by Sara Shepard
“My friend is having a masquerade,” Aria said, then immediately wondered if she was again giving up too much information. “I’ll probably wear it there.”
“That’s great,” Jenna cooed. “I’m going to take mine with me to Venice. My parents are taking me there next month, and I hear it’s the mask capital of the world.”
“I love Venice!” Aria squeaked. “I’ve been there with my family four times!”
“Wow.” Jenna layered newspaper strips over Aria’s forehead. “Four times? Your family must like to travel together.”
“Well, they used to,” Aria said, trying to keep her face still for Jenna.
“What do you mean, used to?” Jenna began to cover Aria’s cheeks.
Aria twitched—the strips were beginning to harden and get itchy. She could tell Jenna this, right? It wasn’t like Jenna knew anything about her family. “Well, my parents are…I don’t know. Getting divorced, I guess. My dad has a new girlfriend, this young girl who teaches art classes at Hollis. And I’m living with them right now. She hates me.”
“And do you hate her?” Jenna asked.
“Totally,” Aria said. “She’s running my dad’s life. She makes him take vitamins and do yoga. And she’s convinced she has the stomach flu, but she seems fine to me.” Aria bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. She wished Meredith’s supposed stomach flu would just kill her already. Then she wouldn’t have to spend the next few months trying to figure out ways to stop Meredith and Byron from getting married.
“Well, at least she cares about him.” Jenna paused, then smiled halfway. “I can feel you frowning, but all families have issues. Mine certainly does.”
Aria tried not to make any more facial movements that would give anything away.
“But maybe you should give this girlfriend a chance,” Jenna went on. “At least she’s artistic, right?”
Aria’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t control the muscles around her mouth. “How did you know she’s artistic?”
Jenna stopped. Some of the floury goop on her hands plopped to the scuffed wood floor. “You just said it, right?”
Aria felt dizzy. Had she? Jenna squished more newspaper strips to Aria’s cheeks. As she moved from Aria’s cheeks to chin to forehead to nose, Aria realized something. If Jenna could feel her frowning, she could probably tell other things about her face, too. She might be able to feel what Aria looked like. Just then, when she looked up, a startled, uncomfortable look settled on Jenna’s face, as if she’d figured it all out, too.
The room felt sticky and hot. “I have to…” Aria fumbled around her workstation, nearly tipping over her large unused bucket of water.
“Where are you going?” Jenna called.
All Aria needed was to get out of here for a few minutes. But as she stumbled toward the door, the mask tightening and suctioning to her face, Aria’s Treo let out a bleep. She reached into her bag for it, careful not to get flour all over the keypad. She had one new text message.
Sucks to be in the dark, huh? Imagine how the blind must feel! If you tell ANYONE what I did, I’ll put you in the dark for good. Mwah!—A
Aria glanced back at Jenna. She was sitting at her workstation, fiddling with her cell phone, oblivious to the flour all over her fingers. Another beep from her own phone startled her. She glanced down at the screen again. Another text had come in.
P.S. Your stepmommy-to-be has a secret identity, just like you! Want an eyeful? Go to Hooters tomorrow.—A
19
WANDERING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
Thursday morning, as Emily emerged from one of the bathroom stalls in the gym locker room dressed in her regulation Rosewood Day white T-shirt, hoodie, and royal blue gym shorts, an announcement blared over the PA system.
“Hey, everyone!” a chirpy, way-too-enthusiastic boy’s voice called out. “This is Andrew Campbell, your class president, and I just want to remind you that Hanna Marin’s welcome-back party is tomorrow night at the Rosewood Country Club! Please come out and bring your mask—it’s costumes only! And also, I want everyone to wish Spencer Hastings a great big good luck—she’s off to New York City tonight for her Golden Orchid finalist interview! Best wishes, Spencer!”
Several girls in the locker room groaned. There was always at least one announcement about Spencer. Emily found it strange, though, that Spencer hadn’t mentioned the Golden Orchid trip yesterday at the hospital when they were visiting Hanna. Spencer usually overtalked about her achievements.
As Emily passed the giant cardboard cutout of Rosewood’s shark mascot and emerged into the gym, she heard hooting and clapping, like she’d just walked into her own surprise party.
