Hanna let out a long, shaky breath. T-Mobile smelled overwhelmingly like carpet cleaner and sweat—she hoped it wasn’t her own. “I saw that message we painted on top of your garage the other day,” she blurted out. “You know, HM + MV = BBBBBFF? You can see it from the sky. Clear as day.”
Mona seemed startled. Her expression softened. “You can?”
“Uh-huh.” Hanna stared at one of T-Mobile’s promo posters across the room. It was a cheesy photo of two girls giggling over something, holding their cell phones in their laps. One was auburn-haired, the other blond—like Hanna and Mona.
“This is so messed up,” Hanna said quietly. “I don’t even know how this started. I’m sorry I missed the Frenniversary, Mon. I didn’t want to be hanging out with my old friends. I’m not getting close with them or anything.”
Mona tucked her chin into her chest. “No?” Hanna could barely hear her over the mall’s kiddie train, which was rumbling by right outside the T-Mobile store. There was only one pudgy, miserable-looking boy on the ride.
“Not at all,” Hanna answered, after the kiddie train passed. “We’re just…weird stuff is happening to us. I can’t explain all of it right now, but if you’re patient with me, I’ll be able to tell you soon.” She sighed. “And you know I didn’t do that skywriting thing on purpose. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Hanna let out a small, squeaky hiccup. She always got the hiccups before she was about to start bawling, and Mona knew it. Mona’s mouth twitched, and for a second, Hanna’s heart leapt. Maybe things would be okay.
Then, it was like the cool-girl software inside Mona’s head re-booted. Her face snapped back to being glossy and confident. She stood up straighter and smiled icily. Hanna knew exactly what Mona was doing—she and Hanna agreed never, ever to cry in public. They even had a rule about it: if they even thought they were going to cry, they had to squeeze their butt cheeks together, remind themselves that they were beautiful, and smile. A few days ago, Hanna would’ve done the same thing, but now, she couldn’t see the point. “I miss you, Mona,” Hanna said. “I want things to go back to the way they were.”
“Maybe,” Mona answered primly. “We’ll have to see.”
Hanna tried to force a smile. Maybe? What did maybe mean?
When she pulled into her driveway, Hanna noticed Wilden’s police cruiser next to her mother’s Lexus. Inside, she found her mother and Darren Wilden snuggled up on the couch watching the news. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on the coffee table. By the looks of Wilden’s T-shirt and jeans, Hanna guessed Supercop was off duty tonight.
The news was showing the leaked video of the five of them again. Hanna leaned against the doorjamb between the living room and the kitchen and watched as Spencer threw herself at her sister’s boyfriend, Ian, and Ali sat at the corner of the couch, looking bored. When the clip ended, Jessica DiLaurentis, Alison’s mother, appeared on the screen. “The video is hard to watch,” Mrs. DiLaurentis said. “All of this has made us go through our suffering all over again. But we want to thank everyone in Rosewood—you’ve all been so wonderful. The time we’ve spent back here for Alison’s investigation has made my husband and me realize how much we’ve missed it.”
For a brief second, the camera panned on the people behind Mrs. DiLaurentis. One of them was Officer Wilden, all gussied up in his cop uniform. “There you are!” Hanna’s mother cried, squeezing Wilden’s shoulder. “You look great on camera.”
Hanna wanted to vomit. Her mom hadn’t even gotten that excited last year when Hanna had been named Snowflake Queen and had ridden on a float in the Philadelphia Mummers parade.
Wilden swiveled around, sensing Hanna’s presence in the doorway. “Oh. Hi, Hanna.” He moved slightly away from Ms. Marin, as if Hanna had just caught him doing something wrong.
Hanna grunted a hello, then turned and opened a kitchen cupboard and pulled down a box of peanut butter Ritz Bits.
“Han, a package came for you,” her mother called, turning down the TV volume.
“Package?” Hanna repeated, her mouth full of crackers.
“Yep. It was on the doorstep when we got here. I put it in your room.”
Hanna carried the box of Ritz Bits upstairs with her. There was indeed a large box propped up against her bureau, right next to her miniature pinscher Dot’s Gucci dog bed. Dot stretched off the bed, his tiny nubby tail wagging. Hanna’s fingers trembled as she used her nail scissors to slice open the packing tape. As she ripped open the box, a few sheets of tissue paper cascaded through the room. And then…a champagne-colored Zac Posen slip dress sat at the bottom.
Hanna gasped. Mona’s court dress. All tailored and pressed and ready to wear. She rooted around the bottom of the box for a note of explanation but couldn’t find one. Whatever. This could only mean one thing—she was forgiven.
The corners of Hanna’s lips slowly spread into a grin. She leapt onto her bed and started jumping, making her bedsprings squeak. Dot circled around her, yapping crazily. “Yessss,” Hanna cried, relieved. She’d known Mona would come to her senses. She would be crazy to stay mad at Hanna for long.
She sat back down on the bed and picked up her new BlackBerry. This was short notice—she probably wouldn’t be able to rebook the hair and makeup appointments she’d cancelled when she thought she wasn’t going to the party. Then she remembered something else: Lucas. I’m not invited to Mona’s party, either, he’d said.
