“Oh. Sure.” Aria stepped away, disappointed.
“Sorry.” Cruella smiled apologetically at Aria. Her lipstick was so dark it was almost black. “But Xavier’s quite in demand, as you know.”
Xavier? Aria’s stomach dropped. She grabbed his arm. “You’re…the artist?”
Her new friend stopped. There was a naughty little sparkle in his eye. “Busted,” he said, leaning in to her. “And by the way, the painting really is a boob.”
With that, Cruella pulled Xavier forward. He fell into step with Cruella and flirtatiously whispered something in her ear. They both giggled before marching into the throng of the art elite, where everyone gushed over how brilliant and inspirational Xavier’s paintings were. As Xavier grinned and shook his admirers’ hands, Aria wished there was a trapdoor in the wood floor she could disappear through. She’d broken the cardinal rule of art openings—don’t talk about the work to strangers, since you never know who’s who. And for God’s sake, don’t insult an up-and-coming hotshot’s masterpiece.
But judging by the sneaky little smile Xavier had just shot in Aria’s direction, maybe he didn’t mind her interpretation much at all. And that made Aria very, very happy, indeed.
4
BOTTOM OF THE CLASS
Monday morning, Spencer Hastings hunched over her desk in AP English, scribbling a few sentences on her timed The Sun Also Rises essay quiz. She wanted to add a few quotes from one of the Hemingway critical essays in the back of the book in an attempt to earn some extra brownie points with her teacher, Mrs. Stafford. These days, she had to scramble for every little crumb of brownie she could get.
The PA speaker at the front of the room crackled. “Mrs. Stafford?” called Mrs. Wagner, the school secretary. “Can you please send Spencer Hastings to the office?”
All thirteen students looked up from their papers, staring at Spencer as if she’d come to school in the lacy blue Eberjay bra and panties set she’d bought at the Saks after-Christmas sale. Mrs. Stafford, who looked nearly identical to Martha Stewart, but who had almost certainly never cracked an egg or embroidered an apron in her life, laid down her wrinkled copy of Ulysses. “Fine, go.” She shot Spencer a what have you done this time? look. Spencer couldn’t help but ask herself the same question.
Spencer stood up, did a few covert yoga fire breaths, and placed her quiz facedown on Mrs. Stafford’s desk. She couldn’t really blame her teacher for treating her like this. Spencer had been the very first Rosewood Day student to be nominated for a Golden Orchid essay award. It had been a huge deal, big enough to land her on the front page of the Philadelphia Sentinel. In the very last round, when the judge had called Spencer to tell her that she’d won, she’d finally blurted out the truth—that she’d stolen the AP Economics paper from her sister, Melissa. Now, all of her other teachers wondered if she’d cheated in their classes, too. She was no longer in the running for valedictorian, and the school had asked her to step down as student council vice president, bow out of her role in the school play, and resign as the yearbook editor in chief. They had even threatened to expel her, but Spencer’s parents had cut some sort of deal that most likely involved a hefty donation to the school.
Spencer understood why Rosewood Day couldn’t just let this blow over. But after all the tests she’d aced, committees she’d commandeered, and clubs she’d created, couldn’t they cut her just a teensy bit of slack? Didn’t they care that Ali’s body had been found a few feet from her own backyard, or that she’d received horrific messages from crazy Mona Vanderwaal, who was trying to impersonate her old, dead best friend? Or that Mona had almost pushed Spencer over the precipice of Falling Man Gorge because Spencer hadn’t wanted to be A along with her, or that it was because of Spencer that Ali’s murderer was now in jail? Nope. The only thing that mattered was that Spencer had made Rosewood Day look foolish.
She shut the door of the English room and started toward the office. The hall smelled as it always did, like pine-scented floor wax and a confused tangle of perfume and cologne. Hundreds of glitter-covered paper snowflakes hung overhead. Every December, Rosewood Day Elementary held a schoolwide snowflake-making contest, and the winning designs were displayed in the elementary and high schools all winter. Spencer used to feel so devastated when her classroom lost—the judges announced the winner right before winter break, so it kind of ruined Christmas. Then again, Spencer found every defeat crushing. She still seethed at how Andrew Campbell had been elected class president instead of her, that Ali had taken Spencer’s rightful spot on the JV field hockey team in seventh grade, and that she hadn’t gotten to decorate a piece of the Time Capsule flag in sixth grade. Even though the school had continued to hold the contest every year after that, it had never mattered as much as it had that first year she’d been able to play. Then again, Ali hadn’t gotten to decorate a piece in the end, either, which had softened the blow.
“Spencer?” Someone crept around the corner. Speak of the devil, Spencer thought grumpily. It was Andrew Campbell, Mr. Class President himself.
Andrew walked up to her, pushing his longish blond hair behind his ears. “What are you doing roaming the halls?”
Typical nosy Andrew. He was undoubtedly thrilled that Spencer was no longer in the running for valedictorian—the Spencer voodoo doll she was convinced he had stashed under his bed had finally worked its magic. He probably thought it was comeuppance, too, for how Spencer had invited him to the Foxy benefit last fall, only to ditch him once they got there.
