Perfect

Bridget waltzed back in with a rolling rack of garment bags. “Start unzipping these and see if there’s anything you like,” she instructed. “I just have to run out to the car and get the bag of shoes and accessories.” She wrinkled her nose. “An assistant would be great right now.”



Spencer ran her hands along the vinyl bags. There had to be at least twenty-five. “All these are just for my little photo shoot?”



“Didn’t Jordana tell you?” Bridget widened her gray eyes. “The managing editor loved this story, especially since you’re local. We’re putting you on the front page!”



“Of the Style section?” Melissa seemed incredulous.



“No, of the whole paper!” Bridget cried.



“Oh my God, Spencer!” Mrs. Hastings took Spencer’s hand.



“That’s right!” Bridget beamed. “Get used to this. And if you win, you’ll be on one wild ride. I styled 2001’s winner for Newsweek. Her schedule was crazy.”



Bridget strode back toward the front door, her jasmine perfume punctuating the air. Spencer tried to breathe yoga fire breaths. She unzipped the first garment bag, running her hands over a dark wool blazer. She checked the tag. Calvin Klein. The next one was Armani.



Her mother and Melissa joined her in unzipping. They were quiet for a few seconds, until Melissa said, “Spence, there’s something taped on this bag.”



Spencer looked over. A folded piece of lined paper was affixed to a navy garment bag with duct tape. On the front of the note was a single, handwritten initial: S.



Spencer’s legs stiffened. She pulled the note off slowly, angling her body so that Melissa and her mother couldn’t see it, and then opened it up.



“What is it?” Melissa moved away from the rack.



“J-just directions for the stylist.” Her words came out garbled and thick.



Mrs. Hastings continued to calmly unzip the garment bags, but Melissa held Spencer’s gaze for a beat longer. When Melissa finally looked away, Spencer slowly unfolded the note again.



Dear Ms. Finalist, How’d you like it if I told your secret RIGHT NOW? I can, you know. And if you don’t watch it, maybe I will.



—A



15



NEVER, EVER TRUST SOMETHING AS OBSOLETE AS A FAX MACHINE



Wednesday afternoon at lunch, Hanna sat at a teak farmhouse table that overlooked the Rosewood Day practice fields and the duck pond. Mount Kale rose up in the distance. It was a perfect afternoon. Tiffany-blue sky, no humidity, the smell of leaves and clean air all around them. The ideal setting for Hanna’s perfect birthday present to Mona—now all Mona had to do was show up. Hanna hadn’t been able to get a word in while they were fitted for their champagne-colored Zac Posen court dresses at Saks yesterday—not with Naomi and Riley around. She’d tried to call Mona to talk to her about it last night, too, but Mona had said she was in the middle of studying for a big German test. If she failed, the Sweet Seventeen was off.



But whatever. Mona was due any minute, and they’d make up for all the private Hanna-Mona time they’d missed. And yesterday’s note from A about Mona not being trustworthy? Such a bluff. Mona might still be a little pissed about the Frenniversary misunderstanding, but there was no way she’d bail on their friendship. Anyway, Hanna’s birthday surprise would make everything all better. So Mona had better speed it up before she missed the whole thing.



As Hanna waited, she scrolled through her BlackBerry. She had it programmed to keep messages until manually erased, so all her old Alison text conversations were still stored right in her inbox. Most of the time, Hanna didn’t like going through them—it was too sad—but today, for some reason she wanted to. She found one from the first day of June, a few days before Ali went missing.



Trying to study for the health final, Ali had written. I have all this nervous energy.



Y? had been Hanna’s answer.



Ali: I don’t know. Maybe I’m in love. Ha ha.



Hanna: Yr in love? w/ who?



Ali: Kidding. Oh shit, Spencer’s at my door. She wants to practice field hockey drills…AGAIN.



Tell her no, Hanna had written back. Who do U love?



You don’t tell Spencer no, Ali argued. She’ll, like, hurt you.



Hanna stared at her BlackBerry’s bright screen. At the time, she’d probably laughed. But now Hanna looked at the old texts with a fresh eye. A’s note—saying one of Hanna’s friends was hiding something—scared her. Could Spencer be hiding something?



All of a sudden, Hanna recalled a memory she hadn’t thought of in a long time: A few days before Ali went missing, the five of them had gone on a field trip to the People’s Light Playhouse to see Romeo and Juliet. There weren’t many seventh-graders who’d opted to go—the rest of the field-trippers had been high-schoolers. Practically all of the Rosewood Day senior class had been there—Ali’s older brother, Jason, Spencer’s sister, Melissa, Ian Thomas, Katy Houghton, Ali’s field hockey friend, and Preston Kahn, one of the Kahn brothers. After the play was over, Aria and Emily disappeared to the bathroom, Hanna and Ali sat on the stone wall and started eating their lunches, and Spencer sprinted over to talk to Mrs. Delancey, the English teacher, who was sitting near her students.



“She’s only over there because she wants to be near the older boys,” Ali muttered, glaring at Spencer.



“We could go over too, if you want,” Hanna suggested.



Ali said no. “I’m mad at Spencer,” she declared.



“Why?” Hanna asked.



