“Really?” Spencer pressed a hand to her chest. “I mean, I only started my website last week. I’m really flattered.”
“So that means you’d like to be part of our video?” Samantha asked, her voice rising. “We’ll film in New York on Tuesday evening. You’re not too far, right? Just an Amtrak ride away? We’ll cover the costs.”
Spencer pushed her hair off her forehead. “That sounds awesome.” She pictured her face in classrooms all over the country, including Rosewood Day. And this was just another way to impress everyone at Princeton.
“Perfect!” Samantha cried.
She gave Spencer the details and directions. After they hung up, Spencer pressed the phone between her hands, her mood buoyed again. Your name kept coming up. She pictured everyone talking about her. Lauding her. She couldn’t wait to tell someone about this—but who? Her friends would appreciate it, of course, and Greg flashed through her mind, too, but that was crazy. She didn’t even know him.
The door to the mini-mart swung open, and Spencer looked up. A man in work pants and a plaid shirt sauntered to his car parked at pump number three. Then her gaze fixed on the registers inside. Something the cashier had said suddenly turned over in her mind. We get lots of people coming in and out of here. One blond girl buying water is the same as the next.
They’d said they were looking for a girl. They’d said Ali was blond. But they hadn’t said what she’d been buying—they weren’t even sure themselves. Why had Marcie mentioned water specifically? Did she know something?
She shut off the ignition and climbed out of the car again. When she was halfway to the mini-mart, something behind her made a loud, sizzling snap. She turned and stared. The lights at the pumps flickered off. A shadow passed behind one of them. Faint footsteps sounded from the back of the building. And then she noticed a parked car she hadn’t seen before. It was a black Acura. It seemed so out of place up here in the land of pickup trucks and practical Subarus.
She thought of the Acura keychain she’d found in her stepfather’s trashed model home. They’d found that car, hadn’t they? Or did Nick have more than one?
Then something flashed in the front seat. It was a head of blond hair.
Spencer’s heart pounded. She crept toward the car, knowing she had to see who was inside. With every step, her chest felt tighter and tighter, and her nerves crackled and snapped. Finally, she approached the car from the side. She steeled herself, then took one more step forward to peer into the front window.
The alarm went off, sending her jumping backward. It was a deafening sound, all whoops and buzzes. Spencer staggered a safe distance away, then stared into the window for real. Only now, the blonde was gone. No one was in the car. She ran her hands down her face. It made no sense. She’d definitely seen a blond head . . . hadn’t she?
It felt like a sign. Spencer fumbled for the door handle and climbed back into her car. She’d turned out of the Turkey Hill lot even before the alarm was silenced.
And before whoever was watching her could do anything worse.
11
ARIA’S FIRST FEATURE
The next morning, Aria stood in the cramped back room of the gallery, watching as Ella carefully swathed the sold Ali painting in Bubble Wrap. They were shipping it to the buyer in New York by a courier truck waiting outside, and they wanted to ensure it got there in one piece. Aria couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
Ella paused. “This is how you imagined she would have looked if she’d lived, right?”
Aria fiddled with a piece of packing tape. Ella had been in the hospital room the first time they’d protested to Fuji that Ali had been part of Nick’s attack, and she’d also heard Fuji shoot down the theory. It was easier for her family to believe that Aria had imagined seeing Ali instead of considering that the crazy girl was at large.
Aria’s gaze moved to Ali’s haunting eyes in the painting. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to capture so precisely Ali’s furious, insane, and unraveled expression—it was as if something demonic had taken hold of her brush. Why had a highbrow art collector in New York City been so captivated by it? Aria had Googled John Carruthers last night; there were numerous pictures of him attending charity events at the Met, the Whitney, and the MoMA. A New York Times profile said that he and his family lived in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-Seventh Street with views of Central Park. His two young daughters, Beverly and Becca, had the FAO Schwarz life-size piano from Big and an authentic Keith Haring mural in their playroom. Hopefully he would hang Ali’s face somewhere the girls would never see it.
And what about Ali? Surely she’d found out that a painting of her face had sold; the deal had even gotten a mention on the Art Now blog. That worried Aria a little. Was Ali totally pissed off that Aria was profiting—hugely—off her image? Should Aria pull out of the transaction?
Stop worrying, she told herself as she helped Ella wrap the rest of the painting. She couldn’t let Ali run her life.
Ella whistled for the courier, who was waiting in the main gallery space, to haul it to the truck. “So,” she said, turning to Aria after he left, “what are you going to do with all that money?”
Aria took a deep breath. When she’d come to work this morning, her mom had announced that the money had been wired into the gallery’s account; in a few days, it would be in her bank account, minus a small gallery fee. “Give you money for a new car so we don’t have to drive that Subaru anymore, for one thing,” she said with a chuckle.