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“I go there, too,” Emily blurted.
A small smile appeared on Cassie’s face. “I know you do. You were friends with Alison DiLaurentis, weren’t you?”
Emily pressed her lips together. Just hearing Ali’s name made her heart beat faster.
“I made the connection at my party,” Cassie explained. “I remember you. I used to play field hockey with Ali on the JV team at Rosewood Day. She was really good.”
“I remember you, too.” Emily fiddled with the cloth napkin on her lap. “Ali thought you were awesome. She used to talk about you all the time.”
Cassie pressed her tongue between her teeth, seeming a little embarrassed by this. “We had fun together. Ali was definitely mature beyond her years—all of us said so. We couldn’t believe she was in seventh grade.” She twisted a thick leather bracelet around her wrist. “I couldn’t believe it when I found out about what Ian had done to her. He was a grade ahead of me. I only knew him by sight, but he always seemed so nice to everyone. Not the kind of guy who would . . . you know. But what kind of freak dates a seventh grader as a senior? That’s just . . . wrong.”
“I know.” Emily’s eyes inadvertently filled with tears. She wanted to claim it was the strong odor of Italian spices wafting in the air, tickling her nostrils, but she knew it wasn’t true.
“She used to talk about you, you know,” Cassie said.
Emily lifted her head. “Really?”
“Uh-huh. She said you were her favorite of all her friends. You guys had a special bond.”
“We did,” Emily said, her cheeks warming. “I miss her so much.”
“I do, too.” Cassie placed her hand over Emily’s. “I’ve changed so much since Ali went missing.”
A buzzer sounded from the kitchen. A group of women at a nearby table broke into a peal of laughter. Emily blotted her eyes with a napkin and peeked at Cassie’s blond hair, heavily lined eyes, and the multiple piercings in her ears. Was it possible Ali’s disappearance had made Cassie drop her perfect, preppy image and turn into a bad girl? It certainly had made Emily rethink a lot of things.
“I’ve never had another friend like Ali,” Emily admitted. “Even though she could be mean, I would have done anything for her.”
The waitress appeared with two cannolis, and Emily and Cassie dove into them at once. Cream oozed onto the plate as Emily cut into the pastry with her fork. “This is frickin’ delicious,” Cassie murmured.
“Much better than a salad,” Emily said.
Then Cassie laid down her fork, leaned forward on her elbows, and gave Emily a serious look. “So listen. We’ve had a lot of fun with you, Santa. At first we weren’t sure about you—it was so weird that Mrs. Meriwether brought in a girl to be Santa, and she kept whispering around you, and we were sure there was something weird going on. But you’ve proved us wrong. So we want to invite you somewhere very special tonight.”
Emily almost choked on her bite of cannoli. Her heart began to hammer. A tiny voice inside of her pleaded, Don’t let it be a pranking mission. Anything but that.
Cassie licked a bit of cream off her spoon. “Have you heard the stories about someone in Rosewood messing with people’s Christmas decorations?”
Emily’s heart sank. “I guess so.”
“Well, that’s us.” Cassie thumbed her chest proudly. “Me, Lola, Sophie, and Heather. We call ourselves the Merry Elves. And tonight, we’re going to pull our biggest prank yet.” She scootched forward into her chair, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We’re going to steal all the presents under the big tree at the Rosewood Country Club. All of the decorations, too. It’s perfect timing, because tomorrow morning is the annual brunch where everyone opens their gifts. It’s going to be just like How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Let’s see if the snotty rich people gather around the tree when it’s bare.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, we’d like for you to help.”
Emily kept her gaze trained on her half-eaten cannoli. “I don’t know how I feel about stealing.”
“Oh, we’re not stealing the stuff.” Cassie waved her fork in the air. “We’re just moving it to the tennis courts. They can move it back the next day. It’s just to mess with them. Screw with their perspective. It’s like how, a couple of weeks ago, we stole this baby Jesus from the Nativity scene in front of a church. We wanted people to see the empty cradle in the manger and really think about things—what the holidays mean, what the symbols mean.” She paused. “It was also really funny. Heather had to ride in the car with the Jesus on her lap. She kept screaming about how it was bad karma and that God was going to strike her down.”
It took all of Emily’s willpower not to tell Cassie that it was her mother’s baby Jesus she was talking about. On the bright side, it didn’t sound like Cassie and the others had smashed the baby Jesus to pieces. “So the pranks aren’t about ruining people’s holidays?” she asked timidly.
Cassie popped the last bite of cannoli into her mouth. “Not necessarily. It’s more to draw attention to the commercialism of it. All good pranksters have a point to their actions. I mean, we’re not complete thugs.” She touched Emily’s hand. “We’ll have so much fun, I promise. Think of it as a Christmas crusade.”
The bites of cannoli churned in Emily’s stomach, and she stared out at the mall’s promenade, with its massive Christmas tree and millions of shops. Maybe Cassie had a point. She thought about the line of kids at Santa Land, all of them asking for way too many things, and their parents nodding encouragingly. And there were all those stories on the news of shoppers tackling one another to get the last hot toy at Target or Walmart. All those commercials that made you feel terrible if you didn’t buy your beloved a diamond ring or a Lexus or an It bag for Christmas. Even her mother’s desperation to get the baby Jesus back: She was going to sell it in order to buy Christmas presents so she could turn this Christmas into, yet again, the best Christmas ever. Did it really matter when they had the most important thing: a healthy, happy family that was spending the holiday together?
