“Courtney” smiled nastily, catching what she’d said, too. She reached down and grabbed Ali’s finger, touching the silver ring with the curly A in the center. “Your time is running out, Ali,” she sneered, dropping Ali’s finger once more and brushing past her toward the exit. “Say your good-byes.”
9
ALL FALL DOWN
“Looking good, Alison!” Mark Hadley, an eighth grader, called as Ali passed him on the track later that afternoon.
“Can I run with you?” Brian Diaz shouted next.
Ali shot a brilliant smile to them over her shoulder, but she didn’t stop. The red lines on the track blurred beneath her. She pumped her arms hard, cycled her legs, and whizzed past the bleachers, trying to clear her thoughts. This was her fifth lap, and she had decided to run as long as it took to get the memory of what had just happened at the hospital out of her mind. There was only one problem: The image of her sister’s sneering face was branded in her mind.
She’d considered telling her parents what her sister had said to her in the bathroom, but she’d decided against it. Mrs. DiLaurentis would ask the real Ali for the truth. Even though the real Ali had claimed I’m Alison, I’m Alison again and again, what if the Preserve kept surveillance tapes? Ali had blatantly said Please don’t lock me up again. Had she sealed her doom? And what if her sister was watching her when she got to go off campus? Did she really have a chaperone? How strict was the Preserve, anyway?
There had only been one other time she’d been alone with her sister since she’d become Ali. It had been early in sixth grade, not long after the switch happened—her sister had come home for a weekend. Apparently, the girl everyone thought was Courtney was having a hard time transitioning to the Preserve; the doctors thought some time away might do her some good.
Ali had stressed about the visit to no end. They’d all be prisoners in the house while her sister was home—her parents were still keeping things a secret—and she didn’t know how to explain to her friends why she was staying away from them all weekend. She couldn’t say they’d gone out of town—Spencer would see their car in the driveway and the lights snapping on and off inside the house. In the end, she said she was sick and really contagious.
But the stress didn’t end there. As soon as her sister entered the house, Ali watched her like a hawk. She’d even slept in the den to make sure her sister didn’t go out at night and locked her bedroom door to make sure her twin didn’t break in and look through her things. For the first day, the plan worked well enough: Ali managed to keep her sister inside and contained. But on the second day, when Ali had turned her back, her sister vanished. To her horror, she found her standing in the front yard. A second girl looked up at the sound of the slammed door, her eyes wide. It was Jenna Cavanaugh. And that was when Ali remembered: Jenna had met both twins years ago, during another visit home—they’d all played Barbies in the backyard one afternoon. She was the only girl in Rosewood who knew there were two of them.
A nasty smile had spread across her sister’s face. “I was just talking to Jenna, Courtney,” she said. “I was telling her all about who you really are.”
Jenna’s eyes had ticktocked from one twin to the other. Black spots had appeared before Ali’s eyes. She’d grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her back inside.
Their parents were in the kitchen. Ali told them that her sister was talking to the neighbors. “I was just telling them the truth,” “Courtney” screamed. “I told her that I was the real Alison and that I was being held prisoner!”
A vein had pulsated in Mrs. DiLaurentis’s temples, and she’d sent Courtney back to the Preserve early. It was obvious their parents didn’t believe her, but if they had proof—like Ali saying Please don’t lock me up again—their minds just might change. Ali couldn’t go back there—she just couldn’t. She tried to picture those cold, bare, antiseptic beds; that joyless common room; those nurses in their scrubs handing out pills. One year at the Radley, her family hadn’t visited for Christmas, taking a trip to Colorado instead. The hospital celebration had involved a pathetic plastic tree, carols no one sang along to on the out-of-tune piano, and turkey with gross, lumpy gravy. Ali was certain that every girl on the floor had gone to sleep crying in her pillow.
Now Ali ran past the back of the track, which bordered the soccer fields. In the narrow strip of grass that separated the two were small concrete blocks flush against the ground. Each one was labeled with a year and the words Time Capsule.
It was from the game Rosewood Day played every year. Ali thought of the Time Capsule piece she’d taken from her twin. After he discovered what she did, Jason had stormed away with the piece and never brought it back—Ali had no idea whatever happened to it. But that hardly mattered—she had used the missing piece to garner sympathy from her friends.
She wiped sweat from her forehead. If it hadn’t been for that piece of the flag, would I even be here right now? she wondered. Perhaps her fate was that coincidental, that precarious. Perhaps it could change on a dime once again.
Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes. It felt as if all the balls in the delicate juggling act she was performing had crashed to the ground. Not only with what had happened with her sister, but everything that was going on with her friends, too. Why were they keeping so many secrets from her? Didn’t they like her anymore? Didn’t they want to be part of her clique? Had they forgotten how much she’d done for them? And what did her sister mean by I know what you’ve been doing? What if she could see her friends defying her, see her screwing up so badly?