Vicious (18 page)

Aria usually had a cast-iron stomach when it came to motion sickness, but something about the way the bald, burly, khaki-jacketed prison worker drove the van to the Keystone State Correctional Facility sent her stomach tumbling all the way until they rolled through the prison gates. Maybe it was his jerky driving, or maybe it was the way he
smelled
like jerky—beef jerky, the scent of it literally leaking from his pores.

The car came to a halt, throwing Aria, Spencer, and Hanna forward roughly against their seat belts. The worker glared at them, got out, and yanked open the sliding back door to the van. “End of the line,” he ordered, then chuckled. “Welcome to your new home, bitches.”

Aria shuffled out of the van as best she could with the shackles around her ankles. Hanna and Spencer followed, neither of them saying a word. They hadn't spoken since the verdict had been passed down, actually. Cried into one another's shoulders, yes. Stared at one another in horror, definitely. But what was there really to
say
?

Guilty.
It was still too horrible to believe. Anything Rubens had said, any
logic
about what might have happened, any assurance that they'd appeal as soon as they could, went in one of Aria's ears and out the other. A panel of people had found them guilty. It made her feel lower than low. People actually thought she was a murderer. They'd listened to that ridiculous case and took Ali's side. She couldn't believe it.

The worker shoved them toward an open metal door. Another guard, a portly woman with short brown hair and a jowly face, waited for them, a metal basket in her outstretched hands. Aria glanced at the name on her badge.
BURROUGHS
. She'd read somewhere that people went only by last names in prison—first names were too personal. Or maybe they gave you too much of an identity. So in here, Aria would no longer be Aria, but simply Montgomery. No longer an individual, but a number. No longer an artist, but a killer.

“Turn over all your belongings,” Burroughs ordered Spencer, who was first in line. “Any jewelry, anything you got in your pockets, give it here.”

Spencer took off a pair of earrings and dropped them into the basket. Aria had nothing to fork over—she'd removed the Cartier bracelet Noel had given her earlier and handed it to Ella for safekeeping. She'd told her to give it back to the Kahn family, though even saying that had choked her up. She wished now that she hadn't chickened out of talking to him at Hanna and Mike's wedding. He'd just looked so . . . pissed. And he hadn't come to her trial. Then again, his own trial was probably soon. She wondered what he thought when he heard she'd been found guilty. Maybe he didn't care at all.

Suddenly Burroughs had pushed her up against the wall, Aria's chin banging against the cinder blocks. She felt Burroughs's hands move roughly up and down her body, prodding her armpits, cupping the space beneath her boobs, and doing a full sweep between her legs. Burroughs stood back and looked at the three of them with narrowed eyes. “Before we go inside, I don't want any funny business,” she growled. “No talking. No looking at the other inmates. No complaining. You'll do what you're told, and you won't make waves.”

Aria raised her hand. “When can I make a phone call?”

Burroughs snorted indignantly. “Honey, phone privileges are
earned
. And you certainly haven't done anything to deserve that yet.” She glared at the others. “And so are bathroom privileges, sleeping privileges, even eating privileges.”

“
Eating
privileges?” Spencer repeated, her voice cracking. “That doesn't seem humane.”

Whap.
The woman's hand flew out and struck Spencer's jaw so fast Aria almost didn't catch it. Spencer pitched to the right and made a tortured sound. Aria turned to her, wanting to comfort her, but feared the woman might hit her, too.

“I said
no complaining
,” Burroughs hissed. Then she pushed them down a long, dirty corridor that smelled like feet, sweat, and the grimiest Porta-Potti ever, until they came to an entrance to what looked like a bathroom, though it didn't have a door. “Time to shower,” she instructed, pushing them into the room.

