by Sara Shepard
Page 1
Christmas Stalking
Here’s a pretty snow-globe scene for you:
It’s December of Hanna, Emily, Aria, and Spencer’s junior year. Snow is falling, blanketing Rosewood’s perfectly manicured lawns and dusting the tops of luxury SUVs. Christmas lights brighten every window, and cherub-cheeked kids are busy making their lists for Santa. The whole town is at peace, especially the pretty little liars.
Now that Alison DiLaurentis’s murderer is in jail and A is dead, they can finally relax. But little do they know that I’m going to pick up where A left off. I’m going to be the new A, and I’ve made a list of my own. Guess who’s at the top of the naughty column? That’s right: Hanna, Emily, Aria, and Spencer.
And these liars have been bad! Hanna got caught shoplifting and totaled her ex-boyfriend’s car. Emily defied her parents so many times they sent her away to Iowa. Aria’s after-school smooch sessions with her English teacher got him fired. And Spencer may have been the naughtiest of them all. Stealing her sister’s fiancé wasn’t enough—Spencer also took her economics paper and pushed her down the stairs when Melissa found out what she’d done. Tsk tsk. These liars deserve coal in their stockings—or worse. Luckily I’m here to make sure they get what’s coming to them.
It’s only a matter of time before the pretty little liars get their hands dirty again—especially now that they think A is gone. So what trouble will they get into next? Well, I’ll just have to lie low . . . and watch. I’ll watch and watch and come to understand exactly what kind of bitches I’m dealing with. I’ll find out everything.
And once I do, I’ll know how to take them down.
Let’s start with . . . Hanna. This girl’s undergone some major upheaval. Her mom ditched her for Singapore. Her estranged dad is moving in with his Stepford fiancée and her perfect daughter, Kate. At least Hanna has her loyal boyfriend, Lucas. Or does she?
Let the stalking begin!
Hanna’s Pretty Little Secret
Chapter 1
Home for the Holidays
It was a blustery Wednesday in early December in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, a bucolic suburb twenty miles from Philadelphia. While many residents were cutting down Frasier firs at the local Christmas tree farm or adorning the outsides of their houses with pinecone wreaths, a moving van was pulling up to a Georgian house with the word MARIN stenciled on the mailbox. Three men disembarked and slid open the back door to reveal dozens of boxes. Tom Marin, his fiancée, Isabel Randall, and Isabel’s daughter, Kate, stood in the yard as the movers shuttled their belongings through the front door. Hanna Marin, who had lived in the house since she was five, observed from inside the foyer, biting her fingernails.
“Be careful with that,” Isabel screeched to the burly guy who was hefting a medium-sized box. “It contains my vintage doll collection. ”
“And that box goes upstairs,” Kate called nervously to another mover. “Those are all my handbags. ”
Hanna snuck a peek at her soon-to-be stepsister, Kate, who had a slender body, long, lustrous chestnut-colored hair, and big blue eyes. She was carrying a Chloé bag Hanna had only seen on the pages of Vogue. When Hanna asked where Kate had gotten it, Kate had trilled that it was an early Christmas present, shooting a grateful smile at Hanna’s father. Ick.
“Hanna?” Mr. Marin thrust a small box marked DELICATES at her. “Can you take this up to your mom’s—er, our—bedroom?”
“Sure,” Hanna mumbled, eager to get away from Isabel and Kate—one of them was wearing a perfume that kept making her sneeze.
She climbed the stairs, her miniature pinscher, Dot, following at her heels. Just a few weeks ago, before Thanksgiving, Hanna’s mother, Ashley, had dropped the bomb that she was taking a job in Singapore—and Hanna couldn’t come.
Hanna would have loved to start over somewhere else. She’d had a horrible year. She’d been taunted by an evil text-messager named A. Her old best friend, Alison DiLaurentis, who’d been missing for three years, had been found under a concrete slab behind her old house in September. It turned out Ian Thomas, Ali’s secret boyfriend—who Hanna and her other best friends Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery, and Emily Fields had all crushed on when he was a senior and they were seventh graders—had murdered Ali the night of the girls’ end-of-seventh-grade sleepover. The police had arrested him a few weeks ago. It had all come as a massive shock.
But instead she was stuck here, with her father moving in with his new family—his replacement wife, Isabel, the ex-ER nurse who wasn’t nearly as pretty or interesting as Hanna’s mom, and his perfect stepdaughter, Kate, who’d taken Hanna’s place in her dad’s heart and who hated Hanna’s guts.
Hanna padded into the empty master bedroom. It smelled slightly of mothballs, and there were four heavy indentations on the carpet where her mother’s sleek Danish-modern bed used to stand. When Hanna dropped the DELICATES box on the floor, one of the flaps popped open and a little blue gift box with a blank gift tag peeked out.
Looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, she lifted the lid. Inside was a round white-gold locket with a cluster of pavé-cut diamonds in the center.
Hanna breathed in. It was the Cartier locket that had belonged to her grandmother, whom everyone, even nonrelatives, called Bubbe Marin. Bubbe had worn it religiously when she was alive, boasting that she didn’t even take it off in the bathtub. She’d died when Hanna was going into seventh grade, shortly after Hanna’s parents divorced; by that time, Hanna hadn’t been on speaking terms with her dad. She hadn’t known what had happened to the locket, or who it had been willed to.
