Rachel and the girls sat around a table at the Grille. Some of them had food and some just had drinks. Rachel sipped on a lemon water with spoonfuls of sugar inside; it was free, which was perfect. She barely had enough money to eat and pay rent, let alone pay for something as insignificant as a drink.
"Why was Jenna there?" Aria asked, talking about the funeral.
"I guess she's back." Spencer said.
"That cop acted like we were suspects or something." Hanna mentioned.
"Do you think we looked guilty?" Emily asked.
"Why would we? We haven't done anything wrong." Rachel assured her.
"Except lie about the Jenna thing." Hanna added.
"We promised we'd never bring up the Jenna thing again, remember? It never happened." Spencer muttered to them. They always got scared when mentioning Jenna.
"Have you found a way to forget? I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night." Aria said, eyebrows raised.
"Aria, it was an accident." Spencer affirmed.
Hanna poured alcohol into her flask, assuring an onlooker that it was "medicinal" and for "cramps". Rachel chuckled at her excuse.
"I don't get it. How does 'A' know something about me that only Alison knew?" Emily questioned.
"Ali knew all of our secrets, but we never knew any of hers." Aria stated. She was completely right. Rachel could barely name anything that was anything close to a secret about Alison.
"I knew some." Spencer said. The girls encouraged her to tell them, but Spencer chickened out. "I can't. Alison would kill me if she found out I told anyone."
"She's dead!" Hanna exclaimed. Spencer sighed and decided to talk.
"Ali was seeing someone that summer." Spencer explained, "It was an older boy and he had a girlfriend, so she didn't want anyone to know."
"Who was it?" Emily asked.
"She never told me his name." Spencer explained.
"That's only half the secret." Hanna complained.
"It's more than you ever got from her." Hanna didn't argue back, so Spencer was right.
"How is that Ali told us nothing, and we told her everything?" Aria questioned.
"Because she made us feel like we were part of something special." Emily said.
"We were." Rachel reminded them, "I miss those times." All of the girls agreed with that.
Emily played with her bracelet, the one with her name on it. All of the girls had matching ones. "I can't believe you still wear that." Hanna commented.
"Ali still wears hers. Wore." Emily corrected herself.
The girls continued their conversation, talking about what they wished Ali was doing instead of spending her time six feet under. At the beach, flirting with hot guys, shopping in the biggest malls in America— anything other than their current reality.
They were interrupted by the sound of the Grille door opening. Usually, that would've been nothing of importance, but who walked in was very important.
Jenna walked inside, her cane tapping against the floor so she could tell where she was walking. The five girls stared at her as she sat down at the bar, before all silently agreeing to leave. Rachel didn't want her to hear any of their voices, nor did she want to look at her.
She felt too bad about what they had caused.
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Rachel sat at the small table, feeding Leo his bottle as she sipped at her coffee. She had to get through the day somehow. She smiled down at the boy and listened to the morning news. Despite being 16, she felt like she was 30.
"In other news, Rosewood detective Darren Wilden held a press conference this morning." Rachel heard the main reporter say. Rachel's attention went to the small TV sitting on the counter.
"The coroner did release his findings this morning, and although Alison Di Laurentis' body did show signs of a blunt-force head trauma, the cause of her death was suffocation." He explained, reporters eating up his every word.
Rachel's throat felt like it was closing up, so she quickly shut off the TV. Her mind made the excuse that she didn't want Leo to hear what was being said.
Once Leo had finished his bottle, Rachel put him into his carrier. She always felt awful about leaving him with her aunt all day while she was at school.
"Come on, sweetie." She mumbled, picking up his carrier and bag.
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Rachel shut her locker, locking it once more. She smiled at Emily, who had just said goodbye to her boyfriend, Ben.
"How's it going with Ben?" She asked Emily.
"It's... going good." Emily said with a slight hesitation in her tone. Rachel wanted to question it, but decided it wasn't her place.
Emily was about to say something else, but a school announcement began to play on the intercom. "Will the following students please come to the office; Emily Fields, Aria Montgomery, Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, and Rachel Garcia."
Emily and Rachel looked at each other, both as confused as the other. Aria, Hanna, and Spencer appeared from different parts of the school. Before they could start walking, Aria's phone beeped.
"Wait." Aria made them stop, "It's from 'A'."
Rachel looked at the message. "Dead girls walking."
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The five girls sat uncomfortably at the couch in the office, being interrogated by Detective Wilden. Rachel held Emily's hand in hers, noticing her nervousness.
"So, let's see. You thought you heard her scream?" Wilden questioned, reading the file.
"I-I said that, yeah." Spencer replied.
"And when you five woke up in the barn, Alison was gone, and so was Spencer." Wilden continued.
