Warning: Rated M for underage drinking, drug use, sexual content, and adult language.

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Chapter 1 - If Being Wrong's A Crime, I'm Serving Forever

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I don't remember when it started, but the party was in full swing. There were people everywhere. In every corner, every room, in the pool, on the roof…how did they even get up there? It was a stray thought, one that fled my mind quickly as I continued to search for whatever I had gotten up to look for.

The place was trashed, that much was evident. Empty cans littered the floors, the stereo produced more static than music ever and beer dripped from it, mud was tracked all throughout the house on the nice white floors. Not my house, not my problem, but I felt bad for the parents that would come home to this mess in the morning.

"Emily!"

I was both relieved and disappointed to come across Hanna Marin standing in the upstairs bathroom doorway.

"Em!" She giggled, a cup in one hand and her phone in the other. "Em, come here. You have to see this shit. It's hilarious. Aria is puking her guts up, look."

Hanna pushed open the door that she had been guarding, giving me a full view of our friend Aria Montgomery tongue deep in a sophomore's mouth.

"Hanna!" Aria exclaimed, jumping off the sink counter to furiously shut the door in our faces.

"You could have warned me!" Hanna shouted at the door. She turned to me, rolling her eyes. "That's gross as hell."

I put on a fake smile as Hanna began rambling on about boys or something. I don't know; I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't that I didn't like Hanna. She was a wonderful person, very nice and friendly and outgoing and bubbly, and just everything that I really didn't want to be around at the moment. I made an excuse and escaped the one-sided conversation. I was done listening to other people's petty problems for one evening.

I know that sounds harsh, but eighteen years of always putting others first was finally catching up to me. As I rushed downstairs, I could I feel it. It was like a growing darkness in the pit of my stomach. It was pure anger and heartbreak. It was like I was rotting away from the inside. I felt sick and decided to find some fresh air. I needed to get away from these happy people, away from everyone's good time. I know it was selfish, but in that moment all I wanted was for everyone else to feel exactly the way I did. As I passed them, their cheerful smiles and their drunken greetings went unreturned.

With one foot already out the front door, I was stopped. This particular drunken greeting I could not ignore.

Spencer Hastings appeared in the doorway. "Em, hey, you're going to the store, right? Can you pick up some more soda? Maybe some more chips, too? I'm starving." She lowered her voice, her cheerful smile growing wider. "Toby's on his way. Do you think the master bedroom is free?"

"It might be." I lied. "You should go check on that, before it gets taken."

Her eyes lit up. "You're right. Maybe I can put a preemptive sock on the door."

I nodded. "That's a good idea."

"See you soon, don't forget the chips!" Spencer called out, shutting the door.

I sighed in relief, already feeling better as the cool night breeze hit me. Walking down the street, I realized that I was a lot drunker than I thought I had been, and that I had no idea where I was. I couldn't even remember whose house I had just been in. But I kept walking; it was only a matter of time before I found something familiar. Rosewood was only so big.

Approaching a stop sign, I paused for a moment to clear my head. The moon was full, the stars were out, not a cloud sight. I closed my eyes, wishing my thoughts could be as clear as the night sky. Abruptly, and I mean abruptly, I heard the screeching of tires and was knocked flat on my back. Gasping for the air that had been knocked out of me, I found myself unable to sit up on my own. A figure loomed over me, their silhouette hard to make out amongst the blurry stars in my vision.

"Are you okay?" The figure asked. Something was off about them. It was as if they were more annoyed than concerned.

I coughed, my head searing in pain as I did. I gritted my teeth against the pain.

"Hello, Emily Fields? Earth to Emily?" The figure crouched down and I could finally see who they were.

"Paige?" I coughed. "Why the fuck did you run me over?" I was more embarrassed than anything else. Of all the people in Rosewood that could have seen me struggling so hard to pull myself together, why did it have to be her?

"Uh." She paused, defensively shaking her head. "Well, maybe if you hadn't been just wandering around the sidewalk at night in dark clothing, I would have actually seen you before the turn."

"Why were you driving on a sidewalk?" I asked, refusing her offered hand. I sat up on my own, feeling nauseous as I did.

"Driving?" She looked to the bicycle beside us that still had a revolving wheel, then back to me. "Do you have like a concussion or something? Do you need to go to an Emergency Room?"

"I'm fine. Calm down, I'm fine." I swallowed hard, putting a steel trap over my emotions. There was no way in hell that I would give her the satisfaction of telling the whole swim team about how she saved my life on a street corner by carrying my poor, pathetic self to the hospital.

"You don't look fine." She argued as she stared straight into my eyes. Her gaze was so intense that it made me nervous, a reaction that I couldn't quite understand. I brushed off the feeling as just a product of the minor head trauma I had acquired. Paige narrowed her gaze and sniffed the breeze. "Are you drunk?"

Ignoring her question, I tried to stand up. Failing miserably, I fell back on to my butt again, a searing, throbbing pain igniting in my tail bone.

"Shit." I gasped, fighting back tears from the literal pain in my ass while being watched closely by the metaphorical pain in my ass.

Paige's expression was hard to read, so I chose to just not look at her anymore.

