Perfect

Page 24

Emily felt someone’s eyes on her. She glanced around through the whirling vines and bushes and saw Carolyn and a few other swim team girls sitting by the bougainvillea. Her sister glared right at them, a disgusted look on her face.
Emily leapt up from the bench. “Maya, go. Carolyn sees us.”
She took a few steps away, pretending to be fascinated by a planter of marigolds, but Maya didn’t move. “Hurry!” Emily hissed. “Get out of here!”
She felt Maya’s eyes on her. “I’m going to Mona’s party tomorrow,” she said in a low voice. “Are you going to be there or not?”
Emily shook her head, not meeting Maya’s eye. “I’m sorry. I need to change.”
Maya violently yanked up her green-and-white canvas tote. “You can’t change who you are. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
“But maybe I can,” Emily answered. “And maybe I want to.”
Maya dropped Emily’s rose on the bench and stomped away. Emily watched her weave through the rows of planters past the foggy windows for the exit and wanted to cry. Her life was a horrible mess. Her old, simple life—the one she’d had before this school year started—seemed like it belonged to a different girl entirely.
Suddenly, she felt someone’s fingernails trace the back of her neck. A chill ran up her back, and she whirled around. It was only a tendril from another rosebush, its thorns fat and sharp, the roses plump. Then, Emily noticed something on one of the windows a few feet away. Her mouth fell open. There was writing in the condensation. I see you. Two wide-open, heavily lashed eyes were drawn next to the words. It was signed A.
Emily rushed to the writing to wipe it away with her sleeve. Had it been here all along? Why hadn’t she seen it? Then, something else struck her. Because of the greenhouse’s humidity, water only condensed on its inside walls, so whoever had written this had to be…inside.
Emily turned around, looking for some kind of tell-tale sign, but the only people glancing in her direction were Maya, Carolyn, and the lacrosse boys. Everyone else was milling around the greenhouse door, waiting for lunch period to end, and Emily couldn’t help but wonder if A was among them.
24
AND IN ANOTHER GARDEN ACROSS TOWN…
Friday afternoon, Spencer leaned over her mother’s flower bed, pulling out the thick, stubborn weeds. Her mother usually did the gardening herself, but Spencer was doing it in an attempt to be nice—and to absolve herself of something, although she wasn’t sure what.
The multicolored balloons her mother had bought a few days ago to celebrate the Golden Orchid were still tied to the patio rail. Congratulations, Spencer! they all said. Next to the words were pictures of blue ribbons and trophies. Spencer glanced into the balloons’ shiny Mylar fabric; her warped reflection stared back. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror—her face looked long instead of round, her eyes were small instead of large, and her button nose looked wide and enormous. Maybe it was this balloon girl, not Spencer, who’d cheated to become a Golden Orchid finalist. And maybe Balloon Girl had been the one who’d fought with Ali the night she disappeared, too.
The sprinkler system came on next door at the DiLaurentises’ old house. Spencer stared up at Ali’s old window. It was the last one at the back, directly across from Spencer’s. She and Ali had felt so lucky their rooms faced each other. They had window signals when it was past phone curfew—one blink of the flashlight meant, I can’t sleep, can you? Two blinks meant, Good night. Three meant, We need to sneak out and talk in person.
The memory from Dr. Evans’s office floated into her head again. Spencer tried to push it down, but it bobbed right back up. You care way too much, Ali had said. And that far-off crack. Where had it come from?
“Spencer!” a voice whispered. She whirled around, heart pounding. She faced the woods that bordered the back of her house. Ian Thomas stood between two dogwoods.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, glancing toward the edge of the yard. Melissa’s barn was just a few hundred yards away.
“Watching my favorite girl.” Ian’s eyes grazed down her body.
“There’s a stalker running around,” Spencer warned him sternly, trying to suppress the hot, excited feeling in her stomach she always got when Ian looked at her. “You should be careful.”
