Kate shrugged. She raised her green eyes to Hanna. “I think we should take them down. Not only has that family messed with Tom, but they’ve messed with you, too.”
Then Kate rose and strutted out of the room, her arms swinging, her shoulders back. Hanna slowly counted to ten, waiting for Kate to turn around and say, Just kidding! I’m totally telling on you, bitch! But after a moment, Hanna heard the gentle clunk of her bedroom door closing. Huh.
“I’ll call you back in a bit,” Mr. Marin said loudly in the kitchen, and Hanna heard the beep of the call ending. She stood, the tips of her fingers prickling. Kate was right. Maybe Hanna should take Liam’s family down. Hanna might not have told Liam anything vital about her father—besides typical divorce stuff every family suffers from and a lot of embarrassing stories about her weight—but Liam had told Hanna a whopper of a secret about his family. Something that would cut Tucker Wilkinson out of the campaign for good.
“Dad.” Hanna padded into the kitchen. Her father was now standing at the sink, washing his dishes. “There’s something I need to tell you. About Tucker Wilkinson.”
Her father turned, one eyebrow raised. And then everything Liam had told Hanna spilled out of her: his father’s affair, the woman’s unwanted pregnancy, the abortion. Her dad’s eyes bulged with every word. His jaw dropped lower and lower. The words felt like poison spilling from Hanna’s mouth, worse than any piece of gossip she’d ever spread, but then the photos from the paper flashed through her mind once more. They made her think of that line from some random Shakespeare-era play Mr. Fitz had made them read in English class last year: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Liam totally deserved it.
Chapter 35
WHO CARES ABOUT PERFECT, ANYWAY?
“Mike, cereal is meant to be eaten with a spoon,” Ella said that same morning as she, Aria, and Mike sat down to breakfast in the sun-filled nook. The room smelled like organic coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, and the slightly wilted wildflowers Thaddeus had sent Ella the other day.
Mike begrudgingly grabbed an antique silver spoon from the drawer and slumped back to his seat. Then Ella turned to Aria. “So what happened to you at the cast party last night? I turned around and you were gone.”
Aria pushed the big Ray-Ban sunglasses higher on her nose. She was wearing them to hide her red, puffy eyes from a whole night of crying over Ezra, Kelsey, A, and everything else. “I had some stuff to take care of,” she mumbled.
“You should’ve stuck around.” Mike chewed his Kashi flakes loudly. “The director got really smashed. People say that’s why he had to come and work at a random private school in the suburbs—he’s a boozer. And Spencer Hastings freaked out on this random girl. Psycho!” He sang the last word and bugged out his eyes.
“She’s not psycho.” Aria picked at a Fresh Fields waffle, the events of last night whirling in her head. Spencer freaked out, but it was for good reason.
So Kelsey was New A. On one hand, it was a good thing: At least they knew who the notes were coming from. On the other, what if people did believe what Kelsey knew about Tabitha? This morning, three more stories had appeared online about Tabitha’s death: one about a new forensic procedure the scientists had done to prove once and for all it had been Tabitha’s remains, another about a bake sale held in Tabitha’s honor, and a third about underage drinking in general, mentioning Tabitha’s death as a recent example.
Tabitha was becoming as popular in her community as Ali had been in Rosewood. If her little town in New Jersey caught wind that Tabitha had been murdered, would they really care if the girl crying foul was a drug addict? And what if Kelsey had more photos of Tabitha’s body? She thought of A’s recent note: Don’t think you’ll be spared from my wrath, murderess. You’re the guiltiest of all. Kelsey seemed to even know that Aria had done the pushing.
Mike’s phone rang, and he jumped up and left the room. Ella balled up her napkin and leaned forward on her elbows. “Honey, is there anything you want to talk about?”
Aria slurped her coffee. “Not really.”
Ella cleared her throat. “Are you sure? I couldn’t help but notice you talking to a certain ex-teacher of yours last night.”
Aria winced. “There’s nothing to tell.”
And there wasn’t. Ezra hadn’t called Aria after she’d caught him with Klaudia. There had been no I’m sorry texts on her phone or please take me back boxes of candy on her doorstep. New York certainly wasn’t happening. The love affair wasn’t happening. It was like she’d dreamed the whole thing.
Aria sighed and raised her head. “Remember how, before I went to Iceland last summer, everyone kept telling me it was going to be so amazing to be back?”