Angela snorted. “They let you walk around the yard. Don’t think you’re getting a spin studio or a Pilates class.”
“But . . .”
Angela leaned forward, her cigarette blazing. “Listen, honey. I highly suggest we use the rest of this time to talk about girl gangs. A girl like you needs street skills. You go in there spouting Shakespeare, taking notes? You’re going to get your ass kicked.”
Spencer blinked hard. “I thought that if you just minded your business and did what you were told, people would leave you alone.”
One corner of Angela’s mouth quirked into a smile. “It depends. Sometimes, you slip through the cracks. But sometimes, trying to lay low makes you a target.”
Suddenly, all of Spencer’s tough resolve crumbled. She shut her laptop, realizing why Angela had laughed at her for wanting to take notes. What was the point?
“There’s no way to make it better?” she heard herself squeak.
Angela snorted. “You can survive, sure. But better? That’s why they call it prison. The best approach, honey, is to figure out a way not to go. Prison will ruin your life, mark my words.”
A shiver ran up Spencer’s spine. “Why were you in prison, anyway?” It was another thing Angela didn’t mention in her book.
Angela shook another Newport out of the pack. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Did you kill someone?”
“God, no.” Angela looked at her sideways. “If I did, do you really think I’d be out already?”
“Then what? Assault? Robbery? Drugs?”
Angela’s lip curled. “Those aren’t nice things to assume.”
Spencer suddenly really wanted to know. So she employed an old trick she had used in debate club when she wanted to intimidate an opponent. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at Angela, sphinxlike.
Angela’s expression soured. She blew out another plume of smoke. Five seconds passed, and finally she threw up her hands. “Jesus. Stop looking at me like that. It was fraud, okay? I created fake identities for people to keep them out of prison. Set up new lives for them. Figured out ways for them to start over.”
Spencer blinked hard. “Wait, you’re serious?”
Angela rolled her eyes. “Why would I lie?”
“Did the cops find these people you helped?”
Angela shook her head. “All except for this one stupid bitch who didn’t follow the rules—she got in touch with someone from home, and the cops were monitoring the phones. They traced her fake ID back to me. I had to plead guilty to some of the other people I helped, but those people were long gone. As far as I know, the law never caught up to them.”
Spencer ran her hands over the top of her computer, her heart beginning to thrum a little faster. “So it’s like the witness protection program . . . except not through the police.”
Angela nodded. “You could say that, sure. It’s a new life.”
“Do you . . . still do it?”
Angela’s eyes narrowed. “Only for very special cases.” She stared right into Spencer’s eyes. “It’s not for everyone, you know. You can’t leave any traces behind. You can’t be in touch with anyone you know from your previous life. You have to start over as if you were . . . I don’t know. Dropped down here from an alien craft. Some people can’t deal.”
Spencer couldn’t believe it. For the past two weeks, lying on her bed, she’d fantasized about someone who, like a travel agent, could get you a passport and travel documents that would extract you from your current predicament and plop you into a world where you were no longer in trouble. And here was someone who actually did it, sitting across from her.
She considered what it would be like, leaving Rosewood and never looking back. Becoming someone else entirely, and never, ever telling anyone the truth. Never seeing her family again. She’d miss them. Well, maybe not her mom, who really didn’t seem to care that Spencer was on trial for murder, but she’d miss her dad. And she’d miss Melissa, who she’d become closer to lately—Melissa had been very vocal about how Spencer was wrongfully accused, though she’d stayed away from explicitly talking about Ali to the press. She’d miss her friends, of course—it would be so strange not to talk to them ever again. But what did she have to live for here? She had no boy in the picture. No college future. And anything was better than prison.
She looked up and stared into Angela’s eyes. “Would you do it for me?”
Angela stubbed out her second smoke. “Starting price is a hundred.”
“Dollars?”
Angela tittered. “Try a hundred thousand dollars, honey.”
Spencer’s jaw dropped. “I-I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Well, then, this conversation never happened,” Angela said, her voice suddenly going scary-cold. “And if you tell anyone that it did, I’ll hunt you down and destroy you.” She recrossed her legs and continued, her voice normal again. “So. Do you want to talk about girl gangs or what?”
Maybe it was the menthol smoke, maybe it was the pissed-off-looking king and queen staring at her from the tapestry, or maybe it was the threat of that giant chandelier breaking off and crushing her head, but suddenly Spencer felt dizzy. She stood from the chair. “Actually, I-I’m sorry. I think I should go.”
“Your loss.” Angela waggled her fingers. “I get to keep the three hundred, though.”
In seconds, Spencer was on the porch again. Angela didn’t follow her out.