But instead, she’d found Iris and her parents sitting on the living room couch watching Jeopardy! and drinking tea. Somehow, that was even more terrifying. Iris was acting like she was just a member of the family. “I’m sure Iris is tired, Mom,” Emily had blurted out in horror. “She’s had a long day, and she probably wants to go to bed.”
“What are you talking about? I’m wide awake!” Iris had said eagerly, moving a little closer to Mrs. Fields on the couch. She had been eating, Emily had noticed, one of her mom’s Rice Krispies treats. No one ate those things—they always came out hard as rocks and way over-buttered. Mrs. Fields, of course, had looked thrilled.
Now, Emily poked Iris’s side. “Why did you invite my mom?” she murmured.
Iris shrugged innocently. “She’s cool.”
Yeah, right, Emily thought, waiting for Iris to roll her eyes and say something nasty. But she didn’t. Instead, Iris turned, checked to see that the perfume girl’s back was turned and Mrs. Fields’s attention was occupied by a free makeup sample offer, and scooped up a Flowerbomb perfume box from a display table and slid it up the sleeve of the baggy sweatshirt Emily had lent her. Emily reached forward to stop her, but Iris just gave her an I-know-what-I’m-doing look. This was the reason they were at the mall, after all. Steal lots of shit from Saks was number sixteen on her list of Things I Want to Do During My Time Off from The Preserve. Maybe there were bonus points for doing it in front of Emily’s mom.
She trailed after Iris down the sweet-smelling corridor toward the Contemporary section. As Emily passed the handbags, someone yanked her arm. Spencer was crouched behind a table full of Marc by Marc Jacobs satchels. “Psst,” she whispered.
Emily ducked down beside her. “What are you doing here?”
Spencer’s eyes darted back and forth. “I special-ordered shoes for prom at Saks.” She peered down the corridor at Iris, who was now posing in front of a three-way mirror. “Has she told you anything yet?”
“Not since you last asked,” Emily grumbled. “We’ve been too busy.”
“Doing what?”
Emily gazed at a perfume ad across the aisle. The girl in the picture looked a little like Jordan, which made her heart ache. “Well, after I signed her out of The Preserve and before I met you at the panic room, Iris made me go to the city so she could make out with a Ben Franklin impersonator. And then, this morning, I had to drive her to her old school. Iris wanted to climb a rope in the playground and ring a brass bell at the top.” She’d looked like a spider on that rope, all spindly arms and legs, the jeans Emily lent her held up by a child-sized belt.
“It turns out high school kids hide pot up that pole,” Emily went on. “Iris came down with a huge bag. So now I’ve got an escaped mental patient and pot at my house. My parents will freak if they find out.”
As soon as she said it, she realized how ridiculous it sounded. Her parents would freak even more if they found out Emily was keeping the secret that Aria had stolen a priceless painting. And helped shove a girl off a roof. And everything else.
Spencer shifted her weight. “So she’s told you nothing about Ali?”
Emily looked around for Iris, finally spotting her blond head by a rack of miniskirts. “I’m working on it.” She’d asked Iris for an Ali tidbit last night, but Iris had said that Emily hadn’t done anything to really deserve information yet—she would have to prove herself. When Emily asked Iris what, specifically, she had to do to receive a blessed piece of information, Iris had tossed her hair, shrugged, and said, “I’ll know it when I see it.”
“And A doesn’t know Iris is with you, right?” Spencer whispered.
Emily squeezed a Michael Kors clutch, angry all over again that Iris had changed the rules on her. The tissue paper inside crinkled. “No.”
“What should we do about that painting?”
The cloying mix of perfumes was giving Emily a headache. “I don’t know. What do you think we should do?”
Spencer slowly shook her head. “I don’t have a clue.”
Emily stared into Spencer’s clear blue eyes. She still couldn’t believe that Aria had kept her secret for so long, especially given that she knew about things Spencer, Emily, and Hanna had done over the summer. But now that she thought about it, there might have been one time around Christmas when Aria had tried: They were at Spencer’s annual party, and after a couple of drinks, Aria had pulled Emily aside. “I’ve done something awful,” she’d whispered into Emily’s ear. “I can’t live with myself.”
Emily had assumed she meant Tabitha. “Any of us would have done the same thing.”
Aria shook her head, her eyes glittering with tears. “You don’t understand. You just don’t understand. What I did will ruin everything, and—”
“There you are!” a voice said from behind them, and suddenly Noel clapped a hand on Aria’s shoulder. Aria’s features crumpled into something resembling a smile. “Hey, will you come meet my buddy from lacrosse camp? I haven’t seen him in ages!” Noel said.
“Sure!” Aria said brightly, her mouth still wobbling.