Relief flooded Ali’s body. “Of course you can’t,” she said. “We’re sisters.”
Courtney glanced at her cagily. Once more, she peered at her hands. She shifted toward Ali, her eyes flashing again.
“M-maybe we can start over,” Ali bargained. If she kept talking, maybe she could keep her twin’s craziness at bay until someone came looking for them. “I can be me. You can be you. You can be Alison DiLaurentis again.”
Courtney blinked. “Just like that, you’ll switch back?”
Ali nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Just like that.” She reached out and touched her sister’s hand, a tender gesture she hadn’t made in years. “I just want a sister again,” she said softly. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Courtney’s head remained down for a few more beats. A strong scent of uprooted dirt swirled through the air, and for a moment, the crickets were silent. Then she breathed out a long, slow sigh. She covered Ali’s hand with her other one. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You can,” Ali urged. “Please.”
“I . . .” “Courtney” trailed off. Her eyes widened on something behind her. “You’re here,” she whispered.
Ali tried to turn around to see who’d come. A parent? Ian? One of her friends? But before she could, her sister’s gaze hardened once more, her resolve apparent. She lunged forward and shoved her hard.
Ali expected to hit grass immediately, but she felt nothing but air. She screamed out as the world turned upside down, and then her neck banged on something sharp and metallic. For a moment everything went black, then she heard a horrible clang in her ears. All the air seemed to leave her body as she hit the cold, flat, unforgiving earth. Something cracked close by. After a second, Ali realized it was a bone inside her body.
She was at the bottom of the hole.
She tried to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t open. Only a square of light peeked out far above her head. Stars twinkled in the distance. A sliver of moon peeked from behind a cloud.
“Help!” she cried, but it was only in her head. Her heart shuddered inside her chest like a seized engine. A strange, snapping sensation was taking place beneath her skin, nerves gone haywire. After a moment, she realized she wasn’t breathing—couldn’t breathe. She tried to claw, tried to fight, but it felt like every cell in her body was weighed down with sand. Then she realized what was going on. She was dying.
A figure appeared over the hole. Ali’s twin looked in, a strange mix of horror and relief on her face. She stared down at her hands again with that same where-did-these-come-from expression. Then she turned and looked at something just out of view.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
At first, Ali thought Courtney was talking to her, but then a voice answered. “Of course I made it. I’ll always come for you.”
Ali strained to listen. It was a voice she was sure she recognized, a voice she’d heard many times before. But her brain, with its dying cells and lack of oxygen, couldn’t quite put the pieces together. She tried to lift her head to get a glimpse of who it was, but her neck wouldn’t move.
“Are you happy?” the voice said.
Courtney’s jaw wobbled. “I don’t know,” she said, looking back down in the hole, a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just . . . did that.”
“But it was our plan all along.”
Suddenly, Ali realized whose voice it was. She tried to react, tried to scream, but she could feel herself slipping away inch by inch, first her feet, then her calves, then her knees. She struggled to stay present, but it was just too much of an effort. She stared at the top of the hole until her sister’s figure was nothing but a big blob of light and shadow. She thought of the second voice, that voice she knew. Only one question screamed over and over in her brain: Why?
But before she could answer, the dying feeling, like a candle fizzling out, had reached her neck. She inhaled the last breath she would ever take, and then shut her eyes. After a moment, amid the dirt and the rocks and the earthworms, she breathed out and finally let go.
34
MISSING: ALISON DILAURENTIS
The following morning, the real Alison DiLaurentis watched the sun come up through the maple blinds in her old bedroom. Bands of light illuminated the vanity she’d begged her mom to buy for her in fifth grade, the blue crystal knobs on her closet and bureau drawers, the faint patina of dust on the flat-screen monitor and TV. This room even smelled the same, like vanilla hand soap. It felt like home.
Finally.
The aroma of coffee brewing in the kitchen wafted into her nostrils. When she looked over the railing, her family was already awake. Mr. and Mrs. DiLaurentis sat at the kitchen table, staring blearily at each other. Jason paced the hall, looking worried.