“Oh, Emily, don’t put Snoopy there.” Mrs. Fields rushed to the tree and scooped up the Snoopy-embossed ball Emily had placed on a low branch. “He needs to be next to Garfield, see?” She pointed to a ceramic Garfield near the top.
Emily’s sister Carolyn giggled, plucking a construction paper ornament covered in glitter and crayon squiggles from the decrepit box. “What is this?”
“That’s the drum Jake made in preschool!” Mrs. Fields waved the ornament in Jake’s face. “Remember this, honey?”
Jake stared at Mrs. Fields blankly from under his ARIZONA SWIMMING baseball cap and tugged on the ends of his chlorine-bleached red hair. “Uh, no.”
Emily concealed a smile. Her mother was a Christmaszilla, wanting everything to be as perfect as a greeting card. Every year they went to midnight Mass and waved around incense sticks. They always had a Christmas Day feast, which included a roasted turkey, stuffing, two kinds of cranberry sauce—a bowl of freshly made cranberry-orange relish as well as the store-bought cans—yams, mashed potatoes, and four different kinds of pies. Then they would sit down and watch every single Christmas special on TV, including A Very Brady Christmas, To Grandmother’s House We Go with the Olsen twins, and a Justin Bieber concert in which he sang all of the holiday standards.
Mrs. Fields collapsed on the couch and admired the tree. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever!”
“Let’s not go overboard.” Mr. Fields laced his hands over his ample stomach. “My bonus was a little smaller than usual this year.”
A tight expression washed across Mrs. Fields’s face. “We’ll make it work. We need a special holiday this year. We’ve all been through a lot.”
She glanced at Emily, and Emily looked down at the worn beige Ugg slippers she’d gotten from her best friend Alison DiLaurentis the Christmas before Ali disappeared. Her family had been through a lot this year—especially with her. The first family emergency was when Emily declared she was going to quit swimming, the sport all the Fields kids excelled in. While fighting over that—which ended with Emily not quitting swimming after all—Emily’s parents also found out that she was dating Maya St. Germain, a new girl at Rosewood Day. Mr. and Mrs. Fields were the kind of people who raised eyebrows when someone from Rosewood Methodist dated someone who attended the Rosewood Abbey, so needless to say it hadn’t gone over well.
After Emily had endured an ex-gay program, a purify-yourself-in-the-Bible-Belt stay with her extended family in Iowa, and a road trip where Emily’s parents thought she was gone for good, they had finally accepted who she was.
“Hey, Em, we have something for you.” Beth smiled reassuringly at Emily. She skipped into the kitchen and returned with a wrapped gift. “An early Christmas present. Jake, Carolyn, and I chipped in.”
Emily slid her thumb under the tape and opened the package. Inside was a DVD box set of The L Word. Two women were kissing on the cover.
When she looked up, everyone was smiling at her eagerly, even her brother, who Emily was almost positive had never knowingly talked to anyone gay in his life. Emily had a feeling Mrs. Fields had told all of her children to put on a happy face about Emily’s choices.
“A friend of mine at school watches the series.” Beth tucked a piece of reddish-blondish hair behind her ear. “She said it’s really good. We’ll watch it with you if you want.”
“That’s okay,” Emily said quickly, an embarrassed flush rising to her cheeks. “But thank you.”
“Speaking of which, there’s a girl at church you should meet.” Mrs. Fields paused from untangling two ornaments made out of Popsicle sticks. “She leads one of the youth groups. I’ve told her all about you. She has very short hair,” Mrs. Fields added meaningfully.
It was amusing how, according to Emily’s mother, girls with short hair must be gay. “She sounds really nice,” Emily said, not wanting to sound ungrateful. But suddenly, all the we-accept-you-for-who-you-are attention was making her claustrophobic. “Um, I’ll be back in a minute,” she murmured, slipping out of the room.
She pulled on her coat and stepped onto the porch. The sun was at a low point in the sky, beaming straight into Emily’s eyes. Emily let out a long sigh until her lungs felt absolutely drained of air. She knew she should be happy right now. A, the evil text-messager who’d been the one to expose Emily’s relationship with Maya, was gone. Ali’s killer, Ian Thomas, was behind bars. She was hanging out again with her old friends Spencer, Aria, and Hanna—after their last group therapy session, they all had gone bowling together. There was no more danger in Rosewood, no more trouble lurking around every corner, and her family was letting her be who she wanted to be.
So why did she feel so . . . empty? Maybe it was crazy, but even after Ali’s body had been found in the concrete hole behind her old house, Emily found herself hoping against hope that her friend was still out there, alive and waiting for Emily to find her. She’d had so many dreams about Ali, and she’d even sworn she’d seen Ali the day of Ian’s arraignment in the back of a Lincoln Town Car. Even now, it felt like a presence lingered somewhere close, ghostlike, as though someone she’d known forever was watching from the cornfield.
Emily glanced through the front window of the house. Her family was still decorating the tree, looking like a Norman Rockwell tableau. It was sweet how supportive they were being about her sexuality, but the last thing she could think about right now was a relationship.
