Pretty Little Liars

At the final bell of the first day, Emily heads to her locker. Her boyfriend, Ben, who’s on the swim team with her, asks if she wants to come to Wawa with him before practice. She declines, telling him she’s walking the new girl home since it’s her first day. He gives her a hard time, but she says she’ll be right back. She wonders if it’s weird to walk Maya home, but she’d been showing her around all day.

As they walk, Maya tells Emily she might join a band with another girl, Sarah. She says Emily should join, but Emily tells her she can’t with swimming practice every day. Maya asks if she can skip it, but Emily insists that she can’t. She doesn’t tell Maya she’s under pressure from her family to get a swimming scholarship, like her brother and sister. Her parents aren’t laid back like Maya’s.

Emily tells Maya there’s a shorter way to get home and as they approach Maya’s house, she suddenly realizes she’s in Ali’s backyard for the first time in ages. She sees the tree where she carved her and Ali’s initials. She flushes at the memory and Maya asks if she’s okay. She considers telling Maya everything but doesn’t. Outside of Maya’s house, Maya asks if Emily wants to stay but Emily says she must get back to swimming. They hug, and Maya kisses Emily on both cheeks. Maya says it’s like the French, so Emily says she’ll be French too, and kisses her the same way. Maya kisses her again but closer to her mouth. Emily leaves quickly.

Emily runs back to school “as if running would untangle the jumble of feelings inside her” (73). After swim practice and a shower in the locker room, a note written on graph paper flutters off the shelf of her locker. She doesn’t recognize the handwriting, but it says Emily has “found another friend to kiss!” (74). It’s signed from A. The only other girl she’d kissed besides Maya was Alison, two days before she carved their initials and a week before the end of seventh grade.

The girls on the field hockey team are all admiring Ian Thomas, the handsome new coach and Melissa’s ex. Spencer feels weird about his appearance since she didn’t expect to see him back in Rosewood. Ian recognizes Spencer and remarks that she’s all grown up, to which she replies “I guess” (76). He then asks if her sister’s boyfriends are still hitting on her, which makes her jaw drop in surprise. By the end of practice, everything is sore since Spencer spent the summer doing several other activities rather than getting in “top shape for field hockey” (77). She’s not looking forward to another day of extra-curriculars, AP classes, and field hockey practice with Ian tomorrow.

Spencer decides to soak in the backyard hot tub. She strips down to her underwear and gets in, not realizing Wren is there in his boxers. She tells him she wasn’t expecting him to be at her house until the next day. He explains that he and Melissa went to a store nearby and she’d dropped him off to run other errands. He tells Spencer he was going to soak in the hot tub, but he can go do something else. She says it’s fine if he joins her. Once he climbs into the tub, Spencer tries to stay on her side. However, she stretches out to avoid a cramp and accidentally touches her leg to Wren’s calf. She jerks her leg away and apologizes.

Spencer and Wren begin to talk while soaking in the tub. He asks her about field hockey and tells her he rowed crew at Oxford, which he says he loved. She tells him she doesn’t love field hockey, but it looks good on a college application. Her shoulder starts to hurt, and she knows that even though it’s only the first day of school, she’s already overwhelmed with the amount she must do. When Wren notices her shoulder bothering her, he tells her he can fix it for her. Although she hesitates at first, he insists. As he’s rubbing her back, she tries to stay distracted. When he starts rubbing the front of her, she suddenly asks where her sister is, realizing she could be back any minute. Spencer gets out of the tub quickly and runs into the house with Wren chasing after her. She runs up to the room and starts compulsively reorganizing everything.

After a while, when Spencer still doesn’t feel better, she checks her email. She finds an email that indirectly references what just happened in the hot tub. It’s a short note about lusting after what isn’t yours. It’s signed by A. She opens her window and looks outside. She thinks she sees a flash of blonde hair in Ali’s old window.

