“Miss Hastings?” said a brisk voice when Spencer answered. “We haven’t met, but my name is Georgia Price. I’m on the admissions board at Princeton University.”
“Uh huh.” Spencer’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the phone. She could just imagine the next sentence. We regret to inform you, but Spencer F. was a much stronger candidate. . . .
“I was wondering if you were still planning on joining us for the early admission mixer next week,” Georgia’s chipper voice broke through.
Spencer frowned. “Pardon?”
Georgia repeated herself. Spencer laughed confusedly. “I-I thought you were still reviewing my application.”
There was the sound of papers flipping. “Uh . . . no. I don’t think so. It says here we accepted you six weeks ago. Congratulations again. This was a tough admissions year.”
“What about the other Spencer Hastings?” Spencer said. “The boy with my same name who also applied? I got a letter that some of the admissions committee reviewed our applications thinking we were the same person, and . . .”
“You got a letter from us?” Georgia sounded appalled. “Miss Hastings, we would never do something like that. Your application is reviewed by five different rounds of readers. Discussed in committees. Approved by the dean himself. I assure you that we don’t make mistakes with whom we admit. We are very, very careful.”
Spencer stared at her reflection in the large mirror in the hall. Her hair was wild around her face. There was a wrinkle in the middle of her forehead she always got when she was utterly confused.
Georgia told Spencer the details about the mixer, then hung up. Afterward, Spencer sat back on the couch, blinking hard. What the hell had just happened?
And then, it came to her. She rose and padded across the hall to her dad’s old office, which still contained a bunch of computer and office equipment. It took her five seconds to log onto the Internet, and another five to call up Facebook. With shaking hands, she typed in Spencer F.’s name into the search window. Several Spencer Hastings profiles appeared, but none were for the golden boy from Darien, Connecticut, Spencer had stalked days before.
She pictured the letter from Princeton in her hands. Come to think of it, the seal had looked crooked. And it was suspicious that Kelsey had known Spencer had gotten into Princeton . . .
Of course. Kelsey had written the letter. She’d created Spencer F.’s profile, too, to mess with her head. Spencer F. didn’t exist. It was all a mind game.
Spencer shut her eyes, embarrassed that she’d been so na?ve. “Good one, Kelsey,” she said into the silent room. She had to hand it to her old friend: It was classic A, through and through.
Chapter 37
FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE ENEMY
Dread filled Hanna as she walked into the sleek lobby of the Preserve at Addison-Stevens Mental Wellness and Rehab facility on Monday after school. All of a sudden, she was reliving the events of last year: how her dad had shoved her through the revolving doors, certain she needed help for her panic attacks. How Mike had walked with her through the lobby, saying, “Well, this doesn’t look so bad!” Yeah, the lobby wasn’t bad at all. It was the rest of the place that was a nightmare.
Next to her, Aria squinted at a tall potted cactus in the corner. Someone had affixed two eyes, a nose, and a mouth to its long green body. “Where have I seen that before?”
Spencer glanced at it and shook her head. Hanna shrugged. So did Emily, who had dressed up for the occasion in a rumpled gray skirt and a slightly too-small white sweater. She turned and nervously watched a worried-looking couple with a thin, hollow-eyed boy lean their elbows on the checkin desk. “It’s so weird to think Ali was here,” she whispered.
“Seriously,” Hanna said. Ali’s family had left her in here for years, too, barely even checking on her. They’d assumed she was the crazy twin, ignoring her pleas that she really was the Real Ali. That was probably enough to make anyone lose her mind.
Spencer approached the checkin desk and told an attendant that they were here to visit Kelsey Pierce. “Right this way,” the attendant said briskly, giving the girls a circumspect look. “Why do I know you?”
Everyone exchanged a glance. Because a patient here tried to kill us, Hanna wanted to say. Really, it was a wonder the Preserve hadn’t been shut down by a medical review board—they’d let the Real Ali out, thinking she was well, and she’d gone on to murder a bunch of innocent people.