Pretty Little Liars: The Beginning {Episodes 1-10} (REVISED)

23. Spencer 🤓

Spencer sat with the other girls in the cafeteria, trays of food in front of each one of them, completely untouched. She didn't know about the rest of them, but she was still shaken up about that "routine" interview with Wilden. The way he was talking to them, it almost felt like he thought they were guilty of killing Alison. The fact that he even thought that was absurd.

Alison was a lot of things. Everyone knew that if she wanted you to be cool, you would be, and if she wanted to make a fool of you, she absolutely could and would. Even her best friends became the butt of her jokes quite often. But that doesn't mean that they wanted to hurt her.

"He knows we're lying," Aria said in a hushed voice.

Hanna rolled her eyes and looked up from examining her cuticles. "Lying is not a crime," she said.

"It is when you're giving false statements to the police," Spencer hissed at her. "It's called obstruction of justice."

Hanna laughed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. We lied about drinking. The truth that matters is that we don't know anything about what happened to Ali that night," she said.

"We also know about somebody who might've wanted to hurt her," Spencer said.

"We should've told the police the truth about Jenna's accident the night it happened," Emily blurted out.

"I wanted to, remember?" Hanna said.

Aria sighed and stared glumly down at her food. "We had a chance to do more than just tell the truth. We had a chance to stop Ali," she said.

"But we didn't," Spencer interjected. "And telling the police now about what happened to Jenna won't make her see again. It'll just ruin our lives."

As if on cue, a sharp tapping sound echoed through the crowded cafeteria. It was the same sound that had haunted Spencer since the night of the funeral. She had never seen the table fall quiet as quickly as she did in that moment. Hanna looked over her shoulder. "Oh my God, she's back in school too?" she whispered.

Spencer, Aria, and Emily turned their heads to see Jenna Marshall making her way through the onslaught of rambunctious teenagers that filled the cafeteria. She was balancing a tray of food in one hand, her cane leading the way to an empty chair at the other. A couple of boys bumped into her, and she almost dropped the tray on the heads of a group of kids at another table.

Aria stood and made her way toward Jenna. Spencer's heart stopped for a moment, wondering what exactly she was about to do. "Jenna?" she asked. "Hey, it's Aria. Do you want to come sit with us?"

This was the exact opposite of anything Spencer wanted to happen. She didn't know if she could handle the worst mistake she ever made coming to eat a sandwich in front of her. Aria shrugged apologetically as Jenna nodded. "Sure. Thank you" Jenna said shortly as Aria took her tray and led the way to the table.

"So you're gonna be between Hanna and Emily, and Spencer's right across from you," Aria said, guiding her toward the open space at the table.

Spencer's eyes were wide as Jenna stood before her. What was she thinking right now? These are the girls that ruined her life. These are the girls who tormented her for years. What could she possibly be thinking right now? "Thank you," Jenna said again.

"Yeah," Aria said, "and here's a chair." She grabbed a plastic chair from the neighbouring table and left it in the space between Hanna and Emily.

Jenna sat down slowly, feeling her way down. "So, this would be Alison's chair, right?" she asked.

"No," Emily said shortly, a slightly forced smile on her lips. "We're not even sitting at that table."

When Alison was still alive, their table used to be the loudest table, the centre of attention even during something as mundane as eating lunch. They would spend their time at lunch gossiping away about boys they liked and girls they didn't, making jokes, and even planning sleepovers. It was normal for people that weren't in Alison's group to try and infiltrate, but Ali would always shut that down. It was the VIP table, no plus-ones. Not even their boyfriends.