GOOD LIAR ━━ pretty little liars

1.22

"You're in this one too," Aria said, spying Halle in the DiLaurentis kitchen with a plastic cup in her hands. The camera went in on her, gliding down her soft skin, exposed slight by the low-cut top, until a body stepped in front of the camera. Whether it was an accident or projection, none of them would know because the screen went black and when it a visual came on again, Halle was gone.

"You don't know who could have taken these?" Emily asked Halle seriously, looking over the the curly-haired girl stood at the foot of the bed.

"I was stoned, Em, I don't remember," Halle tried to explain it away. "I was trashed most of that summer. I don't even remember the parties, how am I supposed to know if someone had a camera?"

Halle certainly didn't notice anyone with a camera. She was always with Jason at those big parties. She remembered him with a video-camera that time after the frat-party and sometimes he took photographs, but that was all. Confidently, Halle knew she couldn't bring up Jason; they jumped the gun when it came to blame and he was an easy target. Plus, if she told her friends that truth, they'd never trust her again.

"You have to remember something," Emily said. "You were talking with the person behind the camera in one of them."

Stumbling around, Halle said the first lie that came to her head. "It could be Ali!" she said loudly, throwing her hand out. "I mean, you found the drive in her old lunchbox, in a container she had the only key to, and the key was hidden a gift she gave you, Em. They could easily be her videos."

"Why would she video herself?" Hanna asked, baffled at the suggestion.

"She was obsessed with herself, she probably hired someone to do the ones she's in," Halle reasoned. "She knew everyone's secrets, this is how."

"These aren't Alison's videos, she's the star," said Spencer, her sat up against the headrest of Halle's bed, arms crossed over her body. "Besides, not even you would bad-mouth Alison to her face."

"And, well, you know..." Hanna cocked her head to the side and mimicked taking off her shirt.

"Exactly," Spencer said. "Alison found them and wanted them safe, that's why she had the container and gave Emily the key."

Aria clicked onto another video, hoping for another clue. This time Halle was nowhere to be seen. The camera focused in on a downstairs window of a house, zooming further into the home.

Squinting her eyes, Hanna asked, "Is that Jenna?"

"You're late."

It was Jenna. Before the sunglasses. Before she was blind. Before Alison. Back last summer when everything was somewhat normal for the girls —when there was no A.

"Who's she talking to?" asked Aria.

Jenna Marshall smirked a sickly one. She turned around and the person behind her was revealed.

Spencer sat up in a flash. "Toby," she said softly, and she appeared to look just as interested in this as she was the first. Spencer scooted herself closer to the laptop, eyes firmly on the screen, invested in the videos once more.

"It's not right," Toby said to Jenna.

But Jenna had snaked her arms up and around a tense-looking Toby's neck. "There's nothing wrong about us, Toby," she said, "we're not really related." Slowly, she curled her body around her as if she was a snake constricting her prey within her grasp.