***Chapter 26***

**Aria's POV**

I was actually back in the photo lab, amazingly enough. I figured A wouldn't mess with me twice in one day, and probably not with Clark here with me. So I was setting my three rolls of film through the developing process and Clark was doing the same with his. We hadn't really talked much since he told me he knew what happened to me, but the silence wasn't too awkward.

"I may have gone a little overboard." He said as I finished hanging up my rolls. "I've got 8 rolls in here."

"Here, let me help." I offered, to which he handed me a couple of rolls to hang up on my side of the lab.

I spotted one of the photos which looked like it was from when he might have taken a picture of A. I brought the magnifying glass up to the negative, wanting to know if it was really an image of A. There was definitely a black hooded figure in the frame, taken from the side. But I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was real. After all, it looked like there was a little bit of a bust on the hooded figure.

"Aria, wanna wait til they dry. You're making me nervous." Clark's voice came from across the room, making me look over at me.

"Yeah, no problem. They look great." I told him before turning away and heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I just need to make a call." I told him real quick before heading out of the room.

I grabbed my phone from my bag and immediately called Emily. I figured she wasn't in the middle of something, so I could tell her and maybe get some clue of what I should do from here.

"Hey, I think Clark might have gotten a picture of A." I told her as soon as she had picked up the phone.

"Wait, who's Clark?" she asked, totally missing the important part that we might have actually gotten a picture of A.

"The guy I met at the photo lab. We were taking pictures out at a junkyard and I think it was by accident. But it looked like A."

"So make a copy and we'll look at it together."

"I can't. They're not exactly mine."

"So borrow them. Listen I gotta go."

I rolled my eyes before realizing that she was right. I would definitely need to snag those negatives to show them. I headed back into the dark room to finish developing the film. Once everything was taken care of and we were both happy with what we had gotten out of the trip we headed out of the room. He put his negative sheets into his cubby before packing up his bag.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yeah." I said then paused for a moment. "Wait, now that I think about it I'm not sure I dumped out the last of the developer."

"I'll go check."

I smiled as he disappeared back into the dark room and I quickly grabbed the negative sheets, not sure which one exactly I needed so I just grabbed the whole stack. Hopefully he wouldn't notice until after I had gotten them back. I had just closed my bag back up when he had come back into the room.

"We're all good."

My bag felt extra heavy as we walked back out to his car, probably from the stolen pages that were inside. I smiled though when he asked me any questions and so the drive back home wasn't too bad. Just a little nerve-wracking. When he had pulled up outside of my house again, I made my goodbyes before heading into the house with a small wave at the police officer parked outside.

"Hey, there you are." My dad's voice caught me off guard when I walked into the living room.

I had kept him updated by text today, and he hadn't seemed too upset that I had left campus. So I wasn't sure if I should expect him to be mad or not, but he seemed pretty calm.

"Yeah, just got all my photos developed." I told him as I sat down on the couch.

"Take any good shots today?" he was definitely alright with me leaving campus.

"I got some that I'm happy with. How were classes today?"

"Pretty good, though my day might have been better if I had gotten to have lunch with you on my break."

"Sorry about that, maybe tomorrow?" I offered as a way to make up for it.

"Definitely. Alright, I'm gonna get started on dinner."

I smiled as he left the room before heading into his office which had a scanner that I could look at the negatives and zoom in better on the shot than I could with just a magnifying glass. It took a few minutes for me to go through the pages to find the image I was looking for, but eventually I got it. I took a picture with my phone when I had gotten it enlarged enough to see the figure clearly in the image. Then sent it out to the other girls.

-Aria: A is a girl?-

I put the negatives back into my bag, not wanting my dad to see them and ask about them. It didn't make any sense that A was a girl, she must be helping Charles. So it looked like we were dealing with another A team. I gave a sigh as I ran my hand over my face. My dad came in a few minutes later, telling me that dinner was ready. Mike was at practice, so it was just the two of us tonight.

"So what are your plans for tomorrow?" he asked, ripping apart the piece of garlic bread on his plate.

"I was gonna go to Hollis for a bit, then hang out with the girls for a little while. See how the day goes."

"Alright, well let me know when you decide."

We finished up our dinner pretty quickly and my dad disappeared into his office to finish up his work for the night. I glared at my stack of homework when I got back up to my room, not wanting to deal with it but knowing that I needed to. So I settled down with my math homework, knowing that it would take a while. Math was never my strong suit, so getting all the information down without having the teacher there to explain it before hand made it tricky for me. I rubbed at my forehead as a headache slowly formed. My phone chirped, making me flinch in fear that A was back to his old tricks.

