Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

‘Yeah. We scrimmaged. I scored three goals.’

‘Good for you,’ Aria deadpanned. Was she supposed to be impressed?

She continued down the Rosewood Day hallway, which she’d unfortunately dreamed about way too many times in Iceland. Above her were the same eggshell-white, vaulted ceilings. Below her were the same farmhouse-cozy wood floors. To her right and left were the usual framed photos of stuffy alums, and to her left, incongruous rows of dented metal lockers. Even the very same song, the 1812 Overture, hummed through the PA speakers – Rosewood played between-classes music because it was ‘mentally stimulating.’ Sweeping by her were the exact same people Aria had known for a gazillion years . . . and all of them were staring.

Aria ducked her head. Since she’d moved to Iceland at the beginning of eighth grade, the last time everyone had seen her she was part of the grief-stricken group of girls whose best friend freakishly vanished. Back then, wherever she went, people were whispering about her.

Now, it felt like she’d never left. And it almost felt like Ali was still here. Aria’s breath caught in her chest when she saw a flash of blond ponytail swishing around the corner to the gym. And when Aria rounded the corner past the pottery studio, where she and Ali used to meet between classes to trade gossip, she could almost hear Ali yelling, ‘Hey, wait up!’ She pressed her hand to her forehead to see if she had a fever.

‘So what class do you have first?’ Noel asked, still keeping pace with her.

She looked at him, surprised, and then down at her schedule. ‘English.’

‘Me too. Mr. Fitz?’

‘Yeah,’ she mumbled. ‘He any good?’

‘Dunno. He’s new. Heard he was a Fulbright Scholar, though.’

Aria eyed him suspiciously. Since when did Noel Kahn care about a teacher’s credentials? She turned around a corner and saw a girl standing in the English room doorway. She looked familiar and foreign all at the same time. This girl was model-thin, had long, red-brown hair, and wore a rolled-up blue plaid Rosewood uniform skirt, purple platform wedge-heels, and a Tiffany charm bracelet.

Aria’s heart started to pound. She’d worried about how she might react when she saw her old friends again, and here was Hanna. What had happened to Hanna?

‘Hey,’ Aria said softly.

Hanna turned and looked Aria up and down, from her long, shaggy haircut to her Rosewood Day white shirt and chunky Bakelite bracelets to her brown scuffed lace-up boots. A blank expression crossed her face, but then she smiled.

‘Omigod!’ Hanna said. At least it was still Hanna’s same high-pitched voice. ‘How was . . . where were you? Czechoslovakia?’

‘Um, yeah,’ Aria answered. Close enough.

‘Cool!’ Hanna gave Aria a tight smile.

‘Kirsten looks like she’s gone off South Beach,’ interrupted a girl next to Hanna. Aria turned her head sideways, trying to place her. Mona Vanderwaal? The last time Aria saw her, Mona had put a billion teensy braids in her hair and was riding her Razor scooter. Now, she looked even more glamorous than Hanna.

‘Doesn’t she?’ Hanna agreed. She then gave Aria and Noel – who was still standing there – an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry, guys, can you excuse us?’

Aria headed into the classroom and fell into the first desk she saw. She put her head down and took heaving, emotional breaths.

‘Hell is other people,’ she chanted. It was her favorite quote by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and a perfect mantra for Rosewood.

She rocked back and forth for a few seconds, in full freak-out mode. The only thing that made her feel better was the memory of Ezra, that guy she’d met at Snookers. At the bar, Ezra had followed her into the bathroom, grabbed her face, and kissed her. Their mouths fit perfectly together – they didn’t bang teeth once. His hands floated all over the small of her back, her stomach, her legs. They’d had such a connection. And okay, fine, some might say it was just a . . . a tongue connection . . . but Aria knew it was more.

She’d felt so overcome thinking about it last night, she’d written a haiku about Ezra to express her feelings – haikus were her favorite kind of poem. Then, pleased with how it turned out, she’d keyed it into her phone and texted it to the number Ezra had given her.

Aria let out a tortured sigh and looked around the classroom. It smelled like books and Mop & Glo. The oversize, four-paned windows faced the south lawn and beyond that, green rolling hills. A few trees had started to turn yellow and orange. There was a great Shakespearean sayings poster next to the blackboard, and a MEAN PEOPLE SUCK sticker someone had stuck to the wall. It looked like the janitor had tried to scrape off the sticker but gave up halfway through.

Was it desperate to text Ezra at 2:30 A.M.? She still hadn’t heard back from him. Aria felt for her phone in her bag and pulled it out. The screen read, NEW TEXT MESSAGE. Her stomach swooped, relieved and excited and nervous all at once. But as she clicked READ, a voice interrupted her.

‘Excuse me. Um, you can’t use your cell in school.’

Aria covered her phone with her hands and looked up. Whoever had said it – the new teacher, she guessed – stood with his back to the rest of the room and was writing on the chalkboard. Mr. Fitz was all he’d written so far. He was holding a memo with Rosewood’s insignia on the top. From the back, he looked young. A few of the other girls in the class gave him an appreciative once-over as they found seats. The now-fabulous Hanna even whistled.

‘I know I’m the new guy,’ he went on, writing, AP English, under his name, ‘but I have this handout from the front office. Some stuff about no cell phones in school.’ Then he turned. The handout fluttered out of his hand and onto the linoleum floor.

Aria’s mouth instantly went dry. Standing in front of the classroom was Ezra from the bar. Ezra, the recipient of her haiku. Her Ezra, looking lanky and adorable in a Rosewood jacket and tie, his hair combed, his buttons buttoned correctly, and a leather-bound lesson planner under his left arm. Standing at the blackboard and writing . . . Mr. Fitz, AP English.

He stared at her, his face draining of color. ‘Holy shit.’

The entire class turned around to see who he was looking at. Aria didn’t want to stare back at them, so she looked down at her text message.

Aria: Surprise! I wonder what your pig puppet will have to say about this . . . —A

Holy shit, indeed.

Tuesday afternoon, Emily stood in front of her green metal locker after the final bell of the day had rung. The locker still had her old stickers from last year – USA Swimming, Liv Tyler as Arwen the elf, and a magnet that said, COED NAKED BUTTERFLY. Her boyfriend, Ben, hovered next to her.

‘You want to hit Wawa?’ he asked. His Rosewood swimming jacket hung loosely off his lanky, muscular body, and his blond hair was a little messy.

‘Nah, I’m good,’ Emily answered. Because they had practice at three-thirty after school, the swimmers usually just stayed at Rosewood and sent someone off to Wawa so they could get their hoagie/iced tea/Cheats/Reese’s Pieces fix before swimming a billion laps.

A bunch of boys stopped to slap Ben’s hand as they headed toward the parking lot. Spencer Hastings, who was in Ben’s history class last year, waved. Emily waved back before realizing Spencer was looking at Ben, not her. It was hard to believe that after everything they’d been through together and all the secrets they shared, they now acted like strangers.

After everyone passed, Ben turned back to her and frowned. ‘You’ve got your jacket on. You’re not practicing?’

‘Um.’ Emily shut her locker and gave the combination a spin. ‘You know that girl I’ve been showing around today? I’m walking her to her house ’cause this is her first day and all.’

He smirked. ‘Well, aren’t you sweet? Parents of prospective students pay for tours, but you’re doing it for free.’

‘Come on.’ Emily smiled uneasily. ‘It’s like a ten-minute walk.’

Ben looked at her, vaguely nodding for a little while.

‘What? I’m just trying to be nice!’

‘That’s cool,’ he said, and smiled. He took his eyes off her to wave at Casey Kirschner, the captain of the boys’ varsity wrestling team.

Maya appeared a minute after Ben loped down the side stairs out to the student parking lot. She wore a white denim jacket over her Rosewood oxford shirt and Oakley flip-flops on her feet. Her toenails weren’t painted. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey.’ Emily tried to sound bright, but she felt uneasy. Maybe she should’ve just gone to practice with Ben. Was it weird to walk Maya home and walk right back?

‘Ready?’ Maya asked.

The girls walked through campus, which was basically a bunch of very old brick buildings off a twisty back road in Rosewood. There was even a Gothic clock tower that chimed out the hours. Earlier, Emily had shown Maya all the standard stuff that every private school has. She’d also shown her the cool things about Rosewood Day that you usually had to discover on your own, like the dangerous toilet in the girls’ first-floor bathroom that sometimes spewed up geyser-style, the secret spot on the hill kids went when they cut gym class (not that Emily ever would), and the school’s only vending machine that sold Vanilla Coke, her favorite. They’d even developed an inside joke about the prim, stick-up-her-butt model on the anti-smoking posters that hung outside the nurse’s office. It felt good to have an inside joke again.

Now, as they cut through an unused cornfield to Maya’s neighborhood, Emily took in every detail of her face, from her turned-up nose to her coffee-colored skin to the way her collar couldn’t settle right around her neck. Their hands kept bumping against each other when they swung their arms.

‘It’s so different here,’ Maya said, sniffing the air. ‘It smells like Pine-Sol!’ She took off her denim jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her button-down. Emily pulled at her hair, wishing it was dark and wavy, like Maya’s, instead of chlorine-damaged and a slightly greenish shade of reddish blond. Emily also felt a little self-conscious about her body, which was strong, muscular, and not as slender as it used to be. She didn’t usually feel so aware of herself, even when she was in her swimsuit, which was practically naked.

‘Everyone has stuff they’re really into,’ Maya continued. ‘Like this girl Sarah in my physics class. She’s trying to form a band, and she asked me to be in it!’

‘Really? What do you play?’

‘Guitar,’ Maya said. ‘My dad taught me. My brother’s actually a lot better, but whatever.’

‘Wow,’ Emily said. ‘That’s cool.’

‘Omigod!’ Maya grabbed Emily’s arm. Emily flinched at first but then relaxed. ‘You should join the band too! How fun would that be? Sarah said we’d practice three days a week after school. She plays bass.’

‘But all I play is the flute,’ Emily said, realizing she sounded like Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.

‘The flute would be awesome!’ Maya clapped her hands. ‘And drums!’

Emily sighed. ‘I really couldn’t. I have swimming, like, every day after school.’

‘Hmm,’ Maya said. ‘Can’t you skip a day? I bet you’d be so good at the drums.’

‘My parents would murder me.’ Emily tilted her head and stared at the old iron railroad bridge above them. Trains didn’t use the bridge anymore, so now it was mostly a place for kids to go and get drunk without their parents knowing.

‘Why?’ Maya asked. ‘What’s the big deal?’

Emily paused. What was she supposed to say? That her parents expected her to keep swimming because scouts from Stanford were already watching Carolyn’s progress? That her older brother, Jake, and oldest sister, Beth, were now both at the University of Arizona on full swimming rides? That anything less than a swimming scholarship to somewhere top-notch would be a family failure? Maya wasn’t afraid to smoke pot when her parents were buying groceries. Emily’s parents, by comparison, seemed like old, conservative, controlling East Coast suburbanites. Which they were. But still.

‘This is a shorter way home.’ Emily gestured across the street, to the large colonial house’s lawn she and her friends used to cut through on winter days to get to Ali’s house faster.

They started up through the grass, avoiding a sprinkler spraying the hydrangea bushes. As they pushed through the brambly tree branches to Maya’s backyard, Emily stopped short. A small, guttural noise escaped her throat.