2.05

•

"The Devil You Know"

During lunch, the five friends sat outside in the courtyard. On a tablet, they had Ian Thomas's suicide letter, all of them eagerly leering over it. Re-reading his words over and over, Halle's stomach curled inwards. Halle thought only of Jason and how he would feel reading Ian's letter — how he would feeling knowing she read the letter. A seed of betrayal sewed deep when her eyes first laid on the letter, all of it out of guilt because of the unsaid guilt she held towards Jason. It ate her, and the churning of her insides crippled her.

"Is this a suicide letter or a confession?" Aria asked, trying desperately to wrap her brain around it.

"It's both," Spencer said.

"No, it ain't," Halle defended. She was frustrated. It was supposed to be over. Jason promised her it was over. But reading Ian's letter, Halle knew better to believe it was over for them. Halle put in, "It doesn't read like a suicide letter. I mean, look at his last words. 'Come and find me'? That ain't suicidal, that's a game of hide-and-go-seek," she said strongly.

Aria looked up at the swimmer across the table and asked directly, "Emily, how do you have this?"

"I sent it to her," Hanna answered. "I took a picture with my phone before we called the police."

"Like, it's weird," Emily mentioned, her eyes on the screen.

"What the letter, or Hanna taking a photo of said-letter?" Halle shot.

"Hey, it's evidence," Hanna said.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Halle's word were laced with sarcasm as she fired them out at Hanna. "Ian's body is evidence too, did you take a picture of that? Gunshot to the head and all?"

Halle wanted it to be over — like Jason said. She had been sucked into the promise of moving on. Or at least starting to. It sounded so sweet last night when Jason said it to her. Halle was lulled into it, more so than anything before. If Halle was allowed to want, Halle wanted that peace.

Emily butt in, breaking up the obvious irritation Halle was taking out of the group that day. "Why would Ian kill himself just as he was about to skip town with Melissa?" she asked curiously.

"Maybe he realised he was gonna get caught. He couldn't hide forever, even with Melissa's and Wren's help," Spencer said.

"But if Ian was alive and came back with Melissa, we'd be the liars," Halle countered. She was remaining strong on this one. "We all said he died that night in the bell-tower — and that he killed Alison. If he's not dead, no one would he killed Alison either. He had the perfect out, so why would he kill himself?"

"Who cares?" Hanna snapped. "Who cares why Ian did it? The important thing is, Ali's killer is dead and we're no longer people of interest," she explained simply.

Though, something felt off to Emily. She held herself, still hung up on the wording of the letter. "Why am I not feeling relieved right now?"

"Oh, Em, come on," Aria urged. She shot, "For months, we've been as welcome in this town as a cold sore, and plus, now people know that we've been telling the truth."

Halle sighed; she couldn't argue with that. So, she offered, "And Ian is out of our lives for good."

"Yeah, but A isn't," Emily reminded them.

"Can we please just slay one dragon at a time?" begged Spencer desperately. Then, from her spot at the table, she saw Officer Reynolds approach them before any of the others. Her quickly seizing the tablet to lock caught the attention of her friends, who noticed the cop after. Spencer put on a smile for him, greeting him first. "Hey," Spencer said.

Garrett came to stand beside their table. "Hey."

"What are you doing here?" Spencer asked.

"I just came to return some evidence we took from the field hockey office," stated Garrett. He turned to the table, sparing a glance to each of the girls sat there. "Hey, um, look, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you all had to be the ones who found him."

Flatly, Spencer corrected, "Melissa's the one who found him."

"Ah, I'm sorry," Garrett repeatedly sincerely. "Then again, could've been worse."

Aria leaned forward and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Bodies decay," stated Garrett. "He's been dead for at least a week." He gave Spencer one last look and said, "Give my best to your family."

"Yeah," Spencer agreed, nodding.

The moment Garrett retreated away, Hanna jumped in and whispered, "A week? No, that's impossible. he was texting Melissa."

"Dead men don't text, Hanna," Halle said. "He died in the bell tower like we said."

Then, Emily put out a sinister thought. "He wasn't the one texting Melissa. I'm betting it was A," she said, alarmed, making her friends grow more nervous.

"But why would A pretend to be Ian and then lead us to the body?" Aria asked.

"Does it matter?" Spencer snapped. Firmly, she said, "The guy was scum and now he's dead scum. Who cares if A found him first?"

Sarcastically, Halle retorted, "Why don't you tell us how you really feel, Spence?"

Still stuck on the matter, Emily asked her friends, "What does A want?"

