The nurse patted Aria’s arm. “I’ll be waiting by the door.” The nurse spun around and strode to the entrance.
Aria faced her friends. “What should I do?”
“Talk to him!” Hanna urged.
“Ali couldn’t have done it alone,” Spencer said eagerly. “Helper A must have been there, too. See if Noel remembers anything.”
Aria tried to take a breath, but her lungs felt cinched tight with string. Noel could explain everything. But after all she’d learned about him, and all they’d been through, she felt raw and unsteady.
Spencer touched her hand. “If things get too weird, just leave. We get it.”
Aria nodded and stood. They were right: She had to do this.
She took deep breaths as she followed the nurse down the shiny, just-Cloroxed hallway and through a set of electronic double doors that led to the intensive-care unit. Just as she was about to pass through, a woman in jeans and a black sweater coat strode toward her. “Miss Montgomery? It’s Alyssa Gaden from the Philadelphia Sentinel.”
Aria stiffened. Last night, the waiting room had been crawling with reporters asking questions about Noel, but the hospital staff had kicked all of them out. Almost all of them. “Um, no comment,” Aria said. Mercifully, the doors to the ward locked behind her.
Halfway down the hall, the nurse turned into a small, bright, private room. Aria peered inside and gasped. Noel’s face was covered in bruises. Stitches crossed from his jawline to his ear. There were IVs in both of his hands, and his skin was chalky white. His feet jutted straight out under the covers. He looked smaller and weaker than she’d ever seen him.
“Noel,” was all Aria could manage.
“Aria.” Noel’s voice was gravelly, not his own.
The nurse checked Noel’s IVs, then left. Aria sat down in a chair by his bed, staring at the checkerboard pattern on the floor. A machine measured Noel’s pulse. By the number of beeps, it seemed like Noel’s heart was beating very fast.
“Thanks for seeing me,” he finally said in a small voice.
Aria’s chin twitched. She almost said you’re welcome, but then she remembered. Noel had lied to her. He’d loved a girl who’d tried to kill her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. “Everything you know about Ali could get you in major trouble.”
“I know.” Noel blinked at her. “But right now, you’re the only one who knows what I know. So if someone is going to turn me in, it would be you.” He cleared his throat. “You can, though. I get it.”
Aria thought of Noel in a prison uniform. Sharing a room with a possibly violent stranger. Checking out books from the prison library. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it, or if it was the worst possible outcome in the world.
“What happened to you in the cemetery?” she blurted.
“Someone came up behind me,” Noel said slowly. “Whoever it was hit me over the head. At first, I thought it was Spencer, but it wasn’t.”
Aria nodded.
He stared down at his bony knees under the sheets. “I heard a deep voice, but I didn’t see his face.”
A deep voice. Helper A. “And then?”
“I was thrown into a trunk. Then someone dragged me through wet grass. I heard a latch open, then two people whispering.”
Two people. “Was one of them . . . her?”
Noel’s face fell. It was clear he knew exactly who Aria was talking about—in the cemetery during prom, Aria had explained, briefly, hysterically, that Ali was after them. “I don’t think so.”
Aria bristled. “Why? Because you love her so much and can’t see how evil she is?”
Noel recoiled. “I don’t love her, Aria.”
Aria stared at him, waiting. He’d said he did.
“Look, I loved someone who didn’t exist,” Noel protested. “I stopped loving her when I fell in love with you.” He choked back a sob. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t excuse anything. I know we can’t be together. But I want you to know that I’ll always regret what I’ve done.”
His voice was so small and scared that it made Aria’s heart quake. “I want you to tell me everything,” she said in the toughest voice she could muster. “How often you saw Ali at The Preserve. Who else you saw there. What she said to you. If she told you . . .” Aria took a breath, trying not to burst into tears. “If she told you what she was going to do to us.”
“I had no idea what she was going to do to you, I promise,” Noel said fiercely.
“Fine. Then tell me at least why you started seeing her.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I felt sorry for her.”