Chapter 16: The Crazy Ones
Emily hadn't been keeping track of how many sessions she'd had evaluating her "sinful sexuality," but it began to weigh on her like Aria's ten years must have chained her down. It wasn't that complicated, really; she did everything the therapist told her to. Say no to this woman, he commanded her, and she did. Reject the body you lust for so much. (Not that Emily thought the chosen women were that attractive.) It was giving her headaches—searing, penetrating aches and stabs that were certainly coming from her heart, or from God.
The idea driven into her mind her entire time at Radley was that something was wrong with her. It was an idea she'd had before, and doubted plenty, but the way that she was treated sickened her. She knew a gay man once, and she never saw him as anything different, anything terribly sinful. But her parents weren't here, and neither were these doctors, to remind her of what she couldn't see, that devil inside her.
It was enough to drive her mad. In fact, she was surprised her parents' signing off on brain surgery hadn't set off the loony bomb. It should have been enough to lead her off the edge, but it wasn't—and the implications of that worried her, but also made her chin less heavy so that she could hold it higher.
On her way back from a meeting, Emily's shoulder bumped into someone rounding the corner, knocking the flash of blond hair into the wall. "I'm so sorry!" Emily frantically apologized, and the blonde shot her a nasty look. Rather than return it, Emily recognized the girl and decided to be the polite person she was. "Oh hey, Bethany. How's it been?"
Sneering, Bethany fervently pushed past Emily and scoffed, "Excuse me, my name is Sara!" before stomping away and shaking her head vehemently. If Emily squinted her eyes, she would have guessed the object moving away from her was a blazing flame.
In Spencer and Aria's room, the day was just heating up. "Why would you lie to me?" Spencer screamed, which was very much unlike her—but then again, she was very much upset and, most of all, betrayed. After all, the person she was putting her heart into helping (though in a slightly selfish way to abbreviate the path to her cure) was exactly what people had warned her about in the beginning. Mona wasn't real, which could only mean that Aria was deluded—and crazy after all.
With a shudder, Spencer thought of all of the nights in Radley, all the times an insane person was with her in her most vulnerable state. There was more Spencer wanted to say—seething words she wanted to spit out—but she was rendered speechless.
Once Emily made it back to her room alive—she was expecting an impulsive, wrathful attack from "Sara"—she spurted out to Hanna, "I think I've seen your old roommate. Bethany."
Hanna, who was curled up on her bed flipping through a magazine, immediately threw the glossy papers to the floor and sat up, draping her legs over the edge. "What do you mean?"
"She's blonde, has some scars, is extremely nice… I didn't think it was her before, but then she acted all…weird."
"Weird as in…?"
"She told me her name was Sara, and bruised my shoulder passing by me."
Body temperature dropping, Hanna had to lie down as her blood pressure slowed to what a hospital monitor would describe as a flatline. "She's been on this floor this entire time?"
As Spencer's fists trembled in their tight clench, Aria resisted her pounding heart's instinct to stumble back or flee. There was no possible way Mona wasn't real—Aria had seen her, talked to her, touched her, lived with her. Every memory of Mona—when they told stories of how when they were first brought in, they were unaware of why they weren't allowed home; when they complained about the beds being too cold; when they made their own dolls out of the few materials they were allowed to craft with; when they snuck in books about puberty and were baffled over where babies came from and how they were going to bleed every month without dying of blood loss; when Aria confessed how stupid she felt for peeking into a science textbook in Radley's library and recognizing nothing—replayed in Aria's pulsing mind.
After some of the shock had worn off, she scoffed and shook her head. "Typical Mona." The flames ignited in Spencer's eyes were there to burn Aria—but, just like that, Aria felt no more fear. "Don't you see what she's doing? She stole her own folder because she knew your curiosity ran too deep, and you would uncover every terrible thing she's ever done and make you look like the better friend."
The numb vocal chords that had refused to vibrate warmed rapidly, and Spencer yelled, "Well, if that's true, then it's working." Spencer chewed the inside of her cheek. "I can't help but be angry, Aria. With every discovery I've made, Mona's been…nowhere."
