A normal group of friends, on an ordinary Tuesday, may be discussing the possibility of snow, what happened at school that day, movies coming out that upcoming weekend, a house party on Saturday.

But this group of friends spent their days agonizing over a black hooded killer on the loose, stalking each one of their footsteps, lurking behind ever closed door. They spent their days planning their zoned defenses in the dark. And now they'd even gotten their significant others in on the ordeals.

"Is Ezra almost here, Aria, or what?" Hanna snapped, while continuing her heavy pacing around the Emily's living room.

"Yes!" Aria exclaimed, her voice strained as she buried her face in her palms.

"Well, can he hurry up? We don't have all day and who knows if that creep is still lurking-" Hanna began to rattle off when Caleb gripped her elbow, pulling her down into the seat next to him.

"Hanna, you're safe," Spencer chimed as she entered the room, carrying the tea Aria requested.

"For now," Hanna snapped at her brunette best friend.

"-A isn't going to-" Spencer started, handing Aria her tea when Hanna cut her off.

"Isn't going to what? Break into my house and lurk around, like a friggen ghost!" Hanna exclaimed.

"Hanna," Emily sounded from the corner of her living room. "You're safe now," She echoed Spencer's words.

"And if I wasn't okay?" Hanna snarled, "then what?"

"But you are okay," Spencer reminded her, sitting on the arm of the chair Toby was currently recliner in.

"And you weren't the only one there," Aria reminded her blonde friend, pointedly.

Right after arriving at school, Hanna realized she'd grabbed the wrong sports bra for gym. When she asked the other girls to bag first period and run home with her, Spencer insisted she had a huge test and Emily had too many absences as it was. Aria, on the other hand, was completely on board with ditching and practically volunteered to leave.

The two girls took their sweet time, in no rush to head back to Rosewood High, when suddenly they heard another presence shuffling around the kitchen. Both girls, after deliberating sneaking out the front door and making a run for it, tried to sneak a glimpse of their hooded enemy and almost ended up with a knife to the face in the process. In their hysteria, -A escaped and the group was no closer to solving this mystery than before.

"I'm serious, guys," Hanna started again. "The knife literally landed three inches from my head," She swore, her blue eyes wide, as if she'd just seen a demon.

"It landed about two inches from mine, Han," Aria reminded her, shaking her head slowly, clearing just as traumatized as Hanna. "I mean, I know -A has done some awful things but if that knife had only been a few more inches off, one of us would have been taken out. For good."

The room fell silent as the other teens-Emily, Caleb, Toby and Spencer-took in what the two girls were swearing. "Hey, Spence," Aria suddenly turned in her direction. "Didn't you use to take a martial arts class?"

Spencer's expression became muddled-a rarity. "Uh, no?"

"Yeah, you did?" Emily interjected. "I remember, third grade talent show. You got second and were so pissed about it, because you threw knives at a target as some part of your martial arts class and you hit the bulls eye every time."

Spencer processed this slowly. "Oh, yeah, I forgot." Except she hadn't. She just hadn't been her at that time.

Mentally, Spencer kicked herself for slipping up. But, she tried to remind herself, it could be chalked up to just an honest mistake.

If she kept her face neutral.

"I've done so many sports in my life, it just kind of slipped my mind," She tried to smooth the conversation further.

Except, to her luck, no one seemed to be suspicious of her. "Do you remember anyone from the class?" Aria questioned.

Spencer swallowed, scrambling for a lie. Lying to her parents was one thing, lying to her friends was another thing completely. They had been through so much together, risked their lives for each other and saved each other's lives too. They stuck together, through thick and thin.

Lying was so much harder when they trusted you implicitly.

So instead of a complete lie, Spencer purely gave a simple avoidance of the question. "I don't think so. It was so long ago."

"I didn't know you were a knife thrower," Toby commented from her side, the edge in his voice giving the impression that he was slightly fascinated with this new found fact. Spencer, on the other hand, realized this new found fact may explain a few things about her childhood.

Nevertheless, she grinned flirtatiously at her boyfriend. "That's a lot you don't know about me, Cavanaugh," She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Before Toby could add a retort, Hanna cut them off. "So not the time for your romance, Spence."

"Sorry, Hanna," Spencer grinned, rolling her eyes.

"Spencer, this is serious! Someone almost killed me and Hanna today!" Aria exclaimed.