"Emily." She said my name softly, using a tone that I had never heard from her before. "Let me help you."

I laughed dryly at the thought of her helping anyone other than herself. "I don't need your help."

"Fine, then who should I call for you?"

"Just go." I muttered, searching my pockets for my phone. "I don't need you to babysit me."

Paige sighed angrily. "You're obviously hurt. I'm not going to leave you alone at night on the street when you can't even stand up on your own."

Disregarding what appeared to be actual concern coming from the worst person I had ever met, I managed to pull my phone out of my back pocket. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck." I threw the cracked phone as far as I could, not feeling any better as it skid across the sidewalk and into the bushes.

Paige's mouth fell open in surprise. "You do know that screens can be fixed, right?"

"Fuck off, Paige." I muttered, dropping my head into my hands. I wanted nothing more than to be home in my bed. I'd even take being back at the party over this humiliation.

"You know, I think this is the most I've ever heard you drop the F-bomb." Paige grinned. "This is even worse than when I beat your fastest time for the—"

Without warning, to myself or to Paige, I started bawling. Straight up heaving, snotty, over-the-top crying on the street corner. And I couldn't stop. I tried everything. Gritting my teeth, balling up my fists, thinking about how stupid I must have looked…nothing stopped the stream of tears cascading down my face, smearing my makeup and dampening my sleeves.

"Oh my god." Was all Paige said. I don't know which of us was more caught off guard, or which of us was more uncomfortable.

I was so caught up in trying to stop myself from crying that I didn't notice at first when her hand touched my shoulder. I only realized it was there when she pulled me into a strong embrace. I couldn't stop myself from sobbing into her arm. I couldn't stop her from cradling my shaking body. I couldn't stop the vomit that spewed from me, luckily missing Paige but unluckily covering myself. I couldn't stop her from taking off her jacket and wrapping it around my waist to hide my lap full of puked up garbage. I couldn't stop her from retrieving my cracked cell phone and using it to make a call. I couldn't stop her from holding me until a car pulled up on the curb. I couldn't stop her and my friends from lifting me off the ground and laying me down across the backseat. I couldn't stop Aria from slamming the car door. The last thing I could remember was seeing Paige's face grow smaller as we drove off. I don't think that any of my friends thanked her.

I woke up unsure of where I was. My head hurt, my back hurt, my ass hurt, my throat hurt, and my mouth tasted like puke and death. I had had worse mornings.

"Good, you're finally awake." Spencer placed a wet washcloth over my forehead. I winced at how cold it felt against my boiling skin. "We were worried you might have had a concussion after all."

"You thought I had a concussion, and you let me sleep?" I asked as she handed me a cup of water.

From across the room, Hanna groaned. "You don't remember us waking you up every half hour for like five hours straight? That was exhausting."

"What time is it?" I asked. It was hard to keep my eyes open.

"It's around noon." Spencer answered. "Don't worry, we texted your mom back saying you'll be home for dinner."

"Yeah, this thing is totally screwed up though." Hanna held up the cracked phone. "You might need a whole new one."

"Em, do you remember what happened last night?" Spencer asked clinically. I never used to mind when Spencer put on a mature voice, it used to mean that she was going to fix whatever trouble we had gotten ourselves into, but lately it had really started to bother me.

I shrugged, trying my best to recall the evening. "We went to a party—"

"Where?" Spencer cut in.

"I…" I blanked. "I don't know."

Hanna scoffed. "So not a fair question to ask, Spence. I don't even remember whose party that was."

"Okay, fine." Spencer waved away Hanna's comment. "What else do you remember?"

"First we got ready at Aria's. Where is she?"

"Her mom wanted her home early." Hanna answered. "You asked that same question like five hours ago. Are you gonna be like Dory in Finding Nemo now? Forever asking where your little fish Aria is?"

"Hanna." Spencer warned, then turned back to me. "Aria's at home. What else?"

"We went to the party. Uh, we did shots. That soccer player guy went skinny dipping and everyone took pictures. Hanna played beer pong."

"That game was rigged." Hanna muttered, staring at her phone.

"Um, Aria made out with some guy in the bathroom."

"She was way out of that kid's league." Hanna added.

I felt Spencer's eyes staring at me. "I left after that."

"I saw you leave." She commented, looking somewhat guilty. "I thought you had sobered up. I assumed you were the one going to get more sodas, but even then I shouldn't have let you go alone. I'm really sorry, Em. I feel terrible, and I will never make the same mistake again. I should have known better."

"It's not your fault." I replied, confused as to how Spencer had managed to make the situation all about her. She had a knack for doing things like that, so it wasn't surprising. "I was heading home."

"That's across town!" Hanna exclaimed.

"I run all over Rosewood." I defended, pushing myself up to a sitting position and removing the wash cloth. I realized that my vomit-covered jeans had been replaced with clean sweat pants. "I would have found my way home eventually."

"That's really dangerous." Hanna threw her hands up. "Do you know how many creeps live in this town?"

Spencer gave Hanna a stern look, effectively shutting her up. Then she turned back to me. "Do you remember what happened after you left the party?"

The memory of what happened hit me hard, much like the actual bike had. "Paige McCullers ran into me with her bike."