“They want me in the office,” Spencer said icily, hoping against hope that it wasn’t bad news. She picked up the pace, her chunky-heeled boots ringing out on the polished wooden floor.
“I’m going that way, too,” Andrew chirped, walking alongside her. “Mr. Rosen wants to talk to me about the trip I took to Greece over the break.” Mr. Rosen was the Model UN advisor. “I went with the Philadelphia Young Leaders Club. Actually, I thought you were coming too.”
Spencer wanted to slap Andrew’s ruddy cheeks. After the whole Golden Orchid debacle, PhYLC—which always reminded Spencer of the noise one made when hocking up phlegm—had immediately revoked her membership. She was positive Andrew knew. “I had a conflict of interest,” she said frostily. Which was actually true: She’d had to house-sit while her parents went to their ski chalet in Beaver Creek, Colorado. They hadn’t bothered to invite Spencer along.
“Oh.” Andrew peered at her curiously. “Is something…wrong?”
Spencer stopped dead, astonished. She threw up her hands. “Of course something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. Happy now?”
Andrew stepped back, blinking rapidly. Realization washed slowly over his face. “Ohhh. The Golden Orchid…stuff. I forgot about all that.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m an idiot.”
“Whatever.” Spencer gritted her teeth. Could Andrew seriously have forgotten what had happened to her? That was almost worse than him gloating about it all winter break. She glared at a neatly cut-out snowflake over the handicapped water fountain. Andrew used to be good at cutting out snowflakes, too. Even back then, it was a private battle between the two of them to see who could be the best at everything.
“I guess I put it out of my head,” Andrew blurted out, his voice rising higher and higher. “Which was why I was so surprised when I didn’t see you in Greece. It’s too bad you weren’t there. No one on the trip was really very…I don’t know. Smart. Or cool.”
Spencer fidgeted with the leather tassels on her Coach bucket bag. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to her in quite a while, but it was too much for her to bear, especially coming from Andrew. “I have to go,” she said, and hurried down the hall to the headmaster’s office.
“He’s expecting you,” the head secretary said when Spencer burst through the office’s double glass doors. Spencer walked toward Appleton’s office, passing the large papier-mâché shark that had been left over from last year’s Founders’ Day float parade. What did Appleton want, anyway? Maybe he’d realized he’d been too harsh on her and was ready to apologize. Maybe he wanted to reinstate her class rank or let her do the play after all. The drama club had planned to perform The Tempest, but right before winter break, Rosewood Day told Christophe Briggs, the senior director, that he wasn’t allowed to use water or pyrotechnics onstage to replicate the play’s signature storm. Christophe, kicking up a tempest of his own, had shut down The Tempest for good and started casting for Hamlet. Since everyone was learning new parts, Spencer hadn’t even missed any rehearsals.
When she carefully closed Appleton’s door behind her and turned around, her blood turned to ice. Her parents were sitting side by side in stiff leather chairs. Veronica Hastings was in a black wool dress, her hair pulled back with a velvet headband, her face puffy and red with tears. Peter Hastings was in a three-piece suit and shiny loafers. He was clenching the muscles in his jaw so tightly they looked as though they might snap.
“Ah,” Appleton blustered, rising from his desk. “I’ll leave you three alone.” He huffed out of the office and shut the door.
Spencer’s ears rang in the silence. “W-what’s going on?” she asked, slowly lowering herself into a chair.
Her dad shifted uncomfortably. “Spencer, your grandmother died this morning.”
Spencer blinked. “Nana?”
“Yes,” Spencer’s mother said quietly. “She had a heart attack.” She folded her hands in her lap, clicking into business mode. “Her will reading is tomorrow morning because your dad needs to fly to Florida to take care of the estate before her funeral next Monday.”
“Oh my God,” Spencer whispered faintly.
She sat very still, waiting for the tears to come. When had she last seen Nana? They’d just been to Nana’s house in Cape May, New Jersey, a couple months ago, but Nana had been in Florida—she hadn’t come up north in years. The thing was, Spencer had struggled through so many other deaths lately, and of people much younger. Nana had lived a rich, happy ninety-one years. Plus, Nana hadn’t always been the warmest of grandmothers. Sure, she’d generously built Spencer and Melissa an enormous playroom in her Cape May manse, outfitting it with dollhouses and My Little Ponies and big trash buckets of Legos. But Nana always used to stiffen when Spencer tried to hug her, never wanted to see the sloppy birthday cards Spencer made for her, and grumbled about the Lego airplanes Spencer carried out of the playroom and left on top of Nana’s Steinway baby grand piano. Sometimes, Spencer wondered if Nana even liked children or whether the playroom had just been a way to get Spencer and her sister out of her hair.
Mrs. Hastings took a big swig of her Starbucks latte. “We were in a meeting with Appleton when we got the news,” she said after swallowing.
Spencer stiffened. Her parents had already been here? “Were you meeting about me?”