Aria stared at the dingy tiles, the dripping faucets, the open toilet stalls. The place was teeming with other women—terrifying looking women with tattoos and vicious sneers and hunched, masculine postures, all strolling around totally naked and unashamed. A couple of them were shouting at each other as though on the verge of a brawl. A thin Asian girl was huddling in the corner, muttering something in a language Aria had never heard. One woman, who was plucking her eyebrows at the sink, had a scar running the length of her face. When she saw Aria staring, she broke into a wide, weird smile, tweezers held aloft. “
Hi
, there,” she teased.

Aria shrank into herself. Her feet wouldn't move. She couldn't shower here. She couldn't even
stand
here. How was she going to do this? How was she going to stay strong? She thought of what Rubens had told them after the verdict had been passed down: “It's going to be okay. We'll appeal. We still might be able to beat this.”

“And if we don't?” Hanna had sobbed.

Rubens had pulled his bottom lip into his mouth. “Well, then, you might be looking at twenty-five years. Twenty maybe, if you have good behavior. I've even seen some prisoners get out in fifteen.”

Fifteen years.
Aria would be thirty-three by then. Half her life would be gone. Noel wouldn't have waited for her anyway, even if they had stayed together.

Somehow, she made it into the shower, which had no curtain. She tried her best to cover herself up and scrub down at the same time, though the soap was slippery, didn't really suds up, and smelled like vomit. Burroughs loomed close by in the corridor, arms crossed over her chest, watching each of them for reasons Aria didn't really understand—maybe just to get them used to the humiliation. Just outside the stall, the prisoners circled like sharks. “New girls?” Aria heard one of them ask the guard. “They're awfully pretty,” said another. “They look like bitches,” someone else said. Aria leaned her head against the filthy wall tile and let the tears fall.

After about three minutes, the guard ducked in and turned off the water, ordering Aria out. “Clothes back on,” she barked. Aria, Spencer, and Hanna dried themselves off as best they could and quickly got into their orange jumpsuits. Aria's skin now smelled like the rank soap she'd used. Her wet hair dripped down her back, a feeling she'd always hated.

Then Burroughs motioned for them to follow her down yet another dark, windowless corridor—the whole place reminded Aria of one of those mazes scientists put rats in for psychological experiments—and past an open room of women's bunks. Prisoners prowled around the space aggressively. Hip-hop floated through the air. There was more yelling from a back corner, though a guard's voice rose up sharply, telling whoever it was to shut the hell up.

The guard took a turn down yet another hallway, but she took only Aria's hand, instructing another guard to lead Hanna and Spencer elsewhere. “Orientation for you, Montgomery. D'Angelo, send Hastings and Marin to their bunks.”

Aria gasped. “We can't all go together?”

Burroughs snickered. “Sorry, sweetheart.”

Aria met Spencer's eye. Spencer gave her a look that was so terrified, so trapped, Aria's own heart quickened. Hanna held up a hand in a wave. Something about it seemed finite, like they might never see one another again. The guards must have known how close they all were and that they'd allegedly committed the crime together. If their goal was to make everyone in here miserable, then of course they'd do everything they could to keep friends apart.

You can do this
, Aria told herself. But really, she wasn't so sure.

Burroughs held tight to Aria's forearm and shoved her into a small conference room at the end of the hall. It was peppered with a few folding chairs and was so hot and stifling Aria immediately started to sweat. She shut her eyes, trying to pretend that she was in a hot yoga class—minus the yoga—but it really didn't do any good.

A skinny blond woman with a dramatic overbite stood at the front of the room. “Sit,” she said to Aria, pointing at some empty chairs. A few seats were already occupied by other women in orange jumpsuits. Aria looked at each of them, wondering who on earth she could sit near without fearing for her life. There was an overweight Latina with a tattoo at her temple; a pale girl who was trembling a little, either in detox or on the verge of a psychotic break; a cluster of women all sitting together who, by their identical menacing expressions, looked like members of the same gang; and a tall black girl in glasses who was motionless at the back of the room, as watchful as a cat.

