Perfect pll-3

by Sara Shepard

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Hastings said. “It’s not even eight yet. Parties don’t start this early, do they?”

  Spencer felt trapped. They were all staring at her. “I…I guess not,” she said.

  She dragged a chair back, sat down, and kicked off her shoes. Her father got a bottle of Moët out of the fridge, popped the cork, and took out four Riedel glasses from the cabinet. He poured a whole glass for himself, Spencer’s mother, and Melissa, and a half glass for Spencer. Melissa put a Scrabble rack in front of her.

  Spencer plunged her hand into the velvet bag and selected letters. Her father selected his letters next. Spencer was amazed he knew how to do it—she’d never seen him play a game, not even on vacation. “When do you hear what the judges’ final decision is?” he asked, taking a sip of his champagne.

  Spencer shrugged. “I don’t know.” She glanced at Melissa, who gave her a brief, indecipherable smile. Spencer hadn’t talked to Melissa since their hot-tub session last night, and she felt a little strange around her sister. Apprehensive, almost.

  “I had a chance to read it yesterday,” Mr. Hastings continued, folding his hands. “I love how you updated the concept for modern times.”

  “So who goes first?” Spencer asked shrilly. There was no way they were talking about the content of the essay. Not around Melissa.

  “Didn’t 1996’s Golden Orchid winner win a Pulitzer last year?” Mrs. Hastings asked.

  “No, it was a National Book Award,” Melissa said.

  Please stop talking about the Golden Orchid, Spencer thought. Then, she realized: for once, they were talking about her—not Melissa.

  Spencer looked at her tiles. She had I, A, S, J, L, R, and H. She rearranged the letters and almost choked on her tongue. LIAR SJH. SJH, as in Spencer Jill Hastings.

  Outside, the sky was raven-colored. A dog howled. Spencer grabbed her champagne flute and drained its contents in three seconds flat. “Someone’s not driving for at least an hour,” her father mock-scolded.

  Spencer tried to laugh, sitting on her hands so her dad wouldn’t see that they were shaking.

  Mrs. Hastings spelled WORM with her tiles. “Your turn, Spence,” she said.

  As Spencer picked up her L tile, Melissa’s slim Motorola lit up. A fake cello vibrated out of the cell’s speaker, playing the theme to Jaws. Duh-DUH. Duh-DUH. Spencer could see the screen from here: new text message.

  Melissa flipped the screen open, angling it away from Spencer’s view. She frowned. “Huh?” she said aloud.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Hastings asked, raising her eyes from her tiles.

  Melissa scratched her head. “The great Scottish economist Adam Smith’s invisible-hand concept can be summed up very easily, whether it’s describing the markets of the nineteenth century or those of the twenty-first: you might think people are doing things to help you, but in reality, everyone is only out for himself. Weird! Why would someone send me part of an essay I wrote when I was in high school?”

  Spencer opened her mouth to speak, but only a dry exhalation came out.

  Mr. Hastings put down his glass. “That’s Spencer’s Golden Orchid essay.”

  Melissa examined the screen. “No, it’s not, it’s my…” She looked at Spencer. “No.”

  Spencer shrank down in her chair. “Melissa, it was a mistake.”

  Melissa’s mouth was open so wide, Spencer saw the silver fillings in her molars. “You bitch!”

  “Things got out of hand!” Spencer cried. “The situation slipped away from me!”

  Mr. Hastings frowned, confused. “What’s going on?”

  Melissa’s face contorted, the corners of her eyes turning down and her lips curling up sinisterly. “First you steal my boyfriend. And then my paper? Who do you think you are?”

  “I said I was sorry!” Spencer cried at the same time.

  “Wait. It’s…Melissa’s paper?” Mrs. Hastings said, growing pale.

  “There must be some mistake,” Mr. Hastings insisted.

  Melissa put her hands on her hips. “Should I tell them? Or would you like to?”

  Spencer jumped up. “Tell on me like you always do.” She ran down the hall toward the stairs. “You’ve gotten so good at it by now.”

  Melissa followed. “They need to know what a liar you are.”

  “They need to know what a bitch you are,” Spencer shot back.

  Melissa’s lips spread into a smile. “You’re so lame, Spencer. Everyone thinks so. Including Mom and Dad.”

