Pretty Little Liars (26 page)

I’ll tell everyone about The Jenna Thing.

You’re just as guilty as I am.

But no one saw
me.

Spencer nervously exhaled and scanned the crowd.
There wasn’t any proof
. End of story. Unless…

“This has been the worst week of my life,” Aria said suddenly.

“Mine too.” Hanna nodded.

“I guess we can look on the bright side,” Emily said, her voice high-pitched and jittery. “It can’t get any worse than this.”

As they followed the procession out to the gravel parking lot, Spencer stopped. Her old friends stopped too. Spencer wanted to say something to them—not about Ali or A or Jenna or Toby or the police, but instead, more than anything, she wanted to tell them that she’d missed them all these years.

But before she could say it, Aria’s phone rang.

“Hang on…,” Aria muttered, rooting around in her bag for her phone. “It’s probably my mom again.”

Then, Spencer’s Sidekick vibrated. And rang. And chirped. It wasn’t just her phone, but her friends’ phones too. The sudden, high-pitched noises sounded even louder against the sober, silent funeral procession. The other mourners shot them dirty looks. Aria held hers up to silence it; Emily struggled to operate her Nokia. Spencer wrenched her phone out of her clutch’s pocket.

Hanna read her screen. “I have one new message.”

“I do too,” Aria whispered.

“Same,” Emily echoed.

Spencer saw she did, too. Everyone hit
READ
. A moment of stunned silence passed.

“Oh my God,” Aria whispered.

“It’s from…,” Hanna squeaked.

Aria murmured, “Do you think she means…”

Spencer swallowed hard. In tandem, the girls read their texts out loud. Each said the exact same thing:

I’m still here, bitches. And I know everything. —A

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a lot to a great group of people at Alloy Entertainment. I’ve known them for years and without them, this book could never have happened. Josh Bank, for being hilarious, magnetic, and brilliant…and for giving me a chance years ago despite the fact that I so rudely crashed his company Christmas party. Ben Schrank, for encouraging me to do this project in the first place and for his invaluable writing advice. Of course Les Morgenstein, for believing in me. And my fantastic editor, Sara Shandler, for her friendship and dedicated help in shaping this novel.

I’m grateful to Elise Howard and Kristin Marang at HarperCollins for their support, insight, and enthusiasm. And huge thanks to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris for all the magical things she made happen.

Thanks also to Doug and Fran Wilkens for a great summer in Pennsylvania. I’m grateful to Colleen McGarry, for reminding me of our junior high and high school inside jokes, especially those about our fictitious band whose name I won’t mention. Thanks to my parents, Bob and Mindy Shepard, for their help with sticky plot points and for encouraging me to be myself, however weird that might be. And I don’t know what I’d do without my sister, Ali, who agrees that Icelandic boys are pussies who ride small, gay horses and is okay with a certain character in this book being named after her.

And finally, thanks to my husband, Joel, for being loving, silly, and patient, and also for reading every draft of this book (happily!) and offering good advice—proof that boys might just understand more about girls’ inner struggles than we think.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT…

I bet you thought I was Alison, didn’t you? Well, sorry, but I’m not. Duh. She’s dead.

Nope, I’m very much alive…and I’m very, very close. And for a certain clique of four pretty girls, the fun has just started. Why? ’Cause I say so.

Naughty behavior deserves punishment, after all. And Rosewood’s finest deserve to know that Aria’s been doing some extra-credit smooching with her English teacher, don’t they? Not to mention the nasty family secret she’s been hiding for years. The girl is a train wreck.

While I’m at it, I really ought to tip Emily’s parents off to the reason she’s been acting funny lately. Hey there, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, nice weather, huh? And by the way, your daughter likes kissing girls.

Then there’s Hanna. Poor Hanna. Just free-falling into dorkdom. She may try to claw her way back to the top, but don’t worry—I’ll be there waiting to knock her rapidly growing behind back into a pair of stonewashed mom-jeans.

Oh my god, I almost forgot Spencer. She’s a total mess! After all, her family thinks she’s a completely worthless skank. That’s gotta suck. And just between us, it’s about to get much worse. Spencer’s keeping a deep, dark secret that could pretty much ruin all four of their lives. But who would tell such an awful secret? Oh, I don’t know. Take a wild guess.

Bingo.

Life’s so much fun when you know everything.

Just how do I know so much? You’re probably dying to know, aren’t you? Well, relax. All in due time.

Believe me, I’d love to tell you. But what’s the fun in that?

I’ll be watching. —A

Credits

Produced by Alloy Entertainment 151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
Hand Lettering by Peter Horridge
Photography by Ali Smith
Doll Design by Tina Amantula
Cover Design by Jennifer Heuer

Excerpt from The Lying Game

PROLOGUE

I woke up in a dingy claw-foot bathtub in an unfamiliar pink-tiled bathroom. A stack of
Maxim
s sat next to the toilet, green toothpaste globbed in the sink, and white drips streaked the mirror. The window showed a dark sky and a full moon. What day of the week was it? Where was I? A frat house at the U of A? Someone’s apartment? I could barely remember that my name was Sutton Mercer, or that I lived in the foothills of Tucson, Arizona. Had someone slipped me something?

