Pretty Little Liars Episode 1.09 The Perfect Storm

A huge storm is on the horizon, as Aria, Spencer, and Hanna study in preparation for the SAT exam the next morning. Emily is nowhere to be found, though. Where's she at? Well, later Emily arrives home, soaking wet, covered in mud, and crying.

The next morning, Veronica escorts the girls into Rosewood High, leery of why the test is going to be administered as planned with a hurricane brewing outside. There, she has a strange run-in with Spencer's new beau Alex, and the two share a familiar glance that signals a previous encounter.

Soon, they all run into Detective Wilden bearing shocking news: somebody has trashed Alison's memorial, and he's there to investigate. Aria gets a surprise of her own when she spots Ella, there as a volunteer proctor for the exam; a tense moment is shared as both are still resentful from Ella's sudden move out of the house.

The girls wait in the library before the exam, and Emily gets a text from "A" that sends her on a hunt for the book Great Expectations in the library; there she finds a personal love letter she wrote to Alison the summer she went missing.

Meanwhile, Noel and Aria manage to escape the holding area in the library; bonding over their shared interest in music, he strums on his guitar as she sings a few verses of a song that leads to a near kiss that's disrupted by Ezra, entering the room soaking wet, there to proctor for the exam.

Emily, still reeling from A's carefully placed notes in the library, flashes back to a time where she and Alison shared a friendship much deeper, and much more sexual, than any of the other girls were aware. Soon, she is forced to confess that she was at Alison's memorial, after it was vandalized, and she took a piece to keep as a token of her deep bond with Ali - when Veronica comes in and witnesses the aftermath of her shocking confessional, with Emily in tears, she threatens Wilden off the case due to his questioning of the girls, minors after all, without an adult present.

When Spencer presses her mother as to why or how she's met Alex before, she confides in Spencer that she had a lump removed from her breast and went to the country club to drink. There, she became overly intoxicated and Alex was kind enough to call her a cab. In an instant, she's gained back her mother's love and appreciation through this heartfelt confession.