“What? I’m just trying to be nice!”
“That’s cool,” he said, and smiled. He took his eyes off her to wave at Casey Kirschner, the captain of the boys’ varsity wrestling team.
Maya appeared a minute after Ben loped down the side stairs out to the student parking lot. She wore a white denim jacket over her Rosewood oxford shirt and Oakley flip-flops on her feet. Her toenails weren’t painted. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Emily tried to sound bright, but she felt uneasy. Maybe she should’ve just gone to practice with Ben. Was it weird to walk Maya home and walk right back?
“Ready?” Maya asked.
The girls walked through campus, which was basically a bunch of very old brick buildings off a twisty back road in Rosewood. There was even a Gothic clock tower that chimed out the hours. Earlier, Emily had shown Maya all the standard stuff that every private school has. She’d also shown her the cool things about Rosewood Day that you usually had to discover on your own, like the dangerous toilet in the girls’ first-floor bathroom that sometimes spewed up geyser-style, the secret spot on the hill kids went when they cut gym class (not that Emily ever would), and the school’s only vending machine that sold Vanilla Coke, her favorite. They’d even developed an inside joke about the prim, stick-up-her-butt model on the anti-smoking posters that hung outside the nurse’s office. It felt good to have an inside joke again.
Now, as they cut through an unused cornfield to Maya’s neighborhood, Emily took in every detail of her face, from her turned-up nose to her coffee-colored skin to the way her collar couldn’t settle right around her neck. Their hands kept bumping against each other when they swung their arms.
“It’s so different here,” Maya said, sniffing the air. “It smells like Pine-Sol!” She took off her denim jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her button-down. Emily pulled at her hair, wishing it was dark and wavy, like Maya’s, instead of chlorine-damaged and a slightly greenish shade of reddish blond. Emily also felt a little self-conscious about her body, which was strong, muscular, and not as slender as it used to be. She didn’t usually feel so aware of herself, even when she was in her swimsuit, which was practically naked.
“Everyone has stuff they’re really into,” Maya continued. “Like this girl Sarah in my physics class. She’s trying to form a band, and she asked me to be in it!”
“Really? What do you play?”
“Guitar,” Maya said. “My dad taught me. My brother’s actually a lot better, but whatever.”
“Wow,” Emily said. “That’s cool.”
“Omigod!” Maya grabbed Emily’s arm. Emily flinched at first but then relaxed. “You should join the band too! How fun would that be? Sarah said we’d practice three days a week after school. She plays bass.”
“But all I play is the flute,” Emily said, realizing she sounded like Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
“The flute would be awesome!” Maya clapped her hands. “And drums!”
Emily sighed. “I really couldn’t. I have swimming, like, every day after school.”
“Hmm,” Maya said. “Can’t you skip a day? I bet you’d be so good at the drums.”
“My parents would murder me.” Emily tilted her head and stared at the old iron railroad bridge above them. Trains didn’t use the bridge anymore, so now it was mostly a place for kids to go and get drunk without their parents knowing.
“Why?” Maya asked. “What’s the big deal?”
Emily paused. What was she supposed to say? That her parents expected her to keep swimming because scouts from Stanford were already watching Carolyn’s progress? That her older brother, Jake, and oldest sister, Beth, were now both at the University of Arizona on full swimming rides? That anything less than a swimming scholarship to somewhere top-notch would be a family failure? Maya wasn’t afraid to smoke pot when her parents were buying groceries. Emily’s parents, by comparison, seemed like old, conservative, controlling East Coast suburbanites. Which they were. But still.
“This is a shorter way home.” Emily gestured across the street, to the large colonial house’s lawn she and her friends used to cut through on winter days to get to Ali’s house faster.
They started up through the grass, avoiding a sprinkler spraying the hydrangea bushes. As they pushed through the brambly tree branches to Maya’s backyard, Emily stopped short. A small, guttural noise escaped her throat.
She hadn’t been in this backyard—Ali’s old backyard—in ages. There, across the lawn, was the teak deck where she and Ali had played countless games of Spit. There was the worn patch of grass where they’d hooked up Ali’s thick white iPod to speakers and had dance parties. To her left was the familiar knotty oak tree. The tree house was gone, but carved in the bark on the trunk were the initials: EF + AD—Emily Fields + Alison DiLaurentis. Her face flushed. At the time, Emily hadn’t known why she carved their names into the bark; she’d just wanted to show Ali how happy she was that they were friends.
Maya, who had walked on ahead of her, looked over her shoulder. “You okay?”
Emily shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. For a second, she considered telling Maya about Ali. But a hummingbird swept past her and she lost her nerve. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Do you wanna come in?” Maya asked.
“No…I…I have to go back to school,” Emily answered. “Swimming.”