Part 3 (1/2)
”That would be nice.” Emily gave Aria a small, watery smile that Aria recognized instantly. Back when they were part of Ali's clique, Aria had dubbed it Emily's Eeyore smile. She'd seen it on Emily's face a lot after Their Ali disappeared.
”What's the matter, Em?” Aria said softly.
Emily stared at her gray New Balance sneakers. Behind her, a bunch of soph.o.m.ore boys shoved each other playfully. Kirsten Cullen gazed into the trophy case gla.s.s, fixing her lipstick. ”I drove by that house on s.h.i.+p Lane yesterday,” Emily finally said.
Aria blinked, remembering s.h.i.+p Lane's significance. ”How did it go?”
Emily swallowed hard. ”There was a FOR SALE sign on the lawn, and the house looked empty. They moved.” Her jaw trembled like she was going to cry.
”Oh, Em.” Aria wrapped her arms around her friend. Words couldn't describe how shocked she'd felt last summer when Emily told her she was pregnant. She'd called Aria out of the blue and begged her not to tell the others. I've got it under control, she'd said. I've picked out a family for the baby once it's born. I just had to tell someone.
”I wish I knew why they left,” Emily murmured.
”It makes sense, don't you think?” Aria asked. ”I mean, they suddenly had a baby. It probably looked strange to the neighbors. Maybe they moved to avoid questions.”
Emily considered this. ”Where do you think they went?”
”Why don't we try to find out?” Aria suggested. ”Maybe the realtor knows.”
Emily's eyes lit up. ”The FOR SALE sign did say there's an open house this weekend.”
”If you want company, I'll go with you,” Aria offered.
”Really?” Emily looked relieved.
”Of course.”
”Thank you.” Emily threw her arms around Aria again and squeezed her tight. Aria squeezed back, grateful that they were close again. They'd spent so much time avoiding each other, shying away from the secrets they shared, but it hadn't done them much good. It was better to fight A together. Plus, Aria missed having good friends.
Aria's cell phone rang, and Emily broke away, saying she had to get to cla.s.s. As she drifted down the hall, Aria looked at the screen and frowned. Call from Meredith. It was unusual for her father's fiancee to be calling her.
”Aria?” Meredith said when Aria answered. ”Oh my G.o.d, I'm so glad I caught you.” In the background, Meredith and Byron's toddler, Lola, was wailing. There were also sounds of banging pots and shattering dishes. ”I really need your help,” she went on. ”I want to re-create this amazing pasta dish we had at an Italian restaurant in Philly for your dad tonight, but I just went to Fresh Fields, and they're out of tatsoi. The Fresh Fields in Bryn Mawr has it, but I can't go right now-Lola's super-fussy and I don't want to make it worse by lugging her out in public. Can you go for me after school?”
Aria slumped against the wall and stared absently at a poster reminding seniors to sign up for sh.o.r.e excursions on the upcoming Eco Cruise. ”Can't you make it tomorrow?” Bryn Mawr wasn't exactly close.
”I really need it tonight.”
”Why?” Aria asked. ”Does Byron have visiting professors in town or something?”
Meredith made an uncomfortable noise at the back of her throat. ”Never mind. It doesn't matter.”
Now Aria was curious. ”Seriously. What's the occasion?”
Another long pause. Meredith sighed. ”Okay, it's the anniversary of our first kiss.”
Nausea rippled through Aria's gut. ”Oh,” she said nastily. Her parents had still been married when Byron and Meredith had their first kiss.
”You asked!” Meredith protested. ”I didn't want to tell you!”
Aria shoved her free hand into her blazer pocket. If Meredith really wanted to keep it from her, then why had she called up Aria in the first place?
”Aria?” Meredith's voice rang through the phone. ”Are you there? Look, I'm sorry I told you. But I really do need your help. Can you do this for me just this once?”
Lola started to wail even louder in the background, and Aria shut her eyes. Even though she didn't support this anniversary, the more stressed out Meredith was, the more Lola would suffer. Saying no would probably get back to Byron, too, and she'd never hear the end of it.
”Fine,” she said as the second bell rang. ”Except you have to tell me what tatsoi is.”
A few hours later, Aria pulled into Fresh Fields in Bryn Mawr. The town was about ten miles away, had a small liberal-arts college, an art house theater that produced avant-garde plays, and an old inn that with a sign that said GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON SLEPT HERE. The cars in the grocery store's parking lot were covered with b.u.mper stickers beseeching people to SAVE THE WHALES, GO GREEN, LIVE IN PEACE, and KILL YOUR TELEVISION.
After pa.s.sing through the grocery store's automatic doors and between at least thirty barrels of olives, she headed to the greens section of the produce department. Apparently, tatsoi was like spinach. Why Meredith couldn't have just used spinach for the stupid let's-celebrate-our-affair dinner was beyond her.