"You know what I want?" Hanna asked rhetorically. "I wanna enjoy my life again before Afinds out another way to ruin it," she said strongly. Hanna, too, wanted it all to be over already. Then, the blonde got up out of her seat, along with Aria and Spencer, and the three of them left together.

Halle stood up, sliding her bag over her shoulder. She looked to Emily and asked, "You coming?"

Emily shook her head. She was focused on the tablet screen again. She said, "No, you guys go ahead."

"Em, what is it?" Halle asked knowingly.

"We now know A is involved," stated Emily. "Doesn't that make you nervous?" she asked her, pleading for Halle to give the answer she desired.

A sigh pushed past Halle's lips, and she said, "Yeah, it does. It really does," she further added. "But Ian— Ian did that, too. Let's just stop looking over our shoulders for once."

Emily asked her seriously, "Did you mean what you said? About the note being like hide-and-go-seek?"

Sucking in a breath, Halle explained to Emily, "That's not how you end it. At least to me it ain't. That's not a goodbye, that's cat and mouse."

With that said, Halle walked away from the table and left Emily alone with Ian's letter. Halle was heading towards her locker when a commotion down the hallway caught her eye. Turning her head, she saw someone was getting into it with one of the senior jocks. When she got closer, edging through the crowd, Halle noticed it was her brother in the middle of it all. Halle was curious. To her, Myles never usually got involved with the 'jocks'. Myles usually stayed clear of anyone outside of his mathletes club.

BANG.

Myles was shoved up against a locker. The jock had Myles' shirt-collar gripped tightly in his fist and his forearm up against his neck. In a blink of an eye, Halle leaped into action.

"Hey! Hey!" Halle started for the end of the hallway. Her bag slipped down off her shoulder, but she didn't care. She was too focused on the guy with his arm to her brother. "Get your hands off him."

The jock briefly looked Halle up and down then chose to laugh at her. He turned back to Myles and taunted him. "You have a girl come to your rescue, Brewster."

Halle gripped at the jock's arm and yanked it from her brother. Through her jaw clenching, Halle said, "This girl's fist will be in your face in a minute." She put herself between Myles and the jock, glowering up at him with a stormy look in her eyes. "If you ever come for my brother again, I swear to god, I'll check your ass so fast you'll never forget it — and that is a threat, from a girl," she added sneeringly, in hope of defeating his ego in front of the gathering crowd.

"Wait," the jock broke into laughter, "Brewster's little sister is the whore from the video? Who knew!" he jested, boastfully laughing.

Halle grimaced at him. "Okay, I'm a whore," she said. Halle motioned with her finger for the boy to come closer, and he did. Halle leaned up and put her lips next to the shell of his ear. "But I'm not your whore," she whispered. With her hand holding him firmly in place, Halle kneed him in the groin.

The jock grunted loudly. He curled over, holding between his legs with both his hands as he fell back against the lockers with a loud clatter. He shouted at her, "You're crazy bitch!" Spit flew from his mouth. His violent outburst was to aid his recovery; the hallway full of students howling in laughter.

"Why do boys have such bad comebacks? Don't you have anything better than crazy bitch? Like, where's the originality?" Halle returned confidently. She stood over the jock, him still slumped over in pain. "Come for my family again, and I will end you. I can do worst than a knee to the groin."

When Halle turned back around to check on her brother, Myles shook his head. The crowd around them was beginning to trickle away with no more action promised. Scowling at her, Myles asked, "Why does it always have to be a fight with you? I was handling it," he stubbornly said. He then picked up his own bag as well as his sister's.

"Yeah, looked like it," Halle shot sarcastically. "Why can't you just thank me?"

"Thank you? You made things so much worst, Halle," Myles fumed. He harshly shoved her bag back at her, pushing it into her chest, irritation written plainly across Myles' face. "You might solve things by throwing punches, but I don't. This might be hard for you to understand, but not everyone wants you fighting their battles." After, Myles plunged the blade in further when he sneered, "Alison might have done, but I don't."

•

"How did that make you feel?"

"Crappy."

Halle sat on the couch in Dr Sullivan's office, replaying the week out to her. As part of her treatment plan, it was agreed that Halle would meet with Dr Sullivan once week, especially while she was still adjusting to her medication. The pills needed regular adjustments — an increase or decrease depending on how well Halle felt she was in that moment.

Dr Sullivan had her notebook rested in her lap and a pen in her hand as she filled it with any notes to go on Halle's file. Settling in closer, Dr Sullivan said, "You mentioned you and your boyfriend had a fight. Tell me about that."

