“Wait, whose room is this?”
Spencer curled her toes. She was hoping Hanna wouldn’t ask that. “It’s . . . Kelsey’s,” she admitted. “Please don’t judge me right now, Hanna. I don’t think I can take it. She’s going to ruin me, okay? I need you to put those pills in Kelsey’s room and then call the cops and say that she’s a known dealer at Penn. You also need to say she has a sketchy past—she’s trouble. That will make the cops search her room.”
“Is Kelsey really a dealer?” Hanna asked.
“Well, no. I don’t think so.”
“So basically you’re asking me to frame Kelsey for something you both did?”
Spencer shut her eyes. “I guarantee you Kelsey’s in the interrogation room right now, blaming me. I have to try to save myself.”
“But I’m going to Iceland in two days!” Hanna protested. “I’d rather not go through customs with a warrant out for my arrest.”
“You won’t get caught,” Spencer reassured her. “I promise. And . . . think about Jamaica. Think about how we all would have been screwed if we hadn’t stuck together.”
Hanna’s stomach swirled. She’d tried her hardest to erase the Jamaica incident from her mind, avoiding her friends for the rest of the school year so as not to relive or rehash the awful events. The same thing had happened to the four of them after their best friend, Alison DiLaurentis—really Courtney, Ali’s secret twin sister—disappeared on the last day of seventh grade. Sometimes, a tragedy brought friends together. Other times, it tore them apart.
But Spencer needed her now, just like Hanna had needed her friends in Jamaica. They had saved her life. She stood up and slipped on a pair of Havaiana flip-flops. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” Spencer said. When she hung up, relief settled over her like a cool, misty rain.
The door burst open, and the phone almost slid from Spencer’s hand. The same wiry cop strode into the room. When he noticed Spencer’s phone, his cheeks reddened. “What are you doing with that?”
Spencer dropped it to the table. “No one asked me to hand it in.”
The cop grabbed the phone and slipped it into his pocket. Then he gripped Spencer’s hand and roughly pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”
“Where are you taking me?”
The cop nudged Spencer into the hall. The odor of rancid takeout burned her nostrils. “We’re going to have a discussion.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything,” Spencer protested. “What did Kelsey say?”
The cop smirked. “Let’s see if your stories match.”
Spencer stiffened. She pictured her new friend in the interrogation room, preserving her own future and wrecking Spencer’s. Then she thought of Hanna getting into her car and setting the GPS to Penn’s campus. The idea of blaming Kelsey made her stomach churn, but what other choice did she have?
The cop pushed open a second door, and pointed for Spencer to sit down in an office chair. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Miss Hastings.”
That’s what you think, Spencer thought, rolling back her shoulders. Her decision was a good one. She had to look out for herself. And with Hanna on her way, she’d get away with this scot-free.
It was only later, after Hanna had planted the drugs, after her call came into the central switchboard, and after Spencer overheard two cops talking about going to the Friedman dorm to search room 413, that Spencer found out the truth: Kelsey hadn’t said a single word to implicate either herself or Spencer for the crimes they’d been accused of. Spencer wished she could undo everything, but it was too late—admitting she’d lied would get her into worse trouble. It was better to keep quiet. There was no way to trace what the cops had found back to her.
Shortly after that, the cops let Spencer go with a warning. As she was leaving the holding room, two officers marched Kelsey through the hall, their meaty hands gripping her arm like she was in big, big trouble. Kelsey glanced at Spencer fearfully as she passed. What’s going on? her eyes said. What do they have on me? Spencer had shrugged like she had absolutely no clue, then walked into the night, her future intact.
Her life went on. She took her APs and aced every single one. She returned to Rosewood Day at the top of her class. She got into Princeton early decision. As the weeks and months flew by, the nightmarish evening faded and she rested easy, knowing her secret was safe. Only Hanna knew the truth. No one else—not her parents, not the Princeton admissions board, not Kelsey—would ever find out.
Until the following winter. When someone discovered everything.
Chapter 1
EVERY KILLER DESERVES A NIGHT OUT