Hanna paused, drumming her hands on the BlackBerry’s screen. She obviously couldn’t bring him to Mona’s party. Not as her date. Not as anything. Lucas was cute, sure, but he was definitely not party-worthy.
She sat up straighter and flipped through her red leather Coach organizer for Lucas’s e-mail address. She would write him a short, snippy e-mail so he’d know exactly where he stood with her: nowhere. He’d be crushed, but really, Hanna couldn’t please everyone now, could she?
26
SPENCER GETS IN HOT WATER…LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY
Friday evening, Spencer was soaking in the family hot tub. It was one of her favorite things to do, especially at night, when all of the stars glittered in the dark sky. Tonight the only sounds around her were the burbling of the hot tub’s jets and the slobbery crunching sounds of Beatrice, one of the family’s labradoodles, chewing on a rawhide bone.
Then suddenly, she heard a twig snap. Then another. Then…someone breathing. Spencer turned as her sister, clad in a Nova-check plaid Burberry bikini, climbed down the stairs and settled into the tub, too.
For a while, neither of them said anything. Spencer hid under a beard of bubbles, and Melissa was looking at the umbrella table next to the pool. Suddenly, Melissa inspected her sister. “So I’m a little annoyed at Dr. Evans.”
“Why?”
Melissa swished her hands around in the water. “Sometimes she says all this stuff about me like she’s known me for years. Does she do that to you?”
Spencer shrugged. Hadn’t Melissa warned her Dr. Evans would do that?
Melissa pressed the flat of her hand against her forehead. “She told me that I choose untrustworthy men to date. That I actually go after guys I know will never commit or turn into anything long-term because I’m afraid of getting close to anyone.”
Melissa reached over and drank from her big bottle of Evian, which was sitting next to the tub. Above her head, Spencer saw the silhouette of a large bird—or perhaps a bat—flap past the moon. “I was angry about it at first, but now…I don’t know.” Melissa sighed. “Maybe she’s right. I’ve started to think about all my relationships. Some of the guys I’ve gone out with have seemed really untrustworthy, right from the start.”
Her eyes needled into Spencer, and Spencer blushed.
“Wren’s an obvious one,” Melissa went on, as if reading Spencer’s thoughts. Spencer looked away, staring at the waterfall installation that was on the other side of the pool. “She’s got me wondering about Ian, too. I think he was cheating on me when we were in high school.”
Spencer tensed. “Really?”
“Uh-huh.” Melissa inspected her perfectly manicured pale peach nails. Her eyes were dark. “I’m almost certain. And I think I know who it was.”
Spencer bit a hangnail on her thumb. What if Melissa had overheard Spencer and Ian in the yard earlier? Ian had alluded to their kiss. Or, worse: what if Ali had told Melissa what Spencer had done, years ago?
Not long before Ali vanished, Spencer’s dad had taken the five of them to play paintball. Melissa had come along, too. “I’m going to tell Melissa what you did,” Ali singsonged to Spencer as they put on their jumpsuits in the changing room.
“You wouldn’t,” Spencer hissed back.
“Oh no?” Ali teased. “Watch me.”
Spencer had followed Ali and the others to the field. They all crouched behind a large bale of hay, waiting for the game to start. Then Ali leaned over and tapped Melissa on the shoulder. “Hey, Melissa. I have something to tell you.”
Spencer nudged her. “Stop it.”
The whistle blew. Everyone shot forward and started pelting the other team. Everyone, that was, except for Ali and Spencer. Spencer took Ali’s arm and dragged her behind a nearby hay bale. She was so angry her muscles were quivering.
“Why are you doing this?” Spencer demanded.
Ali snickered, leaning against the hay. “Why are you doing this?” she imitated in a high falsetto. “Because it’s wrong. Melissa deserves to know.”
Anger gathered in Spencer’s body like clouds before a huge thunderstorm. Didn’t friends keep each other’s secrets? They’d kept the Jenna secret for Ali, after all—Ali was the one who’d lit that firework, Ali was the one who had blinded Jenna—and they’d all vowed not to tell. Didn’t Ali remember that?
Spencer didn’t mean to pull the trigger of the paintball gun…it just happened. Blue paint splattered all over Ali’s jumpsuit, and Ali let out a startled cry. Then she glared at Spencer and stormed away. What if she’d gone and told Melissa then, and Melissa had been waiting all this time for the right moment to drop it on Spencer? Maybe this was it.
“Any guesses who it was?” Melissa goaded, breaking Spencer out of the memory.
Spencer sank down farther into the hot tub’s bubbles, her eyes stinging with chlorine. A kiss hardly qualified as cheating, and it had been so long ago. “Nope. No clue.”
Melissa sighed. “Maybe Dr. Evans is full of it. What does she know, really?”
Spencer studied her sister carefully. She thought about what Dr. Evans had said about Melissa—that her sister needed validation. That she was jealous of Spencer. It was such a weird possibility to consider. And could Melissa’s issues have something to do with the time they’d been mugged, Spencer had gotten sick, and Melissa had had to go to her Bee with Yolanda? How many other things had her sister missed out on that summer because her parents were too busy hovering over Spencer? How many times had she been shoved to the side?