𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫'𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 ⎯ pretty little liars

002. the jenna thing

"I knew some," Rachel muttered. 

 "Go on." 

"Talk," they urged. 

 "I can't." Rachel looked down at the table. 

Even though she was always a major gossiper, she never gossiped about her close friends and respected their secrets. Besides, she spent the summer Alison disappeared extremely intoxicated, so there are, of course, many blank spaces and missing details in those secrets. Alison was known for keeping secrets, but she and Rachel were close enough that Alison told Rachel a majority of her secrets. 

 "Rach! No, you are not gonna drop a bomb like that and just clam up!" Aria exclaimed. 

"She'd so kill me if I told you," Rachel said, not really thinking it through before saying it. 

"She's dead," Hanna reminded her.

"Ali was seeing someone that summer," Rachel revealed.

"I knew she was keeping something from me! From us," Emily exclaimed. 

"Well, why didn't she want us to know?" Aria asked. 

"He was an older boy, and he had a girlfriend," Rachel shrugged.

 "Who was it?" Emily asked..

"She never told me his name," she replied.

"That's only half a secret," Hanna scowled.

"It's more than you ever got from her," the brunette shot back.

"How is it that Ali told us nothing and we told her everything?" Aria asked.

"Because she made us feel like we were a part of something special," Emily answered.

"We were," Rachel smiled, softly. 

"I miss that," Aria sighed.

"Me too."

"I miss Ali," Emily said.

"I can't believe you still wear that," Hanna muttered, gesturing to the friendship bracelet Emily was wearing. 

During the aftermath of The Jenna Thing, Alison had sworn the girls to secrecy and she took the event as something that would bind them together forever. To make it official, she bought all of the girls matching, beaded friendship bracelets with their names on them. Each of them were different colors. Rachel's was pink. She had kept hers as a keepsake, but she hadn't worn it in about a year. 

"Ali still wears hers. Wore," she corrected.

"When Ali didn't come home that night, I knew something terrible must have happened, but there was always some part of me that imagined someday she'd just show up," Rachel told them.

"Yeah. I used to think that maybe she'd just run off with some guy," Aria chuckled, softly. 

"She was laying on a beach somewhere," Emily continued on for her.