A/N: Ay ay everyone! So, this story is pretty much like not canon anymore because a lot of the stuff that's been happening in PLL is like impossible to put in here after everything that's happened. But I'm going to do my best and make everything make sense, but I want you all to know now that I'm not necessarily planning the end of this story to be an A reveal or anything. This is an Emison story, and that's what the ending will be based off of. I can't promise it'll be the best ending ever, but when it does come (I don't know when that will be), I ask you all to be kind to me about it... this is my first -A PLL fic, so I'm not used to writing all this specific plot and stuff...
Anyway...
Disclaimer: I do NOT own PLL!
PLEASE enjoy, favorite, follow and REVIEW!
"Look, Ali, I'm really sorry for ruining your time with Em yesterday. And for everything else," Hanna told me.
"I forgive you but… you didn't like… hear me and Em doing anything in my bedroom right?" I asked. Hanna's eyebrows shot up, like she hadn't realized what Emily and I had been doing in there.
"N-no," Hanna answered, wetting her lips nervously. I let out a breath that I hadn't known I'd been holding and nodded.
"Good," I said.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I tried not to think too much about who A was or what he or she or they were planning for me. I had my journals back, which was good, but A didn't need them to have the power. A always had the power. Always.
I kept the journals with me at all times, which I decided was for the best until I could find a secure place to keep them.
The next day at school, after Emily drove the both of us there, we split up like normal. I headed to my first class, but I was stopped by a suspicious looking Noel Kahn. I hadn't talked to him very much since he had helped me in New York, because I figured the less I talked to him, the less he and I had our loose ends leading to each other. And that was for the best for both of us.
"Hey, Ali," he greeted casually.
I stopped, looking him up and down. "Hi."
"How have you been? I know that there haven't been many leads on the kidnapping thing," Noel said casually. I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew perfectly well that the story about the kidnapping was false, so why was he talking about it like this? What was he getting out of this?
"I'm okay," I answered, crossing my arms tightly over my chest. "My friends are helping me through everything."
"Everything, yeah. Like your mom dying and that Shana girl dying," Noel said, and I found myself glaring at him. What the hell was he up to?
"Yeah," I answered, raising my chin up a little bit to show him that I wasn't scared. "Those things."
"I bet your friend Emily is the one helping you the most, though, right?" Noel wondered. I felt my throat tighten. Why was Noel bringing up me and Emily? Sure, I had trusted Noel with some of my secrets and things, but that didn't mean that I completely trusted him. And I knew that the girls definitely didn't trust him, so I wasn't about to.
"Emily and I are none of your business," I stated, my eyes narrowing again.
"Fine," Noel agreed, nodding. "I just wanted to make sure that you remember that I know things."
"Trust me, I remember," I stated, bitterness in my voice.
Noel smiled that creepy smile, the one that I used to think was actually attractive. "Good. I just wanted to make sure that it hadn't slipped your mind." He stepped around me and started to walk off.
I spun around. "What do you want, Noel?" I snapped.
Noel turned back to me, still smiling. I tried not to shudder at creepy it was. "I told you, I just wanted to remind you." And then he was gone. I shuddered, and headed into my first period.
Wonderfully enough, I had another brilliant surprise waiting for me in my first class. Tanner, that annoying cop. "Hi, Alison," she greeted in an all too chipper voice. I noted that she had a pad of paper and a pen in her hands, and I knew this wasn't going anywhere good. "I was wondering if we could maybe have a little chat before your school day starts?"
"Um, I have class," I said, using my most innocent voice.
"Don't worry, you've been excused," Tanner told me, smiling a smile that made me want to vomit. She walked past me, and I sighed inwardly as I turned and followed her out. Today was going to be just a pleasant day.
Tanner led me to an empty room, and I guessed that she'd already scoped out the place to make sure that it would be empty for her "little chat" with me.
"So, I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few questions?" Tanner asked, as if I had a choice in the matter.