Aria looked at the black girl hopefully. She looked sane. Head down, Aria grabbed a chair next to her and folded her hands in her lap, wondering what would come next.

Olive, aka Overbite Lady, shut the door, which only increased the stuffy feeling inside the room. She walked over to the corner and clicked on a small desk fan, but then angled it only in her direction. “Welcome to the Keystone State Correctional Facility,” she said in a bland voice. “I'm here to tell you everything you need to know, including rules, the schedule, your employment assignment, cafeteria hours, medical concerns, special privileges, and what to do if you start to feel suicidal.”

Aria pressed her hands over her eyes. She
already
felt suicidal.

Olive went on for a while about various prison protocols, transforming the tiniest civil rights—having a few moments to see family every Saturday morning, being allowed to purchase things like hairbrushes or flip-flops from the commissary if adequate funds were provided, a regular half hour each day of outside time in the prison yard—seem like luxuries. Aria wished she could ask Olive if there was a library, or if she'd be able to purchase materials to paint, or if there was a psychologist on staff who might be able to walk her through how, exactly, she was going to get through this without losing her mind. But she'd already accepted the fact that she'd probably get none of those things.

She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, a bead of sweat rolling slowly down her forehead. The black girl with the glasses shifted next to her, and as Aria turned, she caught her eye. Aria dared a shy smile. “Hey,” she whispered. “Is this your first day, too?”

The girl nodded and smiled back. Aria's heart lifted—she seemed so normal. Maybe even a new friend. She'd need as many of them as she could get. Then the girl added, “But I've been here before, Aria.”

Aria blinked hard, feeling as though the positive image had suddenly turned to a photo negative. “H-how do you know my name?”

The girl edged closer to Aria until their bodies almost touched. “Because I've been waiting for you,” she whispered. “You're the girl who killed Alison DiLaurentis, right?”

Aria's jaw hung open. It took too long for her to find the words to respond. “N-no,” she said, her voice trembling. “I didn't kill her. The verdict was wrong.”

The girl faced forward again, her smile now knowing and bitter. “Yeah, you did. And we all know it. She's a hero to some of us, you know. She's what keeps us going.”

Every cell in Aria's body started to quiver. She wanted to leap up and tear away from this girl, but she was almost too stricken to move.
She's what keeps us going.
The girl's chin was held high, her expression certain and righteous. She believed what she was saying about Ali—believed in Ali herself. And then, when Aria looked down, she noticed a scabby, black tattoo on the inside of the girl's wrist. It was of a single letter:
A.

Aria's blood ran cold. She instinctively patted her pockets for her cell phone, but of course there was nothing there. But if she'd had her phone on her, she would have texted her friends immediately.
SOS.
There was an Ali Cat—
in prison.

All at once, Aria revised her prognosis in here. It would be a miracle if she survived the next fifteen years. She might not even survive until tomorrow.

Monday afternoon, Spencer hunched on her hands and knees on the floor of the women's bathroom, a sponge surely teeming with toxic mold in her hands and a bucket of filthy, rancid-smelling water next to her. Trying not to breathe, she plunged the sponge into the water and then slopped it onto the floor, making slow, even circles. She even threw in a few intense, centering, yoga fire-breaths that had always helped her before. But after breath number three, she heard someone snickering above her and looked up.

A scrawny-looking girl with olive skin and an eye patch leaned on the sink, smiling at Spencer with crooked, rotted teeth. “Little rich bitch can't handle bathroom duty, huh?”

“I'm fine,” Spencer answered. She winced, wishing she hadn't said anything. She remembered from Angela's book that the key was
not
to engage with the other prisoners—it was a sign of weakness. And this girl, whose name was Meyers-Lopez, had been following Spencer around all morning, trying to get a rise out of her.

Meyers-Lopez hiked herself up onto the sink. “I bet you never thought you'd come here,” she hissed. “I bet you thought you'd get away with it. She told me all about you, you know. She told me how much of a tight-ass you were. How much of a spoiled bitch.”

