Chapter 7: Spencer

Later that day, Spencer was pulled out of her group therapy session—not that she was talking that much, anyway—and taken to a private room for what the nurse simply described as "some questions from the police." Why in the world would the police want to talk to her?

A sandwich baggie of ADHD pills was set on the metal table and slid across to her. "We confiscated these from your backpack," the male police officer stated.

Spencer's heart halted before pumping erratically in her chest. "What?" she yelled angrily. In fact, she was furious to the point that even her knowledge of the law was a fuzzy red. "Isn't that an invasion of my privacy, o-or something?" she stammered in an attempt to lawfully defend herself.

"Your parents gave us permission," the officer explained. "We gave the school a thorough drug search and came up with nothing."

Spencer's face drained of color. "N-no," she stuttered. "That can't be right!"

"Why not?"

Never in Spencer's eighteen years had she sweated so much in five minutes. Whoever this cop was, he was good—and she said that because usually she was so calm and collected around any authority figure, even if she'd done something wrong and knew it. "B-because I got those—" She pointed to the pills. "—in school! Right out of someone's pocket! They carried them around all the time!"

"Who sold you these?"

The last thing Spencer wanted to label herself as right now next to "drug abuser" and "addict" was "rat." She kept her mouth shut.

"Who sold you these?" he repeated calmly, and Spencer squinted at his name tag.

"Toby," she read, even though she already knew who he was. She grew an innocent smile on her face. "I must be confused. I meant to say I found them in school."

Now Toby was the one who was confused. "How is that?"

"Well," Spencer sighed, preparing herself to whip up a story in milliseconds. "There is someone in the school who sells those pills, but they use a secret hiding place in the bathrooms, taped under the sinks. So you leave a piece of paper with your name on it and some cash, and then the next day, it's there." Spencer let out the breath she was unknowingly keeping hostage. Good one, she proudly congratulated herself.

But Toby didn't seem to buy it, by the stern glare on his chiseled face. Spencer's heart pounded. Then, Toby's face softened, and Spencer felt her heartrate go down. "I didn't want to have to tell you this," he said and took a few steps to the wall, hands on his hips. "But since school started, people have known where you are. And a couple of them, in fear of ending up here, I guess, have fully confessed to us about where and how they bought these drugs."

Spencer's fingers froze along with her pride. It was over, she thought. Her iced pride cracked, then shattered. Her entire life trying to be at the top, be the best person… It was done. People knew now how she got to where she was, even if it was for a short period of time. When she got out of here, she had to start at the bottom where no Hastings had gone before.

And in order to make it to the top again by the end of the year, she had to get out now. What better way, she began to brainstorm as a devious grin crossed her lips, than for a police officer—a trusted member of society—to take her out? She'd be able to get to her parents, convince them to have her stay, and she'd be able to work on her homework at her desk that motivated her because of all the trophies scattered on it rather than on her bed at Radley where she peered at Aria every minute in case she met A.

Clasping her hands on the table (it always made her feel more powerful), she looked up and directly into Toby's Husky-blue eyes. "Toby," she said, straightening her back, too. "It'd be a lot easier for me to find who gave me those drugs if I was back in Rosewood."

Obviously, Toby wasn't stupid, or he wouldn't have made it past day two in the police academy. Standing, he placed his hands on the table and leaned down so that he was close enough to Spencer's face without it being odd but still effective. "I don't have much power in this place unless I'm an orderly, nurse, or your parent." It was a desperate move, anyway. Straightening up, he headed to the door. "I think you need the help, Miss Hastings." And he set a card down on the table. "For when you remember who gave you those drugs…"

The door clicked behind him as Spencer picked up the card. Toby Cavanaugh. The son of Marion Cavanaugh. Spencer's mother, Veronica, had worked on that case when Toby's family sued the institution. Ever since then, people avoided his eyes at school and pretended he was a nonexistent figment, like a ghost. No one really wanted to deal with the kind of baggage he had.

But at least he was putting that grief into some use and helping others.

When Spencer opened the door to her shared room with Aria, she halted in the doorway as the sound of a book slamming shut reverberated off the brick walls.

There, huddled on her bed, was Aria, surrounded by textbooks. Literature and composition, physics, biology, government—they were all advanced placement classes Spencer was enrolled in. "I'm sorry," Aria squeaked as she jumped off the bed, abandoning the literature book she was reading behind. "There were just so many short stories in there… A Good Man is Hard to Find? I might have nightmares!" It was an attempt to lighten the situation in case Spencer was furious, which she wasn't.

Spencer walked over to the side of her bed and began stacking the books. "If you want to read them, you can."

However, when Spencer turned back around, instead of seeing Aria plastered with a joyful grin like she'd expected, there were tears brimming around her eyes. "It's just…" She stepped back until she found her bed and sat on it. "My educational level is only up to eighth grade. They don't really teach high school level, or anything here. And my 'education' only came from the library because I love school." Then, a sigh. "Loved," she corrected herself. "It's hard to love something you haven't had since you were eight years old."

A light bulb clicked on in Spencer's brain and her face lit up. "I can tutor you!"

A skeptical expression contorted Aria's face. "No, thank you." She grabbed the old, yellowed penny novel off her nightstand. It wasn't even a good book, but it was a great distractor and conversation ender.

