Pretty Little Liars #11: Stunning

by Sara Shepard

  “Oh my God,” Spencer blurted, a crack suddenly opening in her brain. Could it have been because of the brownies? They were the only thing she’d eaten. She pictured Reefer proffering her an enormous clump of pot, claiming it was really mellow and perfect for baking. He’d smiled at her, as though completely guileless and honest, then said all that stuff about Ivy. Maybe this was his idea of civil disobedience. He was sticking it to those old-fart-y institutions for being so staid, boring, and exclusionary.

  Spencer twisted her body to reach the cell phone on the little table and dialed Reefer’s phone number. It rang a few times, and then Reefer picked up, letting out a cautious hello.

  “You almost killed us,” she growled.

  “Um, excuse me?” Reefer said.

  “We’re all in the hospital because of you! Do you really hate Ivy that much?”

  There was a pause on the line. “What are you talking about?” Reefer sounded confused.

  “I’m talking about the LSD and Ritalin that was in your mellow pot,” Spencer said through her teeth, noting that her pulse on the monitor was rising. “You spiked it to screw with us, right?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Reefer interrupted. “I don’t do that stuff. And I certainly wouldn’t lace it into my pot. I gave you the tamest thing I had, Spencer. I swear.”

  Spencer frowned. Reefer sounded blindsided by the accusation. Was he telling the truth? Could someone else have tampered with the brownies? The food at the party was out in plain sight, though—it would have been difficult for someone to stealthily sprinkle various poisons into the brownie dish. And Spencer hadn’t let the pot or the brownies out of her sight since she’d baked them the night before.

  She widened her eyes. Actually, she had let them out of her sight—she’d fallen asleep while they were baking. Was it possible someone could have crept into the motel at that very moment and sabotaged her dish? There had also been more pans at the party than she remembered bringing—were some of the brownies smuggled in and passed off as hers?

  “Spencer?” Reefer’s voice came through the line.

  “Uh, I’ll call you back,” Spencer croaked, then hung up. Suddenly, it was so cold in the room that her skin broke out in goose bumps.

  Her cell phone, which she was still holding, let out a bloop. She looked at the screen. Her vital signs on the monitor spiked again. New message from Anonymous.

  Talk about a bad trip, huh? That’s what you get for leaving your potluck goodies unattended. —A

  27

  STALKER FILES

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything we can do to help?” Hanna asked her father as he restraightened his tie in the lobby of the Hollis Gemological Museum, the site of the fund-raiser ball. It was a huge, beautiful space with marble floors, mosaic-tiled walls, and tons of display cases full of priceless diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, meteorites, and geodes. The place was immaculate and gorgeous, with white linens on the two dozen tables set up around the room, massive bouquets of flowers everywhere, and a silent auction area featuring a Fabergé egg, a vintage Louis Vuitton sable coat, and a three-month-long sailboat charter around the world.

  “Yes, Tom, please let us do something.” Kate, dressed in an aubergine gown and black velvet strappy heels, began preening in front of the mirror, too.

  Mr. Marin smiled at the girls. “You two have done so much.” He thought for a moment, then raised one finger. “You could show Ms. Riggs a good time. You used to come to this museum all the time, didn’t you, Hanna? You could point out the displays.”

  Hanna bit back a grimace. It was true she used to go to the museum with Ali in sixth grade, but playing tour guide with Gayle was just about the last thing she wanted to do. But it would give her an opening to steal Gayle’s phone and prove she was A. Now, there was even more of a reason to do so: Spencer had called on the way over, telling Hanna she was in the hospital—A had drugged her and a bunch of kids at Princeton, and if they could prove A was Gayle and that Gayle definitely spiked the brownies, they could put her away for a long time.

  “So she’s coming?” Hanna tried to sound nonchalant.

  “Of course.” Mr. Marin checked his Rolex. “Actually, I’m surprised she’s not here yet. I know she wants to talk to you, Hanna, before the festivities begin.”

  “A-about what?” Hanna croaked. The idea of alone time with Gayle sounded terrifying.

  “I was surprised, too.” Mr. Marin raised an eyebrow. “One of her charities is helping get teenagers involved in community activities. She said something about how she’s really impressed by your involvement in the campaign—especially organizing that flash mob. I think she wants to pick your brain.”