-Jason: Hey, how was the rest of your day?-

I smiled at the text, even though things with Jason had been kind of rocky the last few times I spent any time with him, I still liked that he was reaching out and trying to be my friend through all of this.

-Aria: Alright, spent some time away from school work which was nice. How about you?-

I turned back to my math assignment, checking the answer in the back of the book to see if I had gotten the answer right. Thankfully, I had so I went to start on the next problem.

-Jason: Been stuck with a ton of paperwork. My dad is trying to sue a bunch of people so I'm having to pick up the slack.-

I frowned at the message, that wasn't fair that his dad was leaving so much of the work to him when it wasn't something that he wanted to be doing. It especially wasn't fair given the state of their relationship. I decided that this conversation would be so much easier not via text, so I called him instead.

"Hey, what's up? Why did you call?" he answered the phone.

"Just thought it'd be easier to talk than text. Less distracting."

"Oh, so I'm distracting now?" he teased, making me smile.

"When I'm trying to do my math homework, definitely." I told him with a laugh.

"How's that going? Catching up on all your work?"

I sighed, shoving the math book away from me and heading over to the window seat, looking out to the trees outside. I shivered at the change in temperature being so close to the glass.

"It kind of sucks. I only got through a few days of class work today, since I went to take some photos at a junkyard."

As I spoke, I went to grab his jacket which was laying at the foot of my bed. I slipped on the heavy jacket before heading back over to the window. His cologne was still strong on it and it soothed me and helped stop the shivers.

"What inspired this trip?"

"One of my friends at Hollis, he told me about this photo contest that I'm entering. I thought I could use some more material than just what is in my room." I explained as I looked out the window.

"What's this photo contest?"

"It's called the Cardillo Fellowship. The winner gets a summer internship at a magazine in California. So I figured I would enter and see how I do."

He was quiet for a moment, thinking about what I had just said before responding. "Wow, California is a long ways away."

"Yeah, but I probably won't get it." I told him, not confident at all about my work. It was weird enough having Clark and my dad look at the photos I had taken, but showing them to total strangers seemed so foreign.

"Please, the other contestants don't have a chance. I know you're going to win." He sounded so sure I couldn't help the smile that formed on my face.

"You haven't even seen any of my work."

"Yeah, but I know you. And I know how amazing everything you do is."

I felt my heart contract at that, that he had such faith in me. I didn't understand it, how much he believed in me. That I was this super girl in his mind. I felt a tear slide down my cheek and didn't know where it had come from. I wiped it away quickly before leaning my head back against the wall.

"Aria, you alright?" Jason's voice sounded so concerned that it pulled me back to reality, to what was happening now.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm alright."

"You know my offer is still open if you need to talk. Any time, I'm here for you." He told me, making me feel slightly uncomfortable.

"I know. I'm just not ready to talk. I don't know if I ever will be."

"Of course." He replied, before pausing for a moment. "I know this is gonna sound weird, but are you doing anything Friday night?"

"I don't know. I mean, with the A hunt its kinda hard to plan things out more than a few hours ahead." I told him, rubbing at my neck. I hit a sensitive part and flinched at the pain. That was weird.

"Yeah, I feel you there. Between that and work I barely have any spare time." Jason returned.

"Why did you ask?"

"Well, there is a theater nearby doing a Kubrick marathon. I thought it would be something that you would want to go to. It's a bunch of movies all day, so I could take the day from work and we could go see one. If you wanted."

"I didn't know you liked Kubrick." I said in response, amazed that he was a fan of a specific director, and that it wasn't Tarantin. Though I was learning new things about Jason all the time. Like the fact that he knew about gallery openings and movie marathons. It was a nice surprise though, that we had more things in common than I thought that we did.

"Well, I'm not that familiar with his work, but it looked like something that you might be interested in."

"Jason, you don't have to do this. We're just friends. We can hang out around Rosewood for all I care." I told him, trying to lower the standard for our friendship while quietly reminding him that we're just friends, nothing more.

"I know. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to take your mind off of things."

"Thank you." I told him, stunned that he was so heartfelt about this.

Suddenly, my phone beeped into my ear. I pulled it away seeing that I had a text from Hanna. I put it back to my head, knowing that I needed to go and talk to the girls about what I had found out today. My stomach flipped over at having to talk about the fact that A was a girl, when I knew Charles was a guy. I wasn't sure how I was going to explain that to them without telling them what had happened.

"I gotta go. I'm supposed to meet up with the girls."

"Wait, you never said if Friday was a yes or not."

I couldn't help the smile that spread across my face. He was definitely persistent, but
I didn't feel like that was too bad of a thing. "It's a tentative yes, depending on how crazy the A hunt gets."

***End Chapter***