"Uh..." Halle didn't want to speak about that.

"What was it about, Halle?" Dr Sullivan asked, giving her a serious look.

Halle pressed her lips together, knowing the debate in her head over whether to tell her therapist was a losing battle. So, Halle gave the truthful answer, "Eric and me have our problems, one being his apparent superiority." Halle was still bitter over his work-comment.

"He's older than you, right?" mentioned Dr Sullivan. "The power-balance is almost always off in most age-gap relationships."

"Is not being yourself a factor in them, too?" Halle asked.

Dr Sullivan's pen scribbled on the page while she kept eye contact with Halle. "What do you mean by that?"

"My brother called me out on my relationship with Eric earlier this year," Halle confessed. "He said I don't open myself up to him because I know it's a failed relationship, and being stuck in that room with Eric — that argument, I agreed. Eric doesn't know me like he should, like I should want him to. It's like I've been protecting myself with these little lies. That — or he doesn't care to hear me, I don't know," added Halle after, weighing out the blame.

"Do you feel you've become the person Eric wants you to be rather than being yourself with him?" asked Dr Sullivan.

"I'm a lot of different people for others, I'm whoever they need me to be," Halle replied.

"And who does Eric need you to be?"

"Not the person he's getting now," Halle answered. "He wants me to be the person I was before."

"Before what?" Dr Sullivan questioned.

"Before Alison was found," said Halle, a whisper of melancholy laced within her bitter confession. "Before then, before we hit the anniversary of her disappearance, I was so set in my ways. I knew what I was doing, where I was going, what my life was gonna look like. I had it all planned out, with him."

"And now?"

"I don't think I want it... Eric thinks I'm gonna join him at UPenn after I graduate," she told her therapist.

"But you don't think you are?" noted Dr Sullivan.

"I wanna go to college somewhere far away," Halle admitted aloud for the first time, at least since last summer to someone other than Jason. "I wanna go somewhere where no one's gonna know me. Where my mother ain't an alumni and my boyfriend ain't alumni-pending. I just..." Halle sighed and said, "I don't wanna be a thirty-minute train ride from Rosewood because that means I'll have to come back more, and I don't wanna have to come back."

"You want to get out Rosewood?" she asked Halle, eyebrows raised up at the girl curiously.

"I always have," Halle further confessed. "I hate small towns. I hate this small town. I hate that everyone knows my name — that people scare at me when I walk down a street. 'Hey, look, it's that girl who was friends with Alison' 'Hey, look, there goes the girl who death follows'."

"You mentioned Alison," Dr Sullivan picked up on the change of conversation.

"Everyone does." Halle inhaled forcibly and said, "For as long as I've been friends with Alison, I've only ever been Alison's friend. Alison's friend that's a cheerleader."

"You think there's nothing more you can offer?" Dr Sullivan questioned.

Halle gave shrug and then offered, "I can fight?"

"Halle, that isn't your personality—"

"To Alison, it was," Halle cut her off. "I was always the fighter. Spencer was the smart one on Debate and she runs student council. Aria was the cool, edgy one. Hanna was the sweet one, who worshiped Alison. And Em, she was the loyal one." She said, "Of course Alison was the leader, but she was also the pretty one. I always was the fighter. That's my identifier. I'm the cheerleader who fought Alison's battles. I'm a glorified bouncer," she added, dryly mocking herself. "I made that my personality after Alison taught me to, and I'm never gonna be anything more while I'm still here in Rosewood."

"I don't really agree with identifiers," Dr Sullivan said to her. "I don't believe a person is one thing and one thing only, and something tells me you don't believe that too." Dr Sullivan then told her, "A long time ago, your idea of image and identity got warped. I want to work with you to help fix that."

Looking down at her hands in her lap, Halle mentioned, "I don't who I am, not really. I think I focus too much on trying to be what everyone wants me to be. Then, when I'm who people want me to be — the defender— it blows up in my face. I don't understand why it's so hard," she countered, her voice cracking with her tears. "It's so hard for me to know what I'm so supposed to do, or who I'm supposed to be to people."

"I think you know exactly who you want to be. You said it yourself, you know exactly what you want," Dr Sullivan said, gesturing out to the girl opposite her. Then, the therapist asked her seriously, "How often is your first response is to fight?"

"It's fight or flight, right?" Halle shook her head and said, "I never run away from a fight."

