Perfect (Book Two)

Thirty-Seven: String Bracelets Are So Out, Anyway.

Emily pushed her hair behind her ears and looked at Jenna. The sunglasses she wore stretched from her cheekbones to above her eyebrows, but Emily could just make out a few pinkish, wrinkled scars—burn scars—on her forehead.

She thought of that night. The way Ali's house had smelled like an Aveda peppermint candle. The way Emily's mouth tasted like salt-and0vinegar chips. How her feet rubbed against the grooves in the DiLaurentises' living room wood floor as she stood at the window, watching Ali run across the Cavanaughs' lawn. The boom of the firework, the paramedics climbing up the tree house ladder, how Jenna's mouth made a rectangle, she was crying so hard.

Jenna handed her the dirty, wrinkled piece of paper. "They found this with him," she said, her voice cracking on the word him. "He wrote things to all of us. Your part is somewhere in the middle."

The paper was actually the Foxy auction list; Toby had scrawled something on the back. Seeing the way Toby's words didn't stay between the lines, that he'd barely used any capital letters, and that he'd signed the note Toby in wobbly cursive made Emily clench up inside. Although she'd never seen Toby's handwriting before, it seemed to bring him to life beside her. She could smell the soap he used, feel his big hand holding her smaller one. This morning, she'd awakened not on the porch swing but in her bed. The doorbell was ringing. She stumbled down the stairs, and there was a guy in bike shorts and a helmet at her door. "Can I use your phone?" he asked. "It's an emergency."

Emily had stared at him woozily, not awake. Carolyn appeared behind her, and the cyclist started to explain himself. "I was just riding through your woods, and I found this boy, and first I thought he was sleeping, but..."

He'd paused, and Carolyn's eyes had widened. She ran in to get her cell phone. Meanwhile, Emily stood on the porch, trying to make sense of what was happening. She thought about Toby at her window last night. How he'd violently banged on the sliding glass door, then bolted for the woods.

She looked at the cyclist. "This boy in the woods, was he trying to hurt you?" she whispered, her heart pounding. It was horrifying that Toby really had camped out in her woods all night. What if he'd come up onto her porch after Emily had dozed off?

The cyclist hugged his helmet to his chest. He looked about Emily's dad's age, with green eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. "No," he said gently. "He was...blue."

And now, this: a letter. A suicide note.

Toby had seemed so tortured, sprinting into the woods. Had he taken the pills right then? Or could Emily have stopped him? And was Hanna right—was Toby not Ali's killer?

The world started spinning. She felt a strong hand on the small of her back. "Whoa," Spencer whispered. "It's okay."

Emily straightened herself and looked at the letter. Her friends leaned in, too. There, right in the middle, was her name.

Emily, three years ago, I promised Alison DiLaurentis I'd keep a secret for her if she kept a secret for me. She promised that secret would never get out, but I guess it had. I've tried to deal with it—and to forget it—and when we became friends, I thought I could...I thought I'd changed—and that my life had changed. But I guess you can't ever really change who you are. What I did to Jenna was the biggest mistake I've ever made. I was young and confused and stupid, and I never meant to hurt her. And I can't live with it anymore. I'm done.

Emily folded the note back up, the paper quaking in her hands. It didn't make sense—they were the ones who'd hurt Jenna, not Toby—what was he talking about? She handed it back to Jenna. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

As Jenna turned to leave, Emily cleared her throat. "Wait," she croaked. "Jenna."

Jenna stopped. Emily swallowed hard. Everything Spencer just told her about Toby knowing and Ali lying, everything Toby had said last night, all the guilt she'd carried about Jenna for so many years...it all bubbled over.