“Hey.”
Spencer screamed and whirled around, her schoolbag slipping from her hands.
“Jesus.” Melissa stood in the doorway. “Calm down.”
“W-Why aren’t you in class?” Spencer asked, her nerves vibrating.
Melissa wore dark pink velour sweatpants and a faded Penn T-shirt, but her blunt-cut, chin-length blond hair was held back by a navy blue headband. Even when Melissa relaxed, she still managed to look uptight. “Why aren’t you in class?”
Spencer ran her hand along the back of her neck, finding it sweaty. “I…I forgot something. I had to come back.”
“Ah.” Melissa gave her a mysterious smile. Chills ran up Spencer’s spine. She felt like she was on the edge of a cliff, about to topple over. “Well, I’m actually glad you’re here. I’ve thought about what you said on Monday. I’m sorry about everything too.”
“Oh,” was all Spencer could think to say.
Melissa lowered her voice. “I mean, we really should be nicer to each other. Both of us. Who knows what might happen in this crazy world? Look at what happened to Alison DiLaurentis. It makes what we’re fighting about seem sort of petty.”
“Yeah,” Spencer murmured. It was sort of an odd comparison to make.
“Anyway, I talked to Mom and Dad about it, too. I think they’re coming around.”
“Oh.” Spencer ran her tongue over her teeth. “Wow. Thanks. That means a lot.”
Melissa beamed at her in response. There was a long pause, and then Melissa took another step into Spencer’s bedroom, leaning up against a cherry highboy dresser. “Sooooo…what’s going on with you? You going to Foxy? Ian asked me, but I don’t think I’m going to go. I’m probably too old.”
Spencer paused, completely thrown off guard. Was Melissa up to something? These weren’t the types of things they usually talked about. “I…uh…I don’t know.”
“Damn.” Melissa smirked. “I hope you’re going with the guy who gave you that.” She pointed at Spencer’s neck.
Spencer ran to her mirror and saw a huge, purple hickey near her collarbone. Her hands fluttered frantically to her neck. Then she noticed she was still wearing Wren’s thick silver ring.
Melissa used to live with Wren—had she recognized it? Spencer yanked the ring off her finger and shoved it into her underwear drawer. Her pulse raged at her temples.
The phone rang, and Melissa picked it up in the hall. Within seconds, her head was back inside Spencer’s room. “It’s for you,” she whispered. “A boy!”
“A…boy?” Was Wren stupid enough to call? Who else would it be, at nine-fifteen on a Thursday morning? Spencer’s mind scattered in twenty directions. She took the phone. “Hello?”
“Spencer? It’s Andrew. Campbell.” He let out a nervous laugh. “From school.”
Spencer glanced at Melissa. “Um, hey,” she croaked. For a split second, she couldn’t even recall who Andrew Campbell was. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to see if you have that flu going around. I didn’t see you at the student council meeting this morning. You’re never, um, not in student council.”
“Oh.” Spencer swallowed hard. She glanced at Melissa, who stood expectantly in the doorway. “Well, yeah, but I…I’m better now.”
“I just wanted to say that I offered to pick up your homework for your classes,” Andrew said. “Since we’re in all the same ones.” His voice echoed; it sounded like he was calling from the gym locker room. Andrew would be just the type to duck out of gym. “For calc, we have a bunch of end-of-chapter problem sets.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
“And do you maybe want to go over some notes for the essays? McAdam says it’s a huge percentage of our grade.”
“Um, sure,” Spencer answered. Melissa caught Spencer’s eye and gave her a hopeful, excited look. Hickey? she mouthed, pointing at Spencer’s neck and then at the phone.
Spencer’s brain felt like it was plodding through yogurt. Then, suddenly, she had an idea. She cleared her throat. “Actually, Andrew…do you have a date for Foxy?”
“Foxy?” Andrew repeated. “Um, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t have any pla—”
“Do you want to come with me?” Spencer interrupted.
Andrew laughed; it sounded like a hiccup. “Seriously?”
“Um, yeah,” Spencer said, her eyes on her sister.
“Well, yeah!” Andrew said. “That’d be great! What time? What should I wear? Are you going out with any friends beforehand? Are there any after-parties?”
Spencer rolled her eyes. Leave it to Andrew to ask questions, like he was going to be quizzed on it. “We’ll figure it out,” Spencer said, turning to the window.
Then she hung up, feeling winded, as if she’d sprinted miles and miles for field hockey. When she turned back to her door, Melissa was gone.
13
A CERTAIN ENGLISH TEACHER IS SUCH AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR
On Thursday, Aria hesitated in the AP English classroom doorway when Spencer walked by. “Hey.” Aria grabbed her arm. “Have you gotten any…?”
Spencer’s eyes darted back and forth, sort of like those of the big lizards Aria had seen on display at the Paris Zoo. “Um, no,” she said. “But I’m really late, so…” She ran down the hall. Aria bit down hard on her lip. Okay.