"I want to share something with you," Dr Sullivan began. "With your type of Bipolar — type two, you will experience episodes of hypo-mania frequently, which can take up in the from of agitation, anxiety, irritability. It's all negative energy. Your fight, your anger — it's a sign of your distress. It's a part of you that knows that you're being mistreated, and that part of you that releases that negative energy and responds to conflict by fighting, knows that you and the ones you care for deserve to be treated well, and with kindness. That part of you loves you, and it's the only love you give yourself while in a state of hypo-mania."

Halle furrowed her brows, trying to follow with what her therapist says. "I— I don't understand," Halle said. "I don't understand how me fighting can be..." She swallowed; the lump her her throat made her eyes tear up.

"You meet others — situations — with resistance, with fight," Dr Sullivan explained. "Whether that's the more like the physical fight you had today and your brother's reaction, or you not letting your boyfriend know who you really are. You meet them with a wall, and that wall is your anger. The part of you that doesn't stand for abuse or mistreatment, that cares for your family, your friends, and for yourself. You know — in your subconscious — the behaviour others give, is not acceptable, and that you deserve better."

Quietly, Halle said, "It's because I've had better." Halle looked up and met her therapist's eyes sadly. "That Summer Alison went missing... the most calm I felt was with Alison's brother. Jason," Halle gave. "I never... I never thought he'd be the one to get me to slow down... but I wanted him to be."

Dr Sullivan put down her pen, clasped her hands together and asked Halle, "Have you ever gotten as much as you give to others back, before that time you had with Jason?"

"Sorry?" Halle was confused by the question.

Dr Sullivan said seriously, "Halle, you sacrifice yourself carelessly of your own safety and your own personal happiness for others. You've always got to be this protector. You've always got to be the one to fight back."

"I don't know what else to do. All I know is how to fight," said Halle sadly. "All I've ever done is fight."

"Has anyone ever fought for you?"

"I—" Halle's speech caught in her throat, and she went silent.

Dr Sullivan repeated her question. "Has anyone ever fought for you?"

•

Throughout the rest of her session and all the drive home, Halle replayed that question in her head. Over and over and over. The question kept going around in her head, turning and twisting. Halle didn't know how to answer. She couldn't answer.

Has anyone ever fought for you?

She knew if it came down to it, her friends would protect her but each of them would do that — for any one of them. It wasn't specific for Halle, and so it wouldn't be the answer Dr Sullivan was fishing for. Many people when they realised Halle wasn't so easy to crack gave up. They left. They walked away, or Halle changed her shell to be one they wanted to work with. It was layer after layer of what people wanted her to be, and Halle got so caught up between them, she lost herself in the mist of the lies.

Halle didn't know who she was.

She had lost herself.

Pulling into the end of her driveway, Halle cranked on the handbrake. She placed both hands on the steering wheel and rested her head against it. A heavy sigh left her body, and she wanted to cry. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to weep. Let it all go. But she couldn't though. There was no water to cry. Only a few stray tears squeezed out of her closed eyes, and they weren't nearly enough to start the flood Halle had craved to release. She was so well conditioned, Halle couldn't even do the thing she needed most.

Halle sat up, leaning across the console to look into the mirror above her dashboard. She wiped away the wetness that clung to her lower lashes, and she chose to move on. Halle grabbed her bag from off the passenger-seat and then got out of the car, shutting the door after. She went to round the vehicle, around the rear, when she heard rustling from across the road. Halle stopped, and she met Jason in the dark.

She saw him get out of his car, him parked out the front of the DiLaurentis house, and held up her hand to him. "Hey, neighbour," she lightly joked.

"Hey," Jason said, stopping when he saw her slowly walking into the middle of the dirt road from the end of her driveway.

"So, what brings you out so late?" she asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know, Brewster," he replied, teasingly.

Halle rolled her eyes at him. "That's why I asked."

Playing around with the keys in his hands, Jason told her, "I caught Aria's brother trying to break into my house."

Her eyes grew wide. "Mike?" she questioned loudly. "Mike broke into your house?"

"Tried to," Jason stressed. "He saw the lights were off and must have thought no one was home."

"Crap," said Halle. "Crap for Aria anyway."

"What about you?" Jason then asked, making her eyebrow raise. "Why are you back so late?"

"Therapy," Halle stated.

"Oh," Jason was taken aback by her honesty. "How's that going for you? You finding it helpful?" he asked, sincere, sounding genuinely interested.

"Let's just say that without Dr Sullivan I'm a mess, she's helped me through a lot," replied Halle truthfully.

Jason offered her a gentle smile. He said, "I'm glad you're seeing someone, that it's helping you."

"So are my parents," Halle commented, rolling her eyes in jest.

