“I just wish I knew if she’s hurt,” Hanna said in a small voice.
“I know.” Spencer sounded worried. “Let’s call the hospital.”
They did, on three-way, but since Hanna didn’t know Madison’s last name, the nurses couldn’t give them any information. Hanna hung up the phone, staring into space. Then she went on the website for Penn State—which was the school Madison said she attended—and did a search for her, hoping she’d find her last name that way. But there were quite a few Madisons in the sophomore class, way too many to go through one by one.
Would she feel better if she came forward and confessed? But even if she explained that another car had come out of nowhere, knocking her off the road, no one would believe her—they’d assume she’d been as wasted as Madison. The cops wouldn’t congratulate her for being honest, either—they’d haul her off to jail. They’d also realize that she’d needed help moving Madison and had had to recruit her friends. They’d be in trouble, too.
Stop thinking about it, Hanna decided resolutely. Her family wanted to make it go away, and you should do the same. So she went to the mall. She tanned poolside at the country club. She avoided her stepsister, Kate, and was a bridesmaid in her father’s wedding to Isabel, wearing a hideous green dress. Eventually, she stopped thinking about Madison and the accident every second of the day. The crash hadn’t been her fault, after all, and Madison was probably fine. It wasn’t like she knew Madison, anyway. She’d probably never see her again.
Little did Hanna know that Madison was connected to someone they all knew very well—someone who hated them, in fact. And if that someone knew what they all had done, terrible things might happen. Acts of retribution. Revenge. Torture. That very person might take it upon himself—or herself—to become the very thing all four girls feared most.
A new—and far more frightening—A.
1
BEWARE, YE LIARS
On a blustery Monday morning in late March, Spencer Hastings stared into the vintage Louis Vuitton trunk on her queen-sized bed. It was packed full of things for her upcoming journey on the Rosewood Day Prep Eco Cruise to the Caribbean, a combination of class trip and environmental-science seminar. Using the trunk was a long-standing good-luck tradition: It had once belonged to Regina Hastings, Spencer’s great-great-grandmother. Regina had bought a first-class reservation on the Titanic but decided to stay in Southampton for a few extra weeks and take the next steamer out.
As Spencer tossed a third bottle of sunscreen onto the top of the pile, her phone let out a bloop. A text bubble appeared on the screen from Reefer Fredericks. Hey buddy, it said. What are you up to?
Spencer found Reefer’s number in her contacts list and dialed it. “I’m packing for the trip,” she said when he answered on the first ring. “You?”
“Just putting some last-minute things together,” Reefer answered. “But I’m bummed. I can’t find my Speedo.”
“Oh, please,” Spencer teased, curling a tendril of honey-blond hair around her finger. “You don’t own a Speedo.”
“You got me.” Reefer chuckled. “But I really can’t find my trunks.”
Spencer’s heart did a flip as she thought about Reefer in swim trunks—she could tell through his T-shirt that he was toned. His school was going on the cruise, too, along with several other private schools in the tristate area.
She’d met Reefer at a Princeton Early Admission dinner a few weeks earlier, and although she hadn’t been into his hippy, pothead vibe at first, he ended up being the best thing she got out of her disastrous pre-frosh weekend on campus.
Since she’d returned to Rosewood, they’d been texting and calling each other … a lot. During a Dr. Who marathon on BBC America, they’d called one another during the commercial breaks to discuss the doctor’s bizarre alien adversaries. Spencer introduced Reefer to Mumford & Sons, and Reefer schooled her on the Grateful Dead, Phish, and other jam bands, and before she knew it, she had developed a massive crush on him. He was fun, clever, and more than that, nothing seemed to shake him. He was the human equivalent of a hot-stone massage—just the type of guy Spencer needed right now.
She hoped that something would happen between them on the trip. The top deck of the cruise ship seemed like the perfect setting for a first kiss, the tropical sunset like a huge bonfire all around them. Or maybe their kiss would happen on a dive—they were both taking a scuba class together. Maybe they’d be swimming around a crop of neon-pink coral, and suddenly their hands would touch under the water, and they’d swim to the surface, pull off their masks, and then …