Unbelievable

by Sara Shepard

Page 13

 

  Her hospital sheets felt sticky, like someone had drizzled nacho cheese all over them. Hanna searched her memory, but nothing about an accident was there. The last thing she remembered, before sitting in Ali’s backyard, was receiving the champagne-colored Zac Posen dress for Mona’s birthday party. That had been Friday night, the day before Mona’s celebration. Hanna turned to Mona, who looked both distraught and relieved. Her eyes had huge, kind of ugly purple circles under them, too, as if she hadn’t slept in days. “I didn’t miss your party, did I?”

  Lucas made a sniffing noise. Mona’s shoulders tensed. “No…”

  “The accident happened afterward,” Lucas said. “You don’t remember?”

  Hanna tried to pull the oxygen tube out of her nose—no one looked attractive with something dangling from a nostril—and found that it had been taped down. She closed her eyes and grappled for something, anything, to explain all this. But the only thing she saw was Ali’s face looming over her and whispering something before dissipating into black nothingness.

  “No,” Hanna whispered. “I don’t remember any of that at all. ”

  12

  ON THE LAM

  Late Monday evening, Emily sat on a faded blue bar stool at the counter of the M&J diner across from the Greyhound station in Akron, Ohio. She hadn’t eaten anything all day and contemplated ordering a piece of nasty-looking cherry pie to go with her metallic-tasting coffee. Next to her, an old man slowly slurped a spoonful of tapioca pudding, and a bowling pin–shaped man and his knitting needle–shaped friend were shoveling down greasy burgers and fries. The jukebox was playing some twangy country song, and the hostess leaned heavily against the register, polishing dust off the Ohio-shaped magnets that were on sale for ninety-nine cents.

  “Where you headed?” a voice asked.

  Emily looked into the eyes of the diner’s fry cook, a sturdy man who looked like he did a lot of bow hunting when he wasn’t making grilled cheese. Emily searched for a name tag, but he wasn’t wearing one. His red ball cap had a big, singular letter A stitched in the center. She licked her lips, shivering a little. “How do you know I’m headed somewhere?”

  He gave her a knowing look. “You’re not from here. And Greyhound’s across the street. And you have a big duffel bag. Clever, aren’t I?”

  Emily sighed, staring into her cup of coffee. It had taken her less than twenty minutes to power-walk the mile from Helene’s to the mini mart down the road, even with her heavy duffel in tow. Once there, she’d found a ride to the bus station, and had bought a ticket for the first bus out of Iowa. Unfortunately it had been going to Akron, a place where Emily knew absolutely no one. Worse, the bus smelled like someone had bad gas, and the guy sitting next to her had his iPod cranked up to maximum volume while he sang along to Fall Out Boy, a band she detested. Then, weirdly, when the bus pulled into the Akron station, Emily had discovered a crab scuttling around under her seat. A crab, even though they were nowhere near an ocean. When she’d stumbled into the terminal and noticed that the big departures board said there was a 10 P. M. bus to Philadelphia, an ache had welled up inside her. She’d never missed Pennsylvania as much as she did now.

  Emily shut her eyes, finding it hard to believe that she was really, truly running away. There were many times she’d imagined running away before—Ali used to say she’d go with her. Hawaii was one of their top five choices. So was Paris. Ali said they could assume different identities. When Emily protested, saying that sounded difficult, Ali shrugged and said, “Nah. Becoming someone else is probably really easy. ” Wherever they chose, they promised to spend tons of uninterrupted time together, and Emily had always secretly hoped that maybe, just maybe, Ali would have realized she loved Emily as much as Emily loved her. But in the end, Emily always felt bad and said, “Ali, you have no reason to run away. Your life is perfect here. ” And Ali would shrug in response, saying Emily was right, her life was pretty perfect.

  Until someone killed her.

  The fry cook turned up the volume on the tiny TV sitting next to the eight-slice toaster and an open package of Wonder Bread. When Emily looked up, she saw a CNN reporter standing in front of the familiar Rosewood Memorial Hospital. Emily knew it well—she passed it every morning on her drive to Rosewood Day.

  “We have reports that Hanna Marin, seventeen-year-old resident of Rosewood and friend to Alison DiLaurentis, the girl whose body mysteriously turned up in her old backyard about a month ago, has just awakened from the coma she’d been in since Saturday night’s tragic accident,” the reporter said into her microphone.

  Emily’s coffee cup clattered against her saucer. Coma? Hanna’s parents swam onto the screen, saying that, yes, Hanna was awake and seemed okay. There were no leads as to who had hit Hanna, or why.

  Emily covered her mouth with her hand, which smelled like the fake-leather Greyhound bus seat. She whipped her Nokia out of her jean jacket pocket and turned it on. She’d been trying to conserve the battery because she’d accidentally left her charger behind in Iowa. Her fingers shook as she dialed Aria’s number. It went to voice mail. “Aria, it’s Emily,” she said after the beep. “I just found out about Hanna, and…”

  She trailed off, her eyes returning to the screen. There, in the upper right-hand corner, was her own face, staring back at her from the photo she’d had taken for last year’s yearbook. “In other Rosewood news, another one of Ms. DiLaurentis’s friends, Emily Fields, has gone missing,” the anchor said. “She was visiting relatives in Iowa this week, but vanished from the property this morning. ”

  The fry cook turned from flipping a grilled cheese and glanced at the screen. A look of disbelief crossed his face. He looked at Emily, then back at the screen again. His metal spatula fell to the floor with a hollow clatter.

