Ruthless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel
Sara Shepard
YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE
Have you ever gotten away with something really, really bad? Like when you hooked up with that cute guy you work with at the bagel shop . . . and never told your boyfriend. Or when you stole that patterned scarf from your favorite boutique . . . and the security alarms didn’t go off. Or when you created an anonymous Twitter profile and posted a vicious rumor about your BFF . . . and said nothing when she blamed it on the bitchy girl who sat in front of her in Algebra III.
At first, not getting caught might have felt amazing. But as time went by, maybe you felt a slow, sick roll in the pit of your stomach. Had you really done that? What if anyone ever found out? Sometimes the anticipation is worse than the punishment itself, and the guilt can eat you alive.
You’ve probably heard the phrase She got away with murder a thousand times and thought nothing of it, but four pretty girls in Rosewood actually did get away with murder. And that’s not even all they’ve done. Their dangerous secrets are slowly eating them from the inside out. And now, someone knows everything.
Karma’s a bitch. Especially in Rosewood, where secrets never stay buried for long.
Even though it was almost 10:30 P.M. on July 31 in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, a wealthy, bucolic suburb twenty miles outside Philadelphia, the air was still muggy, oppressively hot, and full of mosquitoes. The flawlessly manicured lawns had turned a dry, dull brown, the flowers in the beds had withered, and many of the leaves on the trees had shriveled up and fallen to the ground. Residents swam languidly in their lime-rocked pools, gobbled up homemade peach ice cream from the open-till-midnight local organic farmstand, or retreated indoors to lie in front of their air conditioners and pretend it was February. It was one of the few times all year the town didn’t look like a picture-perfect postcard.
Aria Montgomery sat on her back porch, slowly dragging an ice cube across the back of her neck and contemplating going to bed. Her mother, Ella, was next to her, balancing a glass of white wine between her knees. “Aren’t you thrilled about going back to Iceland in a few days?” Ella asked.
Aria tried to muster up enthusiasm, but deep down, she felt a niggling sense of unrest. She adored Iceland—she’d lived there from eighth to eleventh grade—but she was returning with her boyfriend, Noel Kahn, her brother, Mike, and her old friend Hanna Marin. The last time Aria had traveled with all of them—and her two close friends Spencer Hastings and Emily Fields—was when they’d gone to Jamaica on spring break. Something awful had happened there. Something Aria would never be able to forget.
At the very same time, Hanna Marin was in her bedroom packing for the trip to Iceland. Was a country full of weird, pale Vikings who were all related to one another worthy of her Elizabeth and James high-heeled booties? She threw in a pair of Toms slip-ons instead; as they landed in the bottom of the suitcase, a sharp scent of coconut sunscreen wafted out from the lining, conjuring up images of a sun-drenched beach, rocky cliffs, and a cerulean Jamaican sea. Just like Aria, Hanna was also transported back to the fateful spring break trip she’d taken with her old best friends. Don’t think about it, a voice inside her urged. Don’t ever think about it again.
The heat in Center City Philadelphia was no less punishing. The dormitories on the Temple University campus were shoddily air-conditioned, and summer students propped up box fans in their dorm windows and submerged themselves in the fountain in the middle of the quad, even though there was a rumor that drunken junior and senior boys peed in it regularly.