Flawless

Emily looked down the country road and noticed the giant Applegate Horse Farm waterwheel. They weren’t in the middle of nowhere. They were a mile from her house.



“C’mon,” Toby said. “I’ll help you out.”



Maybe she was overreacting. There were a lot of people who’d really changed—take any of Emily’s old friends, for instance. It didn’t mean Toby was definitely A. She unclenched her grip on the seat cushion. “Um, you can drive me. If you want.”



He stared at her for a minute. One side of his mouth curled up into an almost-smile. The expression on his face said, Um, okay, crazy girl, but he didn’t say it.



He got back in the driver’s seat, and Emily quietly inspected him. Toby really had transformed. His formerly creepy-looking dark eyes now just looked deep and brooding. And he actually spoke. Coherently. The summer after sixth grade, Emily and Toby went to the same swim camp, and Toby would stare at Emily unashamedly, then pull his cap over his eyes and hum. Even then, Emily wished she could ask him the billion-dollar question: Why had he taken the blame for blinding his stepsister, when he hadn’t?



The night it happened, Ali came inside the house and told them that everything was fine, that no one had seen her. Everyone was too scared to sleep at first, but Ali scratched everyone’s backs, calming them down. The next day, when Toby confessed, Aria asked Ali if she’d known he was going to do that all along—how else could she have been so chill? “I just had this vibe we’d be okay,” Ali explained.



Over time, Toby’s confession had just become one of those life mysteries they’d never understand—like why Brad and Jen really got divorced, what was on the Rosewood Day girls’ bathroom floor the day the janitorial worker screamed, why Imogen Smith missed so much school in sixth grade (because it definitely wasn’t mono), or like…who killed Ali. Maybe Toby felt guilty about something else, or wanted to get out of Rosewood? Or maybe he did have a firework in the tree house and shot it by mistake.



Toby steered into Emily’s street. A rambling, bluesy song played on his stereo, and he drummed the steering wheel with his palms. She thought of how he’d saved her from Ben yesterday. She wanted to thank him, but what if he asked more about it? What would Emily say? Oh, he was pissed because I was French-kissing a girl.



Emily finally thought of a safe question. “So, you’re at Tate now?”



“Yep,” he answered. “My parents said if I got in, I could go. And I did. It’s nice being close to home. I get to see my sister—she’s at school in Philadelphia.”



Jenna. Emily’s whole body, including her toes, tensed. She tried not to show any reaction, and Toby stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware that she was nervous. “And, um, where were you before? Maine?” Emily asked, making it sound like she didn’t know he’d been at the Manning Academy for Boys, which, according to her Google research, was on Fryeburg Road in Portland.



“Yup.” Toby slowed down to let two little kids on Rollerblades cross the street. “Maine was pretty cool. The best thing about it was EMS.”



“Did you…did you see anyone die?”



Toby met her eyes in the rearview mirror again. Emily had never noticed they were actually dark blue. “Nope. But this old lady willed me her dog.”



“Her dog?” Emily couldn’t help but laugh.



“Yep. I was with her in the ambulance and visited her in the ICU. We talked about her dog, and I said I loved dogs. When she died, her lawyer found me.”



“So…did you keep the dog?”



“She’s at my house now. She’s really sweet, but about as old as the lady was.”



Emily giggled, and something inside her began to thaw. Toby seemed sort of…normal. And nice. Before she could say anything else, they were at her house.



Toby parked the car and pulled Emily’s bike out of the trunk. As she took the handlebars from him, their fingers touched. A little spark went through her. Toby looked at Emily for a moment, and she looked down at the sidewalk. Eons ago, she’d pressed her hand into the freshly poured concrete. Now, the handprint looked way too small ever to have been hers.



Toby climbed into the driver’s seat. “So I’ll see you tomorrow?”



Emily’s head shot up. “W-Why?”



Toby turned the ignition. “It’s the Rosewood-Tate meet. Remember?”



“Oh,” Emily answered. “Of course.”



As Toby pulled away, she felt her heart slow down. For some crazy reason, she’d thought Toby wanted to ask her out on a date. But c’mon, she told herself as she walked up the front steps to her house. This was Toby. The two of them together was about as likely as…as, well, Ali still being alive. And for the first time since she’d disappeared, Emily had finally given up hoping for that.



12



NEXT TIME, STASH EMERGENCY COVER-UP IN YOUR PURSE



“¿Cuándo es?” a voice said in her ear. “What time is it? Time for Spencer to die!”



Spencer shot up. The dark, familiar figure that had been looming over her face had vanished. Instead, she was in a clean, white bedroom. There were Rembrandt etchings and a poster of the human musculature system on the bedroom wall. On TV, Elmo was teaching kids how to tell time in Spanish. The cable box said 6:04, and she assumed it was A.M.: out the window, she saw that the sun was just coming up, and she could smell fresh bagels and scrambled eggs wafting up from the street.



