Perfect

In the parking lot, Spencer slid into her car and sat in silence. She listed all the things she saw here, too. Her tweed bag. The farmer’s market placard across the street that read, FRESH OMATOES. The T had fallen to the ground. The blue Chevy truck parked crookedly in the farmer’s market lot. The cheerful red birdhouse hanging from a nearby oak. The sign on the office building door that said only service animals were permitted inside. Melissa’s profile in Dr. Evans’s office window.



The corners of her sister’s mouth were spread into a jagged smile, and she was talking animatedly with her hands. When Spencer looked back at the farmer’s market, she noticed the Chevy’s front tire was flat. There was something slinking behind the truck. A cat, maybe.



Spencer sat up straighter. It wasn’t a cat—it was a person. Staring at her.



The person’s eyes didn’t blink. And then, suddenly, whoever it was turned his or her head, crouched into the shadows, and disappeared.



19



IT’S BETTER THAN A SIGN SAYING, “KICK ME”



Thursday afternoon, Hanna followed her chemistry class across the commons to the flagpole. There had been a fire drill, and now her chem teacher, Mr. Percival, was counting to make sure none of the students had run off. It was another freakishly hot October day, and as the sun beat down on the top of Hanna’s head, she heard two sophomore girls whispering.



“Did you hear that she’s a klepto?” hissed Noelle Frazier, a tall girl with cascading blond ringlets.



“I know,” replied Anna Walton, a tiny brunette with enormous boobs. “She, like, organized this huge Tiffany heist. And then she went and wrecked Mr. Ackard’s car.”



Hanna stiffened. Normally, she wouldn’t have been bothered by a couple of lame sophomore girls, but she was feeling sort of vulnerable. She pretended to be really interested in a bunch of tiny pine trees the gardeners had just planted.



“I heard she’s at the police station like every day,” Noelle said.



“And you know she’s not invited to Mona’s anymore, right?” Anna whispered. “They had this huge fight because Hanna humiliated her with that skywriting thing.”



“Mona’s wanted to drop her for a couple months now,” Noelle said knowingly. “Hanna’s become this huge loser.”



That was too much. Hanna whirled around. “Where did you hear that?”



Anna and Noelle exchanged a smirk. Then they sauntered down the hill without answering.



Hanna shut her eyes and leaned against the metal flagpole, trying to ignore the fact that everyone in her chem class was now staring at her. It had been twenty-four hours since the disastrous skywriting debacle, and things had gone from bad to worse. Hanna had left at least ten apologetic messages on Mona’s cell last night…but Mona hadn’t called back. And today, she’d been hearing strange, unsavory things about herself…from everyone.



She thought of A’s note. And Mona? She’s not your friend, either. So watch your back.



Hanna scanned the crowd of kids on the commons. Next to the doors, two girls in cheerleading uniforms were pantomiming a cheer. Near the gum tree, a couple of boys were “blazer fighting”—whapping each other with their Rosewood Day blazers. Aria’s brother, Mike, walked by playing his PSP. Finally, she spied Mona’s white-blond hair. She was heading back into the main building via one of the side doors with a bored, haughty look on her face. Hanna straightened her blazer, clenched and unclenched her fists, and made a beeline for her best friend.



When she reached Mona, she tapped her on her bony shoulder. Mona looked over. “Oh. It’s you,” she said in a monotone, the way she normally greeted losers not cool enough to be in her presence.



“Are you saying stuff about me?” Hanna demanded, putting her hands on her hips and keeping pace with Mona, who was striding quickly through the side door and down the art studio hallway.



Mona hitched her tangerine Dooney & Bourke tote higher on her shoulder. “Nothing that’s not true.”



Hanna’s mouth fell open. She felt like Wile E. Coyote in one of those old Looney Toons cartoons she used to watch—he would be running and running and running and suddenly run off a cliff. Wile E. would pause, not realizing it for a second, and then rapidly plummet. “So you think I’m a loser?” she squeaked.



Mona raised one eyebrow. “Like I said, nothing that’s not true.”



She left Hanna standing in the middle of the hall, students swarming around her. Mona walked to the end of the corridor and stopped at a clump of girls. At first they all looked the same—expensive handbags, shiny hair, skinny fake-tanned legs—but then Hanna’s eyes unblurred. Mona was standing with Naomi and Riley, and they were all whispering.



Hanna was certain she was going to cry. She fumbled through the bathroom door and closed herself into a stall next to Old Faithful, an infamous toilet that randomly spurted out plumes of water, drenching you if you were stupid enough to use it. The boys’ room had a spewing toilet, too. Through the years, plumbers had tried to fix them both, but since they couldn’t figure out the cause, the Old Faithfuls had become a legendary part of Rosewood Day lore. Everyone knew better than to use them.



Except…Mona had used Old Faithful just a few weeks after she and Hanna became friends, back when Mona was still clueless. She’d frantically texted Hanna in health class, and Hanna had rushed to the bathroom to slip Mona the extra uniform skirt and blouse she’d had in her locker. Hanna remembered balling up Mona’s soaked skirt in a Fresh Fields plastic bag and sliding out of the stall so Mona could furtively change—Mona had always been funny about changing in front of other people.



