Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

‘I’m sorry,’ Hanna squeaked.

‘Did they make you take a blood test?’ she hissed.

She nodded miserably.

‘What else did you tell them?’

‘N-n-nothing,’ she stuttered.

Ms. Marin laced her French-manicured hands together. ‘Okay. I’ll handle this. Just be quiet.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered back. ‘Are you going to call Sean’s dad?’

‘I said I’ll handle it, Hanna.’

Her mother rose up from the plastic bucket seats and leaned over Wilden’s desk. Hanna tore through her purse for her emergency pack of Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel. She’d just have a couple, not the whole pack. It had to be in here somewhere.

As she pulled out the Twizzlers, she felt her BlackBerry buzzing. Hanna hesitated. What if it was Sean, chewing her out via voice mail? What if it was Mona? Where the hell was Mona? Had they actually let her go to the golf tourney? She hadn’t stolen the car, but she’d come along for the ride. That had to count for something.

Her BlackBerry had a few missed calls. Sean . . . six times. Mona, twice, at 8 A.M. and 8:03. There were also some new text messages: a bunch from kids at the party, unrelated, and then one from a cell number she didn’t know. Hanna’s stomach knotted.

Hanna: Remember the KATE toothbrush? Thought so! —A

Hanna blinked. A cold, clammy sweat gathered on the back of her neck. She felt dizzy. The Kate toothbrush?

‘Come on,’ she said shakily, trying to laugh. She glanced up at her mother, but she was still bent over Wilden’s desk, talking.

When she was in Annapolis, after her father told Hanna that she was, essentially, a pig, Hanna shot up from the table and ran inside. She ducked into the powder room, shut the door, and sat down on the toilet.

She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. Why could-n’t she be beautiful and graceful and perfect like Ali or Kate? Why did she have to be who she was, dumpy and clumsy and a wreck? And she wasn’t sure who she was angriest at – her dad, Kate, herself, or . . . Alison.

As Hanna choked on hot, angry tears, she noticed the three framed pictures on the wall across from the toilet. All three were close-ups of someone’s eyes. She recognized her father’s squinty, expressive eyes right away. And there were Isabel’s small, almond-shaped ones. The third pair of eyes were large, intoxicating. They looked like they were straight out of a Chanel mascara ad. They were obviously Kate’s.

They were all watching her.

Hanna stared at herself in the mirror. A peal of laughter floated in from outside. Her stomach felt like it was bursting from all the popcorn everyone had watched her eat. She felt so sick, she just wanted it out of there, but when she leaned over the toilet, nothing happened. Tears spilled down her cheeks. As she reached for a Kleenex, she noticed a green toothbrush sitting in a little porcelain cup. It gave her an idea.

It took her ten minutes to work up the nerve to put it into her throat, but when she did, she felt worse – but also better. She started crying even harder, but she also wanted to do it again. As she eased the toothbrush back in her mouth, the bathroom door burst open.

It was Alison. Her eyes swept over Hanna kneeling on the floor, the toothbrush in her hand. ‘Whoa,’ she said.

‘Please go away,’ Hanna whispered.

Alison took a step into the bathroom. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Hanna looked at her desperately. ‘At least close the door!’

Ali shut the door and sat on the side of the tub. ‘How long have you been doing this for?’

Hanna’s lip quivered. ‘Doing what?’

Ali paused, looking at the toothbrush. Her eyes widened. Hanna looked at it too. She hadn’t noticed before, but KATE was printed on the side in white letters.

A phone rang loudly in the police station and Hanna flinched. Remember the Kate toothbrush? Someone else might have known about Hanna’s eating problem, or might have seen her going into the police station, or might even know about Kate. But the green toothbrush? There was only one person who knew about that.

Hanna liked to believe that if Ali were alive, she’d be rooting for her, now that her life was so perfect. That was the scene she replayed in her mind constantly – Ali impressed by her size 2 jeans. Ali oohing over her Chanel lip gloss. Ali congratulating Hanna on how she’d planned the perfect pool party.

With shaking hands, Hanna typed, Is this Alison?

‘Wilden,’ a cop shouted. ‘We need you in the back.’

Hanna looked up. Darren Wilden rose from his desk, excusing himself from Hanna’s mom. Within seconds, the whole precinct burst into action. A cop car flew out of the parking lot; three more followed. Phones rang maniacally; four cops sprinted through the room.