Hanna is on her couch with her boyfriend, Sean. She tries to seduce him, although he hesitates, pushing her away. When Hanna’s mom comes home, he tells Hanna he needs to go, even though her mom is distracted most of the time with work and barely notices anything. He tells her he’ll see her at Noel’s party on Friday night and kisses her goodbye. To Hanna, dating Sean “felt like a dream” (86) because she’d had a crush on him since the sixth grade. They’d been together seven months and Hanna is in love with him and ready to have sex. She can’t figure out why he made a virginity pledge, especially because it didn’t seem to be motivated by religion. She wonders if he might be gay or is just afraid.

Hanna eats sushi while her mom, a successful executive at an advertising firm, fields phone calls from work. Her mom is an attractive woman and Hanna’s still not sure why her parents divorced, and her dad started dating someone more average looking. The first and only time she visited him in Annapolis to meet his girlfriend, Isabel, and her daughter, Kate, she brought Ali along. The day was a disaster because Kate was “the prettiest girl Hanna had ever met” (89) and her dad called her a pig in front of everyone. She started throwing up her food that day and hasn’t seen her dad since.

The doorbell rings and Hanna’s mom says it might be the Girl Scouts again. After her mom answers the door, a police officer enters and asks for Hanna. Hanna recognizes him as Darren Wilden, a boy that used to go to her school. He tells her that the mall has her on tape shoplifting from Tiffany’s. He says they need to go down to the station and that it may be nothing. He cuffs her and they head to the station.

At the station, Hanna’s mom asks her if she took the bracelet she’s still wearing. and Hanna realizes she forgot to take it off. Her mom tells her to give her the bracelet and she’ll handle the situation. The salesgirl from Tiffany’s comes in and identifies Hanna as the person responsible. Hanna’s mom stands up and says she was with Hanna at Tiffany’s and told her she couldn’t have the items, which is what prompted Hanna to take them. She assures everyone it will never happen again and asks Darren if there’s anything he can do. After her mother looks at him for a while, he says he’ll see and goes to his desk to fill out paperwork.

Hanna imagines everyone will find out and she’ll revert to how she used to be: “chubby, ugly, miserable and overlooked” (95). She checks her blackberry and sees a message from A. It tells her that prison food will make her fat and Sean will say “Not it!” (96), a direct reference to the game they used to play with Alison. Hanna can’t imagine who knows she’s at the police station unless someone saw the police car outside her house. She tries to think who it could be as her mom tells her no one needs to know about this. Hanna agrees.

Aria rides in the car with her father, Byron, and her brother, Mike, as her dad drives them to their second day of school. She’s thinks about how English class was the day before, summarizing it in one word: “brutal” (98). Everyone laughed and Hanna asked Aria if she slept with the teacher. Ezra came up with a ridiculous excuse for why he’d cursed and dropped everything on the ground. He continued with his lecture, but Aria kept looking “at his wolfish eyes and his sumptuous pink mouth” (98-99). She knows he’s the guy for her even if he is her teacher.

When they arrive at school, Aria’s father holds her back for a second and asks if she’s okay. He says they haven’t talked about “you know” (99) in a while, but Aria asks what there is to talk about. He says he can’t imagine how hard it must be for her to stay quiet. She gets out of the car, trying to forget the memory of what happened in May of seventh grade. She and Alison headed to a record store and spotted Byron’s car in an empty lot. He was in the car kissing a young girl. He spotted Aria and she ran back home. Although Ali ran after her, she left when Aria said she wanted to be alone. Byron tried to talk to Aria later, but Aria already knew what was going on. It was one of his students, Meredith, who had been in their house before. He promised it would never happen again and Aria wanted to believe him.

Before class, Aria goes to Ezra’s office. She tells him she’s okay with everything, even though she is his student. He responds that it’s probably not a good idea since he thought she was older. She tells him everyone lies about their age anyway. He says he thinks she’s amazing, but it could get him in trouble if it goes any further. She says no one would have to know, but he dismisses her. She heads outside into the foggy weather, thinking it “seemed like an appropriate time to disappear completely” (104).

Maya greets Emily in the parking lot before swim practice and tries to persuade her to skip it. She takes her hand and tells Emily where they’re going involves swimming. Emily thinks about how she used to feel when she was alone with Ali, and how she could truly be herself then. She misses that feeling, of having a best friend, and thinks she could have it with Maya. She decides she can make up an excuse for missing practice and gets in her car with Maya.

