❝ I genuinely thought the worst of this nightmare was over ❞
Halle Brewster told a lie, and the secrets kept growing. After slaying one stalker, another reared its nasty head, and Halle was starting to wonder if she'd ever be free from the friendshi...
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The mausoleum was still. It became brittle due to the cold night, coming in with the tense draft and from the reveal of the silver journal. Whereas the five friends entered the crypt remorseful and apologetic, they switched in an instance the second they made contact with Alison DiLaurentis' looped handwriting. Hanna acknowledged she made a mistake when she gave it them; she hadn't realised how big it was until Spencer speedily flipped through the pages, glowering down at it the whole time.
"I don't understand," Spencer said, perplexed. "I—I don't recognise any of these names."
Under intense scrutiny, Hanna sought to self-soothe by having her arms folded protectively across her chest. She combatted, "Because she changed them. She was changing stories, too," she said. "You just have to know the real stories in order to recognise the fakes ones."
"Sounds Like Ali," Emily dryly commented. "The truth bored her."
Halle muttered back, "You can say that again."
Still flipping through the pages, Spencer surmised, "So it's like creative nonfiction with pseudonyms?"
"I don't know what that means, but sure," Hanna replied, muddled amongst her guilt and confusion.
"Hanna," gawked Aria, "I can't believe that you held on to this since Ravenswood."
"Yeah, we knew that Ali had journals," Spencer stated. "What's so bad about this one?"
Torn up, Hanna's conflicted tongue was reluctant to wag. Eventually, through the struggled, she mustered a lame excuse, "Because the stories in there, they're... They're personal."
Questioning that, Halle said, "Personally how? Personal about Ali?"
"About Ali and us," disclosed Hanna, a sickly pinched look to her face. All the colour had gone, melted from her in shame, washing her out with her dried, now cracking mascara. "I mean, there are things in there that we may not know about each other, and things from the past that we want to forget."
Her words were chosen carefully. Hanna was hiding something. Lying because it meant protecting something in that journal of Alison's. Halle recognised it well and already damned whatever cursed those pages about her.
"So you thought you should get to read it and we don't?" Emily retorted at Hanna harshly. After being dragged around all day by the girl in question, forced into situations she'd avoid by choice, Emily had finally reached her end.
Hanna defended, "I just didn't see the point of bringing all that up again. We're supposed to be focused on finding Ali."
"We're a team, Han," Halle half-sympathised, only half-understanding, despite what a rocky stance that was to take. "You should've shown it us."
