Pretty Little Liars (Book One)

Two: Icelandic (And Finnish) Girls Are Easy.

"Omigod, trees. I'm so happy to see big fat trees."

Aria Montgomery's fifteen-year-old brother, Michelangelo, wagged his head out of the family's Outback window like a golden retriever. Aria; her parents, Ella and Byron—they wanted their kids to call them by their first names—and Mike were all driving back from Philadelphia International Airport. They'd just gotten off a flight from Reykjavik, Iceland. Aria's dad was an art history professor, and the family had spent the last two years in Iceland while he helped do research for a TV documentary on Scandinavian art. Now that they were back, Mike was marveling at the Pennsylvania cow-country scenery. And that meant...Every. Single. Thing. The 1700s-era stone in that old ornate ceramic bases; the black cows staring dumbly at their car from behind a wooden roadside fence; the New England village-style mall that had sprung up since they'd been gone. Even the dingy twenty-five-year-old Dunkin' Donuts.

"Man, I can't wait to get a Coolata!" Mike gushed.

Aria groaned. Mike had spent a lonely couple of years in Iceland—he claimed that Icelandic boys were "pussies who small, gay horses"—but Aria had blossomed. A new start had been just what she needed at the time, so she was happy when her dad made the announcement that her family was moving. It was the fall after Alison went missing, and her girls had grown far apart, leaving her with no real friends, just a school full of people she'd known forever.

Before she left Europe, Aria sometimes see boys look at her from afar, intrigued, but then look away. With her coltish, battet-dancer frame, straight black hair, and pouty lips, Aria knew she was pretty. People were always saying so, but why didn't she have a date to the seventh-grade spring social, then? One of the last times she and Spencer had hung out—one of the awkward get-togethers that summer after Ali disappeared—Spencer told Aria she'd probably get a lot of dates if she just tried to fit in a little bit more.

But Aria didn't know how to fit in. Her parents had drilled it into her head that she was an individual, not a follower of the herd, and should be herself. Trouble was Aria wasn't sure who Aria was. Since turning eleven, she tried out punk Aria, artsy Aria, documentary film Aria, and right before they moved, she'd even tried ideal Rosewood girl Aria, the horse-riding, polo-shirt-wearing, Coach-satchel-toting girl who was everything Aria wasn't. Thankfully, they moved to Iceland two weeks into that disaster, and in Iceland, everything, everything, everything changed.

Her father got the job offer in Iceland just after Aria had started eighth grade, and the family packed up. She suspected they'd left so quickly because of a secret about her dad that only she—and Alison DiLaurentis—knew about. She'd vowed not to think about that again the minute the Icelandair plane took off, and after living in Reykjavik for a few months, Rosewood became a distant memory. Her parents seemed to fall back in love and even totally provincial brother learned both Icelandic and French. And Aria fell in love...a few times, actually.

So what if Rosewood boys, didn't get kooky Aria? Icelandic boys—rich, wordy, fascinating Icelandic boys—sure did. As soon as they moved there, she met a boy named Hallbjorn. He was seventeen, a DJ, and had three ponies and the most beautiful bone structure she'd ever seen. He offered to take her to Iceland's geysers, and then, when they saw one burble up and leave a big cloud of steam, he kissed her. After Hallbjorn was Lars, who liked to play with her old pig puppet, Pigtunia—the one who advised Aria on her love life—and took her to the best all-night dance parties by the harbor. She felt adorable and sexy in Iceland. There, she became Icelandic Aria, the best Aria yet. She found her style—a sort of bohemian-hipster-girl thing, with lots of layers, lace-up boots, and APC jeans, which she bough on a trip to Paris—read French philosophers, and traveled on the Burial with just an outdated map and a change of underwear.