They drive to the Marwyn trail next to a creek. Maya takes Emily’s hand and leads her to a stone bridge. Maya strips down to her underwear and jumps off the bridge into the water, daring Emily to do the same. Emily is self-conscious and leaves her tank top on over her bra. Once they’re both in the water, Maya tells Emily that she and her boyfriend might break up. She says he keeps calling and sending her letters and she’s only been gone a few days. Emily asks if Maya had written her a note yesterday, but Maya says she didn’t. Emily surprises herself, saying she might break up with Ben. Maya says she should because then they’d both be single, and they’d be free to have fun. They splash around with one another until Emily pushes Maya into a small cave in the rocks.

In the cave, Emily tells Maya about Alison. She explains that they were close, and she went missing and was never found. They hug and Maya then confesses she lied about why she wants to break up with Justin. She says it’s because she’s not sure if she likes guys. Emily thinks she hears something in the bushes and worries someone’s watching them. She spots a group of boys and recognizes one of them as Mike, Aria’s younger brother. Worried that he’ll see her, she gets out of the water and tells Maya she must get back to school.

Hanna and Mona lounge at Mona’s parents’ country club, gossiping about who they think has had plastic surgery. Mona asks Hanna if she’s okay since she seems jumpy. Hanna has been nervous since the police station and since receiving the message from A the night before. She still fears turning back into her awkward seventh grade self. They look down onto the golf course and Hanna recognizes Darren Wilden, the police officer. He gives Hanna a nod and Mona asks who he is, remembering that he went to their school. Hanna lies and tells her they met at the Marwyn trail while Hanna was running.

Mona tells Hanna she should bring Darren to Noel Kahn’s party. The party is “a legendary Rosewood tradition” (118) and there is always lots of drinking and a scandal. Hanna tells Mona she’s bringing Sean, although Mona says it’s a waste of time because of his virginity pledge. She tells Hanna she may take Darren if Hanna isn’t going to. Hanna immediately tells Mona she can’t do that and confesses to the real reason she knows Darren—from the police station. Hanna dismisses the whole ordeal and explains she was texting the whole time. She considers telling Mona about the text from A but decides the text “couldn’t have actually meant anything, right?” (120). Hanna excuses herself to go walk her dog, Dot. Mona asks if she’s okay and Hanna insists it’s no big deal.

In the parking lot, Hanna breaks into a run. Once in her car, she looks in the rearview mirror and sees that her face is covered with splotches. She’s concerned getting caught for shoplifting might ruin her carefully crafted image and “send her spiraling back to dorkdom” (121). She wonders if Mona now thinks she’s a loser. She reconsiders having told anyone but realizes A already knows. She starts to have a panic attack and drives down the street to a road that dead ends. She sits in her car and stares at the fries she ordered at lunch for her mom and tells herself not to eat them. Suddenly she grabs the box and starts shoving fries into her mouth until they’re gone. It’s the only thing that makes her feel better until she gets home and feels ashamed, like she used to. It’s been years since she’s felt that way or done anything like this, but once she gets inside her house she goes to the bathroom and purges all the food.

Spencer is edgy driving home after her student council meeting has run late. She felt like someone—the person who wrote the email—was watching her all day. She keeps thinking about the blond ponytail she saw in Maya’s window but dismisses it as “crazy” (123). In the mailbox, she gets her PSAT scores: 2350 out of 2400. She does some calculating in her mind and determines that her sister got 100 points less than Spencer on her test. She wants to announce her triumph to her mom, who comes into the kitchen while Spencer is reading, but thinks twice when Melissa and Wren enter. Wren asks her what she’s reading, but she hesitates, deciding that avoiding him is best.

While Melissa is unpacking pillows, which she announces are for the barn, Spencer decides “Two could play at this game” (125). She yells to Melissa that Melissa’s ex, Ian Thomas, is now coaching her lacrosse team. Melissa asks if he asked about her, to which Spencer replies that he didn’t. When Wren asks who Ian is, Melissa dismisses him as “No one” (126). Spencer is satisfied and goes off to the dining room.

