“What? He’s gorgeous.” Cassie nudged her. “Can you get me a date with him?”
“You wouldn’t want a date with him,” Ali said. “He’s so moody.” Then she straightened up in the front passenger seat, plucked the cigarette from Zoe’s hand, and puffed, doing her best not to wince when the smoke hit her lungs. The other girls were sophomores or juniors; she was the first seventh grader to ever make the team, even beating out I’ve-played-field-hockey-since-birth Spencer. But when Ali sat in Cassie’s Jeep with them, smoking and talking about boys, it was like they were all the same age.
“Ian’s actually really nice,” Ali said. “I hang around him all the time.”
“Really?” The girls looked at her. “When?”
Ali loved that she had their attention. “He dates Spencer Hastings’s sister. He’s over there a lot.”
Cassie wrinkled her button nose. “Melissa Hastings? What a waste.”
“She’s so prissy,” Zoe agreed. “What does he see in her?”
Ali picked at her manicure. Ironically, her brother had had a crush on Melissa Hastings, too. She didn’t know what to think of Melissa, though. Of all the people in Rosewood, Melissa was one of the few who didn’t bow down to her. Sometimes, when she was in her yard, Melissa stood at the window of the barn apartment at the edge of the Hastings’s property and just stared at her.
Cassie blew a smoke ring. “What are our summer plans, people? School’s ending in a month.”
Brianna Huston, who had glossy black hair and thick goalie’s legs, lowered her sunglasses. “Lose ten pounds. And get a boyfriend, of course.”
“A summer romance would be awesome,” Zoe sighed.
“I want a boyfriend, too,” Ali declared.
Cassie gave her a questioning look as she braked at the stop sign. “Don’t you already have one?”
Ali pictured Matt’s tearful face when he’d climbed into his family’s minivan for Virginia. She’d only responded to his earnest, love-struck texts twice. “I’m not into the long-distance thing.”
They passed Hollis College. Students were sitting on benches with cups of iced coffee or talking on the stone steps. When Ali noticed three shirtless guys playing Frisbee on the lawn, she reached over and pressed on the horn. The guys looked up and grinned. Ali blew them a kiss as Cassie drove away.
“Like them, maybe,” Ali joked.
Cassie’s jaw dropped open as she looked at Ali. “You should be my new bestie,” Cassie said. “I’ll kick aside these bitches and make you my co–queen bee.”
“Hey!” Zoe said good-naturedly.
“I’m kidding,” Cassie said, then gave Ali a wink.
They drove out of Hollis and wound through the streets of Rosewood, where the houses got bigger and more spread out. Cassie cranked up Jay-Z, and all the girls sang along. They passed the white monolithic King James Mall, a sign for the brand-new Rive Gauche French bistro on the marquee at the entrance. Then they looped down one of the back roads past the Marwyn trail, whose parking lot was filled with cars and bikes. Next, they crossed the old covered bridge, which everyone loved to tag with graffiti, and then drove past the neighborhood of enormous, secluded mansions where Sean Ackard, Hanna’s crush, lived.
Cassie entered a neighborhood full of McMansions to drop off Zoe, then pulled up to Brianna’s gated horse farm. When it was just Ali and Cassie in the car, Cassie lit another cigarette, took a drag, and passed it to Ali. “So guess what? My mom is actually going to be home long enough to come to the sports awards ceremony next week. I guess she, like, felt guilty or something.”
“That’s awesome.” Ali squeezed Cassie’s hand. “Now we just have to get my mom to come to my graduation.”
Cassie looked at her sympathetically. “Is she still out all the time?”
“Yep,” Ali said tightly. “Miss Socialite Jessica DiLaurentis.” She rolled her eyes. “My dad doesn’t even go to events with her anymore.”
When Ali had told her friends that she and the field hockey girls talked about deep stuff, she wasn’t entirely lying. They talked about their parents a lot. Cassie’s were jet-setters, never making time for her. To the other girls, she made it sound like it was a good thing—her empty house was perfect for parties, she could wear whatever she wanted to school, and her parents didn’t even notice the ding she’d made in the front fender of the Jeep. But to Ali, she told the truth because Ali’s parents were also on their own planets—her mom had attended three benefits this month for her cause célèbre, children with mental illness, but rarely spent time with Ali or Jason.