“You know, maybe Emily’s mom is right,” Spencer interrupted. “Maybe we are poisoning influences on each other. Maybe we need some space.”
Aria felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. “Don’t push us away,” she begged. “It’s not us you’re mad at. All of this is just messing with your head.”
“With good reason!” Spencer’s eyes were wide. “Emily’s dead, Aria. She couldn’t take it, so she killed herself. Maybe we all should take our lives—it’s probably the best choice.”
Aria gasped. “How could you say that? You don’t know for sure that we’re going to prison!”
Spencer chuckled sarcastically. “Haven’t you listened to the sixty lawyers we’ve already talked to? They all think we’re going down. And I’m sorry, but if it wasn’t for Emily pushing us to look for Ali, if it wasn’t for us being so scared to cross Emily because she seemed so fragile, she might still be here! And we might not be in the amount of trouble we’re in!”
“So, what, now this is all Emily’s fault? But Spence—”
Spencer cut her off. “Leave me alone, okay?” She turned and ran between the cars.
Aria knew better than to follow, but she felt hurt and confused. She looked at the church again. She should go back inside—her family was still in there. But what she really wanted, she realized, was to drive somewhere. Get away from this place, this loss. And even though she wasn’t sure why, this place reminded her of Ali. All of Rosewood reminded her of Ali, really—she was everywhere. And this fight, their issues with one another—that seemed like another one of Ali’s master plans. Instead of banding together against Ali, they’d turned on one another, growing weak, growing angry, losing everything. That was what Ali wanted, right? For them to lose everything? As Ali would say, Score another win for Ali D.
She trudged to the auxiliary parking lot, where she’d left the Subaru. As she turned the corner, a red flashing light caught her eye. The familiar black-and-white pattern of a Rosewood police car stopped her cold. The police were waiting for her.
The ankle bracelet. She’d totally forgotten. The cops were meeting her here to place it on her ankle as well as collect her passport, driver’s license, and anything else that served as an ID. The police had wanted to do it yesterday, but Rosewood PD didn’t have bracelets on-hand and they needed some sort of court order in place. Aria had even heard they were going to put a GPS chip and a recording device on her cell phone. They would know where she was at all times, and hear every conversation she had.
Aria placed her hand on her bag, where her IDs were tucked into the leather side pocket. The idea of forfeiting her passport, with its extra pages for stamps, made her stomach suddenly swirl. Traveling defined her. And not having a passport made everything more, well, real. Without a license, without an ID, she was no longer Aria Montgomery. She was just a girl waiting to go to jail.
She thought about what she’d said to Noel in bed the other day. I wish I could just run away.
A tiny seedling of an idea took hold in her mind. No, Aria told herself. But it pressed on her again and again. It was so tempting—and it was one thing Ali probably would never count on. Emily had escaped Ali with death, but that wasn’t the only answer.
Could she?
“You okay?”
Aria whirled around. Noel, dressed in a dark suit, was shifting from foot to foot a few yards away. In the craziness of the past twenty-four hours, she’d only been able to talk to him on the phone. She hadn’t even known for sure he was coming. Now, she stepped back into the shadows and fell into him, her eyes filling with tears.
“I heard you fighting with Hanna and Spencer,” Noel murmured in her ear. “It seemed kind of . . . brutal.”
Aria lowered her shoulders. “It’s because the Fieldses didn’t want us here. They hate us. Everyone hates us.”
Noel patted her back. “I don’t hate you.”
Aria knew Noel meant that. She wanted more than anything just to stay here and hug him. But she also knew what she had to do this instant . . . and not a moment later.
She wiped away a tear. “I’m going to miss you.”
Noel cocked his head. “Aria. You’re not dead. And you’re not in jail yet.” His smile wobbled. “We still have to think positive.”
Aria stared at the ground. If only she could tell Noel she meant something else, but there was just no way.
He squeezed her hands. “We need to talk about what happened in New Jersey, too. Did you find Ali there? Are you afraid of something?”
“No. We didn’t find a thing.” She couldn’t look at him. “I have to go.”
Noel’s brow furrowed. “Go . . . where?”
But she was already walking away. “I love you,” she blurted before darting around the corner. “Tell my parents not to worry about me. Tell them I’ll be fine.”
“Aria!” Noel called out. But Aria kept running as fast as she could. And when she glanced over her shoulder after climbing the hill that led to the next street over, Noel wasn’t following.
She pushed through a thicket of trees and exploded into someone’s backyard, darting around a swing set and a sandbox. The SEPTA station was at the end of the road, and she reached it quickly, stumbling down the hill. The neon sign above the train tracks said the next train into Philly was due in two minutes. Aria looked nervously toward the street, terrified that the police would roar up any second. Surely all the funeral-goers had emptied out by now. Surely they’d figure out soon enough that she’d given them the slip.