"You know, your mom had been really nice to me recently," Jason told her, leaving Halle pleasantly surprised.

"Oh, she has?"

"She came over with a lasagne," Jason said.

Halle laughed, "No kidding. You must be her favourite person, then."

From where he stood, Jason saw the porch light come on outside Halle's house. He knew too well that it was a sign from her mother to hurry in, having heard the car pull up. "You should probably get in there," he said.

"Yeah. And I'm sorry that Mike tried to break in," she said, offering him what little she could, and he mumbled a small thanks in return.

Halle went to turn — to head up her drive — when she felt something pull on her. An urge. It felt like a thread pulling on her, trying to release itself of a tangle in the middle. She turned back around and called out to Jason, making him turn back too.

"Jason..." Halle took a breath, nervous now he was looking at her, but still she managed to ask him what she wanted. "If Alison hadn't gone missing That Night... would you have fought for me?"

Whatever he was expecting, it was never going to be that. Her question took Jason by surprise, stumping him for a moment. A familiar feeling of longing came over him, followed in slow by realisation. Jason asked her back, "Would you have let me?"

His words touched a nerve with Halle. Dr Sullivan was right in saying no one had fought for her, but was wrong in believing Halle ever was vulnerable enough to let someone fight for her. Halle had always been strong, independent; she didn't need anyone to fight for her. Yet, the sad parts of her craved it to the point of begging. Her weak heart begged for it, but her stubborn head wouldn't let her.

"Good point, sorry," said Halle. "Goodnight."

With her short reply, Halle left knowing that deep down the Jason DiLaurentis had seen beneath the shells of what others wanted her to be.

Jason was the only one who knew her and would have fought for her too.

•

Stood around in Mr Fitz's classroom, waiting for the bell to ring, Halle chatted with three out of her four friends. Their missing member came stalking over to them, a rush in her stride.

"Em—?" Halle's question got cut off immediately.

"Ian didn't commit suicide," Emily stated boldly. "That entire suicide letter is made up of A-texts."

"What?!" Spencer asked, alarmed.

"How do you know that?" asked Aria.

"When I read it again, a couple of words stuck out to me," Emily told them. "On a hunch, I checked my old text messages. Come here," she said, ushering them over to the corner of the classroom — by Halle's desk. There, Emily pulled out a piece of paper from her bag and showed it them. On it, were printed out messages A had sent them all at one point.

"'I killed Alison. I lost my temper because she knew too much.'" Aria glanced up nervously at her friends as she read them aloud. She continued, "'But there's only so much you can bury. It won't be that easy. But I knew how to get rid of the pain. I can't run from the law. Come and find me. Ian.'"

Hanna pointed at the glued-on pieces. "So these are the parts from the texts?" she asked.

"There are only six people who know about these texts — us and A," Emily clarified. "It means that A wrote that suicide note."

"The game of cat and mouse," Halle remarked, scoffing at how foolish she was to walk away from the letter.

"How did you figure this out?" Aria asked.

"Please, I've been watching Wheel of Fortune with my mom since I was three," Emily replied.

"If A wrote this, that means Ian never actually confessed to killing Ali in writing," Spencer pointed out.

"Or in person," added Halle.

Regrettably, Emily further told them, "It gets worse. Logan Reed — the guy who dropped off the money for Ian the night of the sting? Well, I know where he works. We need more answers," she said.

The answers would have to wait. Ian Thomas's funeral was the day after and out of support for Spencer, Halle and the girls wore black again. They all found themselves at another funeral. Their second one in their sixteenth year. A part of Halle wondered how long it would be before the next one because deep down, she had a sick, twisted feeling that the funeral of Ian Thomas wouldn't be the last one she would attend. Like Halle told Dr Sullivan, death followed her.

At the sound of bell toll, Hanna muttered sarcastically, "Who's ringing it this time?"

Something told Halle that Ian's body was safely tucked away in the casket and not hanging from the bell-tower this time. She felt a throbbing in her head, a searing pain from where she hit her head that night Ian fell. Stood in the church, seeing the spot, Halle still saw the memory of her blood soak the wood, wondering if anyone else could too.

Spencer made her way over to them, greeting her friends at the entrance of the church. "Hey."

"Hey," greeted Aria.

"Thanks for being here," Spencer said.

"How's your family doing?" Halle asked her.

Spencer glanced over her shoulder. She found a sullen-looking Melissa, and Spencer had no answer.

Curiously, Emily asked, "What are the cops doing here?"

"Um, my parents wanted them here in case any uninvited guests showed up," Spencer told them.

