Hanna's POV

It was the night of the fashion show and I was on edge. Something felt off about the night, like something bad was going to happen, I just wasn't quite sure what. Maybe it was just the creepy feeling I kept getting when one of us put on one of Alison's dresses, knowing that she was the last person to ever try them on. Or maybe it was the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I've been trying to ignore but only seems gets worse every time I see her.

A Year and a Half Earlier...

Emily and I had been friends since we were in middle school. But after our best friend Alison's disappearance, we were all a mess, Emily took it the hardest. There would be entire days that she wouldn't leave her room or even stop crying. It broke my heart to see her that way. I didn't understand at the time why she was more broken up about it than the rest of us. I even felt guilty that maybe I wasn't mourning the loss of Alison enough. In an attempt to appease my own guilt, I made it my mission to be there for Emily and pull her through it. At first it was just holding her while she cried, bringing her food and forcing her to eat, making her shower and go to school.

Throughout the next several weeks, we were inseparable and became closer than we ever had been, even distancing ourselves from everyone else. Soon after Ali went missing, Aria's family ended up moving to Iceland for her dad's sabbatical, and Spencer buried herself in school, work, sports, and volunteering to keep herself so busy that she didn't have time to feel. Emily and I did everything together and for the first time in my life I felt truly needed by someone. She needed me in her life and I vowed to never let her down.

At the end of September was Emily's birthday, and while she was still in a dark place, I wanted to do something special for her. It was just going to be the two of us, as it had been since right after Ali's disappearance, but that's the way we preferred it. No one else understood Emily the way I did and no one needed me more than she did.

I planned a weekend away for us in the Poconos. Normally our parents wouldn't have liked us going away for the whole weekend, without proper supervision, but Mrs. Fields was hoping that maybe getting away would help Emily grieve and return to her former self, and my mom was on a business trip, so what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.