  Hanna’s stomach churned. She was sure picking her brain wasn’t all Gayle wanted to do. She’d met Liam at the flash mob, and A—Gayle—knew that.

  She threw back her shoulders, took a deep breath, and glanced at her phone again. Plan of attack, Aria had written in an e-mail to her and Emily. Hanna, you distract Gayle by talking about the campaign. If that doesn’t work, Emily, you walk by and look Gayle straight in the eye. When she’s not paying attention, I’ll sneak up and grab her phone. We rendezvous at my car, check her messages, and download everything to our phones.

  Hanna could only hope it was that easy.

  The doors swung open, and people began to arrive. Hanna glued her I’m-a-politician’s-daughter smile on her face and greeted the VIPs. Rupert Millington, who was always in the society pages because his great-grandparents once owned half of Rosewood, walked over and shook Mr. Marin’s hand. Fletch Huxley, Rosewood’s mayor, gave Hanna a kiss on the cheek. A bunch of ladies from local charities and horse-riding clubs air kissed and fake hugged. She looked around for Gayle, but she still hadn’t arrived. Neither Aria nor Emily had, either. Then, gliding through the double doors like royalty, was a familiar black-haired boy in a fitted tuxedo and a girl in an annoyingly pretty pink bebe dress that didn’t look slutty in the slightest. It was Mike and Colleen, deep in conversation.

  Hanna’s heart started to pound. There was something else she had to do tonight. She ducked behind a column to listen in.

  “I don’t know what could have happened to those pictures,” Colleen was saying. “The photographer said someone picked them up for me, but that’s impossible!”

  Hanna bit the inside of her cheek. She really didn’t want to own up to the fact that she’d stolen Colleen’s photos. Maybe she could just send them back anonymously and chalk up the money she’d paid for them as the price she had to pay for getting Mike back.

  On cue, Mike turned his head and noticed Hanna behind the column. Hanna looked away, but then Colleen saw her, too, and she let out a happy squeal. “Kiss kiss!” she said ecstatically, running over and kissing Hanna on both cheeks before Hanna could stop her. “This is so amazing. Thank you so much for inviting me!”

  Hanna sniffed. “I didn’t invite you,” she said, the words like bile in her mouth.

  Colleen’s face fell. Mike gave Hanna a withering look, then shrugged and drifted over to a bunch of guys on the soccer team, who’d no doubt spiked their ginger ales with vodka from someone’s flask.

  Colleen watched Mike go, then turned back to Hanna. Her eyes widened slightly. “Uh, Hanna?” She leaned forward. “You have something stuck to your shoe.”

  Hanna’s head shot down. A long piece of toilet paper was affixed to her back heel. Heat shot through her body. How long had it been there? Had she really greeted the mayor of Rosewood like this? Had Mike seen it?

  Hanna bent down and pulled the piece, which was disgustingly soggy, off her foot. When she looked up again, Colleen had joined Mike at a table with his friends. She felt more infuriated than ever.

  As the room filled and the volume swelled, Hanna ducked down a hallway that featured carved banded agate from Brazil and reached for her phone. She pulled up the yogurt commercial and watched it once more, smirking at Colleen’s constipated face. Priceless. Then she copied and pasted the li
nk into a new text and selected everyone in her Rosewood Day address book as the recipients.

  Once that was finished, Hanna’s finger hovered over the SEND button. She looked into the room, watching as the band set up and partygoers schmoozed. Colleen and Mike were sitting at a table with Mike’s lacrosse buddies. Mike was deep in conversation with the goalie, who Hanna always called Frankenstein because of his square head. Colleen was sitting next to him, sipping her sparkling water and looking a little lost. The perfect little actress doesn’t know how to socialize, she thought with satisfaction. I guess insta-popularity is a little harder than it looks, huh?

  But suddenly, Colleen’s fish-out-of-water expression sparked a memory. Hanna saw herself and Mona sitting at the best table in the cafeteria. Colleen came up and asked if she could join them, and both of them laughed. “We don’t sit with girls who wear Hobbit shoes,” Mona said, pointing to the square-toed Mary Janes on Colleen’s feet. And Hanna crooned, “The cir-cle of life,” because Colleen had carried a Lion King lunch bag to school until eighth grade.

  For a split second, the hurt was obvious on her face, but then she shrugged and chirped, “Okay! Well, have a fun lunch, guys!” Mona and Hanna had collapsed into giggles when she walked away.

  The thing was, not that long before that, Hanna had laughed at Mona when she was in Ali’s clique. And not long before that, Real Ali had laughed at Hanna. At the way her rolls of fat spilled over her jeans. At how she couldn’t do a cartwheel in gym. Hanna remembered how humiliated and ashamed she’d felt. And yet, when it was her turn to wear the Queen Bee crown, she’d teased people so effortlessly, like she’d never been on the other side.

  Popularity had turned Ali, Mona, and Hanna into remorseless bitches. It hadn’t affected Colleen at all, though—even dating Mike, she’d remained exactly the same girl as before. And now Hanna was being tormented by the worst popular bitch of all—A. Did Hanna really want to do that to someone else?

  Her phone suddenly beeped, shrill and loud in the quiet hall. A new text envelope appeared on the screen. Frowning, Hanna exited out of the text she was planning to write and opened the new one. The sender was a series of jumbled letters and numbers.

  C’mon, Hanna. Send that video. You know you want to.

  Hanna’s stomach felt like it was on fire. Did she want to? She missed Mike desperately. She wanted him to be her date here, not Colleen’s, and for them to go on runs and sneak into the movies and play hours and hours of Gran Turismo like they used to. But could she live with herself if the only way she accomplished that was to send around the video? It reminded her of the way she felt when she wore a pair of shoes or a bracelet she had shoplifted: It was amazing to have a Tiffany toggle around her wrist, but something about it made her feel a little dirty, too. Colleen might have been annoying, but she didn’t deserve her own personal A.

  Hanna returned to the text with the video link, took a deep breath, and pressed DELETE. Doing so felt cleansing. Almost . . . good. Like she’d beaten A at A’s game.

  A high-pitched giggle swirled from one of the corners, and she whipped around. Footsteps rang out behind her. Suddenly, Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe sauntered up to Hanna, their phones in their hands.

  “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Hanna,” Naomi snickered.

  “Nice one,” Riley added, pushing a lock of bright-red hair behind her ear.

  “What are you talking about?” Hanna snapped.

  “That video.” Naomi waved her phone back and forth. “It’s priceless.”

  Hanna’s stomach plummeted to her feet. Video? Did Naomi mean what she thought? But Hanna had deleted the text! Had A sent it out anyway and just said it was from Hanna? “It wasn’t me,” she blurted.

  Riley gave her a crazy look. “Uh, this sure as hell looks like you.”

  She shoved her cell phone in Hanna’s face. Hanna stared at it, fully expecting to see Colleen in the Latvian yogurt commercial, but her own image popped up instead. The first part of the video was Hanna at the pole dancing class. Her skimpy top rode up and her shorts rode down, showing off a strip of her lacy underwear. Her hips looked huge as she did circles and rolls, and when she tried to climb that pole she looked like a deranged monkey. The camera caught an unfortunate shot of her crotch as she tumbled to the ground.

  “What?” Hanna whispered.

  The video kept going. The next part showed Hanna skulking through the bushes at the King James Mall, staring into Victoria’s Secret with binoculars. The camo made her skin look red and blotchy and her waist so much bigger than it really was. And when she emerged from the bushes, she had a couple of leaves on her butt. The camera zoomed in on them as she followed Mike and Colleen down the concourse.

  Hanna peered at the girls, her heart thudding faster. “I don’t understand.”

  “Doing some spying, were you, Hanna?” Naomi giggled.

  The video continued. Next was a clip of Colleen walking into the photographer’s studio, Hanna sneaking up behind her, looking desperate and ridiculous. And then it showed Hanna just a few hours before, retrieving Colleen’s photos, looking through them angrily, and tossing them into her glove box. The final frame was a message in bold, red type. Hanna Marin, desperate stalker!

  “Oh my God.” Hanna’s stomach sank.

  Naomi snickered. “I always thought you were a loser for going out with a younger guy, but spying on him after he dumps you? That’s a new low, even for you. And now everyone knows.”

  “Everyone?” Hanna croaked.

  She stared into the ballroom and got her answer. A bunch of Rosewood Day kids gaped at their phones, then raised their heads en masse and gawked at Hanna. “Looking hot in camo, Hanna!” Seth Cardiff said. “Hey, Mike, you’ve got a secret admirer!” Mason Byers chuckled.

  Mike. Hanna found him and Colleen near the window, staring at his phone. Hanna could pinpoint the exact moment when Colleen got to the part in the video where Hanna stole her photos. She covered her mouth with her hand and then turned to Hanna with a betrayed look on her face. Mike’s head shot up and he stared at her, too, his eyes burning. Colleen turned and fled into the lobby. Mike followed.

  Hanna took a few crooked steps backward, almost tripping over a long curtain that separated the main room from a little hallway. How had this happened? Who had been following her around? Who had sent that video to everyone?

  Of course: A. This was A’s reason for encouraging her to spy on Colleen: to throw it back in her face and make sure she lost Mike for good.

  28

  TIME IS RUNNING OUT

  “They went all out, huh?” Isaac said as he and Emily walked into the Hollis Gemological Museum.

  “Seriously,” Emily whispered, looking around. She’d never been to a political fund-raiser ball before, but this one was amazing—way better than prom. Tons of white balloons hugged the arched ceiling. A live band was playing a jazzy song, and a few couples in tuxedos and gowns were slow dancing. Emily had never seen so many diamonds—and she wasn’t talking just about the ones under glass. A jewel thief would have a field day just slipping rings off rich women’s fingers at this party.

  Ali had brought Emily, Spencer, Hanna, and Aria to this place. They had sometimes spent whole afternoons at the museum, fantasizing about what it must be like to wear enormous diamonds to fancy parties. “When I’m older, I’m going to have an engagement ring as enormous as that one,” Ali said, pointing to the ten-carat stone on display. “No one’s going to stop me.” Emily wondered if she meant Real Ali. She’d probably assumed she’d keep her twin’s charmed life forever.

  “This place is gorgeous,” Emily murmured.

  “But you’re the most gorgeous thing here,” Isaac said, squeezing Emily’s hand.

  Emily gave Isaac a wobbly smile, trying to admire his handsome tuxedo, brushed-back hair, and shiny shoes. But she couldn’t really enjoy being here. The black maxi dress with beading at the bodice felt binding around her ribs, and her feet wobbled in the high heels she’d found
in the back of her closet. She’d practically drawn a messy red line across her face while applying her lipstick, her hands were shaking so hard.

  The idea of coming face-to-face with Gayle terrified her. Gayle would tell everyone about her pregnancy . . . and then Isaac would know. He’d ask why they’d hung out three times now and Emily hadn’t said anything. He would hate her, and he’d tell his mom, her parents, everyone.

  She knew that going to the gala was part of the plan to get Gayle’s cell phone and determine whether she was A, but as soon as Isaac had shown up at Emily’s door, she’d felt like this was a huge mistake. But if she bolted, Isaac would ask questions she didn’t know how to answer.

  She scanned the crowd, looking for her friends—it was important that Aria and Hanna were here, too, otherwise the plan wouldn’t work. A bunch of kids were laughing at something on their phones. Mason Byers and Lanie Iler were giggling over a plate of pasta. Sean Ackard was talking animatedly to Nanette Ulster from the Quaker school. A tall blonde in an expensive-looking red gown emerged from the bathroom. Emily stiffened, suddenly alert. Gayle?

  She grabbed Isaac’s tuxedo sleeve and ushered him back into the lobby. They stopped under a giant piece of rose quartz that was suspended from the ceiling, and Emily caught her breath. As much as she’d prepared for this moment, actually being faced with the possibility terrified her.

  “What’s going on?” Isaac asked, confused.

  “Um, I just wanted to . . .” Emily peered at the woman in red again—she accepted a cocktail from a passing waiter and turned toward them. Her face was lined, and her nose was thin and pointy, not small and round like Gayle’s. Oops.

  Of course, that might mean Gayle was walking through the front entrance at this very moment—and they would be the first thing she saw. “I changed my mind. Let’s go dance.” Emily yanked Isaac into the main room again, nearly trampling a bunch of uppity-looking Main Line women wearing VOTE FOR TOM buttons.