  Spencer scrambled up the stairs backwards. “They do not!”

  “Yes, they do!” Melissa taunted. “And it’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re a boyfriend-stealing, plagiarizing, pathetic little bitch!”

  “I’m so sick of you!” Spencer screamed. “Why don’t you just die?”

  “Girls!” Mr. Hastings cried.

  But it was as if the sisters were in a force-field bubble all their own. Melissa didn’t break her stare from Spencer. And Spencer started shaking. It was true. She was pathetic. She was worthless.

  “Rot in hell!” Spencer screamed. She took two stairs at a time.

  Melissa was right behind her. “That’s right, little baby who means nothing, run away!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Little baby who steals my boyfriends! Who isn’t even smart enough to write her own papers! What were you going to say on TV if you won, Spencer? Yes, I wrote every word of it myself. I’m such a smart, smart girl! What, did you cheat on the PSATs, too?”

  It felt like fingernails scraping against Spencer’s heart. “Stop it!” she rasped, nearly tripping over an empty J. Crew box her mother had left on the steps.

  Melissa grabbed Spencer’s arm and swung her around. She put her face right up to Spencer’s. Her breath smelled like espresso. “Little baby wants everything of mine, but you know what? You can’t have what I have. You never will.”

  All the anger that Spencer had held in for years broke free and flooded her body, making her feel hot, then wet, then shaky. Her insides were so bathed in fury they were starting to prune. She braced herself against the railing, grabbed Melissa by the shoulders and started to shake her as if she were a Magic Eight Ball. Then she shoved her. “I said, stop it!”

  Melissa stumbled, grabbing the railing for support. A frightened look danced over her face.

  A crack started to form in Spencer’s brain. But instead of Melissa she saw Ali. They both wore the same smug, I’m everything and you’re nothing expression. You try to steal everything away from me. But you can’t have this. Spencer smelled the dewy humidity and saw the lightning bugs and felt Ali’s breath close to her face. And then, a strange force invaded Spencer’s body. She let out an agonized grunt from somewhere deep inside her and shot forward. She saw herself reaching out and pushing Ali—or was it Melissa?—with all her strength. Both Melissa and Ali fell backward. Their heads both made skull-shattering cracks as they fell against something. Spencer’s vision cleared and she saw Melissa tumbling down, down, down the stairs, falling into a heap at the bottom.

  “Melissa!” Mrs. Hastings cried.

  And then, everything went black.

  29 THERE’S A FULL MOON AT THE HOLLIS PLANETARIUM

  Hanna staggered to the planetarium gates a little after nine. It was the weirdest thing, but it was kind of hard to walk in the court dress. Or sit down. Or, well, breathe.

  Okay, so the whole thing was too damn tight. It had taken Hanna forever to wriggle into the thing and then even longer to zip up the back. She had even considered borrowing her mom’s Spanx girdle, but that would have meant taking the dress off and going through the zipper torture again. The process had taken so long, in fact, she’d hardly had time to do anything else before coming here, like touch up her makeup, tally the calories she’d eaten today, or import her old phone numbers into her new BlackBerry.

  Now the dress fabric seemed to have shrunk even more. It cut into her skin and clung so tightly to her hips that she had no idea how she would pu
ll it up to pee. Every time she moved, she could hear tiny threads tearing. There were certain spots, too, like around the belly, the side of her boobs, and across her butt, that…bulged.

  She had eaten a lot of Cheez-Its over the past few days…and she’d tried really hard not to throw any of them up. Could she have gained weight that fast? What if something was suddenly wrong with her metabolism? What if she had turned into one of those girls who gained weight by simply looking at food?

  But she had to wear this dress. Maybe the fabric would loosen the more she wore it, like leather. The party would probably be dark, too, so no one would notice. Hanna tottered up the planetarium’s steps, feeling a bit like a stiff, champagne-colored penguin.

  She heard the pumping bass from inside the building and steeled herself. She hadn’t felt this nervous about a party since Ali’s seventh-grade Halloween bash, when she’d still felt like she was teetering on the edge of dorkdom. Not long after Hanna had arrived, Mona and her geeky friends Chassey Bledsoe and Phi Templeton had shown up as three Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings. Ali had taken one look at them and turned them away. “You look like you’re covered in fleas,” she’d said, laughing in their faces.

  The day after Ali’s party, when Hanna had gone with her mom to the grocery store, she’d seen Mona and her dad in the checkout line. There, on the lapel of Mona’s denim jacket, was the crystal-studded jack-o’-lantern pin that had been in Ali’s party gift bag. Mona was wearing it proudly, as if she belonged.

  Hanna felt a twinge of guilt about ditching Lucas—he hadn’t e-mailed her back after she cancelled on him—but what choice did she have? Mona had all but forgiven her in T-Mobile and then sent her the dress. Best friends always came first, especially best friends like Mona.

  She carefully pushed through the large metal front door. Immediately, the music washed over her like a wave. She saw bluish ice sculptures in the main hall, and farther back, a giant trapeze. Glittering planets hung from the ceiling, and an enormous video screen loomed over the stage. A larger-than-life Noel Kahn gazed through a telescope on the Jumbotron.

  “Oh my God,” Hanna heard behind her. She turned around. Naomi and Riley stood by the bar. They wore matching emerald sheaths and carried tiny satin clutches. Riley smirked behind her hand, giving Hanna the once-over. Naomi let out a loud guffaw. Hanna would have nervously pulled in her stomach if the dress hadn’t already unnaturally been doing it for her.

  “Nice dress, Hanna,” Riley said smoothly. With her blazing red hair and shiny bright green dress, she looked like an inverted carrot.

  “Yeah, it looks really good on you,” Naomi simpered.

  Hanna stood up straighter and strode away. She skirted around a black-suited waitress carrying a tray of mini crab cakes and tried not to look at them, worried she really might gain a pound. Then she watched as the image on the Jumbotron changed. Nicole Hudson and Kelly Hamilton, Riley and Naomi’s bitchy underlings, appeared on the screen. They also wore slinky green sheaths and carried the same delicate satin bags. “Happy birthday, Mona, from your party court posse!” they cried, blowing kisses.

  Hanna frowned. Party court? No. The court dress wasn’t green—it was champagne. Right?

  Suddenly, a crowd of dancing kids parted. A beautiful blond girl strode right up to Hanna. It was Mona. She wore the exact same champagne-colored Zac Posen gown as Hanna—the one they’d both been fitted for at Saks. Except hers didn’t pull across the stomach or the ass. The zipper didn’t look puckered and strained, and there were no bulges. Instead, it accentuated Mona’s thin waist and showed off her long, lithe legs.

  Mona’s eyes boggled. “What are you doing here?” She looked Hanna up and down, her mouth wobbling into a smile. “And where the hell did you get that dress?”

  “You sent it to me,” Hanna answered.

  Mona stared at her like she was crazy. She pointed at Riley. “That’s the court dress. I changed it. I wanted to be the only one wearing champagne—not all of us.” She looked Hanna up and down. “And certainly not any whales.”

  Everyone tittered, even the waitresses and the bartender. Hanna stepped back, confused. The room was quieter for a moment—the DJ was between songs. Mona wrinkled her nose and Hanna suddenly felt like a drawstring had pulled her throat closed. It all made horrible, sickening sense.

  Of course Mona hadn’t sent the dress. A had.

  “Please leave.” Mona crossed her arms over her chest and stared pointedly at Hanna’s various bulges. “I disinvited you, remember?”

  Hanna walked toward Mona, wanting to explain, but she stepped down unsteadily on her gold Jimmy Choo heel. She felt her ankle twist, her legs go out from under her, and her knees hit the ground. Worse, Hanna heard a loud, undeniable riiiiiiiip. Suddenly, her butt felt a lot less constricted. As she twisted around to assess the damage, her side seam gave way, too. The whole side of the dress burst open from Hanna’s ribs to her hip, exposing the thin, lacy straps of her Eberjey bra and thong.

  “Oh my God!” Riley cried. Everyone howled with laughter. Hanna tried to cover herself up, but she didn’t know where to start. Mona just stood there and let it happen, beautiful and queenlike in her perfect-fitting gown. It was hard for Hanna to imagine that only days ago, they’d loved each other as only best friends could.

  Mona placed her hands on her hips and looked over at the others. “Come on, girls,” she sniffed. “This train wreck isn’t worth our time.”

  Hanna’s eyes filled with tears. Kids started to trample away, and someone tripped over Hanna, spilling warm beer on her legs. This train wreck isn’t worth our time. Hanna heard the words echo in her head. Then she thought of something.

  Remember when you saw Mona leaving the Bill Beach plastic surgery clinic? Hello, lipo!!

  Hanna propped herself up against the cool marble floor. “Hey, Mona.”

  Mona turned and stared at her.

  Hanna took a deep breath. “You look a lot skinnier since I saw you leaving Bill Beach. For lipo.”

  Mona cocked her head. But she didn’t look horrified or embarrassed—just confused. She let out a snort and rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Hanna. You’re so pathetic.”

  Mona tossed her hair over her shoulder and wove toward the stage. A wall of kids quickly separated them. Hanna sat up, covering the tear on her side with one hand and the tear on her ass with the other. And then, she saw it: her face, magnified a billion times on the Jumbotron screen. There was a long, panning shot of her dress. The fat under her arms bulged. The lines of her thong showed through the tight fabric. The Hanna on the screen took a step toward Mona and toppled over. The camera captured her dress splitting apart.

  Hanna screamed and covered her eyes. Everyone’s laughter felt like needles tattooing her skin. Then she felt a hand on her back. “Hanna.”

  Hanna peeped through her hands. “Lucas?”

  He was wearing dark trousers, an Atlantic Records T-shirt, and a pinstriped jacket. His longish blond hair looked thick and wild. The look on his face said he’d seen everything.

  He took off his jacket and handed it to her. “Here. Put this on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Mona was climbing onstage. The crowd quivered with anticipation. On any normal party night, Hanna would have been front and center, ready to grind to the music. But instead, she grabbed Lucas’s arm.

  30 CHANGE IS GOOD…EXCEPT WHEN IT’S NOT

  On Saturday evening, Emily laced up her rental ice skates until she could barely feel the circulation in her feet. “I can’t believe we have to wear three pairs of socks,” she complained to Becka, who was next to her on the bench, lacing up the pair of white skates she’d brought from home.

  “I know,” Becka agreed, adjusting her lace headband.

  “But it keeps your feet from getting cold.”

  Emily tied her skate laces in a bow. It had to be about fifty degrees in the rink, but she was only in a Rosewood Swimming short-sleeve T-shirt. She felt so numb, cold didn’t affect her. On the way here, Em
ily told Becka that her first Tree Tops session was Monday. Becka seemed startled, then happy. Emily didn’t say much else the rest of the ride over. All she was thinking about was how she’d rather be with Maya.

  Maya. Whenever Emily shut her eyes, she saw Maya’s angry face in the greenhouse. Emily’s cell phone had been quiet all day. Part of her wanted Maya to call, to try to get Emily back. And then of course, part of her didn’t. She tried to look at the positives—now that her parents saw that she was really making a commitment to Tree Tops, they had been kinder to her. At Saturday swim practice, Coach Lauren had told her that the U of A swim coach still wanted to meet with her. All the swim team boys were still hitting on her and inviting Emily to hot-tub parties, but it was better than them making fun of her. And as they were driving home from practice, Carolyn had said, “I like this CD,” when Emily slid some old No Doubt into the player. It was a start.

  Emily stared at the ice rink. After The Jenna Thing, she and Ali used to come here practically every weekend, and nothing about the place had changed since then. There were still the same blue benches that everyone sat on to lace up their boots, the machine that dispensed hot chocolate that tasted like aspirin, the giant plastic polar bear that greeted everyone at the main entrance. The whole thing was so eerily nostalgic, Emily almost expected to see Ali out on the ice practicing her backward crossovers. The rink was practically empty tonight, though—there were clusters of kids, but no one Emily’s age. Most likely, they were all at Mona’s party—in a parallel world, Emily would have been there too.

  “Becka?”

  Emily and Becka looked up. A tall girl with short dark curly hair, a button nose, and hazel eyes stared at them. She had on a pink A-line dress, white cable-knit tights, a delicate pearl bracelet, and hot pink lip gloss. A pair of white ice skates with rainbow laces dangled from her wrists.

  “Wendy!” Becka cried, standing up. She went to hug Wendy but then seemed to correct herself and stood back. “You’re…you’re here!”

  Wendy had a big smile on her face. “Wow, Becks. You look…great.”