Maya stooped down to inspect some of the paperbacks. She shoved her tank top strap back onto her shoulder. “Is she a friend of yours?”
Emily paused. Is? Maybe Maya hadn’t heard about Ali’s disappearance? “Um, she was. A long time ago. Along with a bunch of other girls who live around here,” Emily explained, leaving out the part about the kidnapping or murder or whatever might have happened that she couldn’t bear to imagine. “In seventh grade. I’m going into eleventh now at Rosewood Day.” School started after this weekend. So did fall swim practice, which meant three hours of lap swimming daily. Emily didn’t even want to think about it.
“I’m going to Rosewood too!” Maya grinned. She sank down on Alison’s old corduroy chair, and the springs squeaked. “All my parents talked about on the flight here was how lucky I am to have gotten into Rosewood and how different it will be from my school in California. Like, I bet you guys don’t have Mexican food, right? Or, like, really good Mexican food, like Cali-Mexican food. We used to have it in our cafeteria and mmm, it was so good. I’m going to have to get used to Taco Bell. Their gorditas make me want to vomit.”
“Oh.” Emily smiled. This girl sure talked a lot. “Yeah, the food kind of sucks.”
Maya sprang up from the chair. “This might be a weird question since I just met you, but would you mind helping me carry the rest of these boxes up to my room?” She motioned to a few Crate & Barrel boxes sitting at the base of the truck.
Emily’s eyes widened. Go into Alison’s old room? But it would be totally rude if she refused, wouldn’t it? “Um, sure,” she said shakily.
The foyer still smelled like Dove soap and potpourri—just as it had when the DiLaurentises lived here. Emily paused at the door and waited for Maya to give her instructions, even though she knew she could find Ali’s old room at the end of the upstairs hall blindfolded. Moving boxes were everywhere, and two spindly Italian greyhounds yapped from behind a gate in the kitchen.
“Ignore them,” Maya said, climbing the stairs to her room and shoving the door open with her terry-covered hip.
Wow, it looks the same, Emily thought as she entered the bedroom. But the thing was, it didn’t: Maya had put her queen-size bed in a different corner, she had a huge, flat-screen computer monitor on her desk, and she’d put up posters everywhere, covering Alison’s old flowered wallpaper. But something felt the same, as if Alison’s presence was still floating here. Emily felt woozy and leaned against the wall for support.
“Put it anywhere,” Maya said. Emily rallied herself to stand, set her box down at the foot of the bed, and looked around.
“I like your posters,” she said. They were mostly of bands: M.I.A., Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani in a cheerleading uniform. “I love Gwen,” she added.
“Yeah,” Maya said. “My boyfriend’s totally obsessed with her. His name’s Justin. He’s from San Fran, where I’m from.”
“Oh. I’ve got a boyfriend too,” Emily said. “His name’s Ben.”
“Yeah?” Maya sat down on her bed. “What’s he like?”
Emily tried to conjure up Ben, her boyfriend of four months. She’d seen him two days ago—they’d watched the Doom DVD at her house. Emily’s mom was in the other room, of course, randomly popping in, asking if they needed anything. They’d been good friends for a while, on the same year-round swim teams. All their teammates told them they should go out, so they did. “He’s cool.”
“So why aren’t you friends with the girl who lived here anymore?” Maya asked.
Emily pushed her reddish-blond hair behind her ears. Wow. So Maya really didn’t know about Alison. If Emily started talking about Ali, though, she might start crying—which would be weird. She hardly knew this Maya girl. “I grew apart from all my old seventh-grade friends. Everyone changed a lot, I guess.”
That was an understatement. Of Emily’s other best friends, Spencer had become a more exaggerated version of her already hyper-perfect self; Aria’s family had suddenly moved to Iceland the fall after Ali went missing; and dorky-but-lovable Hanna had become totally undorky and unlovable and was now a total bitch. Hanna and her now best friend, Mona Vanderwaal, had completely transformed themselves the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Emily’s mom had recently seen Hanna going into Wawa, the local convenience store, and told Emily that Hanna looked “sluttier than that Paris Hilton girl.” Emily had never heard her mom use the word slutty.
“I know how growing apart is,” Maya said, bouncing up and down on her bed as she sat. “Like my boyfriend? He’s so scared I’m going to ditch him now that we’re on different coasts. He’s such a big baby.”
“My boyfriend and I are on the swim team, so we see each other all the time,” Emily replied, looking for a place to sit down too. Maybe too much of the time, she thought.
“You swim?” Maya asked. She looked Emily up and down, which made Emily feel a little weird. “I bet you’re really good. You totally have the shoulders.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Emily blushed and leaned against Maya’s white wooden desk.
“You do!” Maya smiled. “But…if you’re a big jock, does that mean you’d kill me if I smoked a little weed?”
“What, right now?” Emily’s eyes widened. “What about your parents?”
“They’re at the grocery store. And my brother—he’s here somewhere, but he won’t care.” Maya reached under her mattress for an Altoids tin. She hefted up the window, which was right next to her bed, pulled out a joint, and lit it. The smoke curled into the yard and made a hazy cloud around a large oak tree.