“Our favorite girl is back!” Mike Montgomery whooped, standing underneath the basketball hoop. It seemed like every freshman boy in Emily’s mixed-grade gym class had gathered behind him. “So, you were on a sex vacation, right?”
“What?” Emily looked back and forth. Mike was talking kind of loudly.
“You know,” Mike goaded, his elfin face a near mirror of Aria’s. “To Thailand or whatever.” He got a dreamy smile on his face.
Emily wrinkled her nose. “I was in Iowa.”
“Oh.” Mike looked confused. “Well, Iowa’s hot, too. There are lots of milkmaids there, right?” He winked knowingly, as if milkmaids equaled instant porn.
Emily wanted to say something nasty, but then shrugged. She was pretty sure Mike wasn’t teasing her in a mean way. The other gangly freshman boys gaped, as if Emily were Angelina Jolie, and Mike had been brave enough to ask for her e-mail address.
Mr. Draznowsky, their gym teacher, blew his whistle. All the students sat down cross-legged on the gym floor in their squads, which was basically gym-speak for rows. Mr. Draznowsky took roll and led them through stretches, and then everyone started to file out to the tennis courts. As Emily selected a Wilson racket from the equipment bin, she heard someone behind her whisper. “Psssst.”
Maya stood by a box of Bosu balls, Pilates magic circles, and other equipment that exercise-aholic girls used during their free periods. “Hi,” she squealed, her face bright pink with pleasure.
Emily tentatively walked into Maya’s arms, inhaling her familiar banana gum smell. “What are you doing here?” she gasped.
“I skipped out of Algebra III to find you,” Maya whispered. She held up a wooden hall pass carved into pi’s squiggly shape. “When did you get back? What happened? Are you here for good?”
Emily hesitated. She’d been in Rosewood for a whole day, but yesterday had been such a blur—there was her visit to the hospital, then A’s note, then classes and swimming and time spent with her parents—she hadn’t had time to talk to Maya yet. Emily had noticed Maya in the halls once yesterday, but she’d ducked into an empty classroom and waited for Maya to pass. She couldn’t exactly explain why. It wasn’t as if she was hiding from Maya or anything.
“I didn’t get back that long ago,” she managed. “And I’m back for good. I hope.”
The door to the tennis courts banged shut. Emily looked at the exit longingly. By the time she got outside, everyone in her gym class would’ve already found a tennis partner. She’d have to hit balls with Mr. Draznowsky, who, because he was also a health teacher, liked to give his students on-the-fly contraception lectures. Then, Emily blinked hard, as if startled out of a dream. What was her problem? Why did she care about stupid gym class when Maya was here?
She whipped back around. “My parents have done a one-eighty. They were so worried that something had happened to me after I left my aunt and uncle’s farm, they’ve decided to accept me for who I am.”
Maya widened her eyes. “That’s awesome!” She grabbed Emily’s hands. “So what happened at your aunt and uncle’s? Were they mean to you?”
“Sort of.” Emily shut her eyes, picturing Helene and Allen’s stern faces. Then, she imagined do-si-do’ing with Trista at the party. Trista had told Emily that if she were a dance, she’d most definitely be the Virginia re
el. Maybe she should confess to Maya what happened with Trista…only, what had happened? Nothing, really. It would be better to just forget the whole thing. “It’s a long story.”
“You’ll have to give me all the details later, now that we can actually hang out in public.” Maya jiggled up and down, then glanced at the enormous clock on the scoreboard. “I should probably get back,” she whispered. “Can we meet up tonight?”
Emily hesitated, realizing this was the first time she could say yes without sneaking around behind her parents’ backs. Then she remembered. “I can’t. I’m having dinner out with my family.”
Maya’s face fell. “Tomorrow, then? We could go to Hanna’s party together.”
“S-sure,” Emily stammered. “That would be great.”
“And, oh! I have a huge surprise for you.” Maya hopped from foot to foot. “Scott Chin, the yearbook photographer? He’s in my history class, and he told me that you and I were voted this year’s best couple! Isn’t that fun?”
“Best couple?” Emily repeated. Her mouth felt gummy.
