As her coup de grâce, she detailed how the Liars had tracked her down, finding her in the barn and tying her up. She begged them to listen to her side of the story, but the Liars threw her in Spencer’s trunk and dragged her away—although, really, she hadn’t been dragged anywhere, and was still at the pool house, waiting for them to find her. Writing this with my hands tied up, Ali had penned, actually tying her hands together so her handwriting was properly sloppy. And: This journal is my only friend. And: I’ve tried to tell them the truth again and again, but they just won’t listen. They’re crazy. All of them. I know they’re going to kill me. I’m never getting out of here alive. Her last entry was two choppy sentences: I think today is going to be the day. I’m so scared.
It was kismet: The date of the last entry jibed almost perfectly with when the Liars really did find the pool house. Ali knew they’d come—she’d planted that receipt in the pocket of the hoodie she let Emily tear off her for that very reason. To sufficiently hook them, she made sure the place smelled overpoweringly of the vanilla soap she used. She knew they’d come inside the pool house and touch everything, leaving their fingerprints everywhere. They fell for every one of Ali’s tricks as though she had them under a spell. Sure, there were a few surprises—like the cameras they set up in the trees—but even those she made work to her advantage, especially when Emily had her colossal freak-out on-screen. The prosecution team would log that into evidence.
Now, Ali sat down at the laptop propped up on a small desk in the corner and opened a website. A huge banner saying Hang the Liars! splashed across the top of the page. We Are Your Ali Cats, Ali! Letting out a little coo of happiness, she leaned forward and kissed the screen. The Ali Cats, a special fan club that had started last year, were completely devoted to her. They had been the sweetest surprise in all of this. Ali loved them, her special helpers, her extra credit. Some of them were dedicated enough to risk everything for her. She wished she could write to them and thank each one of them.
After reading a few posts from Ali Cats all over the country, clamoring for the Liars to go to prison for the rest of their lives, Ali shut the laptop and moved to the closet. All her new clothes—mostly white or pale-colored shirts, shorts, and skirts in several sizes larger than she was used to—hung in a neat row. The stuff totally wasn’t her . . . but that was the price she had to pay. As she slid the hangers from one side of the rod to the next, she felt a small, nagging twinge inside her. This latest escape had come at a bit of a price. She’d had to get rid of a few of the Ali Cats—but that was necessary. And then there was Nick. She’d had a few dreams of him escaping from prison, finding her, and demanding to know how she could have blamed him for everything. But betraying him was necessary, too.
A knock sounded at the door. Ali whipped around, her heart pounding hard. “It’s just me,” came a voice. “Are you up?”
Ali’s heart slowed down. “Uh, yeah,” she said.
“I was just about to go out and get some breakfast. You want anything? Pancakes, maybe, like yesterday? An omelet?”
Ali thought a moment. “Both,” she decided. “And some bacon,” she added. “And grapefruit juice, if you can find some.”
A shadow flickered under the door. “Okay,” came the voice. “Be back soon.”
Ali listened as the footsteps grew softer. She turned back to her closet and pulled on a white T-shirt and a long, white, gauzy skirt, which was beyond hideous but fit her expanding hips. She glanced at herself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize the girl looking back, a larger, unwieldy creature with mousy-brown hair and blotchy, messed-up skin. It was only a temporary situation, though—soon enough, she would go back to being beautiful. This was who she needed to be right now: someone other than herself. A nobody. A nothing. A ghost, which made it even more appropriate that most of her new clothes were white.
Outside, a car swished past. A boat horn honked. As Ali thought of her imminent breakfast, all the wary twinges faded away. How unbelievably luxurious that deciding what she would eat was her one and only concern! All that other stuff? She didn’t feel shitty about it at all. Only the strong survive, after all. And soon enough, she’d have a new life. A better one than what she’d had in a long, long time.
And those four bitches would have no life at all.
1
BAD NEWS, AND MORE BAD NEWS
On a balmy Thursday morning in mid-June, Emily Fields sat next to her best friends Hanna Marin, Spencer Hastings, and Aria Montgomery in a large, airy conference room that overlooked the Philadelphia waterfront. The room smelled like coffee and Danishes, and the office bustled with the sounds of ringing phones, whirring printers, and click-clacking high heels on female attorneys rushing off to court. When Seth Rubens, their new lawyer, cleared his throat, Emily looked up. By his pained expression, she suspected she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
“Your case doesn’t look good.” Rubens stirred his coffee with a thin wooden stick. He had bags under his eyes, and he wore the same cologne as Emily’s dad, a summery scent called Royall Bay Rhum. The smell used to cheer Emily up, but not anymore.
“The district attorney has gathered a lot of evidence against you for Alison’s murder,” he went on. “You being on the scene when the crime happened. The shoddy cleanup job. Your prints all over the house. The tooth they found at the scene. Emily’s, er, episode”—here he glanced nervously at Emily—“prior to the event. I’m happy to represent you, and I’ll do all I can, but I don’t want to give you false hope.”