With one final look inside her living room, Emily wheeled her bike out of the garage and took off down the street. Four minutes and thirty-nine seconds later—she’d timed it years ago—she was making the turn onto the road where Ali used to live.
The house loomed at the end of the cul-de-sac, its windows dark. Lit candles, wrinkled photos, ragged stuffed animals, Santa hats, and small wrapped gifts clustered at the curb, offerings for the Ali Shrine. At the back of the property was the concrete slab where Ali had been found. Yellow police tape hung limply around the perimeter, and there was an eerie, translucent haze over the opening in the ground. It was chilling to think that Ian, whom Emily and the other girls had talked to the night of the end-of-seventh-grade sleepover, had dumped Ali’s lifeless body there just hours later.
Emily wheeled her bike up the lawn, stopped at a giant tree in the backyard, and gazed at the rickety remains of the old tree house in its tall branches. It was up there all those years ago that Ali had told Emily she had a secret boyfriend. Before Ali could reveal that it was Ian, Emily had leaned forward and kissed her.
Emily touched the tree bark with her fingers, finding the old spot where she’d carved her and Ali’s initials. Despair flooded over her like warm rain. She’d loved Ali so much. Would she ever feel like that again?
A branch cracked to her left, and she froze. A figure emerged through the trees. “Hello?” Emily said shakily, thinking of Ian. His father had all kinds of connections and had a good shot at getting him out on bail—and Ian would probably want to punish the people who tipped off the police to his crime. What if he was here right now?
“Emily?”
Aria Montgomery appeared, looking just as surprised to see Emily as Emily was to see her. She was wearing a big coat with a furry hood, fitted jeans, and fur-lined brown boots that looked like Snuffleupaguses on her feet.
“Hey.” Emily’s heart began to slow down. “W-what are you doing here?”
Aria’s blue eyes were wide. “I come here, sometimes. But I’m too afraid to go back there.”
She pointed to the dug-up concrete slab. Emily nodded, knowing exactly what Aria meant. She hadn’t looked inside the hole, either.
They stood in silence for a few beats. The sun sank lower into the trees, turning the sky an eerie purple. Christmas lights on automatic timers snapped on in the windows across the street.
Aria trudged over to a large boulder in Ali’s yard and sat down. “It’s weird, you know? That it’s all . . . over. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I know,” Emily whispered.
“I mean, I’m happy it’s over,” Aria said quickly. “But it doesn’t seem real. You know?”
Emily did know. Ali had been gone for years without any answers. And A—Mona Vanderwaal—had impersonated Ali so expertly, they’d all thought she was back until her body was uncovered.
“It is real, though,” Emily said quietly, shifting her feet in the cold, spiny grass. She felt like crying as the words spilled from her mouth. As much as she wanted Ali back, there was nothing she could do to change the past. Ali was gone. End of story.
Chapter 2
Away in a Manger
Forty-five minutes later, Emily parked her bike in the garage and walked back into her house. The beef stew Mrs. Fields had made for dinner was sitting on top of the stove, but there was no one in the kitchen to eat it.
Emily found her mother pacing around the den, her shoulder-length hair loosened from its ponytail and her green eyes wild. Emily’s father was following behind her, rubbing her shoulders and saying, “It’s okay. Calm down. Please.”
“What’s going on?” Emily squeaked.
Mrs. Fields stopped in the middle of the round braided rug. “Something terrible has happened.”
Emily’s heart began to pound. Had Ian gotten out of prison after all? Was someone else dead? “Oh no,” she whispered.
Mrs. Fields collapsed on the couch and placed her head in her hands. “My baby Jesus has been stolen! It was a precious antique!”
It took a few moments for the words to sink in. Emily recalled her mother hauling a ceramic baby Jesus out of the attic on Thanksgiving, nestling it into the backseat of the car, and proudly pointing it out in the Nativity scene on the church lawn every Sunday after that.
“I’m so upset,” Mrs. Fields went on. “It was an heirloom from your grandmother!”
The phone rang, and Mrs. Fields pounced on it. “Judith?” she said into the receiver, springing to her feet and heading into the other room. Emily and her dad exchanged a look.
“That was Judith Meriwether at the church,” Mrs. Fields said when she returned. “She and some of the other people on the church staff have a hunch about who stole the baby Jesus. They think it’s a group of college girls home on winter break. They’ve been terrorizing neighborhoods, stealing decorations and messing up lawns. Apparently they call themselves the Merry Elves.”
Before she could stop herself, Emily cracked a smile at the name, and Mrs. Fields shot her a look. “It’s not funny. Judith says they call themselves that because they all work as elves at Santa Land at the Devon Crest Mall in West Rosewood. Judith works there as the assistant manager, and she’s heard them say a few things that piqued her interest.” Mrs. Fields scrunched up her face once more. “I can’t believe they took the baby Jesus. They’ve probably smashed it to pieces!”
“Now, now.” Mr. Fields rubbed his wife’s back.