Maya took Emily’s hands and swung them back and forth. “We have a photo shoot in the yearbook room tomorrow. Won’t that be so cute?”
“Sure.” Emily picked up the hem of her T-shirt and squeezed it in her palm.
Maya cocked her head. “You sure you’re okay? You don’t sound so enthused.”
“No. I am. Totally.” Just as Emily took a breath to go on, her cell phone vibrated in her hoodie pocket, jolting straight through to her waist. She jumped and pulled it out, her heart pounding. One new text message, the screen said.
When she hit READ and saw the signature, her stomach turned for a different reason. She snapped the phone shut without reading the message. “Get anything good?” Maya asked, a little nosily, Emily thought.
“Nah.” Emily slid the phone back into her pocket.
Maya tossed the pi hall pass from one hand to the other. She gave Emily a quick kiss on the cheek, then sauntered out of the gym, her tall, sandstone-colored Frye boots clunking heavily against the wood floor. As Maya rounded the corner into the hall, Emily pulled out her cell phone, took a deep breath, and looked at the screen again.
Hey, Emily! I just heard the news that you’re GONE! I’m really going to miss you! Where do you live in PA? If you were a famous Philadelphia historical figure, who would you be? I’d be that guy on the Quaker Oats box…. He counts, right?
Maybe I could visit sometime? xxx, Trista
The gym’s central heater came on with a clank. Emily snapped her phone shut, and, after a pause, turned it off completely. Years ago, right before Emily had kissed Ali up in the DiLaurentises’ old tree house, Ali had confessed that she was secretly seeing an older guy. She’d never said what his name was, but Emily realized now that she must have been talking about Ian Thomas. Ali had grabbed Emily’s hands, full of giddy emotion. “Whenever I think about him, my stomach swoops around like I’m on a roller coaster,” she’d swooned. “Being in love is the best feeling in the world.”
Emily zipped up her hoodie to her chin. She thought she was in love, too, but it certainly didn’t make her feel like she was on a roller coaster. Inside the fun house was more like it—with surprises at every turn, and absolutely no idea what would happen next.
20
NO SECRETS BETWEEN FRIENDS
Thursday afternoon, Hanna stared at her reflection in the downstairs powder room mirror. She dabbed a bit of foundation on the stitches in her chin and winced. Why did stitches have to hurt so much? And why did Dr. Geist have to sew up her face with Frankenstein black thread? Couldn’t he have used a nice flesh-tone color?
She picked up her brand-new BlackBerry, considering. The phone had been waiting for her on the kitchen island when her father brought her home from the hospital earlier today. There was a card on the BlackBerry’s box that said, WELCOME HOME! LOVE, MOM. Now that Hanna wasn’t on the brink of death, her mother had returned to her round-the-clock hours at work, business as usual.
Hanna sighed, then dialed the number on the back of her foundation bottle. “Hello, Bobbi Brown hotline!” a cheerful voice on the other end chirped.
“This is Hanna Marin,” Hanna said briskly, trying to channel her inner Anna Wintour. “Can I book Bobbi for a makeup job?”
The hotline girl paused. “You’d have to go through Bobbi’s booking agent for something like that. But I think she’s really busy—”
“Can you get me her agent’s number anyway?”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to—”
“Sure you can,” Hanna cooed. “I won’t tell.”
After a bit of hemming and hawing, the girl put Hanna on hold, and someone else picked up the line and gave Hanna a 212 phone number. She wrote it down in lipstick on the bathroom mirror and hung up, feeling ambivalent. On one hand, it rocked that she could still push people to do exactly what she wanted. Only queen-of-the-school divas could do that. On the other hand, what if even Bobbi couldn’t fix Hanna’s mess of a face?
The doorbell rang. Hanna dabbed more foundation on her stitches and headed into the hall. That was probably Mona, coming over to help audition male models for her party. She’d told Hanna she wanted to book her the best hotties money could buy.
