Nick gestured to the paintball area, an obstacle course of bushes and bulwarks, providing places to hide. “You ready?”
“Absolutely,” Ali answered. But when Nick passed her a gun, she balked. It was huge.
Nick giggled. “You don’t have to act like a girl around me. I remember you kicking butt on paintball day at camp.”
Ali clutched the gun to her chest and stood up straighter. She’d never played paintball in her life, but Nick couldn’t know that. She peered at the other kids playing in the field, shooting out from behind the bushes to tag their enemies. She’d hung out with enough boys to know that there were two teams; the object was to capture the yellow flags that hung from the fence across the wide expanse of grass. How hard could it be? “Let’s rock,” she said.
As they traipsed across the field, Nick leaned into her. “So what’s up in Alison DiLaurentis’s world?”
“Not too much,” Ali said as they crouched behind a bush. She wasn’t about to tell him the truth—like about her visit to the mental hospital, for example. “How about you?”
Nick peered over the top of the bush. A kid whizzed past, but he was in a blue jumpsuit like them. Globs of paint exploded toward him from all directions, and he shrieked and covered his head. “I just got a job at a new French restaurant at the King James.”
“Rive Gauche?” Ali asked excitedly. “I love that place! Now I’ll have to come more often.”
“I hope so.” Nick’s eyes gleamed. Then he poked her playfully. “Of course you’d know about Rive Gauche. You’re probably the type of girl who likes to shop, huh?”
“I do like to shop,” Ali said. “But I’m not a type of girl.”
“No?” Nick raised an eyebrow. “At camp you were. You had those girls in your bunk wrapped around your little finger.”
“Maybe I’ve changed,” Ali teased. “You said yourself that I’d really grown up.”
Nick didn’t look convinced. “So you’re not a Miss Popular, gets-everything-she-wants, loves-manicures-and pedicures, has-a-huge-group-of-friends, and is-good-at-everything-she-does kind of girl anymore?”
Ali peered over the bush, but no one was in view. That was absolutely the image she wanted to project, the perfect Alison she needed to be. But suddenly, she wanted Nick to know that she was more than that. Deeper. “For your information, I don’t like mani-pedis,” she admitted.
Nick widened his eyes. “Shocker!” he said in mock horror. “I’ll alert the press.”
Ali edged closer. “And I kind of like watching football,” she whispered. “And eating wings instead of salads.”
“No!”
She giggled. “I love animals, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” He smiled at her. “Do you have any pets?”
Ali shook her head. “Not now. But I used to have a gerbil.”
Nick looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the gerbil type.”
Ali poked him. “There you go making assumptions again.” She hiked the paintball gun higher on her shoulder. “My gerbil’s name was Marshmallow. She was the best—I decorated her fur, painted her nails, and put bows on her head.”
“So you’re okay giving a gerbil a mani-pedi, even if you don’t like them.” Nick clucked his tongue. “Animal cruelty.”
“She didn’t seem to mind,” Ali admitted, suddenly feeling wistful. “For a while, Marshmallow was my only friend.”
Nick snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Ali clapped her mouth shut, realizing she’d said too much. Marshmallow had been her only friend because she’d been her pet at the Radley. It had been a big privilege to be allowed to have her as a pet, and she’d relished the responsibility, giving her lots of cuddles, making sure she got enough exercise on her wheel, putting her cage right next to her bed because hearing the tap-tap-tap of her claws on the side in the middle of the night comforted her.
“Well,” Nick said, moving closer to Ali, “hopefully I can get to know this girl who is definitely not Miss Perfect.”
“I’d like that,” Ali said shyly. “And what about you? Any secrets I should know about?”
Nick fingered the trigger on the gun. “Not really. What you see is what you get,” he said, staring into her eyes.
Tingles shot through Ali’s body. Then suddenly, something red flashed before her eyes. A girl in a red jumpsuit zigzagged through the field. Ali leapt up and aimed at her, firing the paintball gun as if she really had been the paintball master at camp. The girl squealed and ran for cover.
Ali grabbed Nick’s hand. “Come on!” She pulled him into the field toward the flags. Paint flew at them from all directions, and Ali ducked and giggled, managing to avoid every assault. The yellow flags loomed close. She ripped one from the fence and let out a whoop. Nick, who was right behind her, was so excited he picked her up and spun her around.