"So you don't believe me when I tell you the stories of me seeing her?" The doubt drenching Spencer's demeanor unraveled Aria, and she grappled with the urgent need to cry. Mona was real—she woke her up in the middle of the night, showed up at the Khans' party, led her out of confinement with a nurse's uniform in hand. She was her roommate for years, damn it! "Leave it to the crazy ones to believe they're sane," she spat before rushing past Spencer and out the door.
In normal circumstances, Spencer would have cried out, "Aria, wait!" but she couldn't rustle up the courage to run after someone she wasn't sure she believed in anymore. Instead she felt the wall support her back and her jelly-like muscles bring her to the ground, allowing Aria to run with no reason to consider turning around.
"Call me officially terrified." Hanna gulped in hope that the action would take her nerves with her. She paced in front of her bed, and questioned how many times Bethany might have considered coming here in the middle of the night to finish Hanna off with that knife. "What do we do?" she whined.
Chin in hand, Emily shut her eyes to attempt brainstorming. "We look at her files" was what she came up with.
"What?" Hanna shrieked. "No, we can't do that! We'll get caught and then we'll never get out of here." The idea of being confined in Radley for the rest of her life even after she healed was more terrifying than Bethany on the loose.
"Spencer and Toby were able to—" Emily paused in her defense as a light dawned on her. "Toby! He'll let us into the record room."
Scoffing, Hanna picked up her magazine and smacked it on her nightstand. "Yeah right. The only reason he helped Spencer was because Aria was a part of his case, not Bethany."
The light receded into plain darkness, but the motivation didn't leave with it. "It's still worth a try." She walked out the door and waved Hanna along. "Come on! He's always here at this time."
Rolling her eyes, Hanna crossed a pair of fingers behind her back and prayed for the first time since she stopped going to church when she was nine.
The children's ward was the impeccable place to hide: it was abandoned and chock-full of spider webs. No one had the guts or the need to go down there. But Aria, she was a part of that ward before it was closed almost four years after she'd arrived here. She knew every crook, cranny, cradle, and doll. She and Mona had even discovered secret passageways nurses were taught to find in case of a dangerous patient situation. It would have been their secret, too, if they hadn't gotten stuck in one and a nurse fetched them out and reported that the kids knew about its clandestine location.
Now Aria crawled through one of these passageways to shortcut it to the playroom. She stumbled and fell on her damaged wrist, which electrified her nerves to the point that her teeth clenched. But she got back up and kept her pace up, massaging the tender bone of a joint with poor recovery. Scooting the bookcase to the side, Aria tripped into her safe haven, collapsing on the dusty carpet and exhaling the air that was locked in her lungs.
As Hanna tried to keep up with Emily rounding all the corners, Emily could have sprinted to the lobby if Hanna didn't have to build up her strength. "Em, slow down!" she complained, but Emily was unable to control her feet; she was focused on crumbling down all of this mystery and fear into harmless flecks.
Luck happened to be on their side as Emily almost skidded into Toby. "Officer!" she squeaked out of embarrassment. Then, flicking the humiliation aside, she got straight down to the point: "We need to speak to you," and she gestured to her and a panting Hanna.
A nervous spread of sweat cooled on Toby's hairline. "About what?" But he knew what it was going to be about.
In a millisecond, Emily was blurting out, "It's Aria. She doesn't believe us. So we need to get into the record room to prove to her that all of this Mona stuff is true."
The request, oddly enough, didn't make Toby uncomfortable. In fact, his thought process went something like: If I could get Spencer there with no trouble, I could get them there. What did he have to lose anymore, anyway? Following the law didn't seem to help as much as breaking it.
"Follow me," he whispered, and the girls skimmed the perimeters to see if there was anyone around. There wasn't.
