Well, I have to say that I wasn't too enthusiastic about updating after such a lack of feedback on the last chapter. A big thank you to potterjay92 for being my only reviewer! Guys, please, please review. I decided to stick to updating on Wednesday, as I'd promised, but I will likely go back to once a week if I don't start getting some more feedback. So please let me know what you think! This chapter is where things start to heat up.

Chapter 4

"We have to do something about this."

Alison's voice sounded faint and disjointed, almost like she was speaking through a cardboard tube, though she was only standing a few feet away. Aria paced in front of her, keeping her eyes locked firmly on the ground and focusing only on the pounding of her heart in her ears.

She forced herself not to look at the old leather sofa, where who knows what had gone on between her dad and that student, or at the diplomas behind the desk – yeah, her father sure was quite the educator…or at the family photo on the wall…

"Come on." Alison's voice urged her back to reality. "You don't want daddy dearest to catch us in here, do you?"

Aria folded her arms uncomfortably. Even being in here gave her the creeps. "I don't want to be here at all," she insisted, twisting a strand of her pink streaked hair around her finger. "Come on, Ali, let's just go."

"Aria," Alison said sharply, sounding, like she tended to, about ten years older than Aria. "We can't let him get away with this. If you're not going to tell your mom that your dad's sleeping with some slut, we need to make sure he ends it himself." A smile began to spread across her face, and she opened her purse.

Aria felt a twinge of uneasiness. "Ali," she said warningly, taking a step toward her friend. "What are you – "

Her grin widening vicariously, Alison pulled her hand back out of her purse. Clutched in her fist was a box of matches. "I think this'll get the message across."

"What message?" Aria felt paralyzed with nerves.

Alison began to stride casually around the perimeter of the room, her eyes flitting across every surface. "When you play with fire," she said slowly, stopping in front of the sofa and bending down, sticking her hand between the cushions, "you get burned."

Another pulse of fear shot through Aria's stomach, and she raced over, her brow furrowed. "Ali, no. We can't – "

But she stopped short as Ali's face lit up in triumph. She pulled back from the couch, dangling from her hand something tiny and bronze, with a pink gem glinting in its center.

An earring.

"We can't what?" Alison said, tossing the earring to Aria, who caught it without thinking. Her mind was racing. She'd known that her dad was having an affair with one of his students – he'd been acting weird even before she and Ali caught him with her in his car.

But this…this was physical proof that it was still going on. Anger seized her heart. He'd told her it was over. He'd said what she'd seen was the end of something, not the beginning. He'd…lied to her.

"Give it to me," Aria commanded, but it didn't even feel like her own voice. It was like she was being controlled by someone else, by her own rage, watching her own hand reach out to take the box of matches from Ali.

Her hands were shaking so badly that it took her a few tries to light one of the matches. Without hesitation, she strode over to a picture of the four of them – her parents, Mike, and herself – surrounded by a wooden frame. She held the flame up to it, and it ignited.

Aria stared at the small fire, watching, mesmerized, as the orange flames jumped and spread, until it wasn't so small anymore. The flames nipped at the wall and all at once, Aria was in control of her actions again.

She whirled around to Alison just in time to see her blonde friend's eyes widen at the growing size of the fire. "Ali – "

"We have to get out of here," Alison said immediately, pulling the matches out of Aria's hand and grabbing her arm. "Come on."

Aria allowed herself to be dragged out of her father's office and down the hallway. But then she paused, peering into the room beside it. An older man was seated at his desk, hunched over a stack of papers. He was one of her father's colleagues. He'd been to her house.

She stopped short. "Alison. We can't just leave…there's – there's a fire in there. We have to tell someone."

"We can't," Alison snapped, whirling around and grabbing her wrist again. "Aria. Listen to me. If anyone finds out that we were in there, that we started that fire – it's not going to be pretty. Do you really want to risk messing up your family even more?"

Aria opened her mouth to protest, to ask how her father's affair could be attributed to her at all, but shook her head, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket with a shaking hand. "I'm calling 911. No one has to know it was me. But I'm not letting anyone innocent get hurt."

…

The Bill of Rights was established to pacify the fears of the Anti-Federalists and secure the personal freedom of the –

"Wow, this is from the day we went to the lake. Remember?"

Spencer sighed, letting the pencil drop from her hand as she raised her head from her desk. Hanna was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hair falling in her face and her head bent over the thick scrapbook in her lap.

"I remember," she said, but didn't get up to look. After a moment, she went back to her essay.

"Ali was always in the middle," Hanna blurted after a few minutes of silence. "In every picture of the five of us. Have you ever noticed?"

"Hanna," Spencer huffed, finally setting aside her notebook and looking up. Since Alison's body was found buried beneath the gazebo plot, she and the others had started reconnecting. It was almost like old times…except it couldn't be, especially when all four of them were together. It almost felt like they had to leave a fifth chair empty. "We have a six page history essay due tomorrow," she admonished her friend. "Have you even started it yet?"

"Well, I'm sorry!" Hanna exclaimed indignantly, throwing out her arms. "But I can't concentrate! It hasn't even been two weeks since Ali's body was found – underneath a big, red letter 'A.'" She set aside the scrapbook and scooted to the end of Spencer's bed, wrapping her arms across her stomach. "What do you think it means?"

With one last longing look at the only halfway completed essay, Spencer relented, joining Hanna on the edge of the bed and frowning. "I can't say I haven't thought about it," she admitted. "But I have no idea. I mean, I assume the 'A' stands for Alison…"

"But who would know that her body was buried there?" Hanna cut in, looking a bit revolted.

