as far to one side of the lift as she could. “What you
doing
?”

“I need to talk to you,” Aria insisted. “It’s important.”

“Aria?” Noel cried worriedly behind her. “Uh, you forgot your poles!” He waved two long, thin sticks in the air. “And that lift is for a double-black diamond!”

Aria hesitated. They were already twenty feet off the ground. Empty gondolas swayed back and forth behind them. Skiers zigzagged below, suddenly looking like minuscule ants.

“It’s okay!” she called bravely. Hopefully she could just stay on the gondola and ride it back down.

Then Aria looked at Klaudia, who was pointedly faced the opposite direction, staring at the pines. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you last night. I didn’t realize what Finland’s cultural practices were. I’m sorry.” Aria didn’t really believe that everyone in Finland hot-tubbed naked, but it was easier just to let Klaudia believe she did for now and move on.

Klaudia didn’t move a muscle. Even her skis remained motionless.

Aria sighed and continued. “I have a jealousy problem. I loved Noel when I was in sixth and seventh grades, when there was no chance of us ever hooking up. So when he was interested in me last year, I didn’t exactly believe it was real. Sometimes I just let that jealousy get the best of me, and that’s what I was doing with you. I . . . well, I accidentally read one of your texts to your friend Tanja. You said I was a
peikko
. A troll.”

Klaudia whipped around.
That
got her attention. “You spy on me?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Aria said quickly. “It was just lying there, and . . . well, I’m sorry. For a while, I was really mad at you—it sounded like you wanted Noel, and it hurt that you thought I was a troll when I thought we were becoming friends. But I’m over it. Sometimes people talk behind friends’ backs. That’s life. But we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, so I want us to be friends again. Can we have a truce?”

A swirl of wind blew Klaudia’s icy-blond hair over her face. On the slope below, someone wiped out in a cloud of white. The top of the mountain appeared over the crest. A big sign in the snow said
LIFT BAR TO DISEMBARK
.

Silently, Klaudia pushed the bar up, gripped her ski poles hard, and met Aria’s eyes. There was a forgiving look on her face, and for a moment, Aria thought she was going to apologize and everything would go back to normal.

But then Klaudia’s lips curled into a conniving smile. “Actually, Aria, I’m going to fuck your boyfriend. Tonight.”

Aria stared at her. It felt like Klaudia had just punched her in the throat. “
Excuse
me?”

Klaudia scooted closer to Aria. “I’m going to fuck your boyfriend,” she said again—in textbook-perfect English. “
Tonight
. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

It was like they were in a horror movie where a character suddenly became possessed by a demon. Who was this well-spoken, nerves-of-steel girl? Klaudia’s face had transformed from helpless sex kitten to ruthless boyfriend stealer. And even more than that, the look in her eyes was almost
dangerous
, as though she meant Aria harm. Aria remembered the last time she’d seen that look: on Tabitha’s—
Ali’s—
face when she threatened Hanna on the roof deck in Jamaica.

The memory rushed in hard and fast, as though it had been patiently waiting for nearly a year to rear its ugly head. Aria hadn’t believed Tabitha was Ali until Tabitha started threatening Hanna on the crow’s nest. Then, suddenly, it seemed so . . .
real
. Tabitha’s every gesture, her every aggressive movement was exactly like how Ali had behaved the night she’d tried to kill them in the Poconos.

All of a sudden, Aria saw what the others already knew. Ali was
here.
She’d tried to sneak back into their lives in disguise. And Aria had almost let her.

“Please!” Hanna had wailed as Ali pinned her to the wall that surrounded the balcony. “Leave me alone!”

Every protective instinct in Aria’s body kicked in. She inserted herself between the two of them. “Don’t touch her!”

Ali turned to Aria, looking at her like she was crazy. “What do you think I’m going to do? I just want to show her the view.”

But Aria wasn’t falling for that. “I
know
what you’re going to do!”

Ali moved away from Hanna and lunged for Aria instead. Now it was Aria’s turn to lose her balance and get a terrifying view of the crashing whitecaps below.

“Aria!” someone shrieked behind them. Glass shattered. Aria’s knee banged against the low wall, scraping off skin. Ali barreled for Aria again, her arms stretched out in front of her. Aria stared into her wide, crazed eyes, clearly seeing Ali inside. She had come to kill them, just like she’d killed Courtney, Ian, and Jenna. She was going to throw them over the roof one by one.

It was unclear what had happened next. The only thing Aria remembered was feeling a burst of strength, grabbing Ali’s arms, spinning her around, and pushing her hard. Ali’s feet left the ground. An unnatural sound came out of her mouth. Her arms flailed desperately around her, but suddenly she seemed boneless and feather-light. Before anyone could do anything, she tipped into the black, empty space.

Someone screamed. Someone else gasped. Ali’s body spilled over the low wall, first her head and shoulders disappearing, then her torso, then her butt and legs, and then her feet. She tumbled into the darkness, not even making a sound as she plunged down the face of the resort.

And then . . .
thud.
The solid slap of a body hitting sand.

The memory whizzed through Aria’s brain in a split second. When her vision focused again, she saw Klaudia’s body pressed against hers. Her hands groped for her, pushing her to the side of the ski lift. She grabbed Aria’s shoulders and started to shake her hard. Her face was mere inches from Aria’s. The same self-preserving impulse coursed through Aria’s veins once more. “Get off me!” she screamed, jerking up. She pushed Klaudia once, lightly, but Klaudia just let out an ugly laugh and covered Aria’s mouth with her mittened hand. Fear and fury raged through Aria’s veins. “I said, get
off
me!” she hollered, shoving Klaudia’s chest.

Klaudia wheeled backward, letting out a yelp. At that exact moment, the gondola tilted down to let the skiers off the lift. Klaudia’s body tilted with it. Without the bar to protect her, she slid right off the lip of the chair.

“Oh my God!” Aria grabbed for Klaudia’s hand, but it was too late. Klaudia hurtled toward the ground, her hat flying off her head, her arms wheeling wildly, her skis kicking, her face a twisted mask of terror and fury. Three devastating seconds later, her body landed facedown in a pile of fresh, powdery snow.

And, just like it had been with Ali, all was silent after the fall.

Chapter 29

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Spencer opened her eyes. She was lying on top of silky sheets in a very, very small room in the Hudson Hotel. Soothing ocean waves from a sound machine played in her ear. Funny, she didn’t remember a sound machine from last night—but then, she had been pretty wasted when she fell asleep.

When she looked over, Zach was lying next to her. He looked so different this morning. His short, brown hair was long and blond. And there were scars on his neck and arms, and a trickle of something red seeping out of his left ear. Was that . . . blood?

She shot up and looked around. This wasn’t the Hudson. She was lying on a long stretch of unspoiled white sand. The sun blazed high in the sky, and there wasn’t a person around for miles. The smell of salt and fish tickled her nostrils. Waves crashed on the shore. Gulls circled overhead. Behind her was a pink stucco resort with a crow’s nest deck peeking out over the beach. A very
familiar
crow’s nest.

“
No
,” Spencer whispered. She was in Jamaica. At The Cliffs. She looked at the figure to her left once more. It was a girl. The line of scarlet blood trickled from her ear to the sand. A blue string bracelet circled her wrist. Her yellow halter dress was pushed up almost to her butt, and her legs were bent at an unnatural angle.

It wasn’t Zachary. It was Tabitha.
Ali.

“Oh my God.” Spencer leapt to her feet and ran around to stare into the girl’s face. Her eyes were closed tightly, her skin was a washed-out blue, like she’d been dead for hours.

“Ali.” Spencer slapped the girl’s cheek hard. “
Ali
.”

The girl didn’t answer. Spencer felt for her pulse at her wrist. Nothing. Her head hung limply on her neck like the vertebrae had shattered into a thousand pieces. Blood pooled under her eyes.

Spencer looked around desperately for the others, but they were nowhere to be seen. They had
all
run down here after Aria pushed her, hadn’t they? They’d been in it together.

“Ali, please wake up.” Spencer screamed into the girl’s face. She shook her shoulders hard. “
Please
. I’m sorry Aria did what she did. She was just scared. She didn’t know what you were going to do to us. I would have done the same thing.” And she would have. The scene on the crow’s nest deck reminded her too chillingly of the last moments she’d had with Mona Vanderwaal when Mona confessed she was the first A.

Suddenly, Ali’s eyes popped open. She reached forward, grabbed Spencer’s collar, and pulled her so close that Spencer could smell a faint tinge of vanilla on her skin.

“I know what you did,” Ali whispered hoarsely. “And pretty soon, everyone else is going to know, too.”

Spencer woke up mid-scream. Sun streamed through the blinds. A kids’ TV show was on the screen. This time, she really was in the Hudson. Zach was lying next to her, not Ali. But she could still smell the salt and the sand from Jamaica. Her scalp ached from where Ali pulled her hair. It felt so
real.

Bang bang bang.

The noise was coming from the door. Spencer blinked hard at it, still caught in the dream.

Bang bang bang.
“Hello?” a voice called from the hall.

Zach stirred next to her, pressing his arms above his head. “Hey,” he said, giving Spencer a long, slow smile. “What’s that noise?”

“Someone’s knocking.” Spencer swung her legs around the side of the bed.

Just then, the door burst open. “Zach?” a familiar man’s voice boomed. “It’s nine-thirty. Douglas is waiting to talk to you about Harvard. Get off your ass and get ready.”

Spencer gasped and froze. It was Mr. Pennythistle.

He saw Spencer the same instant she saw him. The blood drained from his cheeks. Spencer quickly wrapped herself up in the bed sheet—at some point in the middle of the night, she’d kicked off her skirt and tights and was now only in her blouse and underwear. Zach shot up, too, groping for his T-shirt, which he’d also stripped off. But it was too late—Mr. Pennythistle had seen everything.

“Jesus Christ!” he screamed, his face contorting. “What the hell?”

Zach pulled his shirt over his head. “Dad, it’s not . . .”

“You sick bastard.” Mr. Pennythistle narrowed his eyes at his son. He yanked Zach up by the arm and slammed him hard against the wall. “She’s going to be your stepsister! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Zach protested weakly. “We were just hanging out.”

Mr. Pennythistle shook Zach’s shoulders hard. “You just can’t keep it in your pants, can you?”

“We were just sleeping!” Spencer cried. “Honest!”

Mr. Pennythistle ignored her. He shook his son again and again, making Spencer wince. “You’re a twisted pervert, Zachary. A sick, disgusting pervert not worthy of anything I do for you.”

“Dad, please!”

Mr. Pennythistle’s hand drew back and slapped Zach’s face. Zach reeled backward, struggling against his dad, but Mr. Pennythistle threw his whole body against him, holding him there. The worst part was that it looked like he’d done this many times before.