I’m so thrilled that we’re friends. I love staring at the back of your head in class, I love how you chew gum whenever we’re talking on the phone together, and I love that when you jiggle your Skechers during class when Mrs. Hat starts talking about famous American court cases, I know you’re totally bored. I don’t want anything to come between us, but I don’t think it will. You felt something, too, didn’t you? I could tell.
Ali shut her eyes and took a few deep breaths. When she opened them one more time, she read the rest.
. . . and I’ve done a lot of thinking about why I kissed you the other day. I realized: It wasn’t a joke, Ali. I think I love you. I can understand if you never want to speak to me again, but I just had to tell you.
—Em
When she finished, she folded the letter in half and pressed it deep into her pocket. But then, because that felt too intimate, she pulled it out and shoved it into the bottom of her bag, under her math book. She pulled out her phone, ready to compose a text to Emily saying something like, I found your letter, weirdo. Ha ha, funny joke. Except maybe it would be better just to not acknowledge it at all.
She threw back her shoulders and walked into the house. As soon as she stepped through the foyer, the hair on her neck rose. Something felt different. The knickknacks on the table in the hall were the same. There were two caps and gowns hanging on the banister, a blue one that was Jason’s, and a white one for her own seventh-grade graduation. Her gaze fell to a flowered suitcase on the ground. It was her suitcase—from back when she was Courtney.
She smelled freshly brewed coffee and baked cinnamon rolls, the thing her mom always made for her when she was little and needed cheering up. It was what she would make for her, not her sister. Her sister, in fact, used to complain that cinnamon rolls made her teeth hurt.
All at once, Ali knew what had happened. But this couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow. And then she thought about Mona and the others hanging out in the driveway, Emily lurking near the mailbox. When had she gotten here? Had anyone seen?
Her first instinct was to run up to her bedroom and never come out, but then her mother stuck her head around the corner and smiled. “Ali?” she said gently. “Your sister’s home.”
29
SHE’S BA-ACK
Mrs. DiLaurentis set a pan of zucchini lasagna on the table. “Careful, it’s hot,” she warned, and then proceeded to pour lemonade into everyone’s glasses. “It’s fresh-squeezed,” she crowed. “It tastes better that way, don’t you think?”
It was a few hours later, and the family was sitting in the dining room, which was usually used only for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each seat had a gold placemat, and they were drinking out of the good crystal goblets. Mrs. DiLaurentis had even lit candles, and the light made eerie shapes against their faces. And there they all sat: Mr. and Mrs. DiLaurentis at the heads of the table, then Jason, then Ali . . . and then the third daughter. The twin. “Courtney.”
“So dig in,” Mrs. DiLaurentis announced as she took the oven mitts off. “The lasagna’s nothing fancy, but the ingredients are all fresh.”
“It looks superb,” Mr. DiLaurentis said, reaching for his fork.
“Absolutely,” Jason agreed, taking a hearty sip of lemonade.
Ali shot him a look, but Jason didn’t glance her way. Jason had actually set the table today. And offered to get the bread out of the oven. And volunteered to bring her sister’s stuff upstairs, to which “Courtney” had smiled and said that would be great. All traces of Elliot Smith were gone.
Then Ali turned to Courtney. Her sister was politely waiting as their father spooned a rectangle of lasagna onto her plate. Her parents had picked her up while Ali and Jason were at school, saying today worked better for Mr. DiLaurentis’s work schedule. She’d arrived home just before the buses pulled out of the Rosewood Day parking lot, which meant it was fairly unlikely that anyone Ali’s age had seen her. Not that it made her feel much better.