Aria Montgomery and her boyfriend, Noel Kahn, huddled close as they walked from Rosewood Day student parking lot to the lobby entrance. A rush of warm air gritted them as they swept inside the school, but when Aria noticed the display near the auditorium, her blood froze. On a long table across the room was a large photo of Jenna Cavanaugh.
Jenna's porcelain skin shone. Her naturally red lips revealed a hint of a smile. She wore a big wraparound Gucci sunglasses that concealed her damaged eyes. We'll miss you, Jenna, said gold foil letters above the image. Next to it were smaller pictures, flowers, and other memorabilia and gifts. Someone had added a package of Marlboro Ultra Light cigarettes to the memorial, even though Jenna wasn't the kind of girl who would smoke.
Aria let out a small groan. She'd heard that the school might erect a shrine in Jenna's honor, but something about it seemed so…tacky.
"Shit," Noel whispered. "We shouldn't have come in this door."
Aria's eyes filled with tears. One minute, Jenna was alive—Aria had seen her at a party at Noel's house, laughing with Maya St. Germain. Then, practically the next minute…well, what happened next was too horrible to think about. Aria knew she should be relieved that at least Jenna's killer had been caught, Ali's murder had been solved, and the threatening notes from A had stopped, but what had happened couldn't be undone—an innocent girl was still dead.
Aria couldn't help but wonder if she and her friends could have done more to prevent Jenna's death. When Billy-as-A had been communicating with them, he'd sent Emily a photo of Jenna and Ali when they were younger. He'd then directed Emily to Jenna's house when Jenna and Jason DiLaurentis were fighting. He was obviously giving them a hint about his next victim. Jenna had also recently lingered on Aria's front lawn, looking as though she needed to tell Aria something. When Aria called out to her, Jenna had paled and quickly walked away. Did she sense Billy was going to hurt her? Should Aria have known something was wrong?
A sophomore girl placed a single red rose on the memorial. Aria closed her eyes. She didn't need any more reminders of all that Billy had done. Just that morning she'd seen a report about a set of Polaroids he'd taken of their end-of-seventh-grade sleepover. It was hard to believe Billy had been so close. As she'd chewed on her quinoa breakfast flakes, she'd parsed her memory of that night over and over, trying to recall anything more. Had she heard any strange noises on the porch or suspicious breathing at the window? Had she felt angry eyes glaring at her through the glass? But she couldn't remember a thing.
Aria leaned against the wall at the far end of the lobby. A bunch of boys on the crew team were crowded around an iPhone, laughing about an app that made a toilet-flushing noise. Sean Ackard and Kirsten Cullen were comparing answers to that day's trig assignment. Jennifer Thatcher and Jennings Silver were making out near the Jenna shrine. Jennifer's hip bumped against the table, knocking over a small photo of Jenna in a shiny gold frame.
A knot tightened in Aria's chest. She marched across the room and straightened the picture. Jennifer and Jennings broke apart, looking guilty.
"Have some respect," Aria snapped at them anyway.
Noel touched Aria's arm. "Come on," he said gently. "Let's get out of here."
He pulled her out of the lobby and around the corner. Kids were at their lockers, hanging up their coats and pulling out books. In a far corner, Shark Tones, Rosewood Day's a cappella group, was rehearsing a version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" for an upcoming concert. Aria's brother, Mike, and Mason Byers were in a shoving match near the water fountains.
Aria approached her locker and spun the dial. "It's like no one even remembers what happened," she murmured.
"Maybe it's their way of dealing," Noel suggested. He rested his arm on Aria's. "Let's do something to get your mind off this."
Aria wriggled out of the houndstooth coat that she'd brought at a thrift store in Philly and hung it on a hook in her locker. "What do you have in mind?"
"Anything you want."
Aria gave him a grateful hug. Noel smelled like spearmint gum and the licorice-scented tree that hung from the rearview mirror of his Cadillac Escalade.
"I wouldn't mind going to Clio tonight," Aria suggested. Clio was a new, quaint cafe that had opened in downtown Rosewood. The hot chocolates were served in mugs the size of a baseball hat.
"Done," Noel answered. But then he winced and squeezed his eyes shut. "Wait. I can't tonight. I have my support group."
Aria nodded. Noel had lost an older brother to suicide and now attended grief support meetings. After Aria and her old friends had seen Ali's spirit the night Spencer's woods burned down, Aria contacted a medium who told her that Ali killed Ali, leading Aria to briefly wonder if Ali had committed suicide, too. "Is it helping?" she asked.
"I think so. Wait—" Noel snapped his fingers at something across the hall. "Why don't we go to that?"
He was pointing to a hot-pink poster. It had black silhouettes of dancing kids all over it, like the once-ubiquitous iPod ads. But instead of holding Nanos and Touches, they were holding small white hearts, Find Love At The Valentine's Day Dance This Saturday, the poster proclaimed in sparkly red letters.
"What do you say?" There was a sweetly vulnerable look on Noel's face. "Want to go with me?"
"Oh!" Aria blurted. Truthfully, she'd wanted to go to the Valentine's Day dance ever since Teagan Scott, a cute freshman, asked Ali in seventh grade. Aria and the others had helped Ali get ready like she was Cinderella going off to the ball. Hanna was in charge of curling Ali's hair, Emily helped Ali into her ballerina-skirt, and Aria had the honor of clipping the diamond pendant Mrs. DiLaurentis had let Ali borrow for the night around her neck. Afterward, Ali bragged about her beautiful wrist corsage, the awesome music the DJ played, and how the dance photographers followed her around the entire time, telling her she was the most beautiful girl in the room. As usual.
Aria gazed bashfully at Noel. "Maybe that would be fun."
"It'll definitely be fun," Noel corrected her. "I promise." His piercing blue eyes softened. "And you know, the people at the Y are starting another group for general grief. Maybe you should go."
"Oh, I don't know," Aria said noncommittally, moving out of the way as Gemma Curran tried to shove her violin case into the adjacent locker. "I'm not really into the group therapy thing."
"Just think about it," Noel advised.
Then he leaned over, pecked Aria on the cheek, and left. Aria watched him disappear into the stairwell. Grief counseling wasn't the answer—she and her old friends had met with a grief counselor named Marion in January in an attempt to put Ali behind them, but it had only made them more obsessed.
The truth was, some niggling inconsistencies and unanswered questions about the case remained, things Aria still couldn't help thinking about. Like exactly how Billy knew so much about her and her friends—down to Spencer's family's dark secrets. Or what Jason DiLaurentis had said to Aria in the cemetery, after she accused him of being a psychiatric patient: You've got it all wrong. Only, what did Aria have wrong? Jason had obviously been an outpatient at the Radley, a mental hospital now turned classy hotel. Emily had seen his name all through the hospital's logbooks.
Aria slammed her locker shut. As she started down the hall, she heard a far-off giggle—just like the one she'd been hearing ever since she started receiving notes from A. She looked around, her heart slamming against her rib cage. The halls were thinning out, everyone scuttling off to homeroom. No one was paying any attention to her.
With trembling hands, Aria reached into her yak-fur bag and pulled out her cell phone. She clicked on the envelope icon, but there were no new text messages. No new clues from A.
She sighed. Of course there wasn't a new note from A—Billy had been arrested. And all of A's clues had been misleads. The case was solved. The pieces that didn't make sense weren't worth thinking about anymore. Aria dropped her phone back into her bag and wiped the sweat from her palms on her blazer. A is gone, she told herself. Maybe if she repeated it enough, she'd actually begin to believe it.