Flawless

“C’mon.” Maya turned to go inside. Emily, not sure what else to do, followed.



She trailed Maya up the creaky, twisty stairs of the inn to her 1776-themed bedroom. It smelled like wet wool. It had slanted pine floors, a shaky, queen-size four-poster bed with a giant crazy quilt on top, and a puzzling contraption in the corner that looked like a butter churn. “My parents got my brother and me separate rooms.” Maya sat down on the bed with a squeak.



“That’s nice,” Emily answered, perching on the edge of a rickety chair that had probably once belonged to George Washington.



“So, how are you?” Maya leaned toward her. “God, I saw you at the funeral. You looked…devastated.”



Emily’s hazel eyes filled with tears. She was devastated about Ali. Emily had spent the past three-and-a-half years hoping Ali would show up on her porch one day, as healthy and glowing as ever. And when she started receiving the A notes, she was sure Ali was back. Who else could have known? But now, Emily knew for certain that Ali was really gone. Forever. On top of that, someone knew her squirmiest secret—that she’d been in love with Ali—and that she felt the same way about Maya. And maybe that same someone knew the truth about what they’d done to Jenna, too.



Emily felt bad, refusing to tell her old friends what her notes from A said. It was just…she couldn’t. One of A’s notes was written on an old love letter that she’d sent to Ali. The ironic thing was that she could talk to Maya about what the notes said, but she was afraid to tell Maya about A. “I think I’m still pretty shook up,” she finally answered, feeling a headache coming on. “But, also…I’m just tired.”



Maya kicked off her boots. “Why don’t you take a nap? You aren’t going to feel any better sitting in that torture contraption of a chair.”



Emily wrapped her hands around the chair’s arms. “I—”



Maya patted the bed. “You look like you need a hug.”



A hug would feel good. Emily pushed her reddish-blond hair out of her face and sat down on the bed next to Maya. Their bodies melted into each other. Emily could feel Maya’s ribs through the fabric of her shirt. She was so petite, Emily could probably pick her up and spin her around.



They pulled away, pausing a few inches from each other’s faces. Maya’s eyelashes were coal black, and there were tiny flecks of gold in her irises. Slowly, Maya tilted Emily’s chin up. She kissed her gently at first. Then harder.



Emily felt the familiar whoosh of excitement as Maya’s hand grazed the edge of Emily’s skirt. Suddenly, she reached underneath it. Her hands felt cold and surprising. Emily eyes shot open and she pulled away.



The frilly white curtains in Maya’s room were open wide, and Emily could see the Escalades, Mercedes wagons, and Lexus Hybrids in the parking lot. Sarah Isling and Taryn Orr, two girls in Emily’s grade, sauntered out of the restaurant exit, followed by their parents. Emily ducked.



Maya sat back. “What’s wrong?”



“What are you doing?” Emily covered her unbuttoned skirt with her hand.



“What do you think I’m doing?” Maya grinned.



Emily glanced at the window again. Sarah and Taryn were gone.



Maya jiggled up and down on the bed’s creaky mattress. “Did you know there’s a charity party this Saturday called Foxy?”



“Yeah.” Emily’s whole body throbbed.



“I think we should go,” Maya continued. “It sounds fun.”



Emily frowned. “The tickets are $250. You have to be invited.”



“My brother scored tickets. Enough for both of us.” Maya inched closer to Emily. “Will you be my date?”



Emily shot off the bed. “I…” She took a step backward, stumbling on the slippery hooked rug. Lots of people from Rosewood Day went to Foxy. All the popular kids, all the jocks…everyone. “I have to go to the bathroom.”



Maya looked confused. “It’s over there.”



Emily shut the crooked bathroom door. She sat on the toilet and stared at the print on the wall of an Amish woman wearing a bonnet and an ankle-length dress. Perhaps it was a sign. Emily was always looking for signs to help her make decisions—in her horoscope, in fortune cookies, in random things like this. Maybe this picture meant, Be like the Amish. Weren’t they chaste for life? Weren’t their lives maddeningly simple? Didn’t they burn girls at the stake for liking other girls?



And then her cell phone rang.



Emily pulled it out of her pocket, wondering if it was her mother wanting to know where Emily was. Mrs. Fields was less than pleased that Emily and Maya had become friends—for disturbing, possibly racist reasons. Imagine if her mom knew what they were up to now.



Emily’s Nokia blinked, One new text message. She clicked READ.



Em! Still enjoying the same kinds of *activities* with your best friends, I see. Even though most of us have totally changed, it’s nice to know you’re still the same! Gonna tell everyone about your new love? Or shall I? —A



“No,” Emily whispered.



There was a sudden whoosh behind her. She jumped, bumping her hip on the sink. It was only someone flushing the toilet in the next guest room. Then there was some whispering and giggling. It sounded like it was coming from the sink drain.



“Emily?” Maya called. “Everything okay?”



“Uh…fine.” Emily croaked. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were wide and hollow, and her reddish-blonde hair was disheveled. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, the bedroom lights were off and the shades were drawn.