The dust coating the doll came off in fluffy strips as Aria's fingers brushed the synthetic hair. The window was grimy, so the light filtering in was dark. But Aria didn't need to be pampered at the moment; she just needed to be alone. And alone she was on the dusty carpeting. Even the spider webs adorning the ceiling were abandoned.
"Aria?" a voice echoed, and Aria wasn't surprised. A short figure in a fluffy white robe stepped out from the way Aria had come and pushed her brown hair behind her ear.
"Mona." Aria wanted to growl, but it, much in Aria's distaste, came out as normal, welcoming, almost.
There were less light bulbs than Hanna was expecting in such a big, already-gloomy place. She gripped her arms over her chest and rubbed the sword-like hair on her skin. "Let's make this quick," she murmured between her clenched teeth as she held back a shiver.
Emily scurried down the linoleum path and got a sense of how the records were organized. "Bethany Young…," she uttered under her breath once she reached the Ys. A trembling Hanna caught up to her. "Here it is."
"What are you here for, Mona?" Aria set the doll tenderly back in the crib, positioning it so that it was sitting comfortably rather than splayed out on its side like how she had found it.
The dark-eyed sneak retied the knot on her rob, appearing weaker than she ever had. "I want to tell you something."
Aria bit her bottom lip to prevent her from exploding with irritation. She couldn't take it with Mona's ambiguity anymore. "Tell me what?"
The strangest thing happened: Mona cried. She caught her tears in a tissue she tugged out of her pocket, except for one, which darkened a spot on the carpet. Aria fought the urge to touch it, to evaluate its authenticity. But Mona inhaled, her chest expanding like she was preparing to go into battle and needed to look tougher, and replied, "Everything."
…
The file Emily had uncovered had one piece of information that caused the folder to slip out of her hands. "What is it?" Hanna asked in alarm.
But Emily found it difficult to remove her hands from her mouth. "Bethany was the blonde who fell off the roof."
Then Hanna remembered: Aria was with Mona when a girl had fallen (or was pushed) off the roof. "That explains her scars," Hanna whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
Shaking her head, Emily stuffed the folder back where she found it and grabbed Hanna's hand. "We need to get to Spencer. Now."
Hanna was taken aback and felt compelled to tug her hand free, but didn't. "Why?"
"Because we need to end all of this, or Aria might end up just like Bethany."
"Em, you don't think—"
"It was never Aria we had to be afraid of. It was Mona. Don't you get it? Aria remembers holding a knife, and Mona was there. With her condition, Aria was easy to frame. Bethany thought she was Sara—she must have the same condition as Aria. Maybe Mona saw that as a threat, like Aria would become close to her because they shared the same illness. But we need to go, now!"
The two girls met up with Spencer and paced the bedroom, emptier without Aria.
"What do we know?" Emily plopped down on Spencer's bed with a pounding head.
"We know Aria's has three roommates—Mona, Jenna, and Alison. Jenna was blinded, and Alison disappeared after leaving Radley, and Mona was sent to the fourth floor after the incident with Bethany 'falling' off the roof. But somehow Mona is able to get out of Radley whenever she wants. Mona was involved in some incident with Aria that ended up with Bethany being pushed off the roof." Spencer could feel her morals clashing, beating each other up inside her. Who—and what—did she believe?
"It's possible Mona stole her own folder," Emily reminded them.
"What mental patient is bold, but wants to be a ghost?" Hanna quipped.
"Wait, the fourth floor…" A jolt of realization caused Spencer's eye to twitch. "Of course! If we check the fourth floor, that will prove that Mona is there. There's no way she can manipulate the entire system."
The trio rushed to the elevators and crossed every finger and toe they had that they could think their way out of this and get Aria out, too. The plan was spontaneous, and shocked them all how easily deception came to them after weeks spent in Radley: Hanna faked a nervous breakdown, Emily called for the nurse, and Spencer hopped in front of the computer once she saw that Hanna was providing a terrifying distraction. "Mona Vanderwaal," she whispered almost inaudibly as her fingers typed it into the patient records bar.
She hit "Enter."