Spencer winced and made bigger circles with her sponge.
Please let a guard walk in right now, please let a guard walk in right now
, she willed. This was the most terrifying part about prison so far. Not the fact that women argued violently well into the night, as Spencer had experienced yesterday evening, logging a total of forty-five minutes of sleep. Not the fact that the food was the lowest-grade possible and infested with all sorts of bacteria—she'd been terrified to choke down a waffle this morning for fear she'd go into botulism-related convulsions immediately. Not that she hadn't seen Aria or Hanna even
once
, or that she'd probably have to live the next thirty years sleeping next to someone whose nickname was Miss Vicious, as she had last night, the woman so haunted-looking that Spencer had been sure she'd wake this morning with bruises all over her body.

No. It was that several inmates had come up to Spencer in the past twenty-four hours and mentioned how they worshipped at the high church of Alison DiLaurentis. How they'd claimed she'd
spoken
to them,
told
them about Spencer and the others—and who knew? Maybe Ali had. Whatever the case, these women were most definitely Ali's minions, and they'd threatened Spencer that soon, they would get their revenge.

Which meant . . .
what
? They were going to kick her ass?
Kill
her?

She scrubbed vigorously, ignoring Meyers-Lopez's hateful stare. It made perfect sense. Not only had Ali constructed a foolproof plan to get them convicted—Spencer was pretty sure Ali had paid off some of the jurors—but she'd also planted some Ali Cats inside the prison to make sure the next few decades of Spencer's life were miserable. And were the Ali Cats communicating with Ali, too, on the outside? Could that, in some way, prove Ali was alive?
Yeah, right
, she thought as the dirty water lapped against the bottom of the sink. She'd never be able to prove it. Ali and her minions were way smarter than that.

She took the sponge into one of the stalls. The door banged shortly after, and when Spencer emerged from the stall, the bathroom was empty. She smiled, feeling like she'd won a tiny victory. Meyers-Lopez must have gotten tired of Spencer and left.

She walked over to the bucket, but when she plunged the sponge into the water, her fingers hit something slimy and firm. She wheeled back. Something black floated on top of the water. Then she noticed a tiny paw, a whisker, a
snout.
Spencer screamed. It was a dead rat.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said, staring at her outstretched hand. She'd just touched a dead rat.
She'd just touched a dead rat.
She was probably going to get the plague. From somewhere in the hall, she swore she could hear Meyers-Lopez laughing.

“Hastings?”

Spencer whipped around. Burroughs, the guard who'd showed them in yesterday, now stood in the doorway. For a moment, Spencer thought she was going to blame
her
for the dead rat. “I need you to come with me,” the guard grumbled.

“F-for what?” Spencer dared to ask.

The lines in Burroughs's forehead furrowed even deeper. “Your lawyer's here, okay? And he wants to talk to you.”

Spencer stared at her.
Her lawyer?
What could Rubens possibly have to say? Was he ready to appeal already?

“Well, come on!” Burroughs bellowed.

Head down, Spencer hurried out of the bathroom to Burroughs's side. They walked down a series of hallways until they got to the rooms where prisoners met with their attorneys. Burroughs unlocked the last door on the right and pushed it open. Rubens was standing, facing the barred window. Aria and Hanna were sitting at the table, looking just about as shell-shocked as Spencer was.

Spencer gazed between all of them. “What's going on?” she asked, feeling circumspect.

Rubens's expression was hard to read. He clasped his hands together. “You girls are coming with me.”

Spencer frowned. “Where?”

“To the courthouse.”

Hanna looked worried. “
Why
?”

Rubens glanced back and forth worriedly. A couple of inmates loitered outside, trying to look busy. “I can't get into it here,” he said cagily. “You just need to come, okay?
Now
.”

A series of guards shoved them down the hallway past the cafeteria and to the double doors that led to the outside. Spencer huddled close to her friends, thrilled to see them again, even if it was for something so mysterious. “What do you think is happening?” she whispered.

