Mrs. Meriwether’s brow creased. “Is this true, Cassie?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cassie admitted. “I scoured the mall, looking. But sorry, Santa, I couldn’t find a single hat.”

“It’s okay,” Emily said quickly. “I’ll live.”

Mrs. Meriwether’s eyes flickered from Emily to Cassie, looking like she didn’t believe either of them. “Just go back to work,” she grumbled, turning around and trundling back to the gingerbread house.

Cassie gazed down her nose at Emily. “Thanks, Santa.”

“You’re welcome,” Emily answered.

“You know . . .” Cassie ran her tongue over her teeth. “There’s a party at my house tonight. Maybe you want to come.”

Emily blinked hard. “Uh, sure. That would be great.”

“What?” Heather slid the headphones from her ears and nudged Cassie hard. “Why are you—”

“Shut up.” Cassie nudged her back, then turned to Emily again. “I live on Emerson Road in Old Hollis. You’ll know the place because of all the cars.”

“Great.” Emily tried to sound nonchalant. “I’ll see you there.”

Cassie set off toward the back of Santa Land. The other elves followed behind her, whispering. Emily returned to her throne, feeling light-headed and giddy, but nervous, too. Was Cassie being sincere? What if this was some kind of setup? She stared at the swarming mall crowds. If someone passes in the next minute with a Neiman Marcus bag, this is all going to end up okay, she wagered.

Not five seconds later, a woman strutted past with not one Neiman Marcus bag, but three. If that wasn’t a positive omen, Emily didn’t know what was.

Chapter 5

Every Good Spy Needs a Plan

When Emily got home from Santa Land that evening, she flopped on the living-room couch with an old clothbound journal in her lap. Ali used to keep a journal, and because Emily had wanted to do everything just like her, she’d started one back in middle school. Emily had only recently found out that Mona Vanderwaal had pulled Ali’s old journal from a pile of junk on the curb that Maya’s family had thrown away from Ali’s old bedroom. Mona had used the information in that journal—including Emily’s and her old friends’ darkest secrets—to become A.

In the twinkling light of the now fully decorated Christmas tree, Emily flipped through the old onionskin pages of her notebook. At first, her journal entries were mostly straightforward accounts of things she and her new friends had done together: trips to Ali’s family’s vacation house in the Poconos, manicures at the King James Mall, a sleepover where Ali dared Aria to prank-call Noel Kahn, her crush. When Aria did, Ali had blurted, “She loves you!” before Aria hung up.

In April of that year, the tone of the entries had begun to change. The Jenna Thing happened, and they’d all become so scared and worried. Emily didn’t refer to the incident directly on the pages—she was worried her mom might read it—but she’d put a sad face next to the day that it happened. Many entries after that were despairing and frantic, too.

The next school year, things began to spiral downhill even more. Ali got a spot on the JV field hockey team, even though she’s only in seventh grade, Emily had written one day in late August. She was talking about the team party she went to today and saying how cool the older girls were. She hadn’t drawn a sad face, but Emily remembered exactly what she was feeling: Ali would soon realize she wasn’t cool anymore and drift away from her. Her time with Ali had always felt borrowed and precarious, and in the back of her mind, she was always waiting for the fantasy life to come crashing down.

A few journal entries later she mentioned that Ali and Emily had attended a field hockey party where Emily had met none other than Cassie Buckley. Cassie bragged about how good vodka and Red Bulls were, Emily had written. When I asked if I could try one, Cassie ignored me, and Ali was like, “No, Em, I think vodka–Red Bulls are a little out of your league.” She and Cassie laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Emily still remembered that party like it was yesterday. Cassie had answered the door with the front pieces of her long blond hair braided together and fastened at the back with a clip; only a few days later, Ali showed up to school with her hair done in the same way, and then all the other girls in their grade copied her. Once inside the house, Cassie had mixed drinks effortlessly, like she was an adult. She’d slung her arm around Ali’s shoulder and invited her to a “secret” party upstairs, making it clear Emily couldn’t come. Emily had wandered around the party for a little while longer, but no one spoke to her. She’d slipped out the door, holding in her tears until she was halfway down the block.

She closed the journal, pulled her laptop onto her lap, and typed Cassie Buckley’s name into Facebook. A profile of the Technicolor-haired, pierced girl popped up. Emily scrolled through her pictures; Cassie wasn’t smiling in a single one. Nor had she included any photos from her blond, preppy, field hockey days. Why had she undergone such a dramatic makeover? If Ali would have lived and remained friends with Cassie, would Ali have transformed, too?

“Who’s that?”

Emily jumped. Carolyn stood in the doorway, a laundry basket in her arms. “Uh, no one,” Emily said.

Carolyn dropped the laundry basket on the couch and studied the screen. “Is it a new girl you have your eye on?”

The words sounded forced coming out of Carolyn’s mouth. Emily wondered what Carolyn really thought about Emily’s sexuality—she wasn’t exactly the accepting type.

