Aria looked at the black girl hopefully. She looked sane. Head down, Aria grabbed a chair next to her and folded her hands in her lap, wondering what would come next.
Olive, aka Overbite Lady, shut the door, which only increased the stuffy feeling inside the room. She walked over to the corner and clicked on a small desk fan, but then angled it only in her direction. “Welcome to the Keystone State Correctional Facility,” she said in a bland voice. “I’m here to tell you everything you need to know, including rules, the schedule, your employment assignment, cafeteria hours, medical concerns, special privileges, and what to do if you start to feel suicidal.”
Aria pressed her hands over her eyes. She already felt suicidal.
Olive went on for a while about various prison protocols, transforming the tiniest civil rights—having a few moments to see family every Saturday morning, being allowed to purchase things like hairbrushes or flip-flops from the commissary if adequate funds were provided, a regular half hour each day of outside time in the prison yard—seem like luxuries. Aria wished she could ask Olive if there was a library, or if she’d be able to purchase materials to paint, or if there was a psychologist on staff who might be able to walk her through how, exactly, she was going to get through this without losing her mind. But she’d already accepted the fact that she’d probably get none of those things.
She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, a bead of sweat rolling slowly down her forehead. The black girl with the glasses shifted next to her, and as Aria turned, she caught her eye. Aria dared a shy smile. “Hey,” she whispered. “Is this your first day, too?”
The girl nodded and smiled back. Aria’s heart lifted—she seemed so normal. Maybe even a new friend. She’d need as many of them as she could get. Then the girl added, “But I’ve been here before, Aria.”
Aria blinked hard, feeling as though the positive image had suddenly turned to a photo negative. “H-how do you know my name?”
The girl edged closer to Aria until their bodies almost touched. “Because I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered. “You’re the girl who killed Alison DiLaurentis, right?”
Aria’s jaw hung open. It took too long for her to find the words to respond. “N-no,” she said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t kill her. The verdict was wrong.”
The girl faced forward again, her smile now knowing and bitter. “Yeah, you did. And we all know it. She’s a hero to some of us, you know. She’s what keeps us going.”
Every cell in Aria’s body started to quiver. She wanted to leap up and tear away from this girl, but she was almost too stricken to move. She’s what keeps us going. The girl’s chin was held high, her expression certain and righteous. She believed what she was saying about Ali—believed in Ali herself. And then, when Aria looked down, she noticed a scabby, black tattoo on the inside of the girl’s wrist. It was of a single letter: A.
Aria’s blood ran cold. She instinctively patted her pockets for her cell phone, but of course there was nothing there. But if she’d had her phone on her, she would have texted her friends immediately. SOS. There was an Ali Cat—in prison.
All at once, Aria revised her prognosis in here. It would be a miracle if she survived the next fifteen years. She might not even survive until tomorrow.
27
THE BIGGEST SURPRISE WITNESS OF ALL
Monday afternoon, Spencer hunched on her hands and knees on the floor of the women’s bathroom, a sponge surely teeming with toxic mold in her hands and a bucket of filthy, rancid-smelling water next to her. Trying not to breathe, she plunged the sponge into the water and then slopped it onto the floor, making slow, even circles. She even threw in a few intense, centering, yoga fire-breaths that had always helped her before. But after breath number three, she heard someone snickering above her and looked up.
A scrawny-looking girl with olive skin and an eye patch leaned on the sink, smiling at Spencer with crooked, rotted teeth. “Little rich bitch can’t handle bathroom duty, huh?”
“I’m fine,” Spencer answered. She winced, wishing she hadn’t said anything. She remembered from Angela’s book that the key was not to engage with the other prisoners—it was a sign of weakness. And this girl, whose name was Meyers-Lopez, had been following Spencer around all morning, trying to get a rise out of her.
Meyers-Lopez hiked herself up onto the sink. “I bet you never thought you’d come here,” she hissed. “I bet you thought you’d get away with it. She told me all about you, you know. She told me how much of a tight-ass you were. How much of a spoiled bitch.”
Spencer winced and made bigger circles with her sponge. Please let a guard walk in right now, please let a guard walk in right now, she willed. This was the most terrifying part about prison so far. Not the fact that women argued violently well into the night, as Spencer had experienced yesterday evening, logging a total of forty-five minutes of sleep. Not the fact that the food was the lowest-grade possible and infested with all sorts of bacteria—she’d been terrified to choke down a waffle this morning for fear she’d go into botulism-related convulsions immediately. Not that she hadn’t seen Aria or Hanna even once, or that she’d probably have to live the next thirty years sleeping next to someone whose nickname was Miss Vicious, as she had last night, the woman so haunted-looking that Spencer had been sure she’d wake this morning with bruises all over her body.
No. It was that several inmates had come up to Spencer in the past twenty-four hours and mentioned how they worshipped at the high church of Alison DiLaurentis. How they’d claimed she’d spoken to them, told them about Spencer and the others—and who knew? Maybe Ali had. Whatever the case, these women were most definitely Ali’s minions, and they’d threatened Spencer that soon, they would get their revenge.