Ping.
It was Spencer’s old phone, still connected via WiFi. She cautiously looked at the screen. It was an e-mail on her newly created account. The return sender was PHILADELPHIA CONSPIRACY THEORIES.
She glanced at her friends. Hanna was peeking out the window. Aria was staring into space, lost in her own world. Emily was looking at her own phone with a glazed-over expression. Head lowered, Spencer clicked OPEN and read the two sentences. We should definitely talk. There’s a lot you need to know.
She hit REPLY. I’m available whenever, she wrote back. The sooner, the better.
10
Just Like Old Times
The sky turned gloomy as Hanna steered the Prius into the parking lot of the William Atlantic Plastic Surgery and Burn Rehabilitation Clinic. She shut off the engine and looked at the squat, übermodern building. Was she seriously doing this? Part of her wanted to call up Spencer and beg for a different mission.
Her old phone bleated a new message from her school e-mail account. It was from Chassey Bledsoe: VOTE CHASSEY FOR QUEEN!
Hanna squeezed the phone between her hands, wishing she could send an alert, too. How else would people know what an awesome queen she’d make? And she’d heard that, as part of the Starry Night theme, the queen’s crown would be even more bejeweled than ever.
The Starry Night. Her insides twisted. It was such an eerie coincidence that the very painting Aria had stolen was this year’s prom theme—if it was a coincidence at all. All A would have to do was tip the cops off that the painting was in Aria’s closet and she’d be done for. And though the police might not ever know that Spencer and Emily knew about the theft, there were Hanna’s phone records from that night in Iceland. She’d be ruined, too. Who knew, maybe A would even figure out a way to blame them for Olaf’s death.
What had Aria seen in Olaf, anyway? His beard was nasty. The cap he wore looked like it was from a Dumpster. But Aria was always into those grungy dudes—Hanna had been surprised, actually, when she started dating Noel. Neither of them were each other’s types—a few boys on the lacrosse team even joked for a while that Noel was dating Aria because her dad, Byron, had access to good pot. Hanna was pretty sure that wasn’t true, but what if Noel did have an ulterior motive to go for Aria? What if someone had put him up to it? Someone like . . . Ali? Could Noel be Ali’s helper?
Hanna hated to think it, but Ali having a helper made a lot of sense. It also fit that Noel was that person—for a lot of different reasons. At the beginning of sixth grade, when Real Ali was still around and Hanna was still a loserish nothing, her BFF was Scott Chin. Scott was out of the closet even then, and he had a raging crush on Noel and was always jealous of his girlfriends. “What does he see in Alison DiLaurentis?” he whined at lunch one day when he spied Ali and Noel giggling at the cool table. “She’s such a butter face. Everything about her is pretty . . . but her face.”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “She’s not a butter face.” Alison was the most beautiful girl ever. She’d modeled at the King James Mall spring and fall runway shows, and rumor had it she’d even been tapped by a big agency in New York City.
“Oh please, yes, she is.” Scott’s eyebrows, which Hanna suspected he plucked, knitted together. “I wonder if Noel has to close his eyes when he makes out with her.”
Hanna lowered her PB&J. “Do you think they actually make out?” Kissing was still exotic to her. She couldn’t believe kids her age were doing it.
“Oh, yeah.” Scott had nodded. “I saw them doing it in the woods behind the playground.”
Sighing, Hanna returned to the present and pushed through the double doors. Instantly, the familiar odor of gauze, antiseptic, and something that could only be described as burnt skin hit her like a tidal wave. She looked around, taking in the fake flowers on the tables and the patient art on the walls. Everything was the same as the last time she’d been here, down to the peppermints in the dish on the front desk. She remembered, suddenly, running into Mona in this lobby. Mona had acted all weird and cagey about why she was there, not admitting she was getting treatment for the burns from the prank-gone-wrong that Ali, Hanna, and the others had played on Toby Cavanaugh. In all the time they’d been friends, Hanna had never known Mona had been at the Cavanaughs that night, watching Ali shoot that firework into the tree house, witnessing Jenna getting blinded, maybe even hearing the fight Ali and Toby had afterward. Of course, Mona’s silence had been intentional.
“Hanna?”
She looked up and saw Sean Ackard’s rounded cheeks, burning blue eyes, and do-gooder smile. He stood in the doorway of one of the offices, wearing a crisp blue button-down that looked like it had come straight from his father’s closet.