The flyer was pinned above the bike rack for everyone to see. Time Capsule Starts Tomorrow, it said in big black letters. Get ready!
The final bell of the day rang. Spencer noticed Aria sitting on the stone wall, scribbling. Hanna stood next to Scott Chin, her cheeks round and puffy. Emily was whispering to some other swimmers, Mona Vanderwaal was unlocking her scooter, and Toby Cavanaugh was crouched under a distant tree, shoving a stick into a small pile of dirt.
Ali pushed through the crowd and snatched down the flyer. "Jason's hiding one of the pieces. And he's going to tell me where it is."
Everyone cheered. Ali pranced through the throng of kids and gave Spencer a high five. Which was startling—Ali had never paid attention to Spencer before, even though they lived next to each other.
But today, it appeared they were friends. Ali bumped Spencer's hip. "Aren't you excited for me?"
"Uh, sure," Spencer stammered.
Ali narrowed her eyes. "You're not going to try and steal it, are you?"
Spencer shook her head. "No! Absolutely not!"
"Yeah, she is," said a voice behind them. A second, older Ali stood on the sidewalk. She was a little taller and her face was a little thinner. A blue string bracelet was tied around her wrist—the very bracelet Ali had made for them after The Jenna Thing—and she wore a pale blue American Apparel T-shirt and a rolled-up-at-the-waist hockey kilt. It was the same outfit Ali had worn to the end-of-seventh-grade sleepover in Spencer's barn.
"She's totally going to try and steal it from you," the second Ali confirmed, giving Younger Ali a sidelong glance. "But she doesn't. Someone else does."
Younger Ali narrowed her eyes. "Right. Someone's going to have to kill me to get my flag."
The crowd of Rosewood Day students parted, and Ian slipped through. he opened his mouth, an evil look on his face. If that's what it takes, he was about to tell Ali. But when he breathed in to speak, he made a fire engine sound instead, shrill and piercingly loud.
Both Alis covered their ears. Younger Ali took a step back.
Older Ali put her hands on her hips, kicking Younger Ali with the side of her foot. "What's wrong with you? Go flirt with him. He's gorgeous."
"No," Younger Ali said.
"Yes," Older Ali insisted. They were fighting as bitterly as Spencer and Melissa did.
Older Ali rolled her eyes and faced Spencer. "You shouldn't have thrown it away, Spencer. Everything you needed was there. All the answers."
"Thrown…what away?" Spencer asked, confused.
Younger Ali and Older Ali exchanged a glance. A frightened look washed over Younger Ali's face, like she suddenly understood what Older Ali was talking about. "It," Younger Ali said. "That was a huge mistake, Spencer. And it's almost too late."
"What do you mean?" Spencer cried. "What is it? And why am I almost too late?"
"You're going to have to fix this," Younger Ali and Older Ali said in unison, their voices identical now. They joined hands and fused back into one Ali. "It's up to you, Spencer. You shouldn't have thrown it away."
Ian's siren grew louder and louder. A gust of wind kicked up, blowing the Time Capsule flyer right out of Ali's hands. It hung in the air for a moment, then blew straight for Spencer, smacking her square in the face hard, feeling more like a rock than a piece of paper. Get ready! it said, right in front of Spencer's eyes.
Spencer shot up in bed, sweat drenching her beck. Ali's vanilla body cream tickled her nose, but she wasn't in the Rosewood Day commons anymore—she was in her spotless, silent bedroom. The sun streamed through the window. Her dogs were racing around the front yard, filthy from the dirty slush. It was Friday, the first day of Ian's trial.
"Spencer?" Melissa's face swarm into view. She hovered over Spencer's bed, her blunt-cut blond hair hanging down over her face, the strings of her blue-and-white striped hoodie almost grazing Spencer's nose. "Are you okay?"
Spencer shut her eyes and remembered last night. How Ian had materialized on the porch, smoking that cigarette, saying all those crazy, terrifying things. And then that note: If Poor Little Miss Perfect were to suddenly vanish, would anyone even care? As much as she wanted to, Spencer had been too afraid to tell anyone about it. Calling Wilden and telling him that Ian had broken his house arrest would probably have gotten him thrown back in jail, but Spencer was afraid that as soon as she told Wilden, something awful would happen to her—or to someone else. After what had happened to Mona, she couldn't bear to have any more blood on her hands.
Spencer swallowed hard, facing her sister. "I'm going to testify against Ian. I know you don't want him to go to prison, but I'm going to have to tell the truth on the witness stand about what I saw."
Melissa's face remained placid. Light bounced off her Asscher-cut diamond earrings. "I know," she said vaguely, like her mind was elsewhere. "I'm not asking you to lie."
With that, Melissa patted Spencer's shoulder and walked out of the room. Spencer stood up slowly, taking deep yoga fire breaths. Both Ali voices still bonged in her ears. She took one more careful look around her bedroom, half expecting one of them to be standing over her. But of course no one was there.
An hour later, Spencer pulled her Mercedes into a parking space at Rosewood Day and hurried to the elementary school. Most of the snow had melted, but there were still a couple of die-hard little kids outside, making pathetic little snow angels and playing Find the Yellow Snow. Her friends were waiting by the elementary school swings, their old secret meeting spot. Ian's trial was starting at 1 P.M., and they wanted to talk before it began.
Aria waved as Spencer jogged toward her friends, visibly shivering in her fur-lined hooded jacket. Hanna had purple circles under her eyes and was nervously tapping the pointy toe of her Jimmy Choo boot. Emily looked as if she was about to cry. Seeing them together in their old spot made something inside Spencer break. You should tell them what happened, she thought. It didn't feel right keeping Ian's visit a secret. But Ian's message was ever-present in her mind: If you tell anyone about me…
"So, are you ready?" Hanna asked, chewing nervously on her lips.