  Emily hit END without finishing her message to Aria. On the TV screen, her parents were standing in front of Emily’s blue-shingled house. Her father wore his best plaid polo shirt, and her mom had a cashmere sweater cardigan draped over her shoulders. Carolyn stood off to the side, holding Emily’s swim team portrait for the camera. Emily was too stunned to be embarrassed that a picture of her in a high-cut Speedo tank suit was on national television.

  “We’re very worried,” Emily’s mother said. “We want Emily to know that we love her and just want her to come home. ”

  Tears bloomed at the corners of Emily’s eyes. Words couldn’t describe what it felt like to hear her mother say those three little words: we love her. She slid off the stool, pushing her arms into her jacket sleeves.

  The word PHILADELPHIA was plastered on top of a red, blue, and silver Greyhound bus across the street. The big 7-Up clock over the diner’s counter said 9:53. Please don’t let the 10 P. M. bus be sold out, Emily prayed.

  She glanced at the scribble-covered bill next to her coffee. “I’ll be back,” she said to the cook, grabbing her bags. “I just have to get a bus ticket. ”

  The fry cook still looked like a tornado had picked him up and dropped him onto a different planet. “Don’t worry about it,” he said faintly. “Coffee’s on the house. ”

  “Thanks!” The sleigh bells on the diner’s door jingled together as Emily left. She ran across the empty highway and skidded into the bus station, thanking the various forces of the universe that had prevented a line from forming at the ticket window. Finally, she had a destination: home.

  13

  ONLY LOSERS GET HIT BY CARS

  Tuesday morning, when she should have been strolling into her Pilates II class at Body Tonic gym, Hanna was instead lying flat on her back as two fat female nurses cleaned her off with a sponge. After they left, her physician, Dr. Geist, strode into the room and flipped on the light.

  “Turn it off!” Hanna demanded sharply, quickly covering her face.

  Dr. Geist left it on. Hanna had put in a request for a different doctor—if she was spending all this time here, couldn’t she at least have an M. D. who was a little bit ho
tter?—but it seemed like nobody in this hospital was listening.

  Hanna slid halfway under the covers and peeked into her Chanel compact. Yep, her monster face was still there, complete with the stitches on her chin, the two black eyes, the fat, purplish bottom lip, and the enormous bruises on her collarbone—it was going to be ages before she could wear low-cut tops again. She sighed and snapped the compact closed. She couldn’t wait to go to Bill Beach to fix all the damage.

  Dr. Geist inspected Hanna’s vital signs on a computer that looked like it had been built in the sixties. “You’re recovering very well. Now that the swelling’s gone down, we don’t see any residual brain injury. Your internal organs look fairly good. It’s a miracle. ”

  “Ha,” Hanna grumbled.

  “It is a miracle,” Hanna’s father butted in, walking in to stand behind Dr. Geist. “We were sick with worry, Hanna. It makes me sick that someone did this to you. And that they’re still out there. ”

  Hanna sneaked a peek at him. Her dad wore a charcoal gray suit and sleek black shiny loafers. In the twelve hours since she’d awakened, he’d been incredibly patient, succumbing to Hanna’s every whim…and Hanna had lots of whims. First, she demanded that they move her into her own private room—the last thing she needed was to hear the old lady on the other side of the curtain in intensive care talk about her bowel habits and imminent hip replacement. Next, Hanna had made her dad get her a portable DVD player and some DVDs from the nearby Target. The hospital rent-a-TVs only got six lame-ass network channels. She’d begged her dad to make the nurses give her more painkillers, and she’d deemed the mattress on the hospital bed completely uncomfortable, forcing him to go out to the Tempur-Pedic store an hour ago to get her a space-age foam topper. From the looks of the mammoth Tempur-Pedic plastic bag he was holding, it appeared that his trip had been successful.

  Dr. Geist dropped Hanna’s clipboard back into the slot at the foot of her bed. “We should be able to let you out in a few more days. Any questions?”

  “Yes,” Hanna said, her voice still croaky from the ventilator they’d had her on since her accident. She pointed to the IV in her arm. “How many calories is this thing giving me?” By the way her hip bones felt, it seemed as if she’d lost weight while being in the hospital—bonus!—but she just wanted to make sure.

  Dr. Geist looked at her crazily, probably wishing he could switch patients too. “It’s antibiotics and stuff to hydrate you,” Hanna’s father quickly interjected. He patted Hanna’s arm. “It’s all going to make you feel much better. ” As he and her dad left the room, Dr. Geist snapped off the light again.

  Hanna glowered for a moment at the empty doorway, then fell back onto her bed. The only thing that could make her feel better right now was a six-hour massage by some hot, shirtless Italian male model. And, oh yeah, a brand-new face.