‘It looks like something big,’ said Brad, the drunk trespasser sitting next to her. Hanna flinched – she’d forgotten he was there.

‘A donut shortage?’ she asked, trying to laugh.

‘Bigger.’ He jiggled his handcuffed hands excitedly. ‘Looks like something very big.’

The sun streamed in through the barn’s window, and for the first time in Spencer’s life, she was awakened by the chirping of high-on-life sparrows instead of the frightening ’90s techno mix her dad blasted from the main house’s exercise room. But could she enjoy it? Nope.

Although she hadn’t drunk a drop last night, her body felt achy, chilled, and hungover. There was zero sleep in her fuel tank. After Wren left, she’d tried to sleep, but her mind spun. The way Wren held her felt so . . . different. Spencer had never felt anything remotely like that before.

But then that IM. And Melissa’s calm, spooky expression. And . . .

As the night wore on, the barn creaked and groaned, and Spencer pulled the covers up to her nose, shaking. She chided herself for feeling paranoid and immature, but she couldn’t help it. She kept thinking of the possibilities.

Eventually, she’d gotten up and rebooted her computer. For a few hours, she searched the Internet. First she looked at technical websites, searching for answers on how to trace IMs. No luck. Then she tried to find where that first e-mail – the one titled ‘covet’ – had come from. She wanted, desperately, for the trail to end at Andrew Campbell.

She found that Andrew had a blog, but after scouring the whole thing, she found nothing. The entries were all about the books Andrew liked to read, dorky boy philosophizing, a couple of melancholy passages about an unrequited crush on some girl he never named. She thought he might slip up and give himself away, but he didn’t.

Finally, she plugged in the key words missing persons and Alison DiLaurentis.

She found the same stuff from three years ago – the reports on CNN and in the Philadelphia Inquirer, search groups, and kooky sites, like one showing what Ali might look like with different hairstyles. Spencer stared at the school picture they’d used; she hadn’t seen a photo of Ali in a long time. Would she recognize Ali if she had, for instance, a short, black bob? She certainly looked different in this picture they’d created.

The main house’s screen door squeaked as she nervously pushed through it. Inside, she smelled freshly brewed coffee, which was odd, because usually her mom was already at the stables by now and her dad was riding or at the golf course. She wondered what had happened between Melissa and Wren after last night, praying she wouldn’t have to face them.

‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

Spencer jumped. At the kitchen table were her parents and Melissa. Her mother’s face was pale and drained and her dad’s cheeks were beet red. Melissa’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Even the two dogs didn’t jump up to greet her as they normally did.

Spencer swallowed hard. So much for praying.

‘Sit down, please,’ her father said quietly.

Spencer scraped back a wooden chair and sat next to her mother. The room was so still and silent, she could hear her stomach, nervously on spin cycle.

‘I don’t even know what to say,’ her mother croaked. ‘How could you?’

Spencer’s stomach dropped. She opened her mouth, but her mother held up her hand. ‘You have no right to talk right now.’

Spencer clamped her mouth shut and lowered her eyes.

‘Honestly,’ her father said, ‘I am so mortified you’re my daughter right now. I thought we raised you better.’

Spencer picked at a rough cuticle on her thumb and tried to stop her chin from wobbling.

‘What were you thinking?’ her mother asked. ‘That was her boyfriend. They were planning to move in together. Do you realize what you’ve done?’

‘I—’ Spencer started.

‘I mean . . . ,’ her mother interrupted, then wrung her hands and looked down.

‘You’re under eighteen, which means we’re legally responsible for you,’ her father said. ‘But if it were up to me, I’d lock you out of this house right now.’

‘I wish I never had to see you again,’ Melissa spat.

Spencer felt faint. She half-expected them to set down their coffee cups and tell her they were just kidding, that everything was all right. But they couldn’t even look at her. Her dad’s words stung in her ears: I am so mortified you’re my daughter. No one had ever said anything like that to her before.

‘One thing’s for certain; Melissa will be moving into the barn,’ her mother continued. ‘I want all of your stuff out and back into your old bedroom. And once her town house is ready, I’m turning the barn into a pottery studio.’

Spencer balled up her fists under the table, willing herself not to cry. She didn’t care about the barn, not really. It was what came with the barn that mattered. It was that her dad was going to build shelves for her. Her mom was going to help her pick out new curtains. They’d said she could get a kitten and they’d all spent a few minutes thinking up funny names for it. They were excited for her. They cared.