Nothing really mattered to her anymore. No matter how many battles she won, A always won the war. Spencer had always had one dream to hold onto; college. Now that Penn State had rejected her, she didn't even have that. All that Spence had in her life was Toby, and even he was slipping away from her. Spencer couldn't bring herself to focus on what Mr. Fitz was droning on about in class, she didn't care about anything anymore.
The bell rang, and Spence still couldn't bring herself to move. Movement required effort, effort which she wasn't willing to give. Bodies began to shuffle all around her, shoving books in their bags and filing out of the classroom. Spencer could feel her friend's eyes on her.
"Spence, you coming?" Aria asked, her voice light but shaky.
"Uh yeah," Spencer began to stack her notebooks, "I'll catch up to you guys at lunch."
Mona appeared out of nowhere, "Okay, we'll meet you in the courtyard."
Spencer resisted the urge to scream as the other three girls shared a glance with each other. Did they not see that Mona was the enemy? She always was, and she always will be. It was Mona's fault that Spencer didn't get into her dream college. She tortured them, and distracted them. Mona wasn't capable of doing good.
Spencer finally put her books in her bag as her three best friends walked out of the classroom, leaving her alone with Mr. Fitz. Just as she was about to stand up, he looked at her.
"You okay Spencer?" He asked.
Spencer nonchalantly brushed her hair out of her eyes, "Yeah."
She knew he didn't actually care. His students problems weren't his problems. But she hesitated before walking out of the classroom. Who would really be a better person to talk to? Her friends would all talk about her behind her back, about how worried they were for her. Toby would try to give her some talk about how amazing she was. Her parents would just be disappointed. Maybe Mr. Fitz not caring made him a good person to talk to.
"I, um, I heard from UPenn this morning," Spencer turned towards him, "And I didn't get in."
Mr. Fitz looked at her for a moment, "I'm sorry. . . I'm sorry, uh, are there any other schools?"
"Not for my family, no. I'll be the first one not to go." Spencer tried to blink away the tears that were forming in her eyes, "I'm sorry, I haven't told my parents and I haven't even told my friends, I don't really know why I told you so I'd just really appreciate it if you-d"
"No I won't say a word," Mr. Fitz assured her.
"Okay." Spencer nodded, not really sure of what else she could say.
"I've actually been asked to help out with college essays, so when you're ready to think of other schools. . . I'm here for you." Mr. Fitz said, "It's really important to have a second choice, even if you had your heart set on something else."
Spencer realized that he probably didn't mean college. Mr. Fitz had just broken up with Aria in order to take the teaching job. She couldn't imagine how hard it must be to see Aria in class every day.
"If I were you, I would actually apply to other schools right away," He continued, "You can email me the essay right away and we can work on it over the weekend."
Spencer nodded, "Thanks."
"Hey, Spencer," Mr. Fitz called after her as she turned to walk away, "It's their loss."
Spencer almost smiled as she walked out of the classroom. It had been a long time since someone had helped her for no reason other than to help her. Even her friends had something to gain by hunting for A and looking for who set the fire in the lodge. It felt good knowing that not everyone in the world was selfish.
As Spencer was walking down the hallway, her phone started buzzing inside her pocket. Of course Toby was calling her to check in. That's just perfect, Toby wanted to make sure she was okay and she would have to lie to him because she wasn't ok.
"Hi Toby," Spencer answered the phone.
"Hey Spence," Toby said on the other end of the line, "My boss just gave me the option to take Saturday off, do you want to have breakfast or something?"
"Um, I'm really sorry Toby, I can't," Spencer said, "I'm meeting with Mr. Fitz to go over some material that I'm behind on. Could we do something later on in the day?"
"Of course we can Spencer," Toby agreed, "Is everything okay?"
"Mhmm, I'm fine," Spencer lied, "I just need some extra help with everything that's been going on."
"Okay Spencer," Toby said, "I love you."
"I love you too, bye Toby." Spencer hung up, and leaned against a random wall of lockers and sighed. She wasn't technically lying to Toby, but she wasn't telling him the truth either. She just didn't want him to feel the need to share the burden with her. It was her mess, she could fix it.
The biggest problem would be telling her family. That was the problem with being a Hastings. You had your whole life planned out for you before it was even born. Spencer never even had the chance to differentiate her dreams from her family's. She was already so different from the rest of them; her life was far from perfect unlike the rest of them. Spencer wasn't some cookie cutter person, and she had always been proud of that, but maybe being perfect wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
A/N: Hey, first of all, thanks so much for reading this! I know it's a really risky thing to be writing about right now, but I know it's been said that all the girls will have new love interests this season, and I saw this happening the second Ezra first talked to Spencer in last week's episode, so I decided to go against my better judgement and take on a fourth fanfic. This is going to be T as of now but I might change it to M later on, so you have been warned (it won't be raunchy though, don't worry!) I'm not going to write the next chapter until after this Tuesday, to see if anything else interesting happens, but please leave a review and any ideas that you might have for me to put in the story, I'm open to suggestions! Thanks, Kathryn.