Hanna paused in the foyer next to her mother’s giant raku ceramic pot. What had Lucas meant at the hospital yesterday, when he said that Hanna shouldn’t trust Mona? And more than that, what had that kiss been about? Hanna had thought of little else since it happened. She’d expected to see Lucas at the hospital this morning, greeting her with magazines and a Starbucks latte. When he wasn’t there, she’d felt…disappointed. And this afternoon, after her father dropped her off, Hanna had lingered on All My Children on TV for three whole minutes before changing the channel. Two characters on the soap were passionately kissing, and she’d watched them, wide-eyed, with tingles running up and down her back again, suddenly able to relate.
Not that she liked Lucas or anything. He wasn’t in her stratosphere. And just to make sure, she’d asked Mona last night what she thought of Lucas, when Mona dropped off the coming-home-from-the-hospital outfit she’d selected from Hanna’s closet—skinny Seven jeans, a cropped plaid Moschino jacket, and an ultrasoft tee. Mona had said, “Lucas Beattie? Huge loser, Han. Always has been.”
So there you had it. No more Lucas. She would tell no one about the kiss, ever.
Hanna reached the front door, noticing the way Mona’s white-blond hair glowed through the frosted panels. She nearly fell over when she opened the door and saw Spencer standing there behind Mona. And Emily and Aria were walking up the front path. Hanna wondered if she’d accidentally told all of them to visit at the same time.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Hanna said nervously.
But it was Spencer who pushed around Mona and walked into Hanna’s house first. “We need to talk to you,” she said. Mona, Emily, and Aria followed, and the girls assembled on Hanna’s toffee-colored leather couches, sitting in the exact same seats they used to sit in when they used to be friends: Spencer in the big leather chair in the corner, and Emily and Aria on the couch. Mona had taken Ali’s seat, on the chaise by the window. When Hanna squinted, she could almost mistake Mona for Ali. Hanna snuck a look at Mona to see if she was pissed, but Mona looked sort of…okay.
Hanna sat down on the leather chair’s ottoman. “Um, we need to talk about what?” she asked Spencer. Aria and Emily looked a little confused too.
“We got another note from A after we left your hospital room,” Spencer blurted.
“Spencer,” Hanna hissed. Emily and Aria gaped at her too. Since when did they talk about A around other people?
“It’s okay,” Spencer said. “Mona knows. She’s been getting notes from A too.”
Hanna suddenly felt faint. She looked at Mona for confirmation, and Mona’s mouth was taut and serious. “No,” Hanna whispered.
“You?” Aria gasped.
“How many?” Emily stammered.
>
“Two,” Mona admitted, staring at the outline of her knobby knees through her burnt orange C&C California jersey dress. “I got them this week. When I told Spencer about it yesterday, I never would have imagined that you guys were getting them too.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Aria whispered, looking around at the others. “I thought A was only sending messages to Ali’s old friends.”
“Maybe everything we thought was wrong,” Spencer said.
Hanna’s stomach spun. “Did Spencer tell you about the SUV that hit me?”
“That it was A. And that you knew who A was.” Mona’s face was pale.
Spencer crossed her legs. “Anyway, we got a new note. A obviously doesn’t want you to remember, Hanna. If we keep pushing you on it, A’s going to hurt us next.”
Emily let out a small whimper.
“This is really scary,” Mona whispered. She hadn’t stopped jiggling her foot, something she did only when she was very tense. “We should go to the police.”
“Maybe we should,” Emily agreed. “They could help us. This is serious.”
“No!” Aria nearly shrieked. “A will know. It’s like…A can see us, at all times.”
Emily clamped her mouth shut, staring down at her hands.
Mona swallowed hard. “I guess I know what you mean, Aria. Ever since I’ve gotten the notes, I’ve felt like someone has been watching me.” She looked around at them, her eyes wide and scared. “Who knows? A could be watching us right now.”
Hanna shivered. Aria looked around frantically, canvassing Hanna’s stuffy living room. Emily peeked behind Hanna’s baby grand piano, as if A might be crouching in the corner. Then Mona’s Sidekick buzzed, and everyone let out startled little yelps. When Mona pulled it out, her face paled. “Oh my God. It’s another one.”
Everyone gathered around Mona’s phone. Her newest message was a belated birthday e-card. Below the images of happy balloons and a frosted white cake that Mona would never eat in real life, the message read,