Pretty Little Liars

Chapter 30: A Letter from the Past

That night, Sabrina sits at her bedroom window, her eyes on her quiet neighborhood that's been tucked away for the night. The glows of streetlamps create orange puddles on the street and a dog barks somewhere in the distance. Her mind has been foggy with the rumors Phi told her about earlier today. She twists the beaded bracelet Ali got them all after the Remy Thing around her wrist, remembering Alison swearing that the five of them will be friends forever.

"Sweetie?" Mrs. Mendes appears in the doorway, her hair damp from her shower and pulled into a clip. "You okay?"

"Huh?" Sabrina asks, her mind slow to catch up with the question. "Uh, yeah. I'm fine."

"You were quiet all during dinner." Mrs. Mendes crosses the room, the scent of baby oil coming with her. She fingers a white envelope in her hands. "And now you look upset."

"What's that?" Sabrina juts her chin towards the envelope. She doesn't want to have to lie to her mother about her complicated feelings for a girl. And she definitely doesn't want to open up a talk about Ali because that will only make her more depressed.

"It came for you." Mrs. Mendes holds it out for her to take. "I meant to give it to you when you got home earlier but I forgot." She peeks at it. "But it's weird. It has no postage stamp or return address."

It's true. The face of the envelope remains empty, with the exception of Sabrina's name neatly scrawled across the front.

Sabrina tosses it onto her desk, knocking over her cup of pencils. "I'll open it later."

"I know that you're going through a tough time right now, but it'll get easier." Mrs. Mendes puts an awkward hand on her daughter's shoulder as she sits down next to her on the window bench. "See this as an opportunity to reconnect with your old friends. The four of you were sitting together at Alison's funeral. Didn't it spark any sort of... connection?"

"Not really," Sabrina lies. Really, the only connection they have right now are these messages from A but that doesn't count. "We don't have much to talk about anymore."

"How come?"

"Alison was the only thing we had in common," Sabrina tells her tearfully, thinking back to a time where everything was so easy. "She's gone and the ties that held us together have come undone."

"If Alison was what brought you together, then maybe you can find a way to use her to bring you together again," she suggests warily. "It's easy to see Alison as this missing girl posted around Rosewood and in the paper. But don't see her as that. See her as the friend that you shared with four other girls. See her in that light, not what Rosewood painted her to be."

Sabrina shifts. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to reconnect a little with Neah and the others. And as safe as it felt being with them at the funeral and sitting with them at lunch... it felt weird. Like they were the limbs of a doll but the head was missing. Hanging out with them more would just be too weird.

"I don't know," Sabrina says and then pulls her cardigan around her. "I think I'm going to try and sleep."

"Okay." Mrs. Mendes rises from the bench and pads across the room, shutting the door behind her.

Sabrina pulls her curtains shut and the envelope on her desk catches her eye. She sighs, tearing it open and finding a smaller envelope inside, this one a nostalgic pink color. Her heart sinks into the depths of her stomach as she stares at her familiar writing in the upper left corner where her name and address was written. Alison's name was scribbled in the middle with her house number and street underneath.

It's the same envelope Sabrina wrote to Alison a week before that sleepover whisked Ali away for good. They kissed months prior, where Alison taunted Sabrina about it all the way up until she vanished. The letter detailed every single romantic feeling Sabrina had for her, everything she loved about Ali. At the end, she wrote the three words she was always too scared to say out loud. Three words and eight damn letters. Words that will forever be strung together in her mind.

Sabrina's eyes wet with tears and she finds the same lined paper Sabrina used for that letter to Alison inside the envelope, a pink post-it note attached:

Thought you should see it from me first. How guilty do you think it would look if Detective Bass were to find this? He might even think you killed me for not feeling the same about you. But chin up, Killer. Like I said: I'm still here. -A

Killer: the nickname Ali gave Sabrina, calling her her own personal guard dog that protected her from harm. A name only Ali and the girls knew about.