Sofia heads straight home after school, excited for the home-made pizza her aunt prepared for cooking tonight, she walks into her room and changes into her sleeping clothes for comfort and goes to head downstairs to the kitchen when her phone rings. She pauses and looks at the message, eyebrows furrowing at what she reads.
Did you miss me?
-A
Unsure what to think, she ignores it. But in the back of her mind she can't help but think 'Ali?' She quickly gets to work sorting out the movies that her and Lizzie will watch when she gets home and then cleans up the kitchen from the morning breakfast since they didn't have time to before they left. By the time she's don't it's about 5pm so she decides to spend some time getting ahead of her schoolwork and then she'll put the pizza in the oven in about 40 minutes so it's ready for 6pm which is when Lizzie should be home.
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Emily is walking on the street alone when she sees an ambulance heading towards the old DiLaurentis house, she follows it desperately. She calls out to Maya when she sees her and Maya looks at her sympathetically and worried. "What's going on?" Emily asks the girl in front of her. "They found your friend." Emily smiles excited and relieved "I knew she was back. Is she inside?"
She moves to head in when Maya stops her and looks somewhere to the side, she follows her line of sight and sees Sofia with tears in her eyes. Sofia looks at Emily heartbroken "They found Alison's body" she tells her shakily. It's at that moment that they put the filled body bag onto a stretcher to take it away. Watching from the other end of the street are Spencer and Aria.
"I heard the cops took Hanna to the police station today." Aria begins the conversation nervously, Spencer catches on to what she left unsaid. "You don't think she'd ever talk about..." she is unable to finish when the girl herself appears next to them cutting her off "the Jenna thing? We made a promise." The three girls stand there in a row not speaking any further of it.
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A newscaster reports to the biggest news rosewood has probably ever had "Thank you... the discovery of her body rocked this community, and today, hundreds of mourners gather To say goodbye to Alison dilaurentis." Sofia is almost jealous of how unemotional he is towards the situation, he has no attachment and therefore is only burdened by sympathy for those who do. The burden she feels is much greater. It was only recently she was given hope that her best friend might still be alive only to be slapped in the face by a cruel reality.
Alison is dead. Her best friend is dead. Gone forever, one of the most important people in her life and she will never get to see her again. That was her sister. She holds back tears and grips Lizzie's hand tightly, they enter the church and Sofia immediately spots Mrs DiLaurentis, Alison's mother Jessica. "Jessica." Lizzie calls out to the woman, she turns to seem them and a pained smile appears. "Sofia, come here." The two hug tightly and Jessica directs them both to the front row to sit.
Lizzie sits to the right, leaving Sofia to sit with the girls who are on the left. Sofia is stood staring at the coffin when a hand takes her, she looks over to see it was Hanna's. They smile at her and she takes her place next to them. "Poor Ali." Emily says in a glum tone. "Can you believe what a scene this is?" Hanna adds, kicking off a conversation between them all. "Alison would have love it." Aria states, Spencer followed her words "popular in life and death."
Seeing the look on Emily's face hanna gives her her flask of alcohol "no thanks, I don't -" Emily refuses it but Hanna interrupts her "today, I think you do." Arias phone ring and all the girls look at her almost holding their breaths in anticipation to find out who it is. "Anyone we know?" Sofia asks her "no, it's just my mom sending me a text." Aria tells them, then she realizes that all of them reacted the same way "Emily and I aren't the only ones who got messages from 'A' , are we?"
Spencer turns around "oh, my god it's Jenna." They all quickly turn to get a look and see Jenna, wearing black sunglasses, being led to a seat further back. Mrs. DiLaurentis sits down next to Sofia and looks at them confused. "Did you see that Jenna Marshall was here? I didn't realize that she and Ali were friends." She says with a frown on her face. "They weren't." Sofia confirms.
The ceremony is over and all the girls are walking out of the church together when a voice calls their names "Emily, Spencer, Aria, Hanna and Sofia." They stops and look at the man infront of them "do we know you?" Spencer asks him "I'm detective Wilden. I understand you were all good friends with the victim." He sounds almost accusing which is ridiculous to them. "Yeah we were." Aria nods, though he already knew the answer. "I'm gonna need to talk to each one of you."
"We talked to the police when Alison went missing." Spencer informs him, none of them want to have to do it again. "And I intend to go over every one of your statements. This is no longer a missing persons investigation. It's a murder. Rest assured, I will find out what happened that summer." He leaves without another word.
"Do you think he knows about?" Aria panics, hanna shuts her thoughts down "No, how could he?" All of of their phones ring and they look at the message they all just received "oh, my god!" "It's from-" "I got one too" they all freak out. "I'm still here, bitches" Spencer reads, they all finish "and I know everything. A."