"Speaking of creeps living in this town." Hanna chuckled to herself.

"She probably used you as target practice." Spencer added, cracking a smile.

I didn't share their amusement. "It was an accident. It was dark, she didn't see me."

Spencer, feeling sympathetic to my embarrassment, changed the subject. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to remember every detail of the previous night's debacle. Why had Paige been so nice? She'd never done anything nice for me before in her whole life. In all the years that we had rivaled, in the pool and out of it, Paige had never once said a single nice thing to me.

I made it home for dinner, just as my friends had promised my mother that I would. My mom didn't notice that I looked as gross as I felt. She was too busy talking about the wedding dress she had seen on television early. She told me all about how she couldn't wait to see me on my wedding day, with the white gown, family gathered, and the handsome man that would be standing at the altar. I went upstairs after dinner and threw up every last bite.

The next morning at school, I avoided everyone. My best friends, my not so close friends, any acquaintance that would try to say hello, I avoided them all. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't want to know what kind of rumors Paige had started spreading, and I definitely didn't want anyone to greet me with a hug. My back was still sore from Saturday night. I made it until lunchtime before I had to speak to anyone. I avoided the cafeteria, not feeling hungry in the least, and I went to the locker rooms by the school's pool instead. They were always empty during the day. Sometimes when I needed a quiet place to be alone for a few minutes, I would go there.

Today, of course, was different. Though I had never gone to this girl's locker room during lunch, I had assumed it would have been just as empty as all other hours. I had been sitting on the bench under my locker for no more than a minute before the door flew open. And, of course, it was the last person that I wanted to see.

Paige jumped, shocked to see me. "What are you doing in here?"

"I could ask the same to you." I replied, a ghostly ache coming from the spot on the back of my head where a bump had previously been.

Paige put on an overly confident grin. "I know for a fact that you never come in here during lunch, so why not just say what you're up to."

It was hard to look at her as memories of her cradling my sobbing body flashed before my eyes. "How could you possibly know that I never come in here during lunch?"

Paige's grin fell, something new taking the place of her feigned confidence. "Because this is where I eat lunch."

At first I thought that it must have been a joke, but the look in her eyes said otherwise. I was left speechless, left staring stupidly across the room at her. She shut the locker room door, slowly walking over. She sat on the other end of the bench, literally as far away as she could, and looked at me.

"It's not a big deal." She tried to play it off. "I like the quiet. I get more done in here."

It hit me then. I had never seen Paige with friends. I couldn't even think of who her friends could be. And that was because she had none.

"That's why I'm here." I said. "The quiet."

There was an ironically awkward silence that fell between us, neither knowing what to say. The only words we had ever exchanged before last night had been less than polite.

"How's your head?" Paige asked quickly, as if she had been arguing with herself on whether to ask or not.

"Oh, um….it's fine." My hand combed through my hair on its own, passing over the spot where the back of my head had made impact with the ground. "Thanks for asking. And…thanks for helping me last night…I wasn't…I mean, I didn't mean to…I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She shook her head, hopefully feeling just as weird about everything as I was. "Don't even worry about it. I'm…I'm sorry for knocking you over. I mean, I didn't see you so it wasn't like I meant to hit you or anything…but, yeah. Sorry."

"It was an accident." I shrugged. "A really weird, embarrassing accident."

Paige cracked a smile and I braced myself for whatever sly comment that she was about to throw at me. "You make it sound like you peed all over yourself."

Despite myself, I smiled. "Might as well have."

"How's your phone?" She asked.

I took it out of my bag and showed her the cracked screen. "It's not working right, but it'll have to do. Thanks for getting it out of the bushes last night."

"Oh, uh, yeah. No problem."

It was all so strange. Paige being nice, the two of us sitting in the locker room having a semi-normal conversation, and the quiet that we both had sought out now causing more uneasiness than peace. Before another awkward silence could fall, I decided to just go for it. "Can I ask you a question?"

She visibly grew nervous. "I guess."

"Why aren't we friends?"

She was stumped. Words failed her for several moments until she could gather up enough thoughts to speak. "Why would we be?"

If it hadn't been for the shakiness of her voice and the vulnerability in her eyes, I would have thought she had meant that harshly. I could have handled that, I was used to that kind of thing from her. But hearing the sincerity of her question struck something deep inside of me, and I didn't know what to feel anymore.

I took a deep breath. "The first thing you ever said to me was 'keep your eyes to yourself, lesbo'. That was years before I came out. And now, now that I've actually come out, you go out of your way to stay as physically far away from me as you possibly can. I notice, Paige. I've always noticed. You're disgusted by me, I know that. I just…I don't understand how the most homophobic and mean person I've ever met, could do what you did for me last night. You're clearly not the monster you pretend to be. So, what's with all the pretending?"

She looked like she might cry. A part of me wanted her to, so that things would be even between us. But mostly I just felt the need to comfort her. Before I could say anything more, she stood and walked to the locker room door. Opening it, she turned back to face me. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "You don't disgust me."

The door shut behind her, leaving me alone in the locker room with the quiet that I had once desired but no longer felt comfortable in.