"What about? My mom?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows and hoping that my expression was pained enough. I may be able to tell the truth around my friends, but one wrong word or expression and my entire story could blow up. That would ruin me and my friends… and Emily. And I couldn't let that happen.
"No, actually," Tanner answered, giving me one of those annoying smiles again. I was starting to wish that people would just stop smiling at me for a little while. "Shana Fring."
I swallowed thickly, hoping that it came off as an emotional thing. "I still can't believe that she's gone."
"It's very tragic," Tanner agreed, but she didn't sound upset. "So, you knew her from your visits to Georgia as a child, right?"
"That's right," I answered, doing my best to sound distant, like I was remembering my old friend. I sort of was, too, but really I was thinking about her standing with that gun pointed at me. That might have been the scariest moment of my life. "We were pretty close."
"You might have heard this, but Shana came to Rosewood for her senior year," Tanner stated. I nodded.
"Yeah, my friends mentioned that," I answered with a nod. "We don't really talk about Shana a lot. It hurts a lot to think about her dying. I haven't even really heard the full story about how she died."
"We don't know the full story," Tanner stated, "which is why this investigation is ongoing."
"Of course," I responded, forcing myself not to bite my lip nervously.
"So, where were you on the night that Shana died in New York?" Tanner wondered.
"I was in Philly, with the girls," I reminded her. "I think I've already said that." I hoped that my voice still sounded innocent like I was trying to force it too. I was really good at sounding mean and bitchy all the time, and doing that now would not allow this to end well.
"Do you remember where in Philly you all were?" Tanner asked me. I furrowed my eyebrows and made a face that was similar to the one that I actually made when I was trying really hard to remember something.
"I… I can't remember," I answered, shaking my head as though I were disappointed with myself. "It was a stressful night."
"Because your friends were trying to convince you that you could come out of hiding? They told you that you would be safe from your kidnapper in Rosewood?" Tanner questioned.
I nodded. "Yeah, something like that. Whatever it was that they said to me, it obviously worked."
Tanner nodded, scribbling some things on her paper. "So, you're absolutely positive that you don't remember exactly where you were in Philly?"
"I don't remember right now," I confirmed. "Maybe it'll come back to me."
"Maybe," Tanner agreed, giving me an overly nice smile that told me that she didn't believe me for a second. "Sorry for pulling you out of class like this. I hope you have a good rest of your day."
My next four classes were horrible, absolutely horrible. I was freaking out the entire time, and I even started tapping uncontrollably at one point, and the girl sitting next to me had to hiss at me to stop. Finally, when lunch came, I got to see my friends.
"Guys," I told them as I sat down with them, shrugging off the fact that I was the only one who didn't have any lunch with me, "we have a problem."
"Already?" Hanna groaned. "I thought that once I was done being the problem, we could all have a break."
I shook my head and frowned. I felt Emily take my hand under the table, which felt nice, but for some reason, it didn't help me feel less stressed out. "Well, first of all, Noel came up to me today determined to remind me that he knows about New York and stuff."
"Why would he need to remind you of that?" Aria demanded.
"Maybe Noel wants to make sure that Ali doesn't just toss him aside now. He knows stuff, so he has insurance," Spencer reasoned. I shrugged, because that wasn't the biggest problem.
"Is there something else, Ali?" Emily asked me, her eyebrows knitting as she gave me a concerned look.
"Tanner came to talk to me today," I told them in a hushed voice. "She wasn't asking about my mom, though. She was asking about Shana."
Aria bit her lip nervously. "Ezra said that they called him about Shana yesterday. It looks like they're bringing the investigation completely into Rosewood because she lived here before she died. Before I…"
"Aria," Emily started, "don't think about it."
Aria's eyebrows knit together. "I can't not think about it!"
I sighed. "Anyway, she was asking me about where I was on that night."
"You already told her where you were. Philly. With us," Hanna said, giving me a confused look. I nodded.