Someone put a hand on her shoulder. She let out a little shriek and dropped her water bottle. It clunked to the floor and started rolling.
“Whoa. Just trying to get by.”
Ezra stood behind her. He’d been absent from school on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Aria had wondered if he’d resigned. “Sorry,” she mumbled, her cheeks bright red.
Ezra had on the same rumpled corduroys he’d worn last week, a tweedy jacket with a tiny hole in the elbow, and Merrill lace-ups. Up close, he smelled faintly like the Seda France ylang-ylang and saffron-scented “man candle” Aria remembered from his living room mantel. She’d visited his apartment just six days ago, but it felt like two lifetimes had passed since then.
Aria tiptoed into the classroom behind him. “So, were you sick?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ezra aswered. “I had the flu.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Aria wondered if she was going to get the flu too.
Ezra looked at the empty classroom and walked closer to her. “So. Listen. How about a fresh start?” His face was businesslike.
“Um, okay,” Aria croaked.
“We have a year to get through,” Ezra added. “So we’ll forget this happened?”
Aria swallowed. She knew their relationship was wrong, but she still had feelings for Ezra. She’d bared her soul to him, and she couldn’t do that with just anyone. And he was so different. “Of course,” she said, although she didn’t entirely believe it. They’d had a real…connection.
Ezra nodded slightly. Then, ever so slowly, he reached out and put his hand on the back of Aria’s neck. Tingles ran up her spine. She held her breath until he brought his hand back to his side and walked away.
Aria took a seat at her desk, her mind churning. Was that some sort of sign? He had said forget it, but it hadn’t felt that way.
Before she could decide if she should say anything to Ezra, Noel Kahn slid into the seat across from Aria and poked her with his Montblanc pen. “So, I hear you’re cheating on me, Finland.”
“What?” Aria sat up, alert. Her hand fluttered to her neck.
“Sean Ackard was asking about you. You know he’s with Hanna though, right?”
Aria poked the backs of her teeth with her tongue. “Sean…Ackard?”
“He’s not with Hanna anymore,” James Freed interrupted, sliding into his seat in front of Noel. “Mona told me Hanna dumped him.”
“So, you like Sean?” Noel pushed his wavy black hair out of his eyes.
“No,” Aria said automatically. Although she kept coming back to the conversation she’d had with Sean in his car on Tuesday. It had felt good to talk to someone about things.
“Good,” Noel said, brushing a hand across his forehead. “I was worried.”
Aria rolled her eyes.
Hanna sauntered into the room just as the bell rang, putting her oversize Prada bag on her desk and sinking dramatically into her chair. She gave Aria a tight smile.
“Hey.” Aria felt a little shy. In school, Hanna seemed awfully closed off.
“Hey, Hanna, are you with Sean Ackard anymore?” Noel asked loudly.
Hanna stared at him. Her eyelid twitched. “It wasn’t working between us. Why?”
“No reason,” Aria butted in quickly. Although she wondered why Hanna had broken up with him. They were two peas in a typical Rosewood pod.
Ezra clapped his hands. “All right,” he said. “In addition to the books we’re reading as a class, I want to do an extra side project on unreliable narrators.”
Devon Arliss raised her hand. “What does that mean?”
Ezra strode around the room. “Well, the narrator tells us the story in a book, right? But what if…the narrator isn’t telling us the truth? Maybe he’s telling his skewed version of the story to get you on his side. Or to scare you. Or maybe he’s crazy!”
Aria shivered. That made her think of A.
“I’m going to assign each of you a book,” Ezra said. “In a ten-page paper, you are to make the case for and against its narrator being unreliable.”
The class groaned. Aria rested her head in her palm. Maybe A wasn’t entirely reliable? Maybe A didn’t really know anything but was just trying to convince them otherwise. Who was A, anyway? She looked around the classroom, at Amber Billings, poking her finger through a tiny hole in her stockings; at Mason Byers, secretly checking the Phillies scores on his cell phone, using his notebook as a shield; and at Hanna, writing down what Ezra was saying with her purple-ink feather pen. Could any of these people be A? Who could know about Ezra, her parents…and The Jenna Thing?
A groundskeeper zoomed by on a John Deere mower outside the window, and Aria jumped. Ezra was still talking about lying narrators, pausing to take a sip out of his mug. He shot Aria the tiniest smile, and her heart began to thrum.
James Freed leaned over, poked Hanna, and gestured to Ezra. “So, I hear Fitz gets some serious ass,” he whispered, loud enough for Aria—and the rest of her row—to hear.
Hanna looked at Ezra and wrinkled her nose. “Him? Ew.”
“Apparently he’s got this girlfriend in New York, but he’s on a different Hollis girl every week,” James went on.
Aria straightened up. Girlfriend?
“Where’d you hear that?” Noel asked James.
James grinned. “You know Ms. Polanski? The bio student teacher? She told me. She hangs out with us at the smoking corner sometimes.”
Noel gave James a high five. “Dude, Ms. Polanski is hot.”