Ali glanced over her shoulder, suddenly getting the queasy sensation that someone was watching her. That feeling struck her now and then, though mostly she just chalked it up to being stressed about graduating.
She turned back to the photo. It felt dangerous, somehow. Ali could never, ever let anyone find out her secret; she wasn’t going to the Preserve as long as she lived. She twisted open the latch of the display case, stuck her hand inside, grabbed the picture of pretty, fifth-grade Alison, and slipped it into her bag. She would burn it when she got home tonight.
Out of sight, out of mind. Just like she used to be.
2
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
Later that afternoon, Ali sat in Cassie Buckley’s Jeep, in Cassie’s driveway. Cassie had just gotten her driver’s license, and she loved giving the girls rides home. They faced Cassie’s rickety Victorian house, where they and a few other girls on the field hockey team had been hanging out after school. The place had a wraparound porch, stained-glass windows, and a chicken-shaped weathervane on the roof. To the right was Cassie’s long and narrow side yard, which contained a garden that needed weeding, a stone wall that separated it from the neighbors, and an old claw-foot bathtub that wasn’t out of place here in funky Old Hollis. Ali actually preferred Hollis’s shabby-chic vibe to Rosewood’s uberfussy perfection, but, as it didn’t seem like an opinion Alison DiLaurentis would have, she never let on.
After she finished checking her mirrors, Cassie turned the key in the ignition. “I hope we pass some hot seniors on the road.”
“Which ones?” Zoe Schwartz asked from the backseat.
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “Someone hot.”
“I’ll find you someone.” Zoe flipped through the pages of the latest Mule, Rosewood’s yearbook, which had just come out that day. No one knew why it was called The Mule—it was an apocryphal, private-school inside joke that the yearbook staff felt superstitious about messing with.
“Ian Thomas is pretty cute,” Zoe decided, pausing on Ian’s senior picture. His smile was wide, his eyes were ultrablue, and he actually looked cute in the graduation cap.
“Not as cute as Ali’s brother.” Cassie grabbed the communal Marlboro Light that was being passed around and took a long drag.
“Ew!” Ali said.
“What? He’s gorgeous.” Cassie nudged her. “Can you get me a date with him?”
“You wouldn’t want a date with him,” Ali said. “He’s so moody.” Then she straightened up in the front passenger seat, plucked the cigarette from Zoe’s hand, and puffed, doing her best not to wince when the smoke hit her lungs. The other girls were sophomores or juniors; she was the first seventh grader to ever make the team, even beating out I’ve-played-field-hockey-since-birth Spencer. But when Ali sat in Cassie’s Jeep with them, smoking and talking about boys, it was like they were all the same age.
“Ian’s actually really nice,” Ali said. “I hang around him all the time.”
“Really?” The girls looked at her. “When?”
Ali loved that she had their attention. “He dates Spencer Hastings’s sister. He’s over there a lot.”
Cassie wrinkled her button nose. “Melissa Hastings? What a waste.”
“She’s so prissy,” Zoe agreed. “What does he see in her?”
Ali picked at her manicure. Ironically, her brother had had a crush on Melissa Hastings, too. She didn’t know what to think of Melissa, though. Of all the people in Rosewood, Melissa was one of the few who didn’t bow down to her. Sometimes, when she was in her yard, Melissa stood at the window of the barn apartment at the edge of the Hastings’s property and just stared at her.
Cassie blew a smoke ring. “What are our summer plans, people? School’s ending in a month.”
Brianna Huston, who had glossy black hair and thick goalie’s legs, lowered her sunglasses. “Lose ten pounds. And get a boyfriend, of course.”
“A summer romance would be awesome,” Zoe sighed.
“I want a boyfriend, too,” Ali declared.
Cassie gave her a questioning look as she braked at the stop sign. “Don’t you already have one?”
Ali pictured Matt’s tearful face when he’d climbed into his family’s minivan for Virginia. She’d only responded to his earnest, love-struck texts twice. “I’m not into the long-distance thing.”
They passed Hollis College. Students were sitting on benches with cups of iced coffee or talking on the stone steps. When Ali noticed three shirtless guys playing Frisbee on the lawn, she reached over and pressed on the horn. The guys looked up and grinned. Ali blew them a kiss as Cassie drove away.
“Like them, maybe,” Ali joked.
Cassie’s jaw dropped open as she looked at Ali. “You should be my new bestie,” Cassie said. “I’ll kick aside these bitches and make you my co–queen bee.”
“Hey!” Zoe said good-naturedly.
“I’m kidding,” Cassie said, then gave Ali a wink.
They drove out of Hollis and wound through the streets of Rosewood, where the houses got bigger and more spread out. Cassie cranked up Jay-Z, and all the girls sang along. They passed the white monolithic King James Mall, a sign for the brand-new Rive Gauche French bistro on the marquee at the entrance. Then they looped down one of the back roads past the Marwyn trail, whose parking lot was filled with cars and bikes. Next, they crossed the old covered bridge, which everyone loved to tag with graffiti, and then drove past the neighborhood of enormous, secluded mansions where Sean Ackard, Hanna’s crush, lived.