Noel pushed his yellow lacrosse bracelet, which all the players wore in some über-masculine show of brotherhood, around his wrist. He wouldn’t look at Aria, not even at her feet. “I don’t think it’s working between us,” he said. His voice cracked a little.
It felt like a karate kick to Aria’s stomach. “W-why?”
Noel shrugged. His normally calm, easygoing face was all scrunched up, and his flawlessly smooth skin looked blotchy. “I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have that much in common, do we?”
The world suddenly went red. When Aria was pseudo-friends with Klaudia for a nanosecond, Klaudia had brought up how mismatched Aria and Noel were. Okay, so Aria wasn’t like the lacrosse-playing, Ralph Lauren Polo–wearing clones Noel usually dated, but Noel said he liked that. Then again, how could she compare to an ice-blond Finnish sex goddess?
The all-natural cleanser the custodial staff used to mop the floors swirled in Aria’s nose, making her queasy. A large guy on the basketball team bumped into her, knocking her into Noel, but Aria pulled away fast, suddenly uncomfortable with touching him. “So that’s . . . it? All the time we spent together . . . it just doesn’t matter?”
Noel shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry, Aria.” He caught her eye, and for a split second, he really did look sorry. But there was something closed-off about him, too, like he’d already said good-bye to her long ago.
Tears wet the corners of Aria’s eyes. She thought of all the weekends she’d spent with Noel. All the lacrosse games she’d watched, even though she didn’t really understand the nuances of the game. All the secrets she’d confessed, like how she and Their Ali caught her father making out with his student, Meredith, near Hollis College in seventh grade. How when Real Ali returned last year and hit on Noel, Aria was sure Noel would dump her. How after Real Ali nearly killed them in the Poconos, she’d slept with the light on and kept a samurai knife her father had bought on a trip to Japan under her pillow. And how even though Aria had lost her virginity to a boy in Iceland in tenth grade, she’d wanted the second time she had sex to be really, truly special. Maybe it was a good thing she’d held out with Noel, considering what was happening now.
But there were some secrets Aria hadn’t shared with Noel. Like what she’d done to Tabitha or what had really happened on their trip to Iceland. The Iceland incident alone would have made Noel dump Aria long ago. Maybe, in a twisted, karmic way, she deserved this.
She heard a snicker and peered into the open classroom door. Klaudia sat in the front row, her injured foot propped up on a spare chair. Kate Randall, Naomi Zeigler, and Riley Wolfe sat next to her—of course they’d all become fast friends with the equally devious and gossipy Klaudia. All four girls stared at her and Noel, big grins on their faces. They had front-row seats to the breakup. The news would be all over school in minutes. Pretty Little Loser was just Pretty Little Dumped!
Aria spun on her heel and marched toward the bathroom before the tears started to fall. She peeked over her shoulder, longing for Noel to call out her name, but he’d turned and was walking in the opposite direction. When he saw Mason Byers, one of his good friends, he stopped and gave him a high five. Like he was carefree. Happy. Thrilled to be rid of kooky Aria Montgomery once and for all.
Chapter 4
HANNA MARIN, CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST
On Thursday evening, as the sun was sinking into the trees and dyeing the sky orange, Hanna Marin pressed her iPhone to her ear and waited for the voice mail message to beep. “Mike, it’s me again. Are you ever going to pick up? How many times can I say I’m sorry?”
She pressed END. She’d left him sixteen voice mail messages, eleven texts, tons of Twitter posts, and a bunch of emails in the past two weeks, but her ex-boyfriend, Mike Montgomery, hadn’t returned a single one. She knew how rash it had been to break up with him when he’d warned her about skeevy Patrick Lake, the photographer who told Hanna that she could be a model in New York. But how was she supposed to know Patrick would take compromising photos of Hanna and threaten to post them online if she didn’t pay him off?
Hanna missed Mike. She missed watching American Idol with him and making fun of the singers. She’d heard he’d taken a small role in the school’s production of Macbeth. When they were dating, they consulted one another before joining activities—Hanna would definitely have put the kibosh on the play.