Spencer sits at the table and pours herself a glass of wine. Her parents don’t care if she drinks if she’s not going anywhere. Wren comes in and sits down, “smirking at her” (126). The rest of Spencer’s family follows, and as Spencer is about to announce her PSAT scores to everyone, Melissa cuts in that she’s thankful Spencer is allowing her and Wren to stay in the barn. She then complains about the chicken since Wren is trying not to eat meat, which distracts everyone. Spencer’s dad suggests they play a family game called “Star Power” (128), where everyone announces their biggest achievement of the day, and the family selects the Star. It can get “ruthlessly competitive” (128).

Each member of the family takes turns sharing their daily achievement. When Wren says he spent his day off from medical school watching a Phillies game at a bar, Melissa looks at him disappointedly. Spencer’s mom then starts to ask Melissa something when Spencer interjects, saying she also has something to share for Star Power. She hands her dad her scores and figures no one will really care anyway, since it’s just the PSAT. But instead, everyone seems impressed, even Melissa. Spencer’s mom asks her how she wants to celebrate, and Spencer says she’d really like to move into the barn. Melissa immediately protests but their mom reminds her that the renovations in the townhouse won’t take long so they could stay in Melissa’s old bedroom. Wren says he doesn’t mind, winking at Spencer as her parents officially agree to it. Spencer gets up and hugs them, thinking she’ll “remember this day for as long as she live[s]” (132).

Aria sits at the table with her mom, whom she calls Ella, and tells her she needs some love advice. She says she likes an “unattainable” (134) boy and wants to know how to “convince him he should like me” (134). After Aria dismisses a few suggestions as unhelpful, Ella tells Aria she read a study that said men find intelligence most attractive in women. Aria’s brother Mike walks in and overhears the conversation. Although he finds it gross, he tells Aria that Noel Kahn likes her. Aria rolls her eyes and calls Noel a “nobody” (135). Mike insists he’s the coolest person in Aria’s grade. As she leaves the kitchen, Mike follows her into the hallways and asks why she doesn’t like Noel. He tells her she’s been acting strange, and he thinks he knows why. Although Aria brushes it aside, she secretly worries he might know something.

Aria goes into English class, preparing for an oral report on Waiting for Godot. She loves the play, as well as public speaking. She wants to show off her cool, Icelandic version of herself. She volunteers to go first and begins by recounting a performance of the play she saw in Paris last year. As she’s setting the scene, Ezra interrupts her and tells her he needs her to talk more about the play and less about Paris. She sits back down in defeat. Noel raises his hand and tells the class he liked Aria’s presentation. He starts quietly talking to Aria about the drinking age in Paris and asks if they have absinthe there. Ezra sternly tells them to stop talking. She happily thinks she might be making Ezra “a little twitchy” (139). Aria feels a buzzing and realizes it’s her cell phone. She checks it and it’s another message from A. This one is about Ezra, referring to the fact that he might fool around with his students regularly, just like her dad. She looks around but no one has a cell phone out. Besides, the only person who knew about her dad was Alison.

Even though Spencer is having a good day, she can’t help feeling uneasy. She has the sense that someone is watching her and is weighed down by the events of the past few days, particularly the email from A and seeing the blond hair in Ali’s old bedroom window. In the school’s reading room, she decides to Google search Wren. As she’s looking through the results, which include Wren in “Shakespearean garb, holding a skull” (142), Andrew Campbell, the class president, taps her on the shoulder and startles her. He asks if Wren is her boyfriend to which she replies no. He then asks if she wants a ride to Noel Kahn’s party the following night. She tells him she doubts she’s going. Andrew is disappointed and says she seems to have a lot going on with Melissa home.

Spencer starts to wonder if maybe Andrew has been spying on her. He drives up and down her street all the time and may have seen her with Wren in the hot tub. She thinks it might be a way of throwing her off her game so he can be reelected president next year. He has long blond hair and she thinks maybe it was him she saw in Ali’s old window. She gets up quickly to leave. However, as she’s walking out, she realizes she feels relief. If it is Andrew, he doesn’t know anything compared to Alison.

Outside the reading room, Spencer runs into Emily. As they awkwardly talk, she notices Emily is still wearing the string bracelet Ali made for her in sixth grade. Alison gave them to everyone after The Jenna Thing. The Jenna situation was originally a prank intended for Jenna’s brother, Toby. But a horrible accident happened to Jenna as a result. Spencer discovered that Toby saw Ali watching everything from the tree house, but Ali saw Toby doing something equally as bad. As a result, neither could tell on the other. Ali then made everyone bracelets to show them the secret bonded them together. Ali never told anyone that Toby saw her.

When the police questioned Spencer after Ali’s disappearance, they asked if Ali had any enemies who might want to harm her. Spencer lied, simply saying some people might’ve been jealous of Ali since she was popular. But people hated Ali, and Toby may have been one of them. Spencer passed Toby and Jenna’s house all the time, although they were away at boarding school and rarely came home. She figures the secret was safe.

While at swim practice, Emily thinks about the previous day with Maya at the creek. Laying in her bed after, she’d wavered between feeling happy about the fun they’d had and feeling uneasy about Maya’s confession that she wasn’t sure she likes boys. Emily also thought about the note from A, reading it “over and over again” (148). She resolved that the answer was to throw herself into swimming.

When Ben comes over to her in the pool, she decides she should also start fresh with him and their relationship. He tells her he missed her yesterday and asks where she was. She lies and says she was tutoring. He asks her to come over and she tells him she doesn’t know if she can. When he tries to splash her and grab her, she tells him to stop. She goes over to the other side of the swimming lane and considers going over to Ben’s house. But she decides she can’t because she isn’t the kind of person who can “fake things” (149). She’s not sure if she wants to break up with him or not. Emily’s sister, Carolyn, swims over and asks Emily if she’s okay. Although the two sisters look alike, they aren’t close.

The swimmers line up for kicking exercises and Emily tells Ben she isn’t coming over. He gives her a sarcastic response. He goes ahead of her in the lane and starts kicking so hard that he splashes water in her face. When Emily catches up to him, he doesn’t let her pass like he’s supposed to and yells at her instead. She responds that she can’t help being faster than him. He angrily throws his goggles on the ground and heads into the boys’ locker room.

Hanna talks on the phone with Sean and asks him to come over to watch their favorite reality show, but he tells her he has a meeting for V Club—as in Virginity Club. He also says he’s not sure if he’s going to Noel’s party the next night, but Hanna insists he go, and they agree Noel would be mad if he didn’t show up. She has a plan devised to lure him into the woods behind Noel’s house so they can have sex.

Hanna goes into her kitchen to eat ice cream. She remembers the day she brought Ali to meet her father’s girlfriend’s daughter, Kate. Ali passed Hanna another dessert and jokingly said to everyone that Hanna can eat whatever she wants and not gain weight. At the time, it wasn’t true, which is why it was so mean. Hanna was chubby and was gaining more weight. Both Ali and Kate laughed. Hanna’s thoughts are interrupted by her mom coming in, asking if she needs three ice cream sandwiches. Hanna ate one without even realizing it and opened a second. She puts the third back in the freezer.

Hanna’s mom tells her she got her a present and gives her a blue Tiffany box. Inside the box is the charm bracelet she was caught stealing, along with earrings and a necklace. Her mom quickly leaves the room to do yoga. Hanna notices an envelope on the telephone table with her typed name and address. She takes it upstairs and opens it. It’s another letter from A that says even her dad doesn’t love her best. Inside is a school newsletter article about Kate being the student speaker at a benefit. It featured a picture of Kate, alongside Kate’s mom, Isabel, and her father, listed as Isabel’s fiancé. While her dad’s engagement to Isabel is surprising to Hanna, it doesn’t rattle her as much as the picture of Kate, looking “more perfect than ever” (158). The only person who knew about Kate was Alison. Hanna starts to feel uneasy and heads to the bathroom. However, she stops herself from throwing up, telling herself she’s better than that. She tries to tell herself she’s fabulous, but she thinks that it doesn’t sound convincing.

