Free Wanted by Sara Shepard

climbed out of the car and stood very still. A snowblower grumbled in the distance. Three crows sat on a green electrical box across the street. The air smelled like spilled motor oil and snow.
    Rolling her shoulders, she walked up the gray flagstone path and rang the DiLaurentises’ bell. There was a thud from inside. Spencer hopped from foot to foot, wondering if this was a mistake. What if Courtney didn’t know they were related—or didn’t care? Just because Spencer wanted a sister didn’t mean she’d get one.
    Suddenly the door flung open, and Courtney appeared. Spencer gasped involuntarily. “What?” Courtney asked sharply. Her eyebrows made a V.
    “Sorry,” Spencer blurted. “It’s just…you look so…”
    Here was Ali, exactly as she was in Spencer’s memory. Her blond hair was wild and wavy over her shoulders, her skin gleamed, and her blue eyes sparkled under a fringe of thick, long eyelashes. There was such a disconnect in Spencer’s mind—this girl looked just like Ali, and yet she wasn’t her old friend.
    Spencer waved her hands in front of her face, wishing she could shut the door and start this all over again.
    “So, what’s up?” Courtney said, leaning against the doorjamb. There was a hole in her left red-and-white-striped sock.
    Spencer chewed her lip awkwardly. God, she even sounded like Ali. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
    “Cool.” Courtney ushered Spencer in, then turned and padded down the hall toward the stairs. Framed photos of the DiLaurentis family lined the walls. Spencer recognized many of them from the DiLaurentises’ old house. There was the picture of the family on a double-decker bus in London, a black-and-white one of them on a beach in the Bahamas, and the fish-eye-lens photo of them in front of the giraffe habitat at the Philadelphia Zoo. The familiar images took on new significance as Spencer followed the unpictured DiLaurentis through the house. Why hadn’t Courtney gone on any of the vacations? Had she been too sick?
    Spencer stopped in front of a photo she didn’t recognize. It was of the family on the back porch of their old house. Mother, father, son, and daughter grinned broadly, happily, as if they didn’t have a secret in the world. It must have been close to the time Ali went missing—there was a big bulldozer looming in the yard, near where the gazebo was going to be. There was another shape at the edge of the property, too. It looked like a person. Spencer leaned close, squinting, but couldn’t quite make out who it was. Courtney cleared her throat, waiting on one of the upper steps. “Coming?” she asked, and Spencer scuttled away from the photos, like she’d been caught spying. She sprinted up the stairs.
    There were lots of moving boxes in the upstairs hallway. Spencer dug her fingers into her palm when she saw one labeled Ali—Field Hockey. Courtney skirted around a purple Dyson vacuum and pushed through a door at the end of the hall. “Here we are.”
    When Spencer saw the room, she felt as though she’d stepped back in time. She recognized the hot-pink bedspread immediately—she’d helped Ali pick it out at Saks. There was the big black Rockefeller Center subway station sign that Ali’s parents had bought for her at an antique store in SoHo. And the license-plate mirror over the bureau was the most familiar of all. Spencer had given it to Ali on her thirteenth birthday.
    These were Ali’s things, all of them. Didn’t Courtney have any possessions of her own?
    Courtney flopped down on the bed. “What’s on your mind?”
    Spencer sank into the paisley, stuffed chair across the room and straightened the protective arm covers so the patterns matched up. This wasn’t something she could drop on a person without warning—especially someone who’d spent her life battling a mysterious illness. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should just up and leave. Maybe…
    “Let me guess.” Courtney picked at a loose