“Who are you writing to?” Emily’s voice sounded eggshell-thin and small.
“Can’t tell. Sorry.” Ali didn’t look up.
“You can’t tell?” Spencer was irate. “What do you mean you can’t tell?”
Ali glanced up. “Sorry, princess. You don’t have to know everything.” Ali closed her phone and set it on the leather couch. “Don’t start filming yet, Aria. I have to pee.” She dashed out of Spencer’s family room toward the hall bathroom, plopping her Popsicle stick in the trash as she went.
Once they heard the bathroom door close, Spencer was the first to speak. “Don’t you just want to kill her sometimes?”
The others flinched. They never bad-mouthed Ali. It was as blasphemous as burning the Rosewood Day official flag on school property, or admitting that Johnny Depp really wasn’t that cute—that he was actually kind of old and creepy.
Of course, on the inside, they felt a little differently. This spring, Ali hadn’t been around as much. She’d gotten closer with the high school girls on her JV field hockey squad and never invited Aria, Emily, Spencer, or Hanna to join them at lunch or come with them to the King James Mall.
And Ali had begun to keep secrets. Secret texts, secret phone calls, secret giggles about things she wouldn’t tell them. Sometimes they’d see Ali’s screen name online, but when they tried to IM her, she wouldn’t respond. They’d bared their souls to Ali—telling her things they hadn’t told the others, things they didn’t want anyone to know—and they expected her to reciprocate. Hadn’t Ali made them all promise a year ago, after the horrible thing with Jenna happened, that they would tell one another everything, absolutely everything, until the end of time?
The girls hated to think of what eighth grade would be like if things kept going like this. But it didn’t mean they hated Ali.
Aria wound a piece of long, dark hair around her fingers and laughed nervously. “Kill her because she’s so cute, maybe.” She hit the camera’s power switch, turning it on.
“And because she wears a size zero,” Hanna added.
“That’s what I meant.” Spencer glanced at Ali’s phone, which was wedged between two couch cushions. “Want to read her texts?”
“I do,” Hanna whispered.
Emily stood up from her perch on the couch’s arm. “I don’t know….” She started inching away from Ali’s phone, as if just being close to it incriminated her.
Spencer scooped up Ali’s cell. She looked curiously at the blank screen. “C’mon. Don’t you want to know who texted her?”
“It was probably just Katy,” Emily whispered, referring to one of Ali’s hockey friends. “You should put it down, Spence.”
Aria took the camera off the tripod and walked toward Spencer. “Let’s do it.”
They gathered around. Spencer opened the phone and pushed a button. “It’s locked.”
“Do you know her password?” Aria asked, still filming.
“Try her birthday,” Hanna whispered. She took the phone from Spencer and punched in the digits. The screen didn’t change. “What do I do now?”
They heard Ali’s voice before they saw her. “What are you guys doing?”
Spencer dropped Ali’s phone back onto the couch. Hanna stepped back so abruptly, she banged her shin against the coffee table.
Ali stomped through the door to the family room, her eyebrows knitted together. “Were you looking at my phone?”
“Of course not!” Hanna cried.
“We were,” Emily admitted, sitting on the couch, then standing up again. Aria shot her a look and then hid behind the camera lens.
But Ali was no longer paying attention. Spencer’s older sister, Melissa, a senior in high school, burst into the Hastings’ kitchen from the garage. A takeout bag from Otto, a restaurant near the Hastings’ neighborhood, hung from her wrists. Her adorable boyfriend, Ian, was with her. Ali stood up straighter. Spencer smoothed her dirty-blond hair and straightened her tiara.
Ian stepped into the family room. “Hey, girls.”
“Hi,” Spencer said in a loud voice. “How are you, Ian?”
“I’m cool.” Ian smiled at Spencer. “Cute crown.”
“Thanks!” Spencer fluttered her coal-black eyelashes.
Ali rolled her eyes. “Be a little more obvious,” she singsonged under her breath.
But it was hard not to crush on Ian. He had curly blond hair, perfect white teeth, and stunning blue eyes, and none of them could forget the recent soccer game where he’d changed his shirt midquarter and, for five glorious seconds, they’d gotten a full-on view of his naked chest. It was almost universally believed that his gorgeousness was wasted on Melissa, who was totally prudish and acted way too much like Mrs. Hastings, Spencer’s mother.
Ian plopped down on the edge of the couch near Ali. “So, what are you girls doing?”
“Oh, not much,” Aria said, adjusting the camera’s focus. “Making a film.”
“A film?” Ian looked amused. “Can I be in it?”
“Of course,” Spencer said quickly. She plopped down on the other side of him.
Ian grinned into the camera. “So what are my lines?”
“It’s a talk show,” Spencer explained. She glanced at Ali, gauging her reaction, but Ali didn’t respond. “I’m the host. You and Ali are my guests. I’ll do you first.”
Ali let out a sarcastic snort and Spencer’s cheeks flamed as pink as her Ralph Lauren T-shirt. Ian let the reference pass by. “Okay. Interview away.”