A Pretty Little Parody [PLL]

43. But Wait ... There's More!

“A?” I asked breathlessly, shining my flashlight on the cobblestone path. I felt a little silly walking through a park on a warm, cloudless night by myself, but my instincts told me that A was around here, somewhere. But why wasn’t he answering?

Something rustled in the bushes and I whipped around. “A? Is that you?”

No reply. I crept closer. The rustling got louder. And then… a guy’s voice. A muffled grunt. It sounded kind of like A.

“AHA!” I yelled as I parted the bushes and shone my flashlight directly in the center. “Gotcha! You couldn’t hide from me forever!”

“Sasha Alison-Lauren Peterson, what the name of God are you doing?!”

I squinted. There, in the bushes, was a guy on his hands and knees. He wore a gray polo shirt and no pants, and as my eyes adjusted to the suddenly harsh light, I noticed that he was crouching over a woman.

“Mom?!” I gasped. “Dad?!”

My mom put up a hand to shield her face from the light. “Sasha, turn that gordforsaken thing off this minute!”

I did as she was told and let the flashlight drop onto the ground. “What’re you doing with each other? I thought you were with your separate lovers tonight.”

“Well, we were, but then we decided that we hadn’t been spending enough time together lately,” my dad explained. “One of the rules of our open marriage is that we come first to each other. And we’ve been getting a little sidetracked, so your mother suggested doing it out here in the bushes.”

“At Emerson Grove Park,” I said drily.

She brightened. “Yes! Isn’t it so romantic, with the trees and the moonlight…”

“And the sticks beneath your back…”

She bristled. “I barely feel it anymore.”

I snickered, picked up the flashlight, and did a little salute. “Have fun,” I said. “I’ll be home pretty late tonight. Don’t wait up.”

“We’ll be up anyway.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just left. And I was muy confundido. If A wasn’t here, then where else would he be? I got back into Ivana’s car (she and Malaria had gone to the Hardons’ house to have a movie night in the basement) and drove home morosely, listening to The Fray’s “How To Save A Life.”

I was halfway there when a new realization came to me--if A had promised to go to the police, wasn’t there a good chance that he would be at the police station right now? How could I have forgotten that? I quickly made a U-turn and headed back the other way. I got there before the song ended--it was only about a mile or so away, after all--but I wasn’t in a sad mood anymore. In fact, when I saw the telltale silver Bentley in the parking lot next to the squad cars, my heart lifted in hope.

The fluorescent light inside was greenish and harsh, but I didn’t care. Because there, sitting on a little green waiting bench talking to a police officer, was A himself, along with Evan, Moby, Henry, and Alec. My friends looked a little dazed, as if they’d just woken up from a bad dream.

“I’ll look into it,” the officer was saying, but from the skeptical looks she was giving to A and my friends, it was obvious that she thought he was bullshitting. I could see why, too--they were all dressed ridiculously and looked stoned.

“Guys,” I said breathlessly. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

They all looked at me, varying degrees of surprise and shock on their faces. Seconds later, I was being gathered up in a tight group hug. I would’ve liked it, except my friends all smelled like booze and sweat. I held my breath for as long as I could and then pushed them all aside.