"I know, Aria!" Spencer assured vigorously, "I know, okay. I just don't see how my knife throwing experience has anything to do with -A."

"-A doesn't miss its target, Spencer," Caleb spoke for the first time. "If -A wanted any one of us dead, we'd be long gone. -A wanted that knife to land exactly where it did."

"On the wall, right in the middle of my kitchen, where my mom will see when she opens the fridge," Hanna grumbled.

"Spence, this person was trained. What if it's someone we've known for a long time after us? This martial arts class could be clue!" Aria insisted.

"Why don't we go through old photos in your attic, Spence," Emily suggested. "If we found an old photo of this class, we'd have an idea-"

"An idea of what?" Spencer inquired oversensitively. "We don't even have any clue what this person looks like now. How are we supposed to figure out what they looked like from a scratchy old photograph that's been deteriorating in my attic for the past six and a half years?"

"It's worth a try," Em insisted.

"That isn't a bad idea, Spence," Toby agreed. "Besides, we're supposed to go unpack boxes from your attic anyway, remember? Your Nana is coming day after tomorrow."

"We?" Spencer raised an eyebrow again. "You're going to help me with box duty?"

"That was my plan," Toby confirmed, slightly grinning.

"Aw-" She started to exclaim when Hanna cut in again.

"Really, Spence? You've gotten distracted by your boyfriend twice in two minutes?"

Spencer rolled her eyes at her usually bubbly best friend. "I'm not distracted, Han. I'm the only one who seems to realize though, we have nothing to go on here. How am I supposed to identify -A from 6 years ago when I don't even know if they're male or female?"

"Female," Aria suddenly stated. "It was definitely a girl running out of Hanna's kitchen."

"Do you remember anything else?" Emily urgently pressed, the entire group suddenly zeroed in on their pint sized friend.

". . . .She looked thin-ish," Aria said after a minute.

"Did you see a face?" Caleb asked.

"Or a hand?" Toby fired.

"A finger?" Emily probed.

"Anything?" Spencer pushed.

"Guys!" Aria bellowed. "I said she ran like a girl and looked skinny. I didn't say I could draw a portrait."

"Did you notice a height?" Spencer questioned.

"I was kind of busy trying not to get sliced and diced, Spence," Aria countered.

Hanna, apparently, remembered something. "They looked about your height, Spence. Or Emily's. Definitely taller than me or Aria."

Hanna's fresh knowledge of their stalker should have brought her relief but instead she felt a pit beginning to grow in her stomach. Spencer didn't, at all, like the knowledge that their masked enemy was her height.

"Did they take anything?" Em searched the two still traumatized girls for answers. "Did they break anything-"

"They broke something glass but I was too scared to look," Hanna shrugged sheepishly but unapologetic. "I was about to pee my pants. I grabbed Aria's arm and ran for it."

"A little too hard," Aria threw in, rubbing her wrist, "I think you sprained it."

"Hanna, what is your mom going to think when she comes home to a knife in the wall and broken glass on the floor?" Caleb asked, eying his girlfriend.

Hanna didn't seem to have a response to that. "Ugh," She groaned loudly, burying her face in her hands. "My mom is going to flip. She was already worked up, thanks to Alison and then Mona got killed and she went into panic mode. I swear, she, like, calls me every hour just to make sure I'm still breathing."

Spencer couldn't really relate. It'd been years since her mother had displayed that kind of over bearing protectiveness when it came to her.

And as much as maybe she didn't want to admit it. She missed it.

But that was a much different life.

"Spence," Toby called, tugging her so that she practically fell into his lap. "Spencer?"

"Huh," She snapped out of her own thought process. "Oh. Sorry, I just-"

"You were lost to the world there," Toby noted, touching her face, gently. "You okay?" He whispered, softly.

"Yeah," She placated and plastered a comforting smile on her face-maybe trying too hard to convince everyone she was fine.

If only they really knew what was going on inside her head.

A few hours later, Spencer still didn't feel completely at ease, as she walked up her driveway, locking her car behind her. She knew it was normal to not feel safe, more than rational actually with a deadly stalker always on her trail, but it felt different at that moment. Her fears weren't being murdered by her anonymous stalker, at least not at the moment. It was who her stalker was that alarmed her.

About her height, skinny and a great knife thrower.