On Friday morning, Noel and Aria work on their assignment in English class: to write an existentialist play. Aria picked Noel as her partner to make Ezra jealous, but so far it isn’t working. Noel makes plans to turn their play into a movie, complete with pyrotechnics and a Navigator crashing into a duck pond. Aria is too exhausted to argue, having been up most of the night worrying about the text from A. She wonders if it’s Alison, or even Alison’s ghost, but thinks if her ghost is trying to make amends somehow, there are better options than Aria—like Jenna. Aria quickly tries to block out the thought. The Jenna Thing is something she tries not to think about, like her dad and Meredith.

Aria momentarily wishes she could talk to her old friends and ask them questions about Ali. Her thoughts are interrupted by Ezra standing in front of her desk. He asks what she’s working on, and when she shows him her notebook, she lets her pinky finger touch his. He doesn’t pull away. When he goes to help another student, Aria continues to try to make him jealous. She tells Noel loudly that she thinks their movie should include a sex scene. Since she suggested earlier that the play involve a guy who thinks he’s a duck, to make it more absurd, Noel asks if that’s the guy who gets some. Aria says it is, “With a woman who kisses like a goose” (164). He asks how a goose kisses, and she leans in and kisses Noel on the check as Ezra watches. Noel then puts his hand on her knee and invites her to his party. Aria leans in and says she’ll go to the party as Ezra drops his pen on the ground.

Emily’s sister, Carolyn, asks Emily if she’s going to Noel’s party. Emily isn’t sure since she and Ben hadn’t spoken to one another at swim practice. When she and Carolyn pull up to their house, their mom says she’s just spoken to their swim coach, Coach Lauren, about Emily missing practice. Emily tells her mom she had to tutor Spanish, but her mom has called the Spanish teacher and knows Emily is lying. Emily confesses she was hanging out with Maya. Her mom asks why she’s lying and skipping practice. Emily often defied her parents when she was friends with Ali. After Ali disappeared, Emily wondered if it was her fault that Alison was gone because she disobeyed her parents. In her guilt, she “made herself into this model daughter, inside and out” (168). But in that moment, she knows it wasn’t her fault and decides that she doesn’t want to spend the next years of high school swimming.

Emily’s mom doesn’t react well when Emily tells her that she no longer wants to swim and insists her father will set things right. She tells Emily she doesn’t know what’s best for herself and asks if any of this has to do with Maya. She says she doesn’t “have a good feeling about girls…like that” (170) and insists Maya is a bad influence on Emily. She feels there are too many “cultural differences” (170) and she doesn’t trust Maya’s family. Emily suddenly realizes her mom isn’t upset about Maya’s sexuality, but rather her race.

Spencer lays on her bed in her barn bedroom with Icy Hot on her back. Ian made them sprint three miles in practice and now her back is in pain. She realizes she’s out of Icy Hot and must go back to the main house to get more. It makes her feel like an adult to call it “the main house” (173). As she heads to the house, she thinks about the relief she feels now that she’s figured out her spy is Andrew Campbell. She thinks of him as a creepy “Weirdo” (173) and can’t believe everyone is under the impression that he’s “sweet and innocent” (173).

In one of the bathrooms of the main house, Spencer pulls down her warm-up pants and starts rubbing Icy Hot on her back. Wren suddenly opens the door and immediately starts apologizing when he sees Spencer. He tells her he’s confused about the house and thought it was the door to the bedroom. He asks her about the barn, and she asks him about his sister’s old bedroom, which he describes as very pink. He also says he found a Phantom of the Opera CD, which he thinks is “disturbing” (174), although Spencer responds by telling him she thought he liked plays. He says he does but usually things like Shakespeare, then wonders how she knows that. She doesn’t reply.

A pain shoots through Spencer’s back and Wren asks what’s wrong. She tells him she pulled something in field hockey. He asks if she needs help with the Icy Hot and she says she does. She points to a spot below her butt and Wren starts lathering the area after she wraps a towel around herself. As he stands up and she feels his breath close to her, Spencer thinks she should kiss him. Just then the phone rings and her mom yells up to Wren that Melissa is on the phone for him. After he leaves, she spells his name out with the Icy Hot left on the counter and puts a heart around it. She thinks about leaving it there but then hears Wren on the phone with Melissa, telling her he misses her, and smashes the heart with her palm.