"Why not? Don't you want to finish high school and—" Then Spencer remembered Aria had never even started high school, or middle school, or finished elementary school. If she did make it out of Radley, would she bother going to high school, or just find a minimum wage job? Didn't her family abandon her here? Feeling insensitive, Spencer cautiously treaded back on the topic. "I mean, if you're interested in knowing more about this stuff or you need to know more of the basics to understand this stuff, I'm here."

A crooked grin turned up the corners of Aria's lips. "Thanks."

Stomach growling and crying out in hunger, Spencer headed towards the door to go to the cafeteria to get a snack. "No problem," she said, proud of herself, and one foot was out the door before she pulled it back in. "And by the way…" She grabbed the literature textbook and opened it to a specific page. "Poe is the best."

Aria's eyes widened as she snatched the book from Spencer and, in awe, saw an entire chapter dedicated to the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. She'd heard of Poe from other patients, the kind that came in and out of Radley after only short treatments, but the Radley library strictly prohibited anything that could mess with a patient's mental health. That included anything that involved talking ravens, sisters that were buried alive, or a drunk joker sealed behind a wall. Aria's fingers, plain compared to Spencer's navy blue polished ones, tenderly skimmed the pages of the book. It was the door to knowledge she'd never been able to reach before. "Do you remember those giant literature books the fourth graders would get?"

Keeping silent, Spencer just nodded, not wanting to slip up again and make some ignorant comment. Of course Spencer remembered those books; they were huge and heavy for nine year olds, but they had dozens of fun, intriguing stories for fourth grade English class. It was the worst thing to lug around.

Aria scoffed to hide most of the pain she was feeling underneath. "All of the fourth graders complained about it, but…I was looking forward to reading that book."

The last thing Spencer did before she took off to the cafeteria was show Aria her giant tote of novels her parents had smuggled in through a bribe. This time, Aria cried in what Spencer could only describe as happiness from the ignorant who was restricted from being anything but ignorant.

…

After dinner, Spencer wasn't surprised that she hadn't seen Aria there. However, she was surprised when she was pulled aside again and led to the same room she was in that afternoon.

Officer Toby made no introduction and went straight to the point. He slapped a photo of a blonde girl in front of Spencer. "Your friend's previous roommate has gone missing. Reports show she has a tendency to be found roaming the halls in the middle of the night with no memory; security footage shows a dark figure sneaking out every now and then. That person was seen leaving and returning between the times Alison—" He tapped the picture. "—disappeared. It's likely that she could have escaped and hurt Alison."

"Alison DiLaurentis was in Radley?" A hand came up over Spencer's mouth in shock—shaken to the core. How could such a seemingly perfect It girl go from the Queen of Rosewood High to a mental patient? "But why would Aria want to hurt Alison?"

"You tell me."

"How can I tell you? I've only known her for a couple weeks." Toby scratched his chin, his eyebrows furrowed in intense concentration, while Spencer swallowed the frozen bulge in her throat. "Toby…" He looked at her, hopeful that she was going to say something productive to the case. "Don't you remember Alison?"

By the uncomfortable way he shifted his body weight on his feet and avoided Spencer's eyes, Spencer knew he remembered. "Doesn't that mean anything? Alison was a terrible person! So many people hate her."

"Is there a reason you're defending your roommate so strongly despite knowing her for only a couple weeks?"

Spencer opened her mouth, but faltered and pursed her lips. It was pointless to argue. If she brought up knowing Aria as a child, that would mean explaining seeing Aria attack Alison on more than one occasion, which the police would find out soon enough. Then Aria would be locked in here forever, especially if Alison was dead somewhere and Aria was unknowingly sneaking out. And Spencer could never live with herself knowing that a perfectly kind, misunderstood and kooky child had turned into some murderous, blood thirsty individual. Hope bred eternal misery, but hope she had on the human race.

"Aria Montgomery is not the victim here. Alison is," Toby reminded her, though Spencer wanted to speak up and protest until she couldn't make her point any clearer. "Aria had a roommate that was blinded, and Aria was the only one around, with another firework in her hands. It was lucky the place hadn't burned down. Then another patient was pushed off the roof, and guess who was there? Aria—with a knife in her hands."

"But she wasn't convicted for that," Spencer defended her new friend. "She told me that story. It was her roommate that did it. And it's not like it's that hard to plant a weapon on someone vulnerable to make them look suspicious. A weapon, I may add, that wasn't even used."

But maybe Toby was right. After all, Spencer only knew Aria when she was a kid, but she wasn't the child in The Bad Seed. Nonetheless, that didn't mean innocence lasted forever. Alison's bullying had affected the majority of their class and the classes under them, but Aria was the only one who'd ever snapped.

One of Toby's eyebrows lifted, wrinkling his forehead. "What roommate?"

"Mona," Spencer explained. "So there were two other people when that girl was pushed. Mona confessed to it and they took her upstairs because she was a danger to others." Aria did tell Spencer, though, that they considered her as a suspect at one point, that Mona was protecting Aria because Aria's DNA—some blood—was on the girl, but not Mona's. But Mona was scratched up, too, and Aria believed she'd probably tried to stop her from pushing the girl, and Spencer chose to believe Aria because who else could she trust in this macabre place?

Toby pulled out a manila folder and flipped through some paperwork. "That's odd," he murmured. "The record only mentions Aria."