The whole thing still made Aria squeamish. She'd been the one who caught Byron and Meredith kissing in a back alley in seventh grade. Byron had begged her not to say anything to Ella, and even though Aria wanted to tell, she'd thought that by keeping her dad's secret, her parents would stay together.
For a long time, Their Ali was the only one who knew about her dad's dalliances, and Aria had wished she didn't. Ali used to tease her about it all the time, asking if Byron had had affairs with other girls, too. When Ali disappeared, Aria had been partly relieved-at least she couldn't taunt her about the secret anymore. But it was lonely keeping the secret to herself, too. She'd tried to bury it deep, telling herself she was making a sacrifice for her family. In the end, though, her sacrifice didn't matter. A had revealed the affair to Ella, and her parents had separated.
Aria pa.s.sed a hanging scale and touched it lightly with her fingertips. Maybe this wasn't worth dwelling on. It wasn't like Ella and Byron were the perfect couple, anyway, even long before Meredith. They were nothing like, say, Noel's parents. Nothing like what Aria wanted her and Noel to be.
She pa.s.sed a bunch of bulbous, dark-purple eggplants and huge, fragrant bins of Thai basil and apple mint, and sampled a bite of sauteed Swiss chard from a woman in a Fresh Fields ap.r.o.n. At the end of the aisle, there was a small bin full of greens marked TATSOI. Aria grabbed a plastic bag from the dispenser and started to fill it up. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a woman by the heirloom tomatoes. She wore a swirled-print, Pucci-style dress, and had tanned skin, bushy eyebrows, and lots of makeup. There was something about her that reminded Aria of Noel's father. This woman could be his sister.
As Aria moved closer, considering asking the woman where she got her dress-Ella would love it-the woman pivoted, revealing more of her face. Something suddenly soured inside Aria, and she ducked around the corner. After a moment, she snuck another peek at the woman's face and gasped.
The woman wasn't Mr. Kahn's sister. She was Mr. Kahn.
6.
SPENCER'S IN That night, shortly after six, Spencer walked into Striped Ba.s.s, a restaurant on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. The place had echoing high ceilings, Brazilian cherry floors polished to a glossy s.h.i.+ne, and Corinthian columns around the perimeter. Huge, barrel-shaped lights swung overhead, waiters swirled around white tableclothdraped tables, and the air smelled like melted b.u.t.ter, grilled swordfish, and red wine.
PRINCETON EARLY ADMISSIONS WELCOME DINNER read a small sign just past the maitre d' stand, pointing to a small room off to the right. Inside, thirty eager kids her age were standing around tables. The guys were all dressed in khakis, b.u.t.ton-downs, and ties, and had that slightly nerdy, overconfident look of every cla.s.s valedictorian Spencer had ever met. The girls wore sweater sets, knee-length skirts, and demure, I'm-going-to-join-a-law-firm-someday high heels. Some of them were whip-thin and looked like models, others were chubbier or wore dark-framed gla.s.ses, but they all looked like they had 4.0 GPAs and perfect SAT scores.
A flas.h.i.+ng TV screen above the main bar caught Spencer's eye. THIS FRIDAY, AN ENCORE PERFORMANCE OF PRETTY LITTLE KILLER, a banner announced in bold yellow letters. The girl playing Alison DiLaurentis appeared, telling the Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily actresses that she wanted to be their BFF again. ”I've missed all of you,” she simpered. ”I want you back.”
Spencer turned away, heat rising to her face. Wasn't it time they stopped showing that stupid docudrama? Anyway, the movie didn't tell the whole story. It left out the part about all of the girls thinking Real Ali had surfaced in Jamaica.
Don't think about Ali-or Jamaica, Spencer scolded herself silently, squaring her shoulders and marching into the dining room. The last thing she needed was to freak out, Lady Macbethstyle, at her first Princeton fete.
As soon as she swept through the double doors, a girl with blond hair and wide, violet eyes gave her an enormous smile. ”Hi! Are you here for the dinner?”
”Yes,” Spencer said, straightening up. ”Spencer Hastings. From Rosewood.” She prayed no one would recognize her name-or notice that a slightly heavier, twenty-something version of her was on TV in the room behind them.
”Welcome! I'm Harper, one of the student amba.s.sadors.” The girl shuffled through a bunch of name tags and found one with Spencer's name written in all caps. ”Hey, did you get that at the D.C. Leaders.h.i.+p Conference two years ago?” she asked, eyeing the silver Was.h.i.+ngton Monumentshaped keychain that hung from Spencer's oversize leather tote.
”I did!” Spencer said, glad she'd stuck the keychain on the zipper pull at the last minute. She'd hoped someone would recognize it.