But now she did. She touched the blank gift tag and felt an angry pang. Her dad was probably going to give it to Isabel or Kate for Christmas.
“Hanna?” a voice floated up from the first floor.
Hanna shoved the lid back on the box and stepped into the hall. Her father was standing at the base of the stairs. “Pizza’s here!”
The tantalizing aroma of mozzarella cheese wafted into Hanna’s nostrils. Just half a slice, she decided. Sure, her Citizens jeans didn’t button so easily this morning, but she’d probably left them in the dryer for too long. She walked down the stairs just as Isabel was carrying a pizza box to the kitchen. Everyone sat down at the table—Hanna’s table—and Mr. Marin passed out plates and silverware. It was weird how he knew exactly which cabinet and drawer to open. But Isabel wasn’t supposed to be sitting in her mother’s chair, using her mother’s cloth napkins from Crate & Barrel. Kate wasn’t supposed to be drinking from the pewter cup her mother had bought for Hanna on a trip to Montreal.
Hanna let out another sneeze, her nostrils tickling with someone’s cloying perfume. Not one of them said Bless you.
“So when are your entrance exams for Rosewood Day again, Kate?” Mr. Marin said as he grabbed a pizza slice from the open box. Unfortunately, Kate would be attending the same school Hanna went to.
Kate took a dainty bite of crust. “In a couple of days. I’ve been going over geometry proofs and vocabulary words. ”
Isabel waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not the SATs. I’m sure you’ll ace the exams. ”
“They’ll be thrilled to have you. ” Mr. Marin looked at Hanna. “Did you know Kate won the Renaissance Student prize last year? She excelled above her peers in every subject. ”
You’ve only told me that eight million times, Hanna wanted to say. She took a bite of pizza so she wouldn’t have to speak.
“And her grades were outstanding at the Barnbury School,” Isabel went on, referencing Kate’s old school in Annapolis. “Barnbury has a better reputation than Rosewood Day. At least there, kids aren’t stalking other kids and running them do
wn with their cars. ”
She shot a pointed look at Hanna. Hanna reached unconsciously for a second slice of pizza and pushed it into her mouth. Nice how Isabel was basically blaming her for her ordeals with A, the stalker who’d almost ruined her life this fall, and for tarnishing Rosewood Day’s sterling reputation.
Kate leaned forward and stared at Hanna with wide eyes. Hanna had a feeling she knew exactly what question was coming next. “You must be so devastated that your best friend turned out to be . . . you know,” Kate said in a fake-concerned voice. “How are you holding up?” A tiny smile crossed her lips, and it was obvious what her real question was: How are you dealing with the fact that your BFF wanted to kill you?
Hanna looked desperately at her father, hoping he’d put a stop to this line of questioning, but he was also staring at her worriedly. “I’m holding up just fine,” she mumbled gruffly.
Not that it was true. Hanna was so mixed up about Mona Vanderwaal, her best friend since eighth grade who’d turned out to be A, the person who’d taunted her with her secrets, publicly embarrassed her more times than she could count, and yes, tried to run Hanna over with her car. There were still days when Hanna woke up, grabbed her phone, and started to text Mona about what shoes she was wearing to school before she remembered. At Mona’s funeral, Hanna had actually cried, eliciting gapes from her peers. Hanna knew she should despise Mona with all of her heart—and a big part of her did. But another part couldn’t just forget all the time they’d spent together gossiping, plotting their rise to popularity, and throwing fabulous parties. Before everything with A happened, Mona had been a better friend to her than Ali ever was—they’d felt like equals. But now Hanna knew it was all a lie.
Hanna stared down at her empty plate. Two ravaged pizza crusts lay in a lake of grease, but she couldn’t remember eating the rest. Her stomach let out an unattractive gurgle.
Mr. Marin wiped his mouth. “Well, we have a lot of unpacking to do. ” He touched Kate’s arm. “You girls should take a break. Why don’t you and Hanna go to that new mall that just opened. What’s it called?”
“Devon Crest,” Hanna piped up.
“Ooh, I heard that place is very nice,” Isabel cooed.
“I’ve been, actually,” Kate said.
Isabel looked surprised. “When?”
“Uh, yesterday. ” Kate fiddled with the bangle on her silver David Yurman bracelet, which she’d bragged was a gift from Isabel for winning an essay contest last year. “You guys were busy. ”
“You two could go together, get to know each other a little better. ” Mr. Marin looked back and forth between Hanna and Kate. “Go shopping. Buy something nice for yourselves. Leave the unpacking to us. What do you say?”
Kate took a long sip from her water bottle. “Thanks, Tom. That sounds really great. ”
Hanna snuck a peek at Kate. Surprisingly, she looked sincere. Was it possible Kate had changed since Hanna had seen her last at a dinner in Philly, when she’d ratted Hanna out for stealing Percocet from a clinic? Hanna was back in touch with her old best friends, Emily, Aria, and Spencer, but none of them were big fashion followers, and she was kind of dying for a new best friend to replace Mona. Especially since she and her old friends had started attending group grief therapy together. She needed a break from all the Ali and A stuff—stat.