“Emma?” a guy’s voice called from another room. “You home?”

“I’m busy!” called a voice close by.

A tall, thin girl opened the bathroom door, her tangled dark hair hanging in her face. “Hey!” I leapt to my feet. “Someone’s in here already!” My body felt tingly, as if it had fallen asleep. When I looked down, it seemed like I was flickering on and off, like I was under a strobe light.
Freaky. Someone definitely slipped me something.

The girl didn’t seem to hear me. She stumbled forward, her face covered in shadows.

“Hel
lo
?” I cried, climbing out of the tub. She didn’t look over. “Are you deaf?” Nothing. She pumped a bottle of lavender-scented lotion and rubbed it on her arms.

The door flung open again, and a snub-nosed, unshaven teenage guy burst in. “Oh.” His gaze flew to the girl’s tight-fitting T-shirt, which said new york new york roller coaster on the front. “I didn’t know you were in here, Emma.”

“That’s maybe why the door was
closed
?” Emma pushed him out and slammed it shut. She turned back to the mirror. I stood right behind her. “Hey!” I cried again.

Finally, she looked up. My eyes darted to the mirror to meet her gaze. But when I looked into the glass, I screamed.

Because Emma looked exactly like me.

And I wasn’t there.

Emma turned and walked out of the bathroom, and I followed as if something was yanking me along behind her. Who was this girl? Why did we look the same? Why was I invisible? And why couldn’t I remember, well,
anything
? The wrong memories snapped into aching, nostalgic focus—the glittering sunset over the Catalinas, the smell of the lemon trees in my backyard in the morning, the feel of cashmere slippers on my toes. But other things, the most important things, had become muffled and fuzzy, as if I’d lived my whole life underwater. I saw vague shapes, but I couldn’t make out what they were. I couldn’t remember what I’d done for any summer vacations, who my first kiss had been with, or what it felt like to feel the sun on my face or dance to my favorite song. What
was
my favorite song? And even worse, every second that passed, things got fuzzier and fuzzier. Like they were disappearing.

Like
I
was disappearing.

But then I concentrated really hard and I heard a muffled scream. And suddenly it was like I was somewhere else. I felt pain shooting through my body, before a final, sleepy sensation of my muscles surrendering. As my eyes slowly closed, I saw a blurry, shadowy figure standing over me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

No wonder Emma didn’t see me. No wonder I wasn’t in the mirror. I wasn’t really here.

I was dead.

1

THE DEAD RINGER

Emma Paxton carried her canvas tote and a glass of iced tea out the back door of her new foster family’s home on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Cars swished and grumbled on the nearby expressway, and the air smelled heavily of exhaust and the local water treatment plant. The only decorations in the backyard were dusty free weights, a rusted bug zapper, and kitschy terra-cotta statues.

It was a far cry from my backyard in Tucson, which was desert-landscaped to perfection and had a wooden swing set I used to pretend was a castle. Like I said, it was weird and random which details I still remembered and which ones had evaporated away. For the last hour, I’d been following Emma trying to make sense of her life and willing myself to remember my own. Not like I had a choice. Everywhere she went, I went. I wasn’t entirely sure how I knew these things about Emma, either—they just appeared in my head as I watched her like a text message popping in an inbox. I knew the details of her life better than I did my own.

Emma dropped the tote on the faux wrought-iron patio table, plopped down in a plastic lawn chair, and craned her neck upward. The only nice thing about this patio was that it faced away from the casinos, offering a large swath of clear, uninterrupted sky. The moon dangled halfway up the horizon, a bloated alabaster wafer. Emma’s gaze drifted to two bright, familiar stars to the east. At nine years old, Emma had wistfully named the star on the right the Mom Star, the star on the left the Dad Star, and the smaller, brightly twinkling spot just below them the Emma Star. She’d made up all kinds of fairy tales about these stars, pretending that they were her real family and that one day they’d all be reunited on earth like they were in the sky.

Emma had been in foster care for most of her life. She’d never met her dad, but she remembered her mother,
with whom she had lived until she was five years old. Her mom’s name was Becky. She was a slender woman who loved shouting out the answers to
Wheel of Fortune
, dancing around the living room to Michael Jackson songs, and reading tabloids that ran stories like baby born from pumpkin! and bat boy lives! Becky used to send Emma on scavenger hunts around their apartment complex, the prize always being a tube of used lipstick or a mini Snickers. She bought Emma frilly tutus and lacy dresses from Goodwill for dress-up. She read Emma
Harry Potter
before bed, making up different voices for every character.