❝ 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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They were walking into school — the three of them who were present in Rosewood at that time. The group wasn't just incomplete; it was unbalanced. Halle couldn't comprehend how, once, she had gone a whole year almost, months upon months, drifting away from her friends — the only friends she had ever really know outside of Alison DiLaurentis — until they were practically strangers. Now, three whole days without all of them together felt like agony. It was wrong. Halle's natural state formed when she was with them. She only ever felt she was properly existing around them. Everything else was just passing by.
As they rounded a corner of one hallway, Emily revealed to Halle and Hanna, "Aria finally called me this morning."
Wincing, Hanna asked, "Is she still mad at me?"
"She's not mad, she's..." Emily angled her head to the side and supposed, "hurting."
"But she's good?" Halle checked in.
"She sounded okay," Emily had gathered from the call. "Distant," she added. Emily looked to her friends and wondered, "Are we still going to Spencer's later?"
"Should be," Halle replied.
Yet Hanna gave a unconvincing hum as they reached her locker. "No, it's so weird," she said, opening it up. "I called her cell and her mom answered." She shot the two beside her a glance, Halle slumped against the locker next to hers, and stated, "There's no visitors and she's not gonna be in school for a while."
"With Spencer's mom, we probably won't be seeing her until after Christmas break," remarked Hanna.
"Hey—" Emily reached out a tender hand to tuck Halle's hair from her face and said, "You're not still blaming yourself for it, are you?"
"Shouldn't I?" Halle posed to them, with her eyes firmly set on Emily. "I told Spencer I'd help her, that I'd be twenty minutes, and I never showed up."
"Yeah, because you were driving around trying to find Aria," Emily reminded. "You couldn't be in two places at once."
"And you seriously thought Aria was gonna hurt herself or Fitz," Hanna said comfortingly.
"And now one friend's in Syracuse and the other just got back from three days at a rehab facility," countered Halle, tortured by both. "If I had just trusted Hanna to find Aria, then maybe I could've gotten Spencer and stopped her from—"
"From what?" Hanna butted in. "From man-handling Mrs DiLaurentis? From taking those pills that A gave her? It's not your fault, Halle," she vowed. "None of it is. Spencer needed to go away and get proper help, just like before with Radley." She huffed, "We're seniors in high school, we're supposed to be worried about the SCT, not rehabs and groomers."
