𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐘||𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐆𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐘

𝟐. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫

THE GROUP OF GIRLS SAT BUNCHED around a table in the Apple Rose Grille. It was calm and the feeling of familiarity made Brooke feel slightly queasy. She hadn't even considered touching the basket of french fries in the centre of the table, tapping her fingers against the glass of coke in her hands and listening to the rattling of the ice against the rim to distract her from the impending sickness.

"Why was Jenna there?" Aria inquired, breaking the silence to discuss a topic which was upon all their minds beginning from the second the blind girl sauntered into the church. Even a year after the so-called Jenna Thing the spectacle of her and her blacked-out glasses still had the girls shaken.

"I guess she's back." Spencer huffed while she fidgetted with one of the napkins to steady her shaky hands.

Brooke could barely focus on the conversation, and she could barely take her eyes away from the empty space at the end of their old usual table at the Rosewood Grill. The space of air that was usually swirling around her blonde haired best friend—but now seemed to hold her ghost. Creating an eerie feeling around them. Like the girl was still there watching them—taunting them.

"Do you think we looked guilty?" Emily worried, her inflexion of voice making her troubled nerves all the more obvious as her fiddling with her beaded bracelet did. Although those beaded bracelets seemed to become relics that told another story about the life of Alison Dilaurentis now, they no longer felt like a gift, instead just a reminder that the blonde girl was dead.

"Why would we? We haven't done anything wrong." Aria contended and while that was true regarding  Alison's death, the girls had nonetheless perpetrated some extensively illegal things—any of which they could go down for if they police found out.

"Except lie about the Jenner thing," Hannah added and Brooke instantly looked away from her sweating glass of coke and to the girls who were all looking at the blonde the same way. Brooke loathed the way that the girl had phrased it. Because on the contrary to what Alison had claimed—the Jenna thing hadn't been perpetrated by them all. It was in fact yet another scheme that Alison had lured them into.

"Technically, we didn't lie. It was Ali's idea, it was Ali's lighter and it was Ali's 'stink bomb' and we all objected to it. It should be her secret not ours." Brooke disagreed, she might have been a bitch when she was friends with the blonde, she might have done some questionable things, but she was never as bad as the beauty queen herself.

"Besides, We promised that we'd never bring up the Jenna thing again, remember?" Spencer added, sending them all a pointed stare for talking so openly about the misdoing in such an open place.

Aria furrowed her brows and looked at Spencer incredulously. "Have you found a way to forget?" Aria urged. "I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night—" She said forcefully but her trembling voice revealed the fear behind it.

"Aria. It was an accident." Spencer whisper shouted—once again reminding herself that people were always watching and the A texts were proof of that. The mysterious sender knew all of their secrets. They needed to be as private as ever and keep a watchful eye for who might be looking. But Hannah didn't get the memo.

The blonde was nonchalantly pouring whatever was in her flask from the funeral, into the coke and ice she had ordered and it was earning her some frowns and scowls from the man sitting two tables over.