Hanna raised her brows in surprised. "I thought my no-party-crashers policy was super strict," she commented.

"I think Spencer means angry mob with torches-type guests," Aria explained.

"I should probably get back to my family," Spencer said. Appreciating them, she said another, "thanks," before she returned to her parents.

Spencer only grew more appreciative of her friends throughout the funeral. When it came to burying the coffin in the churchyard, the girls stood side by side with Spencer in solidarity. One after the other, they took their turns to grab a handful of soil and throw it down on the coffin, lowered in the earth now. It was for Melissa, since no family showed or wanted any part in burying Ian.

As Halle took her place back in line, her eyes found Jason. In a crowd, she always found Jason if he could be found. He watched the funeral from a bench, hunched over with his hands clasped together and arms rested on his thighs. He looked disturbed.

Why was he torturing himself?

Halle thought it was unsettling enough for her to be at Ian's funeral; she couldn't imagine how Jason felt.

Emily found Halle after the funeral had finished. Halle was stood by herself, watching Jason from a distance, when Emily came over and interrupted her sad thoughts. "Is Eric picking you up?" she asked.

Halle faced her friend and shook her head gently. "Uh, no. I came with Hanna and her mom," Halle said. "Eric went back to college the day after we found Ian's body."

"He didn't want to come to the funeral, then?" said Emily.

"Did any one of us want to?" Halle shot.

Emily acknowledged her with a slow nod of her head, understanding where Halle was coming from entirely. Having noticed earlier Jason too, Emily gestured to him and asked, "Who's he waiting for?"

"I wouldn't know," answered Halle, making her friend look to her in questioning. "Maybe he came for the same reason we did," Halle added.

"To spit on Ian's grave," Emily retorted, blunt in her honesty.

Halle glanced to her friend, a small smirk tugging at her lips, and said, "Bet." Halle dropped the smile and the offered with more sincerity, "But also closure."

"Well, I still think he's creepy," Emily commented. "I mean, even if he wasn't hiding Ian, the guy's a freak and he always has been."

The 'Who Are You' album played in the background as Halle and Jason past a joint between them. It was a hot summer's afternoon; Alison had gone shopping with Hanna, and Jason had the house to himself. His bedroom window was open fully, but an air of smoke still fell upon the room. From his position, sat up against his headboard, he snapped a couple photographs of Halle, her sat cross-legged on his bed as she flicked through a comic book.

"So, you're a dork?" Halle asked bluntly, making Jason laugh.

"I'm not a dork," he said, keeping the camera up by his eye as he focused what little he could on taking her picture.

"You are such a dork," she laughed.

Jason put down the camera and picked up the joint, it previously resting in an ashtray. He plucked up Halle's mother-of-pearl lighter and lit the end, inhaling. When he let out a cloud of smoke, he shot at her, "What about you?"

"What about me?" Halle asked.

"I've played Trivial Pursuit with you," Jason reminded, as if that was enough justification.

Halle gave a shrug. "I'm not a dork, I just know a lot of useless crap about a lot of useless crap. Plus, it's not like winning Trivial Pursuit can get me into college."

"I got into college." Jason justified.

"But you're smart, when you try to be," Halle put in. "I find it hard concentrating." She took the joint from him and took a long drag.

Jason watched her. "Well, that's not gonna help in that department."

"I know, so I'm just gonna be a cheerleader," Halle said. "I can get a scholarship, not a full one with UPenn, but still partly, and I can study a subject alongside it. Probably history."

"Do you even like history?" Jason asked.

"No, but it has the most transferable skills for the workforce," she told him confidently.

He scoffed. "So, what? You're gonna make you being a cheerleader your whole personality and study a subject you don't even like?"

"Yes, you got a problem with that?" Halle asked, narrowing her eyes a little.

"Yeah! What happened to the girl who wanted to get away from here? Because it sounds to me like you're doing everything to end up here," Jason reasoned. "God, I thought you were smarter than that, I thought you were going somewhere."

Halle hummed, listening. "And where would I go?"

"Someplace better than here."

Emily broke Halle from her memory. "I'm gonna go," Emily said. "Tell your parents I say hi."

"Yeah, sure. Give your mom my love," Halle replied.

"Always."

Deciding she had stared at him enough from afar, Halle attempted to make her way over to him. Only when she took three steps ahead, Aria had beaten her to it. Halle watched as Aria took a seat next to Jason on the bench.

