Pretty Little Liars: The Beginning {Episodes 1-10} (REVISED)

1. Aria 📚

Aria Montgomery stared at herself in the mirror hanging over the closet door in her bedroom. She was surrounded by cardboard boxes, waiting eagerly to be unpacked. It had been a year since Aria had even set foot in this bedroom, and still no sign of Alison DiLaurentis had been found. She smoothed the creases in her dress as she reminisced about the countless memories this room held. She could remember exactly what she and Alison had done in this room in the rare moments they weren't with the other girls. It was still hard to believe that out of nowhere, none of those things would ever happen again.

The last time she had stood in front of this mirror, her hair had been dyed pink in a single stripe amongst her dark brown hair. Alison had always said she looked like one of those emo girls on MTV with that style of hair. Aria had thought it was kind of mean of her to say at the time, but looking back she couldn't really disagree. After all, that was kind of what she had been going for. Her lips turned down and twitched at the thought of Ali.

Aria's mom leaned against the doorway of her daughter's bedroom. "Aria? Are you okay?"

Aria turned to look at her mother. She must've noticed the slight tremor on Aria's lips while walking by. Aria swallowed the ball rising in her throat and said, "It's weird to be home."

Mrs. Montgomery nodded. "Well, we were gone a year. When you're sixteen, that's a long time," she said.

Aria sat on one of the many boxes piled up in her room and picked absentmindedly at a piece of packing tape sealing it shut. All of the things that had happened in the past year flooded into her mind. Alison officially being declared missing by the Rosewood Police Department, her family up and moving to Iceland for her father's year abroad, falling in love with Europe (not to mention a few of the boys there). She had found her own sense of style, and she found herself missing the way it felt to be away from Rosewood and all of the memories she had managed to tuck into a corner of her mind in Iceland. Ali had missed so much. "I still think about her every day," Aria said, shaking her head. Mrs. Montgomery strode into the room and held out Aria's cell phone. "Why don't you call your friends?" she suggested, sitting on another of the many boxes in Aria's room. "They don't know we're back from Dad's sabbatical."

Aria dismissed this suggestion. Aria hadn't spoken to any of her old friends since before the big move to Iceland. She had changed so much since those last few tearful phone calls about Alison, and Aria didn't know how to even approach them at this point. After spending so much time overseas and falling in love with the atmosphere in Europe, coming back to Rosewood felt like a setback. Rosewood didn't feel like Rosewood anymore. "On the news, they're calling it the anniversary of Alison's disappearance. Like it's a party or something," Aria said.

Mrs. Montgomery sighed. Everyone in Rosewood had seen the news broadcast that morning. A year to the day Rosewood got its biggest news story ever, big enough to even be talked about on the major news stations instead of just the local ones. For exactly a year, anybody who could had been looking for the missing girl, but no one cared more than her family and the four girls who had been with her that night. "Why don't you give them a call?" Mrs. Montgomery suggested once again. Aria rolled her eyes. "You five were inseparable. Those feelings don't just go away."

A loud thumping of footsteps approached Aria's room. Her brother, Mike, out of breath, stopped outside the room. "I need a ride to lacrosse," he announced before practically sprinting down the hallway.

Aria laughed as she took her cell phone from her mother. That was the kind of moment that could pull her out of almost any bad mood. She loved her family dearly. "I'll take him," she said.

Her brother was obsessed with lacrosse. All of the popular boys at Rosewood High played it, and Mike desperately wanted to be one of them, though he would never admit that to Aria. It was the same kind of desire that she had had to be included in Alison's circle of friends, one that she couldn't believe she had found her way into.