Ali sighed. “Long, boring story.”



Hanna let it drop—Ali and Spencer often got mad at each other for no reason. She started daydreaming about how the hot actor who played Tybalt had stared right at her all through his death scene. Did Tybalt think Hanna was cute…or fat? Or perhaps he wasn’t staring at her at all—maybe he was just acting dead with his eyes open. When she looked up again, Ali was crying.



“Ali,” Hanna had whispered. She’d never seen Ali cry before. “What’s wrong?”



Tears ran silently down Ali’s cheeks. She didn’t even bother wiping them away. She stared off in the direction of Spencer and Mrs. Delancey. “Forget it.”



“Shit! Look at that!” Mason Byers cried out, breaking Hanna out of her old seventh-grade thoughts. Up in the sky, a biplane cut a line through the clouds. It passed over Rosewood Day, swooped around, and then zoomed by again. Hanna jiggled up and down in her seat and swiveled around. Where the hell was Mona?



“Is that an old Curtiss?” James Freed asked.



“I don’t think so,” Ridley Mayfield answered. “I think it’s a Travel Air D4D.”



“Oh, right,” James said, as if he’d known it all along.



Hanna’s heart fluttered excitedly. The plane made a few long, sweeping strokes through the air, puffing out a trail of clouds that formed a perfect letter G. “It’s writing something!” a girl near the door called out.



The plane moved on to the E, then the T, and then, after a space, the R. Hanna was practically bursting. This was the coolest party court gift ever.



Mason squinted at the plane, which was dipping and weaving in the sky. “Get…ready…to…” he read.



Just then, Mona slid into the seat next to her, throwing her charcoal gray quilted Louis Vuitton bag over her chair. “Hey, Han,” she said, opening her Fresh Fields bento box and sliding the paper off her wooden chopsticks. “So you’ll never believe who Naomi and Riley got to play at my birthday party. It’s the best gift ever.”



“Forget that,” Hanna squealed. “I got you something cooler.”



Hanna tried to point out the plane in the sky, but Mona was riled up. “They got Lexi,” she rushed on. “Lexi! For me! At my party! Can you believe it?”



Hanna let her spoon drop back in the yogurt container. Lexi was a female hip-hop artist from Philadelphia. A major label had signed her and she was going to be a megastar. How had Naomi and Riley managed that? “Whatever,” she said quickly, and steered Mona’s chin toward the clouds. “Look what I did for you.”



Mona squinted into the sky. The plane had finished writing the message and was now doing loops over the letters. When Hanna took in the whole message, her eyes widened.



“Get ready to…” Mona’s mouth fell open. “…fart with Mona?”



“Get ready to fart with Mona!” Mason cried. Others who saw it were repeating it, too. A freshman boy by the abstract wall mural blew into his hands to make a farting sound.



Mona stared at Hanna. She looked a little green. “What the hell, Hanna?”



“No, that’s wrong!” Hanna squeaked. “It was supposed to say, ‘Get ready to party with Mona!’ P-A-R-T-Y! They messed up the letters!”



More people made fart noises. “Gross!” a girl near them screamed. “Why would she write that?”



“This is horrible!” Mona cried. She pulled her blazer over her head, just like celebrities did when they were avoiding the paparazzi.



“I’m calling them right now to complain,” Hanna exclaimed, whipping out her BlackBerry and shakily scrolling for the skywriting company’s number. This wasn’t fair. She’d used the clearest, neatest handwriting possible when she faxed Mona’s party message to the skywriter. “I’m so sorry, Mon. I don’t know how this happened.”



Mona’s face was shadowed under her blazer. “You’re sorry, huh?” she said in a low voice. “I bet you are.” She slid her blazer back around her shoulders, lurched up, and strode away as fast as her raffia Celine wedges would carry her.



“Mona!” Hanna jumped up after her. She touched Mona’s arm and Mona spun around. “It was a mistake! I’d never do that to you!”



Mona took a step closer. Hanna could smell her French lavender laundry soap. “Ditching the Frenniversary is one thing, but I never thought you’d try to ruin my party,” she growled, loud enough for everyone to hear. “But you want to play that way? Fine. Don’t come. You’re officially uninvited.”



Mona stomped through the cafeteria doors, practically pushing two nerdy-looking freshmen aside into the large stone planters. “Mona, wait!” Hanna cried weakly.



“Go to hell,” Mona yelled over her shoulder.



Hanna took a few steps backwards, her whole body trembling. When she looked around the courtyard, everyone was staring at her. “Oh, snap,” Hanna heard Desdemona Lee whisper to her softball-playing friends.



“Mrow,” a group of younger boys hissed from the moss-covered birdbaths. “Loser,” an anonymous voice muttered.



The wafting smell of the cafeteria’s overly sauced, mushy-crusted pizza was beginning to give Hanna that old, familiar feeling of being both hideously nauseated and crazily ravenous at the same time. She returned to her purse and rifled absentmindedly through the side pouch to find her emergency package of white cheddar Cheez-Its. She pushed one into her mouth after another, not even tasting them. When she looked up into the sky, the puffy, letter-shaped clouds announcing Mona’s party had drifted.