She looked next to her, and it all made sense. Wren slept on his back, one arm thrown over his face, his chest bare. Wren’s father was Korean and his mother was British, so his skin was this perfect, golden shade. There was a scar above his lip; he had freckles across his nose, and shaggy blue-black hair, and smelled like Adidas deodorant and Tide. The thick silver ring he wore on his right pointer finger glinted in the morning sun. He pulled his arm off his face and opened his gorgeous almond-shaped eyes.



“Hey.” He slowly grabbed Spencer around her waist and pulled her toward him.



“Hey,” she whispered, hanging back. She could still hear the voice from her dream: It’s time for Spencer to die! It was Toby’s voice.



Wren frowned. “What’s wrong?”



“Nothing,” Spencer said quietly. She pressed her fingers to the base of her neck and felt her pulse race. “Just…bad dream.”



“You want to share?”



Spencer hesitated. She wished she could. Then she shook her head.



“Well, then. C’mere.”



They spent a few minutes kissing, and Spencer got a relieved, grateful rush. Everything was going to be all right. She was safe.



This was the first time Spencer had slept—and stayed over—in a guy’s bed. Last night, she’d sped into Philly, parked on the street, and hadn’t even bothered with the Club; her parents were probably planning on repossessing her car, anyway. She and Wren had fallen into bed immediately and hadn’t gotten up since except to answer the door for the Chinese takeout delivery boy. Later on, she called and left a message on her parents’ machine that she was staying the night at her hockey friend Kirsten’s house. She felt silly, trying to be all responsible when she was really being so irresponsible, but whatever.



For the first time since her first A note, she’d slept like a baby. It was partly because she was in Philadelphia and not Rosewood, next door to Toby, but it was also because of Wren. Before they went to sleep, they’d talked about Ali—their friendship, what it had been like when Ali went missing, that someone had killed her—for an hour. He’d also let her choose the “crickets chirping” sound on the sound machine, even though it was his second–least favorite noise, after “babbling brook.”



Spencer began kissing him more forcefully now, and slid out of his oversize Penn T-shirt, which she was wearing as a nightgown. Wren traced her naked collarbone, then pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. “Do you want to…?” he asked.



“I think so,” Spencer whispered.



“Are you sure?”



“Uh-huh.” She wriggled out of her underwear. Wren pulled his shirt over his head. Spencer’s heart pounded. She was a virgin, and was as discriminating about sex as she was about everything else in her life—she had to do it with the perfect person.



But Wren was the right person. She knew she was passing the Point of No Return—if her parents found out, they’d never pay for anything ever, ever, ever again. Or pay attention to her. Or send her to college. Or feed her, possibly. So what? Wren made her feel safe.



One Sesame Street, one Dragon Tales, and a half an Arthur later, Spencer rolled onto her back, staring blissfully at the ceiling. So much for going slow. Then she propped herself up on her elbows and looked at the clock. “Shit,” she whispered. It was seven-twenty. School started at eight; she was going to miss first period at the very least.



“I have to go.” She leaped out of bed and surveyed her plaid skirt, blazer, undies, cami, and boots, all in a haphazard pile on the floor. “And I’m going to have to go home.”



Wren sat on the bed, watching her. “Why?”



“I can’t wear the same outfit two days in a row.”



Wren was obviously trying not to laugh at her. “But it’s a uniform, right?”



“Yes, but I wore this camisole yesterday. And these boots.”



Wren chuckled. “You’re so lovably anal.”



Spencer ducked her head at the word love.



She quickly showered, rinsing her head and body. Her heart was still pounding. She felt overcome with nerves, anxious that she was late for school, troubled by the Toby nightmare, but totally blissed about Wren. When she came out of the shower, Wren was sitting on the bed. The apartment smelled like hazelnut coffee. Spencer reached for Wren’s hand and slowly slid his silver ring off his finger and put it on her thumb. “It looks good on me.” When she looked at him, Wren wore a small, unreadable smile. “What?” Spencer asked.



“You’re just…” Wren shook his head and shrugged. “It’s hard for me to remember you’re still in high school. You’re just so…together.”



Spencer blushed. “I’m really not.”



“No, you are. It’s like…you actually seem more together than—”



Wren stopped, but Spencer knew he’d been going to say, More together than Melissa. She felt herself swell with satisfaction. Melissa might have won the fight for their parents, but Spencer had won the battle for Wren. And that was the one that mattered.



Spencer strode up her house’s long, brick-paved driveway. It was now 9:10 A.M., and second period at Rosewood Day had already started. Her father would be long gone to work by now, and with any luck, her mom would be at the stables.



She opened the front door. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator. She tiptoed up to her room, reminding herself that she’d have to forge a tardy slip from her mother—and then realizing that she’d never had to forge a tardy slip before. Every year, Spencer earned Rosewood Day’s perfect-attendance and punctuality awards.