How could Mona not remember that?



As if on cue, Old Faithful erupted. Hanna shrieked and pressed herself against the opposite stall wall as a column of blue toilet water shot into the air. A few heavy droplets hit the back of Hanna’s blazer, and she curled up against the stall wall and finally started to sob. She hated that Mona no longer needed her. And that Ali had been murdered. And that her dad still hadn’t called. Why was this happening? What had she done to deserve this?



As Old Faithful quieted down to a gurgle, the main door swung open. Hanna made tiny gasping noises, trying to keep quiet. Whoever it was walked to the sink, and Hanna peered under the door. She saw a pair of clunky, black, boyish loafers.



“Hello?” a boy’s voice said. “Is…is someone in there?”



Hanna put her hand to her mouth. What was a guy doing in this bathroom?



Unless…No. She hadn’t.



“Hanna?” The shoes stood in front of her stall. Hanna recognized the voice, too.



She peeked out the crack in the door. It was Lucas, the boy from Rive Gauche. She could see the edge of his nose, a long piece of white blond hair. There was a big GO ROSEWOOD SOCCER! pin on his lapel. “How did you know it was me?”



“I saw you come in here,” he answered. “You know this is the boys’ room, right?”



Hanna answered with an embarrassed sniff. She took off her wet blazer, shuffled out of the stall, walked to the sink, and forcefully pumped the soap dispenser. The soap had that fake almond smell Hanna hated.



Lucas’s eyes cut to the Old Faithful stall. “Did that thing erupt?”



“Yes.” And then Hanna couldn’t control her emotions anymore. She hunched over the sink, her tears dripping into the basin.



Lucas stood there a moment, then put his hand on the middle of her back. Hanna felt it shake a little. “It’s only Old Faithful. It erupts, like, every hour. You know that.”



“That’s not it.” Hanna grabbed a scratchy paper towel and blew her nose. “My best friend hates me. And she’s making everyone else hate me, too.”



“What? Of course she doesn’t. Don’t be crazy.”



“Yes, she does!” Hanna’s high-pitched voice bounced off the bathroom’s tiled walls. “Mona’s hanging out with these girls now who we used to hate, and she’s gossiping about me, all because I missed the Frenniversary and the skywriter wrote, ‘Fart with Mona,’ instead of, ‘Party with Mona,’ and she disinvited me to her birthday party, and I’m supposed to be her best friend!”



She said it all in a long sentence without breathing, despite where she was and who she was talking to. When she finished, she stared at Lucas, suddenly irritated that he was there and had heard it all.



Lucas was so tall he practically had to stoop to not hit his head on the ceiling. “I could start spreading rumors about her. Like maybe she’s got a disease where she can’t help but secretly eat her snot when no one’s looking?”



Hanna’s heart thawed. That was gross…but also funny…and sweet. “That’s okay.”



“Well the offer stands.” Lucas had an earnest look on his face. In the hideous green bathroom light, he was actually cute. “But hey! I know something we can do to cheer you up.”



Hanna looked at him incredulously. What, did Lucas think they were friends now, because he’d seen her in the bathroom? Still, she was curious. “What?”



“Can’t tell you. It’s top secret. I’ll come get you tomorrow morning.”



Hanna shot him a warning look. “Like, a date?”



Lucas raised his hands in surrender. “Absolutely not. Just as…friends.”



Hanna swallowed. She needed a friend right now. Bad. “All right,” she said quietly, feeling too exhausted to argue. Then, with a sigh, she pushed out of the boys’ Old Faithful bathroom and headed for her next class. Strangely, she felt a teensy bit better.



But as she turned the corner to the foreign languages wing, Hanna reached around to put her blazer back on and felt something sticking to the back. She pulled off a wrinkled piece of paper. Feel sorry for me, it said, in spiky pink handwriting.



Hanna looked around at the passing students, but no one was paying attention. How long had she been walking around with the note on her? Who could have done this? It could have been anyone. She’d been in that crowd during the fire drill. Everyone had been there.



Hanna looked down at the paper again and turned it over in her hands. On the other side was a typewritten note. Hanna got that familiar sinking feeling in her stomach.



Hanna: Remember when you saw Mona leaving the Bill Beach plastic surgery clinic? Hello, lipo!! But shh! You didn’t hear it from me.



—A



20



LIFE IMITATES ART



Thursday afternoon at lunch, Aria turned the corner to Rosewood Day’s administrative wing. All the teachers had offices here and often tutored or advised students during their lunch periods.



Aria stopped at Ezra’s closed office door. It had changed a lot since the beginning of the year. He’d installed a white board, and it was chock-full of blue-inked notes from students. Mr. Fitz—Want to talk about my Fitzgerald report. I’ll stop by after school.—Kelly. There was a Hamlet quote at the bottom: O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! Below the marker board was a cutout of a New Yorker cartoon of a dog on a therapist’s couch. And on the doorknob was a DO NOT DISTURB sign from a Day’s Inn; Ezra had turned it to the DISTURB side: MAID,