A sadness rushed over her. Halle didn't think it would hurt her to see Jason with someone else. He talked to Aria like he shared secrets with her, the way he shared moments with Halle. Jealousy became the nagging feeling that dug its claws in Halle's heart. Then swept in defeat, acting as the salt in her wounds, making it even more painful to watch.

Halle's shoulders fell, and she walked away.

Aria Montgomery decided to speak with Jason that day at the cemetery. She felt bad for him — she felt back for the entire DiLaurentis family and anyone who cared for Alison. Aria constantly felt bad; she had too much compassion for people. She thought that was why when she saw Jason alone watching Ian's funeral, she wanted to go over.

"Hey," she said, stood awkwardly beside the stone bench Jason was sitting on.

He glanced up at her, surprised. "Hey."

She pulled at the sleeves of her cardigan and said, "Thanks again for... helping my brother out." As she said it, she felt dirty, uncomfortable with Alison's brother knowing something so personal about her family.

Jason looked up at her again and gave a short nod. He was silent in acknowledging her thanks, not giving much away.

Aria sucked in a deep breath and asked, "Why are you so willing to give my brother a free pass?"

"I don't know," Jason answered. He sighed and offered her, "Maybe it's because Ali threatened to turn me in all the time."

Smoothing out the skirt of her dress, Aria then held it down as she took a seat on bench beside him. She kept to herself, but asked him questions in hope of bringing him some comfort. Aria thought perhaps he wanted to talk about his sister, but nobody bothered to ask. "Did she ever?"

"Ali was too smart for that," Jason remarked. "Even as a kid, she was fearless, when she needed to be. I was always jealous of that. Of her," he explained. Jason's eyes found Halle across the cemetery with Hanna and Mrs Marin. Today was going to be one of the days he'd only get to see her from afar, her stood in a pretty black dress. "Of everything Alison had." He took in a shaky breath and said, "I guess that's why my parents can't even look at me anymore. They know they lost the wrong kid."

Aria's heart instantly gave out to the boy. She only heard pain in voice and she saw it in his face, too. "Don't say that."

Jason swallowed harshly. He was keeping back his emotions, fighting them back with a fierce determination. He was emotionally stunted, unable to share.

"Look," Aria sighed heavily. "Maybe you coming here today was a mistake," she said to him.

"Just the opposite actually." Jason looked at her seriously and said, "You don't know how good it feels to know it wasn't me." Seeing Aria's taken-back reaction, Jason calmly told her, "I don't remember a thing from the night Ali died after a certain point. I blacked out, and it was Halle who found me and woke me up the next morning. I had a wicked hangover and..." Jason felt oddly comfortable with Aria. After Halle, she was the most forgiving towards him. Aria was the only one to approach him anyway. "And this," he said, reaching into his jacket-pocket and showing her a piece of paper.

I know what you did.

Aria stared down at the words and gulped. She took in a sharp breath, slight nerved, and asked, "Who gave you this? What does this mean?"

Jason was still staring at the note. His eyes fixated on it. "I don't know, but it almost destroyed me," he confessed.

With her mouth parted, Aria asked softly, "You thought that you killed her?"

"Like I said, I was jealous," Jason told her. He had a dark look behind his eyes, one driven by a pained and frustrated regret. It all stemmed down the night he sister disappeared, when Halle said she was only playing with him. "Something happened that night and I got loaded. And when I got loaded, I got angry. But..." Jason weighed out the new information and calmed. "Ian's confession has changed everything. He did it, not me," he said.

•

Halle never thought to draw the dots between humans and animals. At least not in the literal sense, not until Emily found a clue. Like a dog with a bone, Emily kept digging until she found the answer. The death of Alison seemed to have affected her more, as Emily was more determined, more invested in solving the murder than any of them. Spencer came in close, but her drive was fuelled by the need to always be right — to always win. For Emily, it was about as personal as it got.

The cheerleader realised, as she trudged through the cemetery in the dead of night, why she wasn't too fond of the sentimental. It made people go through life with rose-tinted glasses, often allowing the things they care about fall into the blind-spots. Halle wanted no blind-spots of her own; she needed to see everything and so nothing would sneak up on her. The last time she let that happen, Halle almost fell for Jason. Always ready for a fight, Halle never saw the walls she put up preventing anyone of fighting for her. She always believed people were against her.

"Okay, if we get caught, we are in so much trouble!" Aria complained.

Hanna rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, please, like we're the first teenagers to sneak in a graveyard?"

"It's like chapter one of every Stephen King book," Emily shot.

"And how do they all end?" Halle quipped back. She kept her flashlight focused head, showing her where she and the others were putting their feet. Halle was not about to step on some dead person's grave.

