Twisted

Nothing had happened between Noel and Klaudia. The jealousy that had been present in Aria ever since she was friends with Ali was eating her alive. It had almost destroyed her relationship with Noel once; she couldn’t let it happen again. Klaudia was going to be living with the Kahns until June. If Aria ever wanted to feel comfortable at the Kahns’ again—with Noel again—she had to make peace with her.

“Please?” Aria placed a hand on Klaudia’s shoulder. “I need to apologize.”

Klaudia shook her off. “I have nothing to say to you. I embarrassed and hurt.” Then she skied over to one of the chairlifts and waited for the next gondola.

“Wait!” Aria cried, snapping on her own skis and sliding after her. Just as Klaudia sat down on the gondola, Aria jumped on, too.

“Idiot!” Klaudia spat, moving as far to one side of the lift as she could. “What you doing?”

“I need to talk to you,” Aria insisted. “It’s important.”

“Aria?” Noel cried worriedly behind her. “Uh, you forgot your poles!” He waved two long, thin sticks in the air. “And that lift is for a double-black diamond!”

Aria hesitated. They were already twenty feet off the ground. Empty gondolas swayed back and forth behind them. Skiers zigzagged below, suddenly looking like minuscule ants.

“It’s okay!” she called bravely. Hopefully she could just stay on the gondola and ride it back down.

Then Aria looked at Klaudia, who was pointedly faced the opposite direction, staring at the pines. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you last night. I didn’t realize what Finland’s cultural practices were. I’m sorry.” Aria didn’t really believe that everyone in Finland hot-tubbed naked, but it was easier just to let Klaudia believe she did for now and move on.

Klaudia didn’t move a muscle. Even her skis remained motionless.

Aria sighed and continued. “I have a jealousy problem. I loved Noel when I was in sixth and seventh grades, when there was no chance of us ever hooking up. So when he was interested in me last year, I didn’t exactly believe it was real. Sometimes I just let that jealousy get the best of me, and that’s what I was doing with you. I . . . well, I accidentally read one of your texts to your friend Tanja. You said I was a peikko. A troll.”

Klaudia whipped around. That got her attention. “You spy on me?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Aria said quickly. “It was just lying there, and . . . well, I’m sorry. For a while, I was really mad at you—it sounded like you wanted Noel, and it hurt that you thought I was a troll when I thought we were becoming friends. But I’m over it. Sometimes people talk behind friends’ backs. That’s life. But we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, so I want us to be friends again. Can we have a truce?”

A swirl of wind blew Klaudia’s icy-blond hair over her face. On the slope below, someone wiped out in a cloud of white. The top of the mountain appeared over the crest. A big sign in the snow said LIFT BAR TO DISEMBARK.

Silently, Klaudia pushed the bar up, gripped her ski poles hard, and met Aria’s eyes. There was a forgiving look on her face, and for a moment, Aria thought she was going to apologize and everything would go back to normal.

But then Klaudia’s lips curled into a conniving smile. “Actually, Aria, I’m going to f**k your boyfriend. Tonight.”

Aria stared at her. It felt like Klaudia had just punched her in the throat. “Excuse me?”

Klaudia scooted closer to Aria. “I’m going to f**k your boyfriend,” she said again—in textbook-perfect English. “Tonight. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

It was like they were in a horror movie where a character suddenly became possessed by a demon. Who was this well-spoken, nerves-of-steel girl? Klaudia’s face had transformed from helpless sex kitten to ruthless boyfriend stealer. And even more than that, the look in her eyes was almost dangerous, as though she meant Aria harm. Aria remembered the last time she’d seen that look: on Tabitha’s—Ali’s—face when she threatened Hanna on the roof deck in Jamaica.

The memory rushed in hard and fast, as though it had been patiently waiting for nearly a year to rear its ugly head. Aria hadn’t believed Tabitha was Ali until Tabitha started threatening Hanna on the crow’s nest. Then, suddenly, it seemed so . . . real. Tabitha’s every gesture, her every aggressive movement was exactly like how Ali had behaved the night she’d tried to kill them in the Poconos.

All of a sudden, Aria saw what the others already knew. Ali was here. She’d tried to sneak back into their lives in disguise. And Aria had almost let her.

“Please!” Hanna had wailed as Ali pinned her to the wall that surrounded the balcony. “Leave me alone!”

Every protective instinct in Aria’s body kicked in. She inserted herself between the two of them. “Don’t touch her!”

Ali turned to Aria, looking at her like she was crazy. “What do you think I’m going to do? I just want to show her the view.”

But Aria wasn’t falling for that. “I know what you’re going to do!”

Ali moved away from Hanna and lunged for Aria instead. Now it was Aria’s turn to lose her balance and get a terrifying view of the crashing whitecaps below.

“Aria!” someone shrieked behind them. Glass shattered. Aria’s knee banged against the low wall, scraping off skin. Ali barreled for Aria again, her arms stretched out in front of her. Aria stared into her wide, crazed eyes, clearly seeing Ali inside. She had come to kill them, just like she’d killed Courtney, Ian, and Jenna. She was going to throw them over the roof one by one.