The girls now sit at a table with drinks in the Apple Rosegrille. "Why was Jenna there?" Aria asks wondering if any of them actually knew "I guess she's back." Spencer huffs. "That cop acted like we were suspects or something." Hanna whines. "Do you think we looked guilty?" Emily wonders, fear on her face even though they all know they didn't do it. "Why would we look guilty, em? We haven't done anything wrong." Sofia reminds them.
"Except lie about the Jenna thing." Hanna reminds them. "We promised we'd never bring up the Jenna thing again, remember?" Spencer slightly scolds the blonde girl "it never happened." Aria looks at Spencer in question "Have you found a way to forget? I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night!" Sofia gives her a look "Aria! It was an accident." Hanna pours some alcohol from her flask into her drink and as she's about to pour some in Sofia's, she notices an old man looking at her judgementally. She sweetly smiles "it's medicinal." She explains "cramps!"
"I don't get it. How does A know something about me only Alison knew." Emily says to them, Aria looks up in thought "Alison knew all of our secrets but.. we never knew any of hers." Sofia takes a sip of her drink, looking away slightly and Spencer murmurs "I knew some." All of the girls look at her, aria urges her to say more "go on"
When Spencer doesn't say anything Hanna raises her eyebrows "talk." Now Sofia is curious about what secret Spencer knows. "I can't," Spencer says.
Aria complains that Spencer can't drop a bombs like that and then clam up "she'd so kill me if I told you." Hanna gives her a 'are you dumb' look. "she's dead." Hanna states bluntly to Spencer, cause Emily to look down in sadness and pushing Spencer to spill "Ali was seeing someone that summer." Spencer finally reveals, Sofia isn't surprised, she already knew. Emily looks up "I knew she was keeping something from me!" She backtracks "from us."
"Well why didn't she want us to know?" Aria asks and Spencer shakes her head slightly, continuing "he was an older boy and he had a girlfriend." Emily speak up asking who it was but Spencer reveals she doesn't know "she never told me his name." Hanna huffs almost rolling her eyes in complaint "okay, that's only half a secret." Spencer tilts her head "it's more than you ever got from her."
"How is it that Ali told us nothing and we told her everything?" Aria says in disbelief looking around at them all. "Because she made us feel like we were part of something special." Emily responds sweetly, Hanna smiles at her "we were." Sofia sighs "I miss that" Spencer and Aria admit they do too. "I miss Ali" Emily says placing with the bracelet on her wrist which Hanna notices "I can't believe you still wear that."
"Ali still wears hers," Emily defends then corrects herself "Wore." There's a slight pause until Spencer speaks up "When Ali didn't come home that night, I knew something terrible must have happened, but there was always some part of me that imagined someday she'd just show up." The girls all agree, remembering how naive they were to think Alison would come back safe and sound with a tan, more secrets and a new mysterious boyfriend.
"Yeah. I used to think that maybe she'd just...run off with some guy." Aria pitches in, Emily and Hanna adding to the little tale
"She was laying on a beach somewhere." Hanna smiles "Or getting a tan out by the pool with that hot lifeguard." They all laugh except for Sofia "Ohh. Yeah...What was his name?" Says Aria, none of them actually remember though, what did it matter? Hanna gushes dramatically "who cares? "Save me!""
"I wish I could have been that naive..." Sofia mutters but they hear the sad words anyway and stop laughing. Realising she brought the mood down makes Sofia feel bad but it's true and she can't sit here laughing about the good times when her best friend was murdered. She gets up and leaves, saying a quiet goodbye and heading home. Aria, Hanna, Emily and Spencer discreetly leave the grille shortly after when Jenna enters, her tapping cane like the thundering bang of a gavel in court to them.
Loud music plays at a typical teenage party - drinks, dancing and egotistical popular guys hitting on desperate girls and a surprise. Two best friends walk in to the party laughing, Alison and Sofia aka the duo everyone wants to be or be with. "You totally crushed his ego Sof, I'm so proud of you!" Alison smirks, she would have hated for her Sofia Jade to accept a date from a guy who is clearly not good enough for her. "Well Ali you know I would never ignore you're preach of "never lower your standards for a guy", his pants were past the waistband of his jeans ew."
"I'm so glad you have taste, I worry for the other girls - I mean did you know Hanna was crushing on Mike? As in Aria's little brother!" Alison gossips, the news makes Sofia gasp. I mean seriously? Hanna and Mike?! "Speaking of taste, I have something for you." Alison pulls a drawing from her purse of a sun and moon, Sofia take it, beaming with curiosity "what's this?" The blonde counterpart of the best friends smiles brightly "our tattoo design, the reason I chose this party - this guy I know wants to be a tattoo artist and is doing some here tonight. It's all paid for."