Lying to Everyone but Myself
Chapter One: Background
Summary: Spencer is lying to everyone but herself about how she truly feels about Toby Cavanaugh.
Disclaimer: I don't own Pretty Little Liars.
Spencer Hastings had always hated Toby Cavanaugh. Or, at least, that's what she had always told her friends. The truth? Spencer wished that every time she saw him around town or at school, that she could just tell him that she liked him. Of course she had one chance in junior high to tell him the truth, it just didn't happen.
You see, at the beginning of the summer, in between 6th and 7th grade, a new girl moved to town. Her name: Alison DiLaurentis. And since she was new, her mom had forced Alison to have a party and invite everyone from their class.
So, of course, Spencer and Toby were both invited and they accepted the invite. It was at that party that two major things happened. 1) Alison chose Spencer, Aria Montgomery, Emily Fields and Hanna Marin as her "posse" and 2) Spencer and Toby were put together for a round of "7 Minutes in Heaven" where they almost kissed, but their time was cut short by Alison's parents saying that the party was over.
After that night, Spencer lied to herself and her friends that she didn't like Toby and thought that he was bad news. Of course one can only lie to themselves for so long. And after two years of lying to herself, Spencer finally told her friends the truth. Spencer Hastings has finally admitted to Hanna, Aria and Emily that she actually liked Toby Cavanaugh.
Of course, this information originally shocked Spencer's friends, but they eventually came to be happy for Spencer and told her that they would always be there for her. Unfortunately, due to an incident that had happened the summer after Alison had moved to Rosewood, where Toby had taken the blame for something that Alison and the girls had done, Spencer never had the courage to ever tell Toby how she felt.
Then everything changed. The weekend before the girls started 8th grade, Ali went missing. None of the girls fully knew what had happened to their friend, and without Alison, Spencer, Aria, Hanna and Emily drifted apart. Aria and her family had moved to Iceland for a year; Hanna lost the weight that had given her the nickname "Hefty Hanna"; and Emily and Spencer dove more into sports and school work. And no one had seen hair or hide of Toby Cavanaugh.
Of course, things don't stay the way they are for long, and the same could be said for Spencer and her old friends. Yes, Spencer still saw Emily and Hanna around school and town, but they never hung out anymore. And then, as luck would have it, Aria and her family moved back to Rosewood at the start of the girls' sophomore year of high school. But, for the four unlucky girls, this is also when things involving Alison went from bad to worse.
Alison's body was found in the DiLaurentis' garden and the missing person's investigation turned into a murder investigation. Spencer, Hanna, Emily and Aria were questioned numerous times by a Detective Walden, who soon got thrown off the case when Spencer's mom had found out that he had been questioning all four girls, who were sixteen at the time, without a lawyer, parent or guardian present. Of course the trouble didn't stop there for the girls.
From a few days before Alison's body had been found, all four girls had received a threatening message of some sort from someone who was calling themselves 'A'. As the messages became more frequent, the girls became closer again and they started to suspect anyone they could think of that Alison could have told the girls' secrets to that would be using the secrets against the girls now.
Every time the girls thought they had figured out who 'A' could be or even who had killed Alison, they always seemed to fall short. Then things got really weird for the girls. In the year that Alison had gone missing, all of the girls had seemed to forget about Toby Cavanaugh. Well, Aria and Hanna had seemed to forget about Toby; but Emily and Spencer never did. You see, Emily lived next door to the Cavanaugh's and Spencer still hadn't fully gotten over her feelings for him. But, the weird part was when he came back to Rosewood after the incident that had made Toby's step-sister blind.
And while things were a little tense between the girls and Toby, Emily befriended him and they ended up going to the homecoming dance together. At this point, Spencer, Hanna and Aria all suspected him of killing Alison. Not that Spencer actually believed the words whenever they fell from her lips.
But, to make matters worse, both Emily and Toby got hurt at the dance and after dropping Emily off at the hospital, Toby took off. And while he was gone, a sweater of his had been found in his room with Alison's blood on it, making him look even more like a suspect of Ali's murder. And after Emily didn't show up to talk to him, Toby was arrested for killing Alison.
And even that was short lived. Mere weeks after his arrest, Toby was released from jail on house arrest. While practically everyone in town (Spencer and Emily's family's included) continued to think he was guilty, Spencer and her friends started liking someone else as a huge suspect for Ali's murder; Spencer's ex-fling and now brother-in-law, Ian Thomas.
And about a week and half to two weeks after Toby returned home on house arrest, Spencer saw her chance to talk to him by tutoring him in French. Surprisingly, since Spencer had just recently found out that someone was framing her for Ali's murder, she found herself connecting to Toby in a way that she had only dreamed about having. And boy did Spencer's relationship with Toby grow at a quick rate. It didn't take very long for the feelings that Spencer had never forgotten for Toby to come back full force and stronger than ever.
Sure it had just started with tutoring him in French, but the more that Spencer spent time with Toby, actually getting to know him, the more Spencer knew that her feelings for him were definitely real and that there was a strong chance that they weren't about to go away. As Spencer thought about her relationship with Toby and the feelings that had always been present, she realized that everything that had happened between them- everything that had happened to them- had all led to their first kiss. It was compulsive and unexpected, but Spencer had enjoyed it. It made her feel like Toby returned her feelings.
Upon arriving home after her weekend- and more importantly, her first kiss- with Toby, Spencer was met with the news that she was now a suspect in Alison's murder. Sure, Spencer had thought that things had been bad before, just with her being friends with Toby, and them getting closer, and then him being arrested; but that was all just the preshow. But now; now things were starting to look very bleak for Spencer, and she didn't like it. She didn't like the fact that whoever was torturing her and her friends; whoever had framed Toby; whoever was using everyone Spencer cared about as puppets in their sick little game was now focusing all of their efforts on her.