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.
And just like that, he was steering her away from Emily. In retrospect, perhaps a bit territorially. Like Aria was his possession.
But the next time Emily had caught up with her, she’d been buoyant and lively. What if Aria had been trying to tell her about hooking up with Olaf? Stealing the painting?
“Ooh! These are pretty!”
Emily snapped out of her reverie in time to see Iris showing Mrs. Fields a pair of teal-blue jeans. They were a size 00—and Emily guessed they would still be too big on Iris.
She was about to stand up to go join them, but Spencer grabbed her arm. “Do you really think Noel was on a ski trip the weekend Olaf was killed?”
There was a determined look in Spencer’s eye, the same sort of face she got when she, Ali, Emily, and the others used to put together puzzles on the floor of Ali’s Poconos living room. Sometimes, they made solving the puzzles a race, and Spencer, desperate to beat Ali, shoved pieces together even when they didn’t fit.
“I don’t think we should go on a witch hunt quite yet,” Emily said slowly.
“But Noel makes so much sense, don’t you think?” Spencer whispered.
Emily shut her eyes. She didn’t want Noel to make sense. It would kill Aria. “I don’t know,” she said wearily.
“Emily!” Iris crowed. When Emily looked up, Iris was coming straight for them.
Emily shoved Spencer out of the way and stood. “Hey!” she called, trying to smile.
“What were you doing on the floor?” Iris stared suspiciously at the spot where Emily had just been sitting. Blessedly, Spencer had scampered out of sight. Then Iris pressed an armful of silk blouses at Emily’s chest. “Stuff these in your bag. I already pulled the electronic tags off.”
She glared at Iris. “My mom’s right over there!” Mrs. Fields was holding up a leopard-patterned jacket to her torso and twisting this way and that in the mirror.
Iris scoffed. “So? She won’t see.” She inched closer. “I’ll give you a really good Ali tidbit if you do.”
“Fine,” Emily growled, yanking the shirts out of Iris’s arms. Glancing back and forth, she took a deep breath and shoved the shirts deep into her swim bag that sometimes doubled as a purse. She marched over to her mom and grabbed her elbow. “We’re going now.”
“So soon?” Mrs. Fields looked disappointed. “We just got here! And isn’t this cute?” She showed Emily the leopard jacket. “I wanted to get you something special.”
“That’s sweet, but, um, Iris has an interview at four thirty,” Emily said, steering them toward the exit. “It’s a really big deal—they’re thinking of offering her a scholarship.”
“Really?” Mrs. Fields smiled at Iris. “Where?”
“Villanova,” Emily said quickly before Iris could spout out a made-up college name—or ask what the hell Emily was talking about. “I have to drive her there, in fact. So we’d better get a move on.”
Her heart thudded as she walked past the displays by the doors. As her fingers curled on the handle, she braced herself for the alarms—and her mom’s wrath.
But no sirens sounded as Emily pushed through the second door fast and spilled onto the sidewalk. Her whole body was sweating. Her head throbbed. She couldn’t believe Jordan used to do this on a regular basis—except with boats and cars.
“Okay, see ya, Mom,” Emily said, yanking Iris toward the station wagon.
“This was lovely, girls!” Mrs. Fields looked so pleased Emily almost felt sorry for her. She waved as she headed toward the family minivan. “Let’s do it again!”
Emily’s swim bag felt like a lead weight in her hand. She was certain that any minute someone was going to pounce on her and make her return everything. Only once they were in the car and moving did she breathe out.
Iris kicked her legs. “Whoa, what a rush!”
Emily squeezed her hands on the wheel. “I can’t believe you made me do that in front of my mom.”
Iris rolled her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic.”
“I’ve definitely done my part,” Emily insisted. “Now tell me something about Ali.”
Iris rubbed her palms together. “What do you want to know?”
Emily’s mind scattered in a thousand different directions. She hadn’t been prepared to get to choose her question. “Did Ali have a boyfriend?”
Iris ran her fingers across one of her newly stolen shirts. “Everyone adored Ali. Guys and girls. Everyone wanted a piece of her.”
“Was there someone special? Someone who would do anything for her?”
A knowing smile spread across Iris’s face. “You were the one who was in love with her, weren’t you?”
Emily flinched. “Who told you that?”
Iris’s eyes locked on Emily’s. “Ali talked about you all the time when she was at The Preserve. She was like, My sister has this one friend named Emily who’s got it bad for her. That’s how I’m going to win her over. She’ll be a piece of cake.”
Emily focused on the lines on the highway until they blurred. That was exactly how Ali had won Emily over; she’d kissed Emily as passionately as Emily had kissed Their Ali in the tree house at the end of seventh grade. And then Ali had said how much she’d always loved Emily, even when she was trapped in The Preserve. Of course Emily had bought it. It had been what she’d always wanted to hear.
“Aw, did I hit a nerve?” Iris asked, stroking Emily’s forearm.
Emily ripped her arm away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you still love her?”
“I’m not talking about this with you,” Emily snapped. “But no, I don’t love her anymore.” Again, Jordan’s face flashed in her mind. She felt a pang of sadness.
“But you did after the fire in the Poconos, didn’t you? Someone snuck an iPad into The Preserve around the time all that Ali stuff went down, and I remember watching a lot of the footage. I saw your face on the news. You looked crushed that she might be dead. Your true love . . . gone. That had to hurt.”
Emily turned her head so sharply toward Iris that Iris cowered. “What do you know about true love?” Emily snarled.
Iris’s bottom lip trembled. “I was in love once, too.”
The moment suddenly defused. There were tears in Iris’s eyes. She pressed her lips together so tightly they were translucent. Emily did the same thing when she was trying to hold it together.
Emily faced front again, feeling bad for lashing out. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I thought you were teasing me. Do you want to talk about it?”
Iris sniffed. “I’m not talking about this with you,” she said in the exact same tone Emily had used.
“Touché,” Emily said softly.
They passed a Wawa and a flower shop, and then the road that led to Aria’s house. Emily tried to imagine the person Iris had been in love with, but when she tried to picture a face, she only came up with a question mark.
“Okay, fine.” Iris broke the silence. “Ali did have someone special. A guy.”
Emily’s heart started beating faster. “Okay . . .”
“She talked about him all the time. They were really tight.”
Emily was so excited that she pulled over onto the shoulder. Cars whipped past. She shifted the car into park and stared at Iris. “Was he a patient at the hospital? Or just a visitor? Do you know his name?”