Ian scoffed. “Who’s to say I’m not part of the neighborhood watch? Maybe I’m protecting you from the stalker?” He pushed his palm flat up against the tree.
“Are you?” Spencer asked.
Ian shook his head. “Nah. I actually cut through here from my house. I was coming to see Melissa.” He paused, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. “What do you think of me and Melissa being back together?”
Spencer shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”
“It isn’t?” Ian held her gaze, not even blinking. Spencer looked away, her cheeks hot. Ian wasn’t making a reference to their kiss. He couldn’t be.
She revisited that moment again. Ian’s mouth had hit hers so roughly that their teeth had smacked together. Afterward, her lips had felt achy and sore. When Spencer told Ali the exciting news, Ali had cackled. “What, do you think Ian’s going to go out with you?” she taunted. “Doubtful.”
She eyed Ian now, calm and casual and oblivious that he’d been the cause of all that strife. She sort of wished she hadn’t kissed him. It seemed like it had started a domino effect—it had led to the fight in the barn, which had led to Ali leaving, which had led to…what?
“So Melissa told me you’re in therapy, huh?” Ian asked. “Pretty crazy.”
Spencer stiffened. It seemed odd, Melissa talking about therapy to Ian. The sessions were supposed to be private. “It isn’t that crazy.”
“Really? Melissa said she heard you screaming.”
Spencer blinked. “Screaming?” Ian nodded. “W-what was I saying?”
“She didn’t say you were saying anything. Just that you were screaming.”
Spencer’s skin prickled. The DiLaurentises’ sprinkler system sounded like a billion little guillotines, chopping off grass-blade heads. “I have to go.” She walked crookedly toward the house. “I think I need some water.”
“One more sec.” Ian stepped toward her. “Have you seen what’s in your woods?”
Spencer stiffened. Ian had such a strange look on his face that Spencer wondered if maybe it was something of Ali’s. One of her bones. A clue. Something to make sense of Spencer’s memory.
Then Ian thrust out his open fist. Inside were six plump, pulpy blackberries. “You have the most amazing blackberry bushes back here. Want one?”
The berries had stained Ian’s palm a dark, bloody purple. Spencer could see his love line and life line and all the strange etchings near his fingers.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t eat anything from those woods,” she said.
After all, Ali had been killed there.
25
SPECIAL DELIVERY FOR HANNA MARIN
Friday evening, a pimply, over-gelled T-Mobile salesperson inspected Hanna’s BlackBerry screen. “Your phone looks okay to me,” he said. “And your battery is functioning.”
“Well, you must not be looking hard enough,” Hanna replied gruffly, leaning up against the store’s glass counter.
“What about the service? Is T-Mobile down?”
“No.” The sales boy pointed to the bars in the BlackBerry’s window. “See? Five bars. Looks great.”
Hanna breathed forcefully through her nose. Something was going on with her BlackBerry. Her phone hadn’t rung once all night. Mona might have ditched her, but Hanna refused to believe that everyone else would follow so quickly. And she thought A might text again, filling Hanna in with more information about Mona and her possible lipo, or explaining what it meant when A said that one of her friends had a big secret that had yet to be revealed.
“Do you just want to buy a new BlackBerry?” the sales guy asked.
“Yes,” Hanna said sharply, conjuring up a voice that sounded surprisingly like her mother’s. “One that works this time, please.”
The sales guy looked tired. “I’m not going to be able to transfer over your information from this one, though. We don’t do that at this location.”
“It’s fine,” Hanna snapped. “I have a hard copy of everything at home.”
The sales guy retrieved a new phone from the back, pulled it out of its Styrofoam bed, and started hitting some buttons. Hanna leaned on the counter and watched the shoppers stream through the King James Mall concourse, trying not to think about what she and Mona usually did on Friday nights. First, they’d buy a Happy Friday outfit to reward themselves for making it through another week; next, they’d hit a sushi place for the salