Wanted (13 page)

“Hanna?” Ms. Marin asked after a pause. “Honey, are you all right? Is there something we need to talk about?”

“No,” Hanna said quickly, stabbing the
END
button. Then she staggered back to the library and sat down below one of the stone lions. There was a newspaper kiosk on the sidewalk, a copy of today’s
New York Post
face out. Billy Ford’s wild eyes glowered back at Hanna, his expression spellbindingly chilling, his long blond hair plastered to his sallow forehead.
Ford Didn’t Do It
blared the headline.

A stiff wind gusted, blowing the top newspaper loose. It fluttered across the sidewalk, coming to a stop at a pair of familiar brown ankle boots. Hanna’s gaze traveled from the boots all the way up to the heart-shaped face topped with blond hair. “Oh,” she spurted, surprised.

“Hi,” Courtney said, a smile on her face.

Hanna lowered her head. “What do you want?”

Courtney plopped down next to her. “Are you okay?”

Hanna didn’t answer.

“They’ll get over it.”

“No they won’t. I blew it,” Hanna wailed over a grumbling Big Apple tour bus. She had a sudden craving for Cheez-Its. “I’m officially a loser.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.” Hanna set her jaw. Maybe this was something she had to accept. “Before I met your sister, I was really lame. I don’t even know why she wanted to be friends with me. I’m not cool. I’ve never been cool. I can’t change that.”

“Hanna,” Courtney said sternly. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

Hanna snorted. “You’ve known me for two days.”

Headlights flashed across Courtney’s face. “I’ve known you for a lot longer than that.”

Hanna raised her head and stared at the girl on the steps. “Huh?”

Courtney cocked her head. “Come on. I thought you’d known for a while. Since the hospital.”

A chilly wind kicked up, blowing around cigarette butts and spare bits of trash. “The…hospital?”

“Don’t you remember?” Courtney smiled hopefully. “I visited you when you were in a coma.”

A hazy memory of a blond figure wavered and wobbled in Hanna’s mind. A girl had leaned over her bed murmuring
I’m okay, I’m okay
. But Hanna had always thought that girl was…

Hanna blinked in disbelief. “
Ali?
”

The girl next to her nodded. She extended her arms out
ta-daa!
style.

“What?” Hanna’s heart thundered. “
How?
”

Ali told her story. Hanna gasped at the end of almost every sentence, barely believing her ears. She gazed at the pedestrians walking down Fifth Avenue. A woman pushed a Silver Cross baby carriage, yakking on a Motorola Droid. A gay couple in matching John Varvatos leather jackets walked their French bulldog. It was amazing that their mundane lives could proceed apace amidst such a life-altering revelation.

She took Hanna’s hands. “Hanna, I never thought you were a loser. And seriously,
look
at you now.” She leaned back and gestured to Hanna’s hair and outfit. “You’re stunning.”

The surface of Hanna’s skin throbbed. In sixth grade, she’d felt like the Michelin Tire Man next to Ali. Her stomach bulged and her braces made her cheeks puffy. Ali had always looked so flawless—whether she was in her field hockey skirt or the white dress she’d worn to seventh-grade graduation. For years Hanna had longed to show Ali her makeover, to prove that she was fabulous, too. “Thanks,” she whispered, feeling thoroughly disembodied, as if caught in a dream.

“You and I are the ones who deserve to be popular, Hanna.” Ali’s eyes hardened for such a brief moment that Hanna wondered if she’d imagined it. “Not your stepsister. And
especially
not Naomi or Riley. So you know what we need to do?”

“W-what?” Hanna stuttered.

A coy smile slunk onto Ali’s face. All of a sudden, she was pure Ali again—irresistible, intoxicating, and utterly in control of everything. She stepped off the stairs and extended her arm for a cab. One pulled up immediately. Ali climbed in and motioned for Hanna to follow.

“Penn Station,” Ali said to the driver, slamming the door. Then she turned back to Hanna. “We ditch the bitches,” she said. “And then we take them down.”

15

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A WELL

Late Thursday night, Aria stood in her bedroom at Byron’s new house, examining the fringed red dress she’d bought for the Valentine’s Day dance. Would Noel think it was artistic and stylish…or kooky?

Suddenly, a flicker outside the big bedroom window caught her eye. A figure jogged past the house, her lithe body illuminated by the amber-hued streetlight. Aria immediately recognized the pink Windbreaker, black running tights, and dirty blond hair tucked into a silver beanie. Spencer’s sister, Melissa, religiously ran the neighborhood roads every afternoon.

But never at
night.
Aria’s heart started to pound as she remembered Melissa lurking outside Courtney’s house yesterday. An eerie feeling crept into her bones. Aria pulled on a sweatshirt, rammed her feet into her Uggs, and went outside.

The night was frigid and still. A fat, bloated moon hung in the sky. The houses loomed huge and imposing, and most people’s porch lights were already off for the night. The air still had a faint odor of charred earth to it from the fire, and Aria could make out jagged tree stumps in the woods. She spied the reflective tape on Melissa’s sneakers at the end of the street and started to run, following her at a safe distance.

Melissa passed the big Dutch Colonial whose owners rotated colorful porch flags with the seasons, the massive stone farmhouse with the man-made pond in the backyard, and then the big Victorian with the memorial at the curb.
We’ll miss you, Ian,
someone had spelled out with marigolds. Now that everyone presumed that Ian was innocent—and dead—the town had set up a series of wreaths, lacrosse sticks, and old Rosewood Day soccer jerseys on the Thomases’ muddy lawn in his memory.

Melissa circled the cul-de-sac and disappeared down a path toward the woods. Aria stealthily followed, growing nervous. Technically, people weren’t allowed back here—the cops were still hunting for Ian’s body.

Taking a deep breath, Aria pushed through the brambles to follow her. Twigs snapped and crackled. The air was thick with putrid smoke. Melissa’s bobbing sneakers disappeared up a steep rise. Aria’s lungs filled and emptied, rushing to keep up. She was so far into the woods now that she could barely see the lights from the houses. The only thing she could make out was Spencer’s family’s dilapidated barn, way off through the trees.

A pair of eyes blinked at her from a high tree branch. Something scuttled on the forest floor. Aria gasped but kept going. She staggered up the hill on all fours, panting hard. But when she reached the top, she didn’t see Melissa anywhere. It was as if she had evaporated into thin air.

“Aria?”

Aria screamed and whirled around. A face swam into view. First Aria saw her heart-shaped jaw, then her glistening blue eyes, and then her bloodred Cheshire cat smile.

“C-Courtney?” she stammered.

“I didn’t realize anyone else knew about this place,” Courtney said, tucking a stray lock of blond hair under her maroon wool hat.

Aria ran her hands over her bumpy ponytail. Her heart thrummed in her ears. “D-did you see Spencer’s sister? Melissa? I followed her here.”

Courtney shook her head, looking confused. “It’s just me and the moon.”

Aria shivered, her lungs burning from the cold. She wanted out of here,
now
, but her limbs wouldn’t move. “W-what are
you
doing here?”

“Just checking out an old haunt,” Courtney said. She leaned against a crumbling structure Aria had never seen before. It looked like a round brick base, overgrown with moss. Half of an A-shaped post still existed, the wood brittle and rotted. A rusty metal bucket lay in the grass nearby.

Aria put her hand to her mouth, slowly filling in the missing pieces. It was a
wishing well.
Just like the one Ali had drawn on her Time Capsule flag. Her limbs began to shake.

“I used to come here to think.” Courtney perched on the edge of the stone, letting her feet dangle into the well. “It was the only place that was just mine. It’s why I drew it on my Time Capsule flag.”

Aria’s mouth dropped open.
Her
Time Capsule flag? “Excuse me?”

An owl hooted. A cloud shaped like a hand floated over the moon. Courtney threw a clump of frozen moss down the well. Aria didn’t hear it hit the bottom. “I know Jason gave you the flag.” She turned to look at Aria. “I’m glad you had it.”

Aria blinked fast. “W-what the hell is going on?”

Courtney raised her hands in surrender. “Don’t freak out.” Her voice made a little puff of smoke in the air. “But I’m not Courtney. I’m Ali.”

Aria’s knees buckled. She scrambled backward, slipping on some wet leaves.

“Please don’t run away,” Courtney pleaded. The moon illuminated the whites of her eyes and her ultra-bleached teeth, like a human jack-o’-lantern. “Just let me explain.”

Aria didn’t move as Courtney—or whoever she was—quickly summarized the truth about her sister, the murder, and the switch. “Hanna, Spencer, and Emily all know already,” she concluded. “I knew you’d be the hardest to tell. All that stuff with your dad…” She jumped off the well and approached Aria. She tentatively put a cashmere-gloved hand on Aria’s shoulder. “I was awful to you. But I’ve changed. I want us to be friends again, just like we used to be when we first got together in sixth grade. Remember how awesome it was?”

Aria’s lips felt paralyzed. Was this
Ali
standing in front of her? It
could
be possible. Something had been so strange about Courtney from the beginning—she’d known more about Aria and Rosewood than she should have.

Ali stood there, her eyes wide, pleading. “Just think about it, okay? Try to see things from my perspective.”

Aria felt a longing twinge, wanting things to be the way they once were back when they’d first become friends. Things
had
been awesome for a while: They’d taken tons of trips to the Poconos, spent hours at one another’s houses, made silly movies with Aria’s video camera. For once, Aria hadn’t been a kooky loner but part of a group.

And then Ali pivoted and walked away. Her footsteps crunched loudly for a few moments before fading into the distance.

Aria started back down the hill toward her house.
I want us to be friends again. Just think about it, okay?
Part of her wanted to tell Ali that bygones were bygones. She wanted a best friend again. But something was holding her back. Could Aria really believe that Ali was sorry for everything she’d done and had changed her ways? She’d been back for only a few days, and she already was telling lies again, pretending she’d never been to Rosewood Day or seen Noel Kahn’s house before. She’d put on a pretty convincing act, blubbering about how devastated she was about her father’s affair. Was it really just to get Aria to open up about her own family dysfunction all over again?

Aria breathed out, the smell of rust and something vaguely pondlike filling her nostrils. Then she noticed something white at her feet and stopped. Something was buried deep in the dirt in the side of the hill.

After a moment’s hesitation, Aria crouched down and pulled at it. Chunks of soil and dead leaves cascaded to the ground as she wrenched it free. It was a tattered envelope. Had the backhoes dredged it up when removing some of the old tree stumps?

She tore the envelope open and plunged her hand inside. Her fingers touched something with hard, square edges. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out two blurry Polaroids. Aria furrowed her brow, her hands mottled purple from the cold. The first was a photo of four girls sitting in a circle on a round rug, their heads down. Candles flickered around them. A fifth girl with long blond hair and a heart-shaped face stood, her arms in the air, her eyes closed.

Aria’s heart started to pound. This looked like one of the Polaroids Billy had taken of their end-of-seventh-grade sleepover.

She examined the second Polaroid. The flash had made a hot yellow circle at the top of the frame. Aria felt wobbly on her feet, and her teeth chattered. Somehow, maybe because of the angle of the camera or the refractive light from the flash, this picture showed not what was happening inside…but outside. There was a ghostly reflection in the window showing a pair of hands and a shadowy, ghoulish face. Whoever it was had blond hair like Billy’s, but the features were softer, more feminine. The image was blurry, but the person’s nose was small and straight, and the eyes were round and rimmed with dark lashes.

Aria could barely breathe. She stared at the reflection until her eyes burned. As much as she wanted to believe that the person in the window looked like Billy, she knew it wasn’t true.

Which meant that someone else had been watching them that night.

16

IF NOT NOW, EM, WHEN?

The following morning, Emily and her sister Carolyn walked into the Rosewood Diner. Their grueling swimming practice had ended a little early, which meant they actually had time to eat a real meal before school.

The diner’s owners left their Christmas lights up all year long, which made the room feel cozy and festive. The kitchen smelled of pancakes, syrup, sausages, and coffee. A couple of discarded newspapers lay on the counter.
Photo in Window Isn’t of Ford
read one of the headlines. Beneath it was a scan of the blurry Polaroid Aria had told Emily about. She’d called late last night, explaining that she’d found two photos in the woods. She’d dropped off the photos anonymously, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself.

Emily stared hard at the fuzzy image. The face was overexposed from the flash, making it look like an apparition. The person had blond hair like Billy’s, but the shapes of the person’s jaw, eyes, and nose were completely different. The space behind Emily’s eyes started to throb. Why did Billy have those Polaroids if he wasn’t the one who’d taken the pictures? Did he have an accomplice that night? Or had someone planted them in his car?