"I guess," Emily answered. "It's going to weird to…you know. See Ian."
"Seriously," Aria whispered.
"Uh-huh," Spencer stammered nervously, keeping her eyes glued on a zigzagging crack in the pavement.
The sun poked through a cloud, reflecting blindingly against the remaining snow. A shadow moved behind the jungle gym, but when Spencer turned, it was only a bird. She thought about the dream she'd had this morning. Younger Ali had seemed interested, but Older Ali had urged her to flirt with Ian—he was gorgeous. It was a lot like what Ian had said to Spencer yesterday. At first, Ali hadn't taken him very seriously. When she started liking him, it was instantaneous, like a light had switched on.
"Do you guys happen to remember Ali ever saying anything…negative…about Ian?" Spencer blurted out. "Like maybe that she thought he was too old or too skeevy?"
Aria blinked, looking confused. "No…"
Emily shook her head too, her blondish-red ponytail swishing from side to side. "Ali talked to me about Ian a couple times. She never said his name, only that he was older, and she was totally into him." She shuddered, staring down at the muddy ground.
"That's what I thought," Spencer said, satisfied.
Hanna ran her fingers over her scar. "Actually, I heard something weird on the news the other day. They were interviewing people at the train station about Ian's bail hearing. And this girl, Alexandra something, she said she was pretty sure Ali thought Ian was perverted."
Spencer stared at her. "Alexander Pratt?"
Hanna nodded, shrugging. "I think so. She's a lot older?"
Spencer let out a shaky breath. Alexandra Pratt had been a senior when Spencer and Ali were sixth-graders. As the captain of the varsity field hockey team, Alexandra had been the main student judge for JV tryouts, but only one would make the team any given year. Ali boasted she might have a leg up because she'd practiced with Alexandra and the other older players a couple of times in the fall, but Spencer had simply laughed it off—Ali wasn't nearly as good as she was.
For whatever reason, Alexandra didn't like Spencer. She was constantly critiquing Spencer's dribbling skills and telling her she held her hockey stick wrong—as if Spencer hadn't spent every single summer at field hockey camp, learning from the very best of the best. When the team was announced and Ali's name was on the list and Spencer's wasn't, Spencer stormed home in disbelief and rage, not bothering to wait for Ali to walk with her. "You can always try out next year," Ali simpered to Spencer on the phone later. "And c'mon, Spence. You can't be the best at everything."
And then she'd giggled gleefully. That very night, Ali had begun hanging her brand-new JV uniform in her bedroom window, knowing that Spencer would look out and see it.
It wasn't just field hockey. Everything between Spencer and Ali had been a competition. In seventh grade, they'd made a bet about who could hook up with the most older boys. Although neither of them would come out and say it, they both knew their number one target was Ian. Every time they were at Spencer's house and Melissa and Ian were there too, Ali made a point of walking by Ian, hiking up her field hockey shirt or standing up straighter to stick out her boobs.
She certainly hadn't acted like she thought Ian was perverted. Alexandra Pratt obviously had her facts wrong.
A bus roared into the drop-off lane, making Spencer jump. Aria was staring at her curiously. "Why are you asking that, anyway?"
Spencer swallowed hard. Tell them, she thought. But her mouth clamped close.
"Just curious," she finally answered. She sighed heavily. "I wish there was something we could find—something concrete that would put Ian away for good."
Hanna kicked at a hard clump of snow. "Yeah, but what?"
"This morning, Ali kept saying I was missing something," Spencer said thoughtfully. "Like a big piece of evidence."
"Ali?" Sunlight glinted sharply off Emily's small silver hoop earrings.
"I had a dream about her," Spencer explained, shoving her hands in her pockets. "Actually, there were two Alis in the dream. One Ali was in sixth grade, and one Ali was in seventh. They both were pissed at me, acting like there was something really obvious that I wasn't seeing. They said it was up to me…and that soon it would be too late." She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ease her pounding tension headache.
Aria chewed on her thumbnail. "I had a dream about Ali a couple of months ago that was a lot like that. It was right when we realized she'd been secretly dating Ian, and she kept saying, The truth is right in front of you, the truth is right in front of you."
"And I had that dream about Ali in the hospital," Hanna reminded them. "She was standing right over me. She kept telling me to stop worrying. That she was okay."
A cold shiver ran down Spencer's spine. She exchanged a glance with the others, trying to swallow the enormous lump in her throat.
More buses pulled up to the curb. Little kids skipped down the elementary sidewalks, their lunch boxes swinging, all of them talking at once. Spencer thought again of how Ian had smirked at her yesterday and then disappeared into the trees. It was almost like he thought this was all a game.
Just a few more hours, she reminded herself. The D.A. would get Ian to cave and admit he'd killed Ali after all. Maybe he'd even get Ian to confess to taunting Spencer and the others, pretending to be a new A. Ian had a lot of money—he could hire a whole team of A spies and direct the whole operation from house arrest. And it made sense why he was sending notes: He didn't want any of them to testify against him. He wanted to scare Spencer into recanting her statement, into saying she hadn't seen Ian with Ali that night she disappeared. That she had really made it all up.
"I'm glad Ian gets locked up again after today," Emily breathed out. "We can all relax at the benefit tomorrow."
"I'm not going to feel calm until he'd gone for good," Spencer answered, her throat thick with tears. Her voice carried up beyond the gnarled tree branches, high into the turquoise blue winter sky. She twisted a lock of hair around her finger until it almost snapped. Only a few more hours, she repeated. But those few hours suddenly seemed like an eternity.