Perfect (Book Two)

Twenty-Two: You Can't Handle The Truth.

Friday evening, Aria shut off the radio in her bedroom. For the past hour, the local DJ had gone on and on about Foxy. He made it sound as if Foxy were a shuttle launch or a presidential inauguration, not just some silly benefit.

She listened to the sounds of her parents walking around the kitchen. There wasn't the usual cacophony of noise—NPR on the radio, CNN or PBS on the kitchen TV, or a classical or experimental jazz CD playing on the kitchen stereo. All Aria heard were pots and pans clanging. Then a crash. "Sorry," Ella said curtly. "It's fine," Byron answered.

Aria turned back to her laptop, feeling more and more crazed by the second. Since her Meredith-stalk had been cut short, she was now researching her online. Once you started Web-stalking someone, it was hard to stop. Aria had Meredith's last name—Stevens—from a Strawberry Ridge Yoga schedule she found online, so she searched Google for Meredith's phone number. She thought maybe she'd try to call to tell her, kindly, to stay away from Byron. But then she found her address and wanted to see how far away Meredith lived, so she mapped it on MapQuest. From there, it got nuts. She looked at a hypertext paper Meredith had done in her freshman year of college on William Carlos Williams. She hacked into Hollis's student portal to see Meredith's grades. Meredith was on Friendster, Facebook, and MySpace. Her favorite movies were Donnie Darko, Paris, Texas; and The Princess Bride, and her interests were quirky things like snow globes, tai chi, and magnets.

In a parallel universe, Aria and Meredith could have been friends. It made it even harder to do what A asked in Aria's last text message: make it go away.

It felt like A's threat was burning a hole in her Treo, and whatever she thought about seeing not only Meredith but Spencer in the yoga studio that morning, she felt uneasy. What was Spencer doing there? Did Spencer know something?

Back in seventh grade, Aria had told Ali about seeing Toby at her drama workshop while she, Ali, and Spencer were hanging out at Spencer's pool. "He doesn't know anything, Aria," Ali had answered, calmly applying more sunscreen. "Chill out."

"But how can you be sure?" Aria had protested. "What about that person I saw outside the tree house that night? Maybe they told Toby! Maybe it was Toby!"

Spencer frowned, then glanced at Alison. "Ali, maybe you should just—"

Ali cleared her throat loudly. "Spence," she said, sort of as a warning.

Aria looked back and forth at them, confused. Then she blurted out the question she'd wanted to ask for a while: "What were you guys whispering about the night of her accident? When I woke up and you were in the bathroom?"

Ali cocked her head. "We weren't whispering."

"Ali, we were," Spencer hissed.

Ali gave her another sharp look, then turned back to Aria. "Look, we weren't talking about Toby. Besides"—she gave Aria a little smile—"don't you have bigger things to worry about right now?"

Aria bristled. Just days before, Aria and Ali had caught her father with Meredith.

Spencer tugged Ali's arm. "Ali, I really think you should tell—"

Ali held up her hand. "Spence, I swear to God."

"You swear to God what?" Spencer shrieked. "You think this is easy?"

After Aria saw Spencer at the yoga studio this morning, she'd considered tracking her down in school and talking to her. Spencer and Ali had covered something up, and maybe it was tangled in A. But...she felt afraid. She thought she'd known her old friends inside and out. But now that she knew they all had dark secrets they didn't want to share...maybe she'd never really known them at all.