“Does Emily have a new girlfriend?” Beth asked, wandering into the room with a bowl of microwave popcorn.

“Maybe.” Carolyn folded a Rosewood Day Swimming T-shirt and set it on the chair. “Show her, Em.”

“Let me see, let me see!” Beth plopped down next to Emily and tilted the laptop in her direction. When she saw Cassie’s picture, she frowned. “Whoa. She looks tough.”

“She’s just this girl who’s working at Santa Land with me,” Emily protested, figuring their mother had told her siblings about Emily’s mission. “She’s definitely not a girlfriend.”

“What about her? She’s cute.” Beth clicked on another profile. It was tiny, gamine, short-haired Heather from Santa Land. In Heather’s info section, it said she liked South Street Philadelphia, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and The Anarchist Cookbook.

“What are you guys doing?” Jake grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl as he entered the room.

“Trying to find a new girlfriend for Emily.” Beth clicked on the profile of a girl named Polly whom Emily didn’t recognize.

“Are the girls hot?” Jake’s eyes lit up. “I’ll help.”

“You guys!” Emily grabbed the laptop from Beth and slammed the lid shut. She suddenly felt like her siblings were turning this into a pet project. It reminded her of when she was little and they decided that she was half-girl, half-cat because she was so young, small, and nimble. Felina, they called her, as though she were a superhero mutant. They’d developed training sessions for Emily to make her even more catlike, squeezing her under fences, folding her up inside cupboards, and forcing her to walk across a balance beam that straddled the small pond down the street. Emily put up with it because she liked the attention—it was hard being the youngest and left out of everything. It was only when they started talking about letting Emily jump off the roof to see if she’d land on her feet that Mrs. Fields got wind of it and put a stop to things.

“I don’t want a girlfriend,” Emily said now.

“Sure, you do,” Beth teased.

Emily groaned, stood up, and stormed into the kitchen, where her mother was standing at the stove minding a pot of pasta, a chicken-print oven mitt on one hand. When she saw Emily, she dropped the spoon into the pot and rushed over to the kitchen table.

“How did it go today?” she said in an excited whisper.

“Um, not too bad.” Emily ran her hand through her hair. “They invited me to a party.”

Mrs. Fields squealed giddily as though Emily had just announced she’d been awarded a full scholarship to Harvard. “That’s wonderful. And you’re going to go, right?”

So ironic. Usually, Emily had to beg her mom to let her go to parties. “You don’t care that it’s a Sunday night and I have school tomorrow?” she asked.

“You can go in late to school if you want,” Mrs. Fields said.

Emily almost swallowed her gum. Who was this woman, and what had she done with her über-strict mother?

Mrs. Fields started listing off points on her fingers. “Now, be sure to tell me everything they say, including any pranks they might want to pull next. In fact, try to record it on your phone if you can. Or write it down so you don’t forget. And don’t drink.” She wagged her finger at Emily.

“Got it,” Emily said.

The kitchen timer sounded, and Mrs. Fields stood up again. “You’d better get upstairs and figure out what you’re going to wear. I can have Beth set the table instead of you. Go on.”

She nudged her out of the room. Emily scuttled up the stairs, walked into her bedroom, and opened her closet. Nearly identical Old Navy long-sleeved T-shirts, medium-wash jeans, and Banana Republic cable-knit sweaters hung in an unorganized jumble. What did one wear to a naughty elf party? She pulled out a pair of tight black jeans and an off-the-shoulder black top she’d bought on a whim with Maya.

Then, a flicker outside the window caught her eye. She ran to the window and squinted hard. Something was moving through the cornfield outside. It was definitely a person. And did she see blond hair?

Emily pressed her nose and mouth so close to the window that the glass immediately steamed up. But by the time she wiped it clean and looked again, the figure had vanished.

Chapter 6

Poor Little Wallflower

A few hours later, Emily walked up the front steps of a huge white Victorian on Emerson Road in Old Hollis, the hip neighborhood next to Hollis College. It was the only house on the block with loud music pulsing from its seams, lights in every window, and cars parked on the grass, so Emily figured it was Cassie’s. A couple of kids were making drunken angels in the light dusting of snow. Everyone seemed to know one another, and she already felt out of place. She’d asked Aria to come with her, but Aria had to help her dad get wreaths or logs or something ready for the Winter Solstice.

The front door was shut tight. Emily was deliberating over what to do—knock? Just go in?—when the door burst open and a girl wearing a very short dress and thigh-high snow boots and a guy in a Santa beard and a HOLLIS BEER CRAWL T-shirt tumbled out onto the porch, giggling. They held the door open for Emily, and she slipped inside.

The scent of stale beer instantly assaulted her. People crammed the rooms, talking loudly. A small Christmas tree decorated with white lights rotated slowly on a plastic pedestal. A high-tech-looking stereo pumped out music, and a flat-screen TV was tuned to Comedy Central, not that anyone was watching. A gray cat perched on the stairs, licking her paws. When a girl barreled down from the second floor, spilling her cup of beer as she went, the cat screeched and took off.