Jason pivoted stiffly and marched into the woods. The patio door slammed again, and the girls ducked. Ali stood on the deck, looking around. Her long blond hair rippled down her shoulders, and her deep pink T-shirt made her skin look extra glowing and fresh.
“You can come out,” Ali yelled.
Emily widened her brown eyes. Aria ducked down further. Spencer and Hanna clamped their mouths shut.
“Seriously.” Ali walked down the deck steps, balancing perfectly on her wedge heels. She was the only sixth grader ballsy enough to wear high heels to class—Rosewood Day didn’t technically allow them until high school. “I know someone’s there. But if you’ve come for my flag, it’s gone. Someone already stole it.”
Spencer pushed through the bushes, unable to contain her curiosity. “What? Who?”
Aria emerged next. Emily and Hanna followed. Someone else had gotten to Ali before they did?
Ali sighed, plopping down on the stone bench next to the family’s small koi pond. The girls hesitated, but Ali gestured them over. Up close, she smelled like vanilla hand soap and had the longest eyelashes any of them had ever seen. Ali slid off her wedges and sank her petite feet into the soft green grass. Her toenails were painted bright red.
“I don’t know who,” Ali answered. “One minute, the piece was in my bag. The next minute, it was gone. I’d decorated it already and everything. I drew this really cool manga frog, the Chanel logo, and a girl playing field hockey. And I worked forever on the Louis Vuitton initials and pattern, copying the design straight from my mom’s handbag. I got it perfect.” She pouted at them, her sapphire blue eyes round. “The loser who took it is going to ruin it, I just know it.”
The girls murmured their condolences, each suddenly grateful that she hadn’t been the one to steal Ali’s flag—then she would be the loser she was complaining about.
“Ali?”
Everyone whipped around. Mrs. DiLaurentis stepped onto the deck. She looked as if she was on her way to a fancy brunch, dressed in a gray Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress and heels. Her gaze lingered on the girls for a moment, confused. It wasn’t as if they’d ever been in Ali’s backyard before. “We’re going now, okay?”
“Okay,” Ali said, smiling sweetly and waving. “Bye!”
Mrs. DiLaurentis paused, as if she wanted to say something else. Ali turned around, ignoring her. She pointed to Spencer. “You’re Spencer, right?”
Spencer nodded sheepishly. Ali looked searchingly at the others. “Aria,” Aria reminded Ali. Hanna and Emily introduced themselves too, and Ali nodded perfunctorily. It was a total Ali move—she obviously knew their names, but she was subtly saying that in the grand hierarchy of the Rosewood Day sixth-grade class, their names didn’t matter. They didn’t know whether to be humiliated or flattered—after all, Ali was asking their names now.
“So where were you when your flag was stolen?” Spencer asked, grappling for a question to keep Ali’s attention.
Ali blinked dazedly. “Uh, the mall.” She brought her pinkie finger to her mouth and started to chew.
“What store?” Hanna pressed. “Tiffany? Sephora?” Maybe Ali would be impressed that Hanna knew the names of the mall’s upscale shops.
“Maybe,” Ali murmured. Her gaze shifted to the woods. It seemed like she was looking for something—or someone. Behind them, the patio door slammed. Mrs. DiLaurentis had gone back inside the house.
“You know, the stealing clause shouldn’t even be permitted,” Aria said, rolling her eyes. “It’s just…mean.”
Ali pushed her hair behind her ears, shrugging. An upstairs light in the DiLaurentis house snapped off.
“So where had Jason hidden the piece, anyway?” Emily tried.
Ali snapped out of her funk and stiffened. “Huh?”
Emily flinched, worried she’d accidentally said something upsetting. “You said a few days ago that Jason had told you where he’d hidden his piece. That’s the one you found, right?” Really, Emily was more interested in the thud she’d heard inside the house minutes ago. Had Ali and Jason been fighting? Did Jason imitate Ali’s voice a lot? But she didn’t dare ask.
“Oh.” Ali spun the silver ring she always wore on her right pointer finger faster and faster. “Right. Yeah. That’s the piece I found.” She swiveled to face the street. The champagne-colored Mercedes the girls often saw picking Ali up after school slowly emerged down the driveway and rolled to the corner. It paused at the stop sign, put on its blinker, and turned right.
Then Ali let out a breath and regarded the girls almost unfamiliarly, as if she was surprised they were there. “So…bye,” she said. She turned and marched back into the house. Moments later, the same upstairs light that had just gone dark snapped on again.
The wind chimes on the DiLaurentises’ back porch clanged together. A chipmunk skittered across the lawn. At first, the girls were too baffled to move. When it was clear Ali wasn’t coming back, everyone said awkward good-byes and went their separate ways. Emily cut through Spencer’s yard and followed the trail to the road, trying to see the bright side—she was thankful Ali had even spoken to them at all. Aria started for the woods, annoyed she’d come. Spencer trudged back to her house, embarrassed that Ali had snubbed her as much as the others. Ian and Melissa had gone inside, probably to make out on her family’s living room couch—eww. And Hanna retrieved her bike from behind the rock in Ali’s front yard, noticing a sputtering black car sitting at the curb right in front of Ali’s house. She squinted, perplexed. Had she seen it before? Shrugging, she turned away, biking around the cul-de-sac and down the road.
Each girl felt the same heavy, hopeless sense of humiliation. Who did they think they were, trying to steal a Time Capsule piece from the most popular girl at Rosewood Day? Why had they even dared to believe they could do it? Ali had probably gone inside, called her BFFs Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe, and laughed about the losers who’d just shown up in her backyard. For a fleeting moment, it had seemed like Ali was going to give Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer a chance at friendship, but now, that chance was most definitely gone.
Or…was it?
The following Monday, a rumor swirled that Ali’s piece of the flag had been stolen. There was a second rumor, too: Ali had gotten into a vicious fight with Naomi and Riley. No one knew what the argument was about. No one knew how it had started. All anyone knew was that the most coveted clique in sixth grade was now missing a few members.
When Ali made conversation with Spencer, Hanna, Emily, and Aria at the Rosewood Day Charity Drive the following Saturday, the four girls thought it was just a nasty prank. But Ali remembered their names. She complimented the way Spencer had flawlessly spelled knickknacks and chandeliers. She ogled Hanna’s brand-new boots from Anthropologie and the peacock-feather earrings Aria’s dad had brought her from Morocco. She marveled at how Emily could easily lift a whole box of last season’s winter coats. Before the girls knew it, Ali had invited them to her house for a sleepover. Which led to another sleepover, and then another. By the end of September, when the Time Capsule game ended and everyone turned in their decorated pieces of the flag, a new rumor was swirling around schooclass="underline" Ali had four new best friends.
They sat together at the Time Capsule burial ceremony in the Rosewood Day auditorium, watching as Principal Appleton called each person who’d found a piece of the flag to the stage. When Appleton announced that one of the pieces previously found by Alison DiLaurentis had never been turned in and would now be considered invalid, the girls squeezed Ali’s hands hard. It isn’t fair, they whispered. That piece was yours. You worked so hard on it.