Flawless (12 page)

“Do you want to come with me?” Spencer interrupted.

Andrew laughed; it sounded like a hiccup. “Seriously?”

“Um, yeah,” Spencer said, her eyes on her sister.

“Well, yeah!” Andrew said. “That’d be great! What time? What should I wear? Are you going out with any friends beforehand? Are there any after-parties?”

Spencer rolled her eyes. Leave it to Andrew to ask questions, like he was going to be quizzed on it. “We’ll figure it out,” Spencer said, turning to the window.

Then she hung up, feeling winded, as if she’d sprinted miles and miles for field hockey. When she turned back to her door, Melissa was gone.

13

A CERTAIN ENGLISH TEACHER IS SUCH AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

On Thursday, Aria hesitated in the AP English classroom doorway when Spencer walked by. “Hey.” Aria grabbed her arm. “Have you gotten any…?”

Spencer’s eyes darted back and forth, sort of like those of the big lizards Aria had seen on display at the Paris Zoo. “Um, no,” she said. “But I’m really late, so…” She ran down the hall. Aria bit down hard on her lip.
Okay.

Someone put a hand on her shoulder. She let out a little shriek and dropped her water bottle. It clunked to the floor and started rolling.

“Whoa. Just trying to get by.”

Ezra stood behind her. He’d been absent from school on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Aria had wondered if he’d resigned. “Sorry,” she mumbled, her cheeks bright red.

Ezra had on the same rumpled corduroys he’d worn last week, a tweedy jacket with a tiny hole in the elbow, and Merrill lace-ups. Up close, he smelled faintly like the Seda France ylang-ylang and saffron-scented “man candle” Aria remembered from his living room mantel. She’d visited his apartment just six days ago, but it felt like two lifetimes had passed since then.

Aria tiptoed into the classroom behind him. “So, were you sick?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ezra aswered. “I had the flu.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Aria wondered if she was going to get the flu too.

Ezra looked at the empty classroom and walked closer to her. “So. Listen. How about a fresh start?” His face was businesslike.

“Um, okay,” Aria croaked.

“We have a year to get through,” Ezra added. “So we’ll forget this happened?”

Aria swallowed. She knew their relationship was wrong, but she still had feelings for Ezra. She’d bared her soul to him, and she couldn’t do that with just anyone. And he was so different. “Of course,” she said, although she didn’t entirely believe it. They’d had a real…connection.

Ezra nodded slightly. Then, ever so slowly, he reached out and put his hand on the back of Aria’s neck. Tingles ran up her spine. She held her breath until he brought his hand back to his side and walked away.

Aria took a seat at her desk, her mind churning. Was that some sort of sign? He had
said
forget it, but it hadn’t
felt
that way.

Before she could decide if she should say anything to Ezra, Noel Kahn slid into the seat across from Aria and poked her with his Montblanc pen. “So, I hear you’re cheating on me, Finland.”

“What?” Aria sat up, alert. Her hand fluttered to her neck.

“Sean Ackard was asking about you. You know he’s with Hanna though, right?”

Aria poked the backs of her teeth with her tongue. “Sean…Ackard?”

“He’s not with Hanna anymore,” James Freed interrupted, sliding into his seat in front of Noel. “Mona told me Hanna dumped him.”

“So, you like Sean?” Noel pushed his wavy black hair out of his eyes.

“No,” Aria said automatically. Although she kept coming back to the conversation she’d had with Sean in his car on Tuesday. It had felt good to talk to someone about things.

“Good,” Noel said, brushing a hand across his forehead. “I was worried.”

Aria rolled her eyes.

Hanna sauntered into the room just as the bell rang, putting her oversize Prada bag on her desk and sinking dramatically into her chair. She gave Aria a tight smile.

“Hey.” Aria felt a little shy. In school, Hanna seemed awfully closed off.

“Hey, Hanna, are you with Sean Ackard anymore?” Noel asked loudly.

Hanna stared at him. Her eyelid twitched. “It wasn’t working between us. Why?”

“No reason,” Aria butted in quickly. Although she wondered why Hanna had broken up with him. They were two peas in a typical Rosewood pod.

Ezra clapped his hands. “All right,” he said. “In addition to the books we’re reading as a class, I want to do an extra side project on unreliable narrators.”