Spencer shook her head, feeling a little sick herself. She hadn't seen the letter that had been painted, in bright red, across the exact spot where Alison's body lay, but it was all over the news. What did it mean? Who'd put it there…and why?

But despite the growing rumors, the police were strangely quiet about the mysterious letter. They claimed publicly that their main goal was finding out the cause of death, and the person behind it. But Spencer got the feeling that they just didn't want to admit that it had taken such an obvious clue for them to discover the body of a girl who had been missing for an entire year.

"There's only one person who could know for sure that Ali's body was buried under that gazebo," she announced to Hanna, glancing up to meet her friend's eyes. "The person who killed her."

Hanna shuddered, and the conversation petered out quickly after that. Spencer returned to her essay, but didn't even get through another page before Hanna left, claiming a headache. She'd looked queasy ever since their conversation about Alison.

Spencer sat alone in her room as the sun sank behind the horizon, giving way to a pitch black, clear night. She was home alone – her parents were at a business dinner, and Melissa was off in Philly, meeting with the decorator for her new condo.

She sighed and pushed her six page essay aside, stifling a yawn. It wasn't good. In fact, it was probably the worst essay she'd ever written, thanks to her wandering mind as she'd written it. But it was done, and she was just about to go and take a shower when a creak resounded through the house.

Spencer jumped, caught off guard. But after a moment she rolled her eyes at herself, and at her pounding heart. Her house was old. It was always making weird noises as it settled at night.

"Stop freaking yourself out," she told herself, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she heard it again. A long, low creak, like someone walking over the wooden floor in the entryway.

Spencer's head snapped up at the sound, her breath catching in her throat. Okay. This was getting a little freaky. "Mom?" she called, moving cautiously into the hallway and peering down the stairs. "Dad? Are you guys home?"

There was no response, and yet Spencer couldn't rid herself of the nagging feeling that something was wrong. She flicked on the hall light and began moving carefully down the stairs.

As soon as she caught sight of the living room, she gasped. The back door was wide open, leading out into the dark night. The latch, which she'd locked after Hanna had left earlier, was broken on the ground.

Spencer practically fell the rest of the way down the stairs, her eyes fixed on the open door. "Hello?" she called out, her voice wavering. "Melissa?"

But even as she said the words, she knew that they were in vain. Whoever had done this, it wasn't anyone who should be here. Someone had broken in. She glanced back up the stairs, picturing her phone, laying right side up on her nightstand. If she could just run upstairs and get it…

A dark figure rose, popping like a demented jack in the box from behind the sofa, and Spencer screamed, backing up to the edge of the stairs. She took a step back blindly, backed up against the staircase, and the person – wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled tight around their face, when she looked closer – ran right toward her.

Spencer held out her arms in hopes to shield her face as the person slammed into her, knocking her against the steps. "What do you want?" she yelled, scrambling to her feet. She braced herself for another attack, but once her vision, momentarily blurred from smacking her head against the wooden stair, returned to normal, she realized that she was alone.

The black clad figure was gone, and the door was shut tight.

The back of her head throbbing, it took Spencer a moment to get her bearings. "What the hell?" she gasped under her breath, taking in gulps of air to try to calm her pounding heart. She could not believe that she had just been attacked in her own home.

But the strange thing was…everything looked normal. Aside from the latch to the back door, lying broken on the ground, nothing was out of place or missing. Had she stopped the burglar before they had been able to grab anything? Or had that person not been a burglar at all?

Spencer stood at the bottom of the stairs, scanning the room. Her eyes landed on something propped against the sofa. Moving closer, she squinted through the dark and frowned. It was a shovel. An old, battered shovel, half covered with dirt, that looked strikingly familiar. A note was tied to the handle with a string.

She crept closer, glancing around warily. Obviously whoever had broken in had left this for her to find. She stooped down and grabbed the shovel, turning it over in her hands before pulling off the note.

Now you know how I felt. –A

Spencer gasped, both the note and shovel falling from her hands. The metal shovel clanged as it hit the floor, but she barely noticed.

No. There was no way…there was just no way…

But she looked once more at the note, written in large, bright red, messy print. The attack, the shovel, the note…it all led back to the one secret that Spencer had kept buried for so long.

She sat down hard on the couch, her eyes not leaving the signature of the note. There was only one person who could possibly know about this, and that person was Alison. But Alison couldn't have done this. Alison couldn't be alive. It was impossible.

Because Spencer had killed her.

…

That girl is stronger than she looks.

I rub my forearm as I walk around the back of the Hastings' house, but even the pain in my shoulder doesn't stop me from grinning.

Leaving a note that makes it sound like it's from Alison. Genius! I can't believe I didn't think of this before. Being stalked by someone who knows your secrets is bad enough. But being stalked by your old, dead friend – particularly the friend you killed?

Priceless!

I creep around the side of the house and peer through the back door, the same one that I broke in through not long ago. I don't imagine that I have to worry about Spencer spotting me, and I'm right. She's sitting on the sofa with her back to the door, gazing down at the shovel in her lap and the note in her hands.

I smile to myself and turn away, looking out into the yard and at the large barn. I deserve an award for not only the effort, but the creativity that I'm putting into this. My only regret is that I hadn't thought of posing as Alison from the very start.

...

Whoa, what do you think about Spencer's secret? And A obviously isn't Alison, but could she really still be alive?