She stared at the magazine, nausea burbling up in her stomach. In group, Hanna had blamed Tara. But something didn’t fit. Even if Tara had somehow found Iris’s disposable camera, some of these details were too specific. They were things only someone who spent every waking moment with Hanna could know.
Just before Hanna hurled the magazine across the room, she saw something else in the photo. Behind her head, right next to Iris’s sketch of the wishing well, was another drawing in the exact same style and the same color ink. It was of a girl with a heart-shaped face, Cupid-bow lips, and wide, big blue eyes. Hanna brought the magazine closer to her face, staring at it until her eyes crossed. It was the spitting image of a girl Hanna knew very, very well. A girl she thought she’d seen in the woods the week before.
And suddenly, Ali’s voice lilted in her ear. She wants to hurt you just like she already hurt me.
Ali hadn’t been talking about Tara at all; she’d been talking about Iris.
Chapter 25
Aria Says Good-Bye
An hour after her meeting with Esmeralda, Aria parked at the gates of St. Basil’s cemetery. The majestic mausoleums and headstones were dappled with silver moonlight. A couple of tall, old-fashioned lanterns lit the brick pathway. There was a gentle breeze shaking the bare willow trees. Aria knew every step to Ali’s grave, but that wouldn’t make the journey there any easier.
Ali killed Ali. It was shocking . . . and unbelievable . . . and filled Aria with penetrating, unbelievable guilt. Someone murdering Ali was one thing, truly tragic. But Ali killing herself? It could have been prevented. Ali could have sought help.
And still, Aria was skeptical that Ali could have done such a thing. She’d seemed so happy, so carefree. But the day Mrs. DiLaurentis questioned them about Ali’s whereabouts, after Aria and her friends parted ways, she’d started down the DiLaurentises’ driveway and noticed the lid to one of their garbage cans had blown off. Bending down to put it back on the can, she spied an empty bottle for pills nestled atop the trash bags. The prescription was for Ali, but the medication’s name had been rubbed off. At the time, Aria hadn’t thought much of it, but now she reexamined the memory more closely. What if the pills were to treat depression or anxiety? What if Ali took a whole handful of them on the night of the seventh-grade sleepover, too overcome to go on? She could have climbed into that hole on purpose, folded her hands over her chest, and waited for the drugs to take effect. But there was no way to prove it—Ali’s body had been so decomposed by the time the workers found her that there was no way to test for a drug overdose.
R U avoiding me? Ali had texted Aria in those last few weeks she was alive. I want 2 talk. But Aria had ignored almost every one of them—there was only so much teasing about Byron’s affair she could take. What if Ali had needed to talk about something else? How had Aria missed something so huge?
Even though she’d only seen Noel an hour ago, she pulled out her phone and called him. He answered right away. “I’m at the cemetery,” she said. Then she paused, figuring Noel would know why.
“It’ll be okay,” Noel said. “It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”
Aria picked up the crinkly wrapping around the bouquet of flowers she’d picked up at the grocery store just minutes ago. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to Ali here—or what answers she’d get. But at this point, she was willing to try anything to feel better. She swallowed hard, pressing the phone to her ear. “Ali might have been reaching out to me about something, but I ignored her. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not,” Noel soothed. The other end crackled with static. “I think that about my brother sometimes, too . . . but you can’t. It’s nothing I could’ve prevented, and it’s nothing you could’ve stopped, either. And it wasn’t like you were Ali’s only friend. She could’ve reached out to Spencer or Hanna or her parents. But she didn’t.”
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Aria said, her voice thick with tears. Then she hung up, grabbed the flowers, opened the passenger door, and started up the walk. The grass was wet and squishy under her feet. Within minutes, she was climbing the hill and approaching Ali’s headstone. Someone had set up fresh flowers at the headstone’s base and taped a picture of Ali to the stone itself.
“Aria? “
She jumped. A shiver went down her back. Jason DiLaurentis was standing a few feet away under a big sycamore tree. She braced herself, ready for him to get angry, but he just stood there, his eyes darting back and forth. He wore a heavy black jacket with a thick, padded hood, black pants, and black gloves. For a wild second Aria wondered if he was going to rob a bank.
“H-hey,” she finally sputtered. “I just . . . wanted to talk to Ali. Is that okay?”
Jason shrugged. “Sure.” He began to walk down the hill, giving her space. “Wait,” Aria called. Jason stopped, leaned his hand against a tree, and peered at her.
Aria considered her words. One short week ago, when they were dating, Jason had encouraged her to discuss Ali with him—he said everyone else seemed too uncomfortable to even utter her name in his presence. She brushed her hands on her jeans. “We’ve found out a lot about Ali that we didn’t know,” she finally said. “A lot that’s really painful. I’m sure it’s been hard on you, too.”
Jason kicked his toe into a loose clump of soil. “Yeah.”
“And sometimes you just don’t know what’s going on inside of people,” Aria added, thinking about how Ali had happily pirouetted across the lawn the evening seventh grade ended, seemingly overjoyed to see her best friends. “People always seem so perfect on the surface,” she added. “But . . . it’s not always the case. Everyone hides things.”