"I told her that, and then she asked me where in Philly," I warned.
"What did you tell her?" Spencer hissed.
I shrugged. "Nothing! I told her that I couldn't remember right now because it had been a stressful night for me, because you guys were trying to convince me to come back to Rosewood or whatever."
"So you didn't tell her a specific place?" Aria asked, and I nodded in confirmation.
"We have to figure out where we were, then," Emily said, looking at all of us. "Like, now. Before enough time passes that Ali should've remembered, and before Tanner comes asking us questions."
"So… where were we?" Spencer asked, and we all exchanged nervous looks.
"Okay wait," Hanna said, before anyone could say anything. "What if none of us remember, because none of us know?"
"How could none of us know?" Emily demanded.
"What if we say that Ali was, you know, trying to avoid coming out as alive, and so she was in Philly, right, like not being here. And then she was lost or something, and she finally called or texted us or something, and we drove there. We stopped at the place that Spence left her car, and then we took off. We stuck together, so there wasn't any need for us to know exactly what street we were on, and we tried to find Ali. And we did, and we took the bus back afterward, but we were all too like… frazzled to realize what stop it was that we got on at," Hanna ranted.
"That could work," Spencer said, getting a nod from Aria.
"It could," I agreed, "but we've got to clean it up. If one of us says that I called you and another says I texted you, that could make all of the difference in the world."
"Okay, so, you were afraid that your kidnapper knew where you were, so you bolted to Philly," Emily started.
"We hadn't known you'd left, because we were at the wedding dress thing for your mom, until you called us," Aria expanded.
"No, you can't do that," I argued. "You guys called me that night, and that's something that they could always trace."
"Okay, so we called you, to check up on you. And you were like broken down and scared because you didn't know where you were, just that you were in Philly and you'd walked a long ways from where you got off the bus," Aria corrected.
"And we ditched the thing and took my car to Philly. We abandoned it after a while, because we figured that it would harder to be tracked by your potential kidnapper stalker," Spencer said, shrugging. "And we found you and didn't know where the car was form there, so we got on the nearest bus stop and came back."
I nodded in agreement. "Do we all have that?"
"Yes," they all said in unison. I sighed, relieved, and then realized that lunch was drawing to a close. "I'll see you guys later."
We all split up, or so I thought. Emily caught my hand as she caught up with me in the hallway. I immediately slowed my urgent pace as I felt her hand in mine. I looked at her face, and she gave me a soft smile. "It'll be okay," she promised me.
"I'm not so sure," I answered, sighing. "Noel said something about you and me when he talked to me earlier. I don't think that he's A or anything, but the way he mentioned you made me think that if he was A, he would totally be after you just as much as me."
"Yeah well, he's not A," Emily reminded me, squeezing my hand. "We already have so much to worry about."
I nodded in agreement. "I wish I didn't have to come to school," I muttered. "It's so frustrating."
"I know," Emily agreed, squeezing my hand. "I have to go to my locker. I'll see you later."
I flashed her a smiled. "Yeah, you will." I watched her walk away and sighed, thinking about Saturday and wishing that we could've laid together in my bed a little longer on Saturday.
I don't remember exactly what the story Ali used for her kidnapping was, but I did watch some YouTube videos to get the main pieces of it. If some of the things I decided they would go with contradict something they actually did say in the show, that's my bad, but let's pretend it works ;P
Likeeeee? Please leave me a review with your thoughts, or send me a PM! Also, please follow me on Twitter at BrittzandTana ! Tweet me that you read this and I'll follow you back!
Funfact! WYRA, my Emison AU story that's going, has officially gotten more reviews than this story, even though there's only been 12 chapters of it compared to 19 over here :P Oh well. If you haven't checked it out, do it =)
I'll attempt to update WYRA tonight, but I can't make any promises! I was busy all morning, because a couple of my friends that came over for PLL yesterday slept over so we were hanging out this morning :P
Have a great day loves! Please review c: