All the same, Ali couldn’t resist asserting that she was just slightly better than the rest of them. She pulled out her cell phone, looked at the screen, and mustered a laugh. “Cassie sent me the funniest text earlier,” she said, referring to Cassie Buckley, a girl on the JV field hockey team with Ali. “She’s so hilarious.”
“You’re still hanging out with her?” Emily sounded wounded. “Field hockey’s been over for months.”
“We got pretty tight,” Ali said breezily. “In fact, I’m hanging with Cassie and a few other girls from the team this afternoon.”
There was a pregnant pause. Ali peeked at her friends, satisfied by their worried, intimidated expressions. She knew they wanted her to invite them along, but excluding them was the whole point. It wasn’t to be mean, exactly. It reminded her of what Spencer’s labradoodles, Rufus and Beatrice, did in the Hastingses’ backyard: They would play for a while, and then Rufus would climb on top of Beatrice and pin her down to remind her who was the alpha.
“Hey,” Spencer said after a moment. “We need to figure out what we’re doing for the end-of-seventh-grade sleepover. If you don’t already have plans that night, Ali.” Her tone was light, but she gave Ali a cautious look.
“Please say you don’t have plans!” Emily said anxiously.
“I wouldn’t miss our sleepover.” Ali looked at Spencer. “What if we had it in your barn?” The Hastings family had an old barn in their backyard that they’d converted into a gorgeous apartment for Spencer’s older sister, Melissa. With its lofty ceilings, enormous closet, and marble bathroom complete with a soaking tub, it was the ultimate bachelorette pad.
Spencer twisted her mouth. “Not unless we want Melissa playing truth or dare with us.”
Ali rolled her eyes. “Kick her out for the night! It would be perfect, don’t you think? We could set up sleeping bags in that big main room, watch movies on the flat-screen, maybe even invite some boys . . .” Her eyes sparkled.
“Like Sean Ackard?” Hanna asked excitedly.
“Noel Kahn?” Aria braved a smile.
Spencer picked at her nails. “What if we had it in your backyard instead, Ali?”
Ali made a face. “Have you forgotten about the gazebo we’re building? My backyard is a disaster area.” Then she laid her head on Spencer’s shoulder. “Please ask Melissa? I’ll be your best friend.”
Spencer sighed, but Ali knew she was considering it. That was the power she had over all of them. They would do anything for her, even things they didn’t want to.
Just like she had done for her sister, all those years ago.
The bell rang, and everyone stood. “Call us later?” Hanna asked Ali, and Ali nodded. Usually the girls did a five-way phone call at the end of the day to catch up on gossip.
Ali held her head high as she rounded the corner toward the gym, her next class period, the jealous gazes of her classmates like warm summer sun on her skin. But suddenly, something in the hall stopped her short. There was a new display in one of the cases, called ROSEWOOD DAY DRAMA CLUB: A LOOK BACK. In the center of a poster board was a picture of this year’s drama club after the performance of their play, Fiddler on the Roof—there was Spencer, who’d played a supporting role, right in the front. Fanning out in a sunburst pattern around that central photo were pictures of plays from even earlier. Ali spied a younger Spencer playing a tree in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There was a picture of Mona Vanderwaal, her hair arranged in pigtails and her mouth full of braces, playing a cowgirl in Annie Get Your Gun. There was a younger Jenna Cavanaugh, singing a solo, her lips naturally pink, her hazel eyes wide, seeing everything.
And right next to that, delivering a line to eye-patch-wearing Noel Kahn, was her own face. Except this was a play before sixth grade. Before Courtney had become Ali, and Ali had become Courtney. If you really concentrated, the differences between the two girls were obvious. Her sister’s eyes were wider and a little bluer. She stood straighter, and her ears didn’t stick out as much. But not a single person had ever noticed those differences—people rarely paid attention to details.
Ali thought about the Preserve at Addison-Stevens. She’d visited a few times, and it was even worse than the rumors. The patient ward had peeling blue walls, dark corridors, and bars on the windows. Kids shuffled through the halls despondently, some of them muttering, others screaming, most twitching. Her sister was one of them now. She’d been insisting she was Alison DiLaurentis for over a year, working herself into a lather. It was a beautiful catch-22: The more the real Ali insisted she’d been unjustly imprisoned at the Preserve, the more ammunition that gave the staff to keep her there. They had her on so many meds she was drooling most of the time.
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.