❝ 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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Aria Montgomery folded up in to herself, impassive and stewing in immense melancholy. Her forlorn expression was cut up with streams of tears. It wasn't sadness that consumed and writhed in her stiffened, numb body; it was anguish.
Betrayal.
Utmost and brutal humiliation.
She didn't know how she managed to push it out. How she put her pain into actual words and told them what heinous thing Ezra had done to her — across her. He had lied to her. He had not once told her the truth. Even the start was a lie. Yet, Aria did tell them. Through the crying breaks and she screams of anger that tore at her soul, Aria told her four closest friends what horror he had done and let she let bewilderment and hurt fill the living room at the back of her house.
On the other side of the couch to a stuffy Aria was Spencer. Her stomach had been gnawed at by the guilt of telling Aria that her on-and-off boyfriend -- and their collective teacher — was A. That he was the one bullying them, torturing them, making their lives a living hell meanwhile he pretended to be their supporter. Still, Spencer found the ability to ask, "Did you actually read any of this book?"
"A few pages," said Aria, ever so quietly. The four had to strain to hear her because she was so quiet. "Bits and pieces."
"You don't have to tell us what you read," Halle offered, although she craved to know desperately.
Aria knew this, too. She said, "Ezra knew who I was before we met." Water welled in her eyes, building and building, but never broke. She had already done that on the ski lift, staring directly down at Ambrose Pavilion. She grew angry at that flooding memory. "He knew who all of us were." Shamed, Aria dropped that grit and rage as another wave of sadness crashed upon her. "And he knew Alison too."
"So, he—" Emily was shaky as she spoke, "admitted to being in a relationship with her?"
"Yeah, a brief one," Aria said, not wanting to cry anymore.
"Then he must be Board Shorts," Hanna pressed.
"Well, Ezra didn't try to kill Alison," Aria defended. She stammered, "His—H—It—His— his whole book is trying to piece together who did it."
"How is he gonna do that when the police can't even figure it out?" countered Spencer, baffled.
"I don't know," answered Aria. "He had a theory though."
"And?" Emily leaned closer, more eager. "What is it?"
Aria's glassy eyes looked towards Halle, knowing exactly what power her next words held. She disclosed, "He thinks that one of us did it."
While everyone else scoffed in disbelief, Halle fell to silence. Her stare remained fixed to a weepy Aria, who did the same just more helplessly. The crunch came back to Halle. She felt this was clarification — the truth finally coming to light. This was what she needed for months, nearing on a year now.