“Psssst,” Maya called from the bed. She’d laid seductively on her side.



Emily looked around. She was pretty sure Maya hadn’t even locked the door. All those Rosewood kids were eating brunch downstairs….



“I can’t do this,” Emily blurted out.



“What?” Maya’s dazzlingly white teeth glowed in the dimness.



“We’re friends.” Emily plastered herself against the wall. “I like you.”



“I like you, too.” Maya ran a hand over one bare arm.



“But that’s all I can be right now,” Emily clarified. “Friends.”



Maya’s smile disappeared in the dark.



“Sorry.” Emily shoved on her loafers fast, putting her right shoe on her left foot.



“It doesn’t mean you have to leave,” Maya said quietly.



Emily looked at her as she reached for the doorknob. Her eyes were already adjusting to the dim light, and she could see that Maya looked disappointed and confused and…and beautiful. “I should go,” Emily mumbled. “I’m late.”



“Late for what?”



Emily didn’t answer. She turned for the door. Just as she suspected, Maya hadn’t bothered to lock it.



4



THERE’S TRUTH IN WINE…OR, IN ARIA’S CASE, AMSTEL



As Aria Montgomery slipped into her family’s boxy, avant-garde house—which stuck out on their typical Rosewood street of neoclassical Victorians—she heard her parents talking quietly in the kitchen.



“But I don’t understand,” her mother, Ella—her parents liked Aria to call them by their first names—was saying. “You told me you could make it to the artists’ dinner last week. It’s important. I think Jason might buy some of the paintings I did in Reykjavík.”



“It’s just that I’m already behind on my papers,” her father, Byron, answered. “I haven’t gotten back into the swing of grading yet.”



Ella sighed. “How is it they have papers and you’ve only had two days of class?”



“I gave them their first assignment before the semester started.” Byron sounded distracted. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. How about Otto’s? Saturday night?”



Aria shifted her weight in the foyer. Her family had just returned from two years in Reykjavík, Iceland, where her dad had been on sabbatical from teaching at Hollis, Rosewood’s liberal arts college. It had been a perfect reprieve for all of them—Aria needed the escape after Ali went missing, her brother, Mike, needed some culture and discipline, and Ella and Byron, who’d begun to go days without speaking, seemed to fall back in love in Iceland. But now that they were back home, everyone was reverting back to their dysfunctional ways.



Aria passed the kitchen. Her dad was gone, and her mom was standing over the island, her head in her hands. When she saw Aria, she brightened. “How you doing, pumpkin?” Ella asked carefully, fingering the memorial card they’d received from Ali’s service.



“I’m all right,” Aria mumbled.



“You want to talk about it?”



Aria shook her head. “Later, maybe.” She scuttled into the living room, feeling spastic and distracted, as though she’d drunk six cans of Red Bull. And it wasn’t just from Ali’s funeral.



Last week A had taunted Aria about one of her darkest secrets: In seventh grade, Aria caught her father kissing one of his students, a girl named Meredith. Byron had asked Aria not to tell her mother, and Aria never had, although she always felt guilty about it. When A threatened to tell Ella the whole ugly truth, Aria had assumed A was Alison. It was Ali who’d been with Aria when she caught Bryon and Meredith together, and Aria had never told anyone else.



But now Aria knew A couldn’t be Alison, but A’s threat was still out there, promising to ruin Aria’s family. She knew she should tell Ella before A got to her—but she couldn’t make herself do it.



Aria walked to the back porch, winding her fingers through her long black hair. A flash of white zoomed by. It was her brother, Mike, racing around the yard with his lacrosse stick. “Hey,” she called, getting an idea. When Mike didn’t answer, she walked out onto the lawn and stood in his path. “I’m going downtown. Wanna come?”



Mike made a face. “Downtown’s full of dirty hippies. Besides, I’m practicing.”



Aria rolled her eyes. Mike was so obsessed with making the Rosewood Day varsity lacrosse team, he hadn’t even bothered to change out of his charcoal gray funeral suit before starting drills. Her brother was so cookie-cutter Rosewood—dirty white baseball cap, obsessed with PlayStation, saving up for a hunter-green Jeep Cherokee as soon as he turned sixteen. Unfortunately, there was no question they shared the same gene pool—both Aria and her brother were tall and had blue-black hair and unforgettable angular faces.



“Well, I’m going to get bombed,” she told him. “You sure you want to practice?”



Mike narrowed his grayish-blue eyes at her, processing this. “You’re not secretly dragging me to a poetry reading?”



She shook her head. “We’ll go to the skankiest college bar we can find.”



Mike shrugged and laid down his lacrosse stick. “Let’s go,” he said.



Mike fell into a booth. “This place rocks.”



They were at the Victory Brewery—indeed the skankiest bar they could find. It was flanked by a piercing parlor and a store called Hippie Gypsy that sold “hydroponic seeds”—nudge, nudge. There was a puke stain on the sidewalk out front, and a half-blind, three-hundred-pound bouncer had waved them right through, too engrossed in Dubs magazine to card them.