Ding-dong.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes, looking around. Blankets and sheets were tangled around her and Mike, and Dot had wedged between them, his head on Mike’s butt. Hanna stifled a giggle, then felt a swell of wistfulness. If only she could have weeks, months, years of waking up together just like this.
There was a scuffle downstairs, and Hanna remembered the doorbell. Then there was a knock on her door. Hanna threw on a robe and opened the door just enough to see her mother’s pale face and eyes. “The police are downstairs for you,” her mother whispered. “The jury has made a decision.”
“On a Sunday?” Hanna gasped. Instantly she was up and throwing on clothes.
Everyone was bleary-eyed when they pulled up to the courthouse. Hanna clasped Mike’s hands tightly as they walked the distance from the parking lot to the steps. Flashbulbs popped in her face, and she couldn’t help but think that her slapdash attempt at makeup and coarse comb-through of her hair, still gummy with hairspray from yesterday’s updo, would probably get some jeers on Twitter. But those thoughts were quickly drowned out by the questions the reporters were yelling. “What do you think the jury will decide? How do you feel about going to prison? Do you think you’ll go free?”
Once inside, Mike turned to Hanna and squeezed her arm tightly. “It’s going to be okay.”
Hanna nodded, too afraid to speak for fear she’d throw up. Somehow, her legs managed to get her to the courtroom. Spencer and Aria were already in their seats, their faces drained of blood. Wordlessly, Hanna slid in next to them and clasped their hands. Her pulse raced fast.
The jurors reassembled, the lawyers took their places, and the judge appeared at his bench. Her gaze wandered to the rest of the crowd—her parents, Aria’s parents, a bunch of people from the press. Then she looked back at the jurors in their box. Suddenly, one of them met her gaze. A tiny smile appeared on the woman’s face. Hanna felt her jaw drop. That had to be a good sign, right? Had the jury decided they weren’t guilty?
The judge’s booming voice rang out through the room, and all eyes turned to him. “Has the jury reached a verdict?” he asked.
A pasty-colored middle-aged guy who served as the jury’s representative clutched a folded piece of paper tightly. “We have, your honor.”
It seemed to take ages for the bailiff to walk the length from the jury box to the judge’s bench. Hanna thought she might faint as the judge took the sheet of paper from him and studied it. Spencer’s nails dug into Hanna’s palm. Aria trembled next to her. For a few seconds, it didn’t seem like a single person in the courtroom breathed.
The judge coughed, then lowered his glasses farther down his nose. He looked at the jury foreman and asked, “How do you find?”
The man replied, “We the jury find Hanna Marin, Spencer Hastings, and Aria Montgomery guilty of the murder of Alison DiLaurentis.”
Hanna’s mouth fell open. Someone near her screamed. Spencer’s hand slipped from hers. Hanna glanced blindly around the courtroom, her gaze first landing on Mr. DiLaurentis, who was in his regular seat in the back. There was a small, tense smile on his face. Then Hanna found Mike in the crowd. His skin was ashen. He was blinking hard, maybe to hold back tears. Hanna held his gaze as long as she could, but she couldn’t offer a brave smile, and neither could he. That was when she realized. Mike hadn’t really thought this was ever going to happen.
Maybe she hadn’t, either. But the reality sank in, and made her dizzy: She was never going to see him again, except in a prison visitor’s room. She was never going to see anyone again.
The judge said more after that—something about the girls serving their life sentences immediately, as they were all flight risks, and for that sentence to be served at the Keystone State Correctional Facility, but Hanna barely registered it. Her vision began to dim. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. It rang in her head like a gong. Life in prison. Forever.
And then everything went dark.
26
PRISON BLUES
Aria usually had a cast-iron stomach when it came to motion sickness, but something about the way the bald, burly, khaki-jacketed prison worker drove the van to the Keystone State Correctional Facility sent her stomach tumbling all the way until they rolled through the prison gates. Maybe it was his jerky driving, or maybe it was the way he smelled like jerky—beef jerky, the scent of it literally leaking from his pores.