Spencer got home from Emily's and tossed her trench coat across her couch before she sat down and opened up her laptop. Normally, she'd spend the next several days googling anything about the Alison DiLaurentis stalking case she could, but she had so much on her plate these days. She wasn't even really sure Ali was missing. She could picture her on some exotic beach with three tan oiled stallions feeding her grapes while she forgets Rosewood even existed.
The second her home screen flashed up Spencer pushed all thoughts of Ali and A out of her head and immediately began to throw herself into her Torts textbook. Being a lawyer was going to be her new obsession. It was healthier than her obsession to be normal in college and not the "girl who almost died at the heads of a cyber-stalker who turned out to be her older sister". She was going to finish on top of her class at Yale and then move to a prestigious law firm and within ten years make partner then named partner. This was her obsession; she'd make everyone forget about Melissa and her parents drama. She'd be better than all of them combined.
She had been studying for what seemed like hours and didn't stop until her eyes started to make the pages fuzzy and all of the text jump around. She had surpassed her reading goal by two chapters and had highlighter marks and notes so extensive there was no way she would start 1L behind. She marked the page she finished on and closed her book and laptop before she slowly made her way to her bedroom. She noticed the sun was beginning to rise and that gave her just three hours of sleep before she had to be up and at her internship with the Ballard Spahr firm. She stripped down and crawled under her covers and was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.
Her dreams were frantic and confusing. She spent most of it running from a shadowy figure in a place that reminded her of Radley. She couldn't remember where to go for safety and whenever she'd run into a room to hide Melissa would be there staring at her with an evil grin. Every once and a while she'd get lost in a hallway that went on forever trying to find a scream that sounded like Ali's. She just kept repeating the same thing over and over again, "Spencer he's closer than you think, run!".
When her alarm went off a few short hours later, Spencer awoke with a start, drenched in a cold damp sweat. It took her a moment to realize she was in her bed, at her place, alone. She wasn't in Radley, she wasn't in the same room with Melissa, she was in her bed, safe. She ran her fingers through her sweat soaked hair and got out of bed and started to get ready for her day, doing anything she could to push that dream from her mind.
She had just stepped out of the shower and looked at the mirror when she saw it, written in the steam over and over was, "all work and no play will get Spencer killed". Spencer gasped and stepped back slipping on in the shower hitting her head against the tiled wall. She could just make out a shadowy figure entering into her bathroom as she slumped to the floor and lost consciousness.