“Maybe we're being moved,” Aria said. Her expression darkened. “God, I bet that's it. We're being moved to somewhere even
worse.
”

Hanna swallowed hard. “There can't be anywhere worse than this. They have me working in the cafeteria with this woman who has already decided she hates me. She trapped me in the walk-in refrigerator twice.” She looked around, as though the woman was listening. “And then, when I came out? She made fun of my cold, pointy nipples. She made
everyone
in the kitchen look at them.”

Aria squeezed Hanna's hand. “I'm in laundry, and I think one of the other girls replaced the water in my bottle with bleach yesterday. Thank God I didn't drink it.”

Spencer swallowed hard, thinking about her experience with the rat. “Did those women mention Ali?”

Aria's eyes widened. “The girl I met in orientation did.”

“The kitchen bitch didn't, but I think my cellmate knows about Ali,” Hanna whispered. She glanced back at the prison doors. “She
looks
totally normal, and she's new like us, but she has an
A
tattoo on the inside of her wrist and she already knew my name.”

Aria's eyes widened. “I might have met the same girl. She's definitely an Ali Cat.”

Hanna shut her eyes and moaned. “Did you know she's a knitter? She can legally have knitting needles in her bunk. I was so afraid last night that I was going to . . .” She made a stabbing motion with her arm.

Burroughs wheeled around and glared at them. “No talking!”

They were outdoors by then. The sun on Spencer's face felt delicious, but she couldn't relish it for very long because the guards were shoving them into a waiting van. Hanna and Aria tumbled in after her, and the same guy who'd escorted them to the prison manned the front seat. Rubens climbed into the passenger side. Spencer stared at the back of his head, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. What was so important that they were being led back to the courthouse? Was the jury going to sentence them to immediate
death
?

After a long, almost intolerable silence, the courthouse appeared on the hill. The van rattled into the parking lot and pulled up to the curb. Spencer peered out the window. “Why are there press people here?” she asked.

The lawyer jumped out of his seat and slid open the doors. “Let's go,” he said roughly.

Hanna climbed out, almost tripping over her ankle chains. “Are we going to be ambushed with something? You have an obligation to tell us, you know.”

“Y-yeah,” Aria said shakily. “If this is bad, you have to let us know now.”

But the reporters had already descended upon Rubens and were bombarding him with questions. “What's going on in there?” they shouted. “Why was everyone called back to court?” “What's happened?”

“No comment, no comment,” Rubens said, gripping Spencer's hand hard and pulling her up the steps. The other girls followed. Spencer was acutely aware of all the flashes going off, getting pictures of her in her orange jumpsuit and messy hair and, most likely, filthy-sweaty-grimy face. But she was far too curious about what was happening inside to worry. Guards whisked her through the metal detector, and soon enough she was standing just outside the courtroom.

Rubens stood in front of them, his hand on the doorknob. There was a jittery expression on his face, but Spencer couldn't tell if it was good or bad. “Okay, ladies,” he said breathlessly. “Brace yourselves.”

“For
what
?” Hanna squeaked.

The door swung open, and several people who were already in the courtroom, including the judge, swiveled around and clapped eyes on them. Then Hanna gasped. Aria made a small breathy sound that was a cross between a hiccup and a sob. A tall, familiar girl stood at the front of the courtroom. It was a girl Spencer had thought she'd never see again. A girl she'd thought about far too many times, who'd appeared in far too many dreams, who'd haunted her endlessly since she vanished.

“E-Emily?” Spencer managed to say, shakily pointing at the girl at the front of the courtroom. She looked at Rubens.

He smiled. “I just got the call an hour ago. She was escorted here this morning.”

Spencer looked again. Tears filled Emily's eyes. She broke into a wide, careful smile. “H-hey,” she said. And it was, indeed, Emily's voice. Emily's
everything.

She was alive.