Just like she should be.

It didn't help her anxiety that no one else was home. The Hastings Manor, home to the happy family and all their literal and metaphorical skeletons, was pitch black.

"Hello?" Spencer called before opening the door, entering through her kitchen. "Mom?" She called again but received no response.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't alone.

Scrambling blindly against the wall, she flickered on the lights, trying to put her hopefully irrational fears to bed.

She knew better than to hope for anything.

Lying face down on the ground was a small pile of shattered glass, surrounding a frame, as if it'd be smashed with a hammer.

Spencer recognized the frame easily. It was one that had sat on top of the mantel for as long as she could remember. It contained a new family photo every year, one from each of the expensive photo shoots that Veronica Hastings insisted they do, Melissa and Spencer in red while their parents dressed in green, the perfect Christmas card. Spencer remembered finding slight relief in not having to do one this year, with her parents recent separation, Melissa alternating between Rosewood and London and the pesky murder charge hanging over Spencer's head. A family Christmas photo shoot didn't seem appropriate.

But why would -A smash a family photo only? Everything else in her house was perfectly neat and untouched. Why bother breaking a lousy picture frame.

Bending to pick up the annihilated frame cautiously, Spencer realized it was empty. Did -A steal the photograph? Why?

The more she thought about it, the more the hair on the back of her neck rose.

Only then did Spencer find that the photo was not missing but simply moved. The false cheery family portrait sat upright against a bowl on the counter. Perfectly positioned, waiting for her arrival.

You'd have to be blind though, not to see the alterations that took place between the frame and the counter. Melissa, Peter and Veronica were just as before, in their Christmas colors, the ideal picture of holiday happiness. But Spencer's face had been scribbled out, thoroughly and aggressively, with a black permanent marker.

Feeling a tremble work its way through her limbs, Spencer, somewhat lightheaded, gripped the photograph between her fingers, hesitating slightly before turning it over.

Just as she expected, there was a message scrawled on the back.

Liar, liar! Soon "Spencer" is going to be on fire!

-A

The message had its desired effect and Spencer felt her stomach churn, almost about to vomit all over the hard polished wood floor.

This wasn't the first time in her life that she'd heard words like this, even before -A. Before high school, before the madness that had her and her friends looking over their shoulders for a shadowy figure whenever they turned around. There was someone who wanted Spencer to feel a great amount of pain and they were a lot less anonymous.

"See this match?"

Spencer shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the memory, of that voice.

"You see the way the face melts right off the doll when I hold it up to her face?"

"Stop!" Spencer cried out loud, even though what she was seeing in her mind was from nearly a decade ago. "Stop it, stop it!" She yelled, pounding her fists on the counter top to no avail.

"This doll is going to be you if you don't cooperate."

Spencer squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing them hard, as if she could rub the memory out of her psyche.

"You know what cooperate means?"

Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she tried to get her heart rate down.

"Of course you don't. You weren't even smart enough to enter Kindergarten."

"One Mississippi, two Mississippi," Spencer counted slowly.

"It means I own you."

"Three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi."

The match collided with the doll, turning the melted, waxy, mess of a face into a huge glistening flame. It spread in just milliseconds, trailing down to the cloth body of the baby doll in just a blink of an eye.

"Six Mississippi."

The doll hit the carpet, sparks and flames and smoke soon filling the room.

"Seven Mississippi."

"Mom! Courtney just set our room on fire!"

"Eight Mississippi."

"Courtney!"

"Nine Mississippi."

"Mommy, I'm didn't do this!"

"Ten Mississippi."

Opening her eyes, Spencer pulled herself together, taking several more calming deep breaths. Using the back of her hand to swiftly wipe all moisture from her eyes, she felt her heart rate slow down, little by little.

Barely able to move without feeling like she was going to tumble over at any given second, Spencer half crawled up the stairs and hurried to her room. If her mom came home and saw her like this, if her dad popped in now for a visit, she had no clue what they'd do. They couldn't see this, Spencer told herself. Not her parents, not her friends, not even Toby could ever see this side of her.

She was going to go to her room, hide her closet, preform her yoga fire breaths until she was calm and at peace, then return downstairs and clean up the mess -A had left behind.

She was going to.

But as soon as Spencer entered her room, she felt her stomach drop once again, like a hard punch in the gut.

Her window was wide open.