“Little piggy doesn’t feel good?” Hanna’s dad asked, squeezing her small toe.
Hanna shuddered at the memory and touched her now-slim stomach. A—whoever A was—was totally right. Her dad didn’t love her best.
“Everyone in the pond!” Noel shouted, snapping Hanna out of her thoughts.
Across the field, Hanna watched Sean pull off his T-shirt and run toward the water. Noel, James, Mason, and some other boys threw off their shirts, but Hanna didn’t even care. Of all the nights to see Rosewood’s hottest boys without their shirts on…
“They’re all so gorgeous,” murmured Felicity McDowell, who was mixing tequila with Fanta Grape, next to her. “Aren’t they?”
“Mmm,” she muttered.
Hanna ground her teeth together. Fuck her happy father and his perfect soon-to-be stepdaughter, and fuck Sean and his choosiness! She grabbed a bottle of Ketel One from the table and drank straight from it. She put the bottle back down but at the last second decided to bring it to the pond with her. Sean wasn’t going to get away with dumping her, insulting her, and then straight-up ignoring her. No way.
She stopped at a pile of clothes that were no doubt Sean’s—the jeans were neatly folded, and he’d anally stuffed his little white socks into his Pumas. Making sure no one was looking, she balled up the jeans in her hands and started backing away from the pond. What would the V Club say if they caught him driving home in his boxers?
As she walked toward the trees with Sean’s jeans, something fell and bounced off her foot. Hanna picked it up and stared at it for a moment, waiting for her vision to un-double.
The key to the BMW.
“Sweet,” she whispered, stroking the alarm button with her finger. Then she dropped the jeans back on the ground and shoved the keys into her blue quilted Moschino bag.
It was a gorgeous night for a drive.
22
BEER BATHS ARE GOOD FOR THE PORES
“Check it out,” Maya whispered excitedly. “There used to be one of these in my favorite café back in Cali!”
Emily and Maya stared at the old-school photo booth at the perimeter of Noel’s yard and the woods. A long, orange extension cord wound its way to the booth from Noel’s house across the lawn. As they admired it, Noel’s older brother, Eric, and a very-giddy Mona Vanderwaal fell out of the booth, grabbed their photos, and skipped away.
Maya glanced at Emily. “Wanna try it?”
Emily nodded. Before they ducked inside, she quickly glanced around the party. Some kids were gathered around the keg and a lot of other people held their red plastic cups in the air as they danced. Noel and a bunch of boys were swimming in the duck pond in their boxers. Ben was nowhere to be seen.
Emily sat beside Maya on the photo booth’s little orange seat and closed the curtain. They were so squeezed together, their shoulders and thighs touched.
“Here.” Maya handed her the Jack Daniel’s bottle and hit the green start button. Emily did a shot, then held it up triumphantly as the camera snapped the first picture. Then they squished their faces together and donned huge grins. Emily rolled her eyes back into her head, and Maya puffed her cheeks out like a monkey for the third picture. Then the camera caught them looking seminormal, if maybe a bit nervous.
“Let’s go see how they look,” Emily said.
But as she stood up, Maya grabbed her sleeve. “Can we stay in here a sec? This is such a great hiding spot.”
“Um, sure.” Emily sat back down. She swallowed loudly, without meaning to.
“So, how have you been?” Maya asked, pushing hair out of Emily’s eyes.
Emily sighed, trying to get comfy on the cramped seat. Confused. Upset at my possibly racist parents. Afraid I made the wrong decision about swimming. Kinda freaked that I’m sitting so close to you.
“I’m all right,” she said finally.
Maya snorted and took a swig of whiskey. “I don’t believe that for one second.”
Emily paused. Maya seemed like the only person who actually understood her. “Yeah, I guess not,” she said.
“Well, what’s going on?”
But suddenly, Emily didn’t want to talk about swimming or Ben or her parents. She wanted to talk about…something else completely. Something that had been slowly dawning on her. Maybe seeing Aria had triggered it. Or maybe finally having a real friend again had brought the feeling back. Emily thought Maya would understand.
She took a deep breath. “So, you know that girl Alison, the one who used to live in your house?”
“Yeah.”
“We were really close and I, like, really loved her. Like, everything about her.”
She heard Maya breathe out and nervously took another sip of Jack Daniel’s from the bottle.
“We were best friends,” Emily said, rubbing her fingers between the ratty blue fabric of the photo booth curtain. “I cared about her so much. So this one day, sort of out of the blue, I did it.”