"Yes, I woke up before them, and I realized that Ali was missing, so..." Spencer explained.
"So you went looking for her." Wilden finished for her. Spencer nodded. "I got that. So, what's up? Was this a slumber party, or...?"
"Is this an interrogation?" Rachel asked, "Because I'm pretty sure you have to get our parents consent for that."
Wilden looked over at the brunette. "No, it's just a routine follow-up." He said, "Why did you guys all fall asleep?"
"I guess we were tired." Aria said, not sure how to answer such a open question.
"Tired? Really." Wilden said, clearly doubting them. "Is that how you remember it, Hanna?"
Hanna looked up at Wilden and nodded. "Yeah."
"Yeah, you guys were tired." Wilden said, repeating back the obvious information.
"Look, we've told you everything we know, just like we did on the night she went missing." Spencer explained.
Rachel was extremely wary of Wilden. He wouldn't be going over the information again unless he suspected them. He wanted to find holes in their story, suspicious parts he could pick apart. Rachel didn't like that.
"I know, and you see, the thing is, it's almost exactly what you said last year— Almost like it was rehearsed." Wilden accused. Rachel glared at him.
"Like Spencer said, we've told you everything we know." Aria assured him.
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"He knows we're lying." Aria said, completely contradicting what she said in the office.
"Lying isn't a crime." Hanna said, taking a bite of her muffin.
"It is when you're giving false statements to the police. It's called obstruction of justice." Spencer explained.
"Oh, please! We lied about drinking. But the truth that matters is we don't know anything about what happened to Ali that night." Hanna defended.
"We also know about somebody who might have wanted to hurt her." Spencer added.
"We should have told the police the truth about Jenna's accident the night it happened." Emily said regretfully.
"Rachel and I wanted to, remember?" Hanna said. Rachel nodded in agreement.
"We had a chance to do more than just tell the truth. We had a chance to stop Ali." Aria said.
Spencer leaned closer to all of them. "But we didn't. And telling the police now about what happened to Jenna Isn't going to make her see again. It'll just ruin our lives."
Spencer was usually the most calm and collected of the group, as well as most logical. The group trusted her to lead them to do the right thing, despite Alison being the "leader" of their group.
The familiar sound of a cane tapping was heard throughout the cafeteria. They turned around to see Jenna making her way around with a lunch tray in hand.
"Oh, my god, she's back in school too?" Hanna cursed. Aria slowly stood up and walked towards Jenna, who was having trouble walking around in such a crowded area.
Rachel's eyes widened. There was no way Aria was going to offer her a seat with them, right? Jenna didn't even know they were there, why poke the bear when the bears distracted?
But despite Rachel's silent wishes, Aria made her way back with Jenna. "So you're gonna be between Hanna and Emily, and Spencer and Rachel are across from you."
Rachel bit her lip nervously, looking around at the other girls, who looked at nervous as she did.
"So, this would be Alison's seat, right?" Jenna asked, setting her tray down.
"Uh, no, we sat at another table." Rachel explained.
"You know, she came to visit me in the hospital after the accident." Jenna said. Rachel's eyes widened once more.
"Alison did?" Spencer asked.
"Mhm. Everyone misunderstood Alison, but I knew exactly who she was." Jenna said simply.
"When did you get back, Jenna?" Spencer asked, "We heard you were in Philadelphia, in a school for the... visually impaired." She seemed hesitant to say the word blind, at a risk of being rude.
"You can say blind, Spencer." Jenna smiled, "It's okay, it's not a dirty word."
The silence at the table was deafening. Nobody knew what to say or even what to do. While Jenna drank her orange juice, nobody else touched their food.
"Wow, it's so quiet." Jenna commented, "You guys used to be the fun table. What happened to you guys?"
Just being around Jenna forced Rachel to remember exactly what they had done. Exactly how they ruined her life.
The fireworks popped and shrieked in the sky, creating beautiful patterns of colour in the sky. But the six girls didn't have the time to watch them, they had a mission. Well, Alison did.
Rachel trudged along with the five girls, Alison in the lead showing them where to go. She had a bad feeling about this. She understood getting revenge on the peeping Tom, Toby Cavanaugh, but Alison didn't even want to report him to the police.
"Are we sure he's not in there?" Rachel asked.
"He's not, okay?" Alison assured her, "You've got the lighter, right, Rach?" Rachel nodded.
"Let's wait a second..." Emily said. Alison quickly turned to her.
"What, Emily?!" She snapped.
"I don't wanna do this." Emily said, rubbing her arms.
"Fine, go back. You're on your own then." Alison said. That was something Alison always did— she made you feel completely on your own if you didn't agree.