"Guys, not helping," Spencer told them off. She was just as off-put and nervous about being there as the rest; she didn't need any witty comments about horror books to worsen it.

Emily, with her eyes constantly flitting down to the map Adelivered to her house, commented, "Okay, I think we're close." They were searching for a plot-number.

Aria took in a sharp breath, hand flying out to halt the group. "Wait — stop." When the girls did and looked at her in questioning, Aria said, "I'm— I'm not going any further until you tell me why we're here."

"I told you," Emily stressed, "I think A set us up."

"And I do, too," Spencer voiced. "Emily's right. This isn't over." She said, "And I thought I'd feel differently once we buried Ian, but I don't, and it's because A is still alive and calling the shots."

As they started to walk again, slowly, Aria asked, "But what do that mean?"

"What do you think it means?" Halle fired back shortly. "It means, we just the pieces A gives to us, and we're stupid enough to try and figure the full freaking picture without seeing the box."

"The box?" questioned Hanna.

"A Jigsaw, Hanna!" said Halle in a raised-whisper. "It's a metaphor."

"Well, how was I supposed to know," returned Hanna, squealing when her heel went to the ground in a particularly muddy part.

"I think A took the body and made it look like a suicide," Emily mentioned firmly.

"No!" Aria couldn't wrap her head around it. "Why would A do that?"

"So that the confession in the suicide note makes Ali's murder look like and open-and-shut case," Spencer explained.

"But that would mean that A was helping us," Aria offered. "This whole time, we've been trying to convince the police that Ian killed Ali."

"Exactly," said Spencer. "And why would A help us when we know that A ultimately wants to hurt us?"

"Ugh!" Hanna groaned, whining a little. "I'm confused, and I'm stepping on something mushy." She turned up her nose, hating the feeling of her shoes in the mud.

Choosing to ignore the blonde, Emily continued, "What Spencer means is, how do we know for sure that Ian is Ali's killer?"

"We don't," Halle stated, tilting her head as she took in the point.

Aria looked at her, lost. "What do you mean?" she asked. "The Kissing Rock video," she said.

"And— and the missing tree," Hanna added.

"A gave us those things," Emily argued. "A is the one who handed us Ali's killed on a silver platter."

"And whatever A gives, the bitch takes back," Spencer reminded them all.

With the torch-light aimed ahead, Emily's eyes caught onto something. "Guys, look," she said. The light shone over a plot-number embedded into the grass, the plot A chose to lead them to. When Emily traced the light upwards, they saw they were stood in front of Alison's grave.

BELOVED DAUGHTER, TRUSTED FRIEND

Halle cringed at the engraving. In the year that had passed, she didn't have the courage to share in the sentiment. Halle figured it out for herself — Alison was done with her and had her way of flushing Halle out for good.

Suddenly, giggling cut loudly through the air. Gasps left the girls. A couple — Halle couldn't tell who — jumped back. Halle was too focused on the video sprawled in projection across the wall of the stone mausoleum. Just like Aria mentioned only a few moments prior, the kissing rock video played and Alison was shown how she always wanted to be remembered: immortal and on a big screen.

"I know you wanna kiss me."

Her voice echoed around them. It travelled down over the grass, seemingly coming from all around. Alison's voice was closing in on the girls, making them trapped, in a state of limbo from what happened that night. They watched again in horror, Alison inching closer to Ian.

"Where's it coming from?" Spencer asked, speaking loud to be heard.

THUD.

Alison fell. Her hand and the bracelet on show. She squeezed at the ground, grabbing a fistful of soil, before releasing. This was the moment she died, they all thought. They had seen it before.

Halle whipped her head around, searching in the dark. She came up empty. "We have to stop it, what if someone sees?"

The video continued. Alison's once relaxed and still hand started to move again. The girls gasp, realising. And then Alison's girlish giggle sounded again, more terrifying than the last time. She was laughing, enjoying herself. Halle almost felt like Alison was laughing at her — at them — in mockery.

"Oh, my god!" Emily exclaimed, just as Alison appeared on camera again. This time, she was holding it, smiling devilishly, before the flipped it to film Ian as he fixed his jacket.

"She was still alive," Spencer said, in a state of shock.

"Thanks for meeting me," Alison said sweetly, giggling again after.

It cut. The film stopped playing. Alison was alive after Ian left her, and now the two of them were dead. Halle felt a chill creep up her back as she looked around. She felt cold and unsafe. In that moment, stood in the cemetery in the dead of night, Halle knew A was finished playing with them yet. This was only the second act of the game.

•