Ali and Chloe Forever (Book 1)

Chapter 10: Ali Puts It All To Rest

An hour later, Ali, Chloe; and Nick pulled up to a familiar sign pointing to a secluded road lined by tall, thick trees. THE PRESERVE AT ADDISON-STEVENS, read the calligraphy lettering. Nick put on his blinker and steered up the drive.

"Those white trees are freaky," Ali grumbled, glancing out the window at the birches in the woods, their albino branches twisting and curling over the road. "They remind me of the people in this place."

Ali was trying very hard not to remember all the horrible things that had happened to her at this place. The closet they got to the hospital, the tighter the knot in her stomach cinched. As Nick continued up the drive, Chloe took Ali's hand.

Ali looked into Chloe's eyes. "I don't ever want to be locked up again."

"You won't have to as long as you're good," Chloe said.

Ali gazed at the building in the distance. The hospital was a big white mansion with impressive columns, looking more like someone's house than a mental institution. A nurse and a patient hobbled along the path. Another patient sat on a bench, just staring. An ambulance was parked in a side driveway, waiting for a disaster.

Chloe put her other hand on Ali's shoulder, probably sensing how nervous she felt right now. She'd begun to understand why her parents kept the fact that she'd been in and out of mental hospitals a secret all these years: There was definitely a stigma to having a daughter or sister in a loony bin. People might assume the DiLaurentises were bad parents for putting her there. Or maybe they'd assume the rest of the family was crazy, too.

Everyone in Rosewood had known about the DiLaurentis twins since they arrived from Stamford, Connecticut just before Ali and Courtney had started third grade. They didn't know where Ali had been whenever she missed days of school— her parents had told the teachers that Ali had a lot of health issues—but even then, people still knew something was wrong with her.

Her heart pounded fast as they pulled up to the guard's gate and gave their name—Tripp Maxwell—to a khaki-clad man with a walkie-talkie. They circled the driveway and passed the obsessively manicured topiaries and the glassy-eyed patients on the lawn. For a moment, Ali thought she recognized one of them from the Radley, a girl who used to scream in her bed for hours on end, but she couldn't be sure.

They parked in the visitors' lot and got out. Ali and Chloe lagged behind Nick, staring at the names on the plaques of old patients who had passed on that were mounted beside the trees and benches. NELLY PETERSON. THOMAS RYDER. GRACE HARTLEY. That was another thing people said about the Preserve: The suicide rate was worryingly high. People must have thought death was a better option than being trapped in here.

The lobby had marble floors, a big fountain in the center, and modern white couches. After giving their name to a lab coat–wearing receptionist, they were buzzed into the patient ward, which was markedly shabbier and older than the lobby or the outside. They entered the day room, which was big and bright with several large windows, threadbare couches pushed against the walls, and an old, blinking TV playing a movie Ali recognized: The Three Faces of Eve. The room smelled of antiseptic cleaner and macaroni and cheese. A nurse listening to headphones sat behind a window in the corner. A woman Ali knew was a psychiatrist was talking to a despondent girl with white-blond hair by a bookcase full of board games.

It was Iris Taylor, Ali's old roommate.

Nick had already told the receptionist they were there to see Iris. But Ali couldn't let Iris see her or Chloe. She took Chloe's hand and led her to the door, which sectioned off the other parts of the hospital from the day room and the lobby. Then they began to walk down the long corridor toward the patient rooms.