"Okay, maybe Emily's right." Aria said, "We should just call the cops. They'll take care of it."
"Where's the fun in that? Girls, Toby Cavanaugh is a freak, and we need to teach him a lesson." Alison explained, "If he thinks he can come and spy on us while we're in your bedroom, Emily, he needs to know that his little domain Is no longer a safe little hideout. Who knows what he does in there all day, that little freak."
"Are you sure it was Toby?" Spencer asked.
"Yes! And it's a stink bomb for fucks sake!" Alison exclaimed, "We're not nuking the place. Give me the lighter."
Rachel hesitantly handed Alison the lighter and she lit the end of the stink bomb, carefully putting it inside Toby's place. All of a sudden, the place lit on fire and practically exploded in front of their eyes.
"Ali, what did you do?!" Spencer yelled.
"Come on, let's get out of here." Alison said. When nobody moved, she snapped at them. "Let's go!"
Rachel's thoughts were interrupted by all of the girls phones beeping. They all hesitated to answer, so Jenna picked up Rachel's phone and held it out to her.
"Aren't you gonna get that?" She asked. Rachel slowly took her phone and read the message with the others. Her heart dropped to her stomach.
If only she could see how guilty you all look.
-A
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Both Aria and Rachel decided to go out for dinner together, to catch up. Both girls left Rosewood, so they hadn't seen each other in a year. It wasn't such a bad idea to catch up.
Once they walked inside, they noticed Spencer sitting with her father, Peter. Spencer noticed them too, because she excused herself and came over to them.
"Hey, I was gonna text you guys later." Spencer said, "How weird was that lunch?"
"On a scale from one to ten, I'd say an eleven." Aria replied.
"It almost breaks the scale." Rachel added. Just as they were about to talk more, two more people entered the restaurant. This time, it was Rachel's worst nightmare come true.
Wren and Melissa. Rachel hadn't seen Wren since... well, the night Leo was conceived. She had no interest or need to see him, but here he was.
"Is that the new fiancée?" Aria asked, "Is he as uptight as Melissa?"
Rachel tried to hide her shock. Fiancée? God, it was much, much worse than she thought. A boyfriend was one thing, but a fiancée? That was a whole new level of low for Rachel.
"No one's as uptight as Melissa." Spencer joked. The three chuckled before Spencer excused herself to sit back with her family.
Rachel turned to Aria, trying to get her mind off of Wren. "How do you feel about milkshakes?"
"I feel great about them." Aria said with a smile, sitting down with Rachel at the bar stools, "Let's get some. Plus fries; they're really good here."
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Rachel sat in the Grille, not eating, but instead studying. She hadn't had much time for it, and with tests coming up, she really had to buckle down.
She sipped on a free coffee and read over her notes and flash cards, highlighting the important stuff.
"Rachel?" She heard the familiar British accent and slowly looked to see Wren. She put down her pen and swallowed harshly.
"Wren. Hi." She said simply, "You can sit, if you'd like."
Wren nodded and sat across from her, looking directly at her. "So, how have things been with you?"
"They've been fine." Rachel replied, "How about you? I heard from Spencer you're getting married."
Wren chuckled in spite of himself. "I'm not so confident about that now." Wren said, "Melissa and I had an... argument of sorts."
Rachel turned her head slightly. "Did something happen?" She couldn't help but ask.
"Something like that." Wren confirmed, "I actually wanted to talk to you, about that night."
Rachel panicked. She had thought out this conversation dozens of times, each of them not going well. She quickly stood up with her bag. "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this."
"Wait-" Wren began to say, but was cut short.
"I hope you and Melissa make up and you live a wonderful life together." Rachel rambled as she shoved her belongings in her bag, "Goodnight!"
Ignoring Wren's pleas for her to stop, she left the Grille as quickly as possible. She got into her car and put her bag down, before immediately bursting out into sobs. She gripped the steering wheel as tears streamed down her face.
She was a liar, a cheat, a slut, every word you could use to describe the worst person alive. She was disgusting.
She stayed like that for a while. Whether it was hours or minutes, she wasn't sure. Rachel opened the mirror above her head to dry her face, but gasped when she saw what was written on it.
In blood red was the words "slut" and "liar" all over the mirror. The most damning thing was the small 'A' below the words. It made Rachel realize something.
'A' was a lot more than just texts. They had literally broken into her car to write that.
Rachel closed the mirror harshly and sighed heavily. The rain began to pour outside, leaving her no option but to stay inside the car. She found herself fumbling with her bracelet, her index finger brushing the white letters that read "Rachel".
Alison always said with these bracelets, they'd be friends forever. In life and in death.