Devon Arliss raised her hand. “What does
that
mean?”

Ezra strode around the room. “Well, the narrator tells us the story in a book, right? But what if…the narrator isn’t telling us the truth? Maybe he’s telling his skewed version of the story to get you on his side. Or to scare you. Or maybe he’s crazy!”

Aria shivered. That made her think of A.

“I’m going to assign each of you a book,” Ezra said. “In a ten-page paper, you are to make the case for and against its narrator being unreliable.”

The class groaned. Aria rested her head in her palm. Maybe A wasn’t entirely reliable? Maybe A didn’t really know anything but was just
trying
to convince them otherwise. Who was A, anyway? She looked around the classroom, at Amber Billings, poking her finger through a tiny hole in her stockings; at Mason Byers, secretly checking the Phillies scores on his cell phone, using his notebook as a shield; and at Hanna, writing down what Ezra was saying with her purple-ink feather pen. Could any of these people be A? Who could know about Ezra, her parents…
and
The Jenna Thing?

A groundskeeper zoomed by on a John Deere mower outside the window, and Aria jumped. Ezra was still talking about lying narrators, pausing to take a sip out of his mug. He shot Aria the tiniest smile, and her heart began to thrum.

James Freed leaned over, poked Hanna, and gestured to Ezra. “So, I hear Fitz gets some serious ass,” he whispered, loud enough for Aria—and the rest of her row—to hear.

Hanna looked at Ezra and wrinkled her nose. “Him? Ew.”

“Apparently he’s got this girlfriend in New York, but he’s on a different Hollis girl every week,” James went on.

Aria straightened up.
Girlfriend?

“Where’d you hear that?” Noel asked James.

James grinned. “You know Ms. Polanski? The bio student teacher? She told me. She hangs out with us at the smoking corner sometimes.”

Noel gave James a high five. “Dude, Ms. Polanski is
hot
.”

“Seriously,” James answered. “You think I could take her to Foxy?”

Aria felt like someone had just thrown her into a bonfire. A
girlfriend?
Friday night, he’d said he hadn’t dated anybody in a long time. Aria remembered noticing his bachelorish frozen dinners for one, his eight thousand books but one drinking glass, and his sad, dead spider plants. It didn’t
look
like he had a girlfriend.

James could have his facts wrong, but she doubted it. Aria bubbled with anger. Years ago, she might’ve thought only typical Rosewood boys were players, but she’d learned a lot about boys in Iceland. Sometimes the most unassuming boys were the sketchiest. No girl would look at Ezra—sensitive, rumpled, sweet, caring Ezra—and distrust him. He reminded Aria of someone. Her father.

Aria suddenly felt sick. She stood up, grabbed the hall pass from the peg, and strode out the door.

“Aria?” Ezra called, sounding concerned.

She didn’t stop. In the girls’ room, she rushed to the sink, dispensed pink soap into her hands, and scrubbed the spot on her neck Ezra had touched. She was walking back to class when her cell phone chimed. She pulled it out of her bag and pressed
read
.

Naughty, naughty Aria! You should know better than to go after a teacher, anyway. It’s girls like you who break up perfectly happy families. —A

Aria froze. She was in the middle of the empty front hallway. When she heard a noise, she whirled around. She was facing the glass trophy case, which had been transformed into an Alison DiLaurentis temple. Inside were various candids from Rosewood Day classes—teachers always took tons of pictures throughout the year, and the school typically presented them to parents when their child graduated. There was Ali as a gap-toothed kindergartner; there she was dressed up as a pilgrim for their fourth-grade play. There was even some of her school-work, like an Under the Sea diorama from third grade and an illustration of the circulatory system from fifth.

A square of hot pink caught Aria’s eye. Someone had stuck a Post-it note on the memorial’s glass. Aria’s eyes widened.

P.S. Wondering who I am, aren’t you? I’m closer than you think. —A

14

EMILY’S PERFECTLY FINE WITH TAKING ALI’S SLOPPY SECONDS

“Say
butterfly
!” crowed Scott Chin, Rosewood Day’s yearbook photographer. It was Thursday afternoon, and the swim team was in the natatorium for team photos before the Tate meet started. Emily had been on swim teams for so long, she didn’t even think about having her picture taken in a bathing suit.

She posed with her hands on the starting block and tried to smile. “Gorgeous!” Scott cried, pursing his pink lips. A lot of kids at school speculated about whether Scott was gay. Scott never outwardly admitted it, but he didn’t do anything to dispel the rumors, either.

As Emily maneuvered across the deck to her duffel bag, she noticed Tate Prep’s team strolling to their bleachers. Toby was in the middle of the pack, wearing a blue Champion sweatshirt and rolling his shoulders back and forth to warm up.

Emily held her breath. She’d been thinking about Toby ever since he rescued her yesterday. She couldn’t imagine Ben ever having picked her up like that—he’d have worried that lifting her might pull his shoulder muscles and compromise his race today. And thinking about Toby had triggered something else, too: a memory of Ali that Emily had nearly forgotten.

It was one of the last times Emily was ever alone with Ali. She’d never forget that day—clear blue sky, all the flowers had bloomed, there were bees everywhere. Ali’s tree house smelled like Kool-Aid, sap, and cigarette smoke—Ali had pilfered a Parliament from her older brother’s pack. She grabbed Emily’s hands. “You
can’t
tell the others this,” she said. “I’ve started secretly seeing this older guy, and it’s a-
maz
-ing.”

Emily’s smile drooped. Every time Ali told her about a guy she liked, a little piece of her heart cracked off.

“He’s
so
hot,” Ali went on. “I almost want to go sort of far with him.”

“What do you mean?” Emily had never heard anything so horrifying in her life. “Who is he?”

“I can’t tell.” Ali smiled slyly. “You guys would
freak
.”

And then, because Emily couldn’t stand it any longer, she leaned forward and kissed Ali. There was a singular, wonderful moment; then Ali pulled away and laughed. Emily tried to pass it off like she was just playing…and then they went to their separate houses to have dinner.

She’d thought about the kiss so many times, she’d hardly remembered what had come before it. But now that Toby was back and he was so cute…it got Emily thinking that maybe Ali’s guy had been Toby? Who else would’ve made them freak?

Ali liking Toby sort of made sense. At the end of seventh grade, she’d been on a bad-boy kick, talking about how she wanted to go out with someone who was “like,
bad
.” Being sent to reform school qualified as bad, and maybe Ali saw something in Toby that no one else did. Emily thought maybe she could see that same something, now. And, slightly bizarre as it was, the possibility that Ali had liked Toby made Toby seem that much more attractive to Emily. What was good enough for Ali was certainly good enough for her.

As soon as the swim meet broke for the diving competition, Emily pulled her flip-flops out of her Rosewood Day swimming tote, preparing to walk over to Toby. Her fingers bumped against her cell phone, tucked under her towel. It was blinking; she’d missed seven calls from Maya.

Emily’s throat tightened. Maya had called, IM’ed, texted, and e-mailed her all week, and Emily hadn’t responded. With every new missed phone call, she felt more confused. Part of her wanted to find Maya in school and run her hand through her soft, curly hair. To climb on the back of her bike and ditch school. Kissing Maya had felt dangerously good. But part of her wished Maya would just…disappear.

Emily stared at her cell phone window, a lump in her throat. Then, slowly, she snapped it shut. It kind of felt like the time when she was eight and decided to throw away Bee-Bee, her security blanket.
Big girls don’t need blankies,
she’d told herself, but it had been awful to close the trash can’s lid with Bee-Bee inside.

She took a deep breath and headed for Tate’s bleachers. On her way there, she glanced over her shoulder, looking for Ben. He was over on Rosewood Day’s side, slapping Seth’s shoulder with his Sammy towel. Since the Tank on Tuesday, Ben had stayed out of Emily’s way, acting like she didn’t exist. It was certainly better than attacking her, but it made her paranoid that he was saying stuff about her behind her back. She kind of wanted Ben to see her right now, just as she approached Toby.
Look! I’m talking to a guy!

Toby had laid his towel on the natatorium tile and had headphones over his ears and an iPod on his lap. His hair was slicked back from his face, and the royal blue sweats he wore over his Speedo—which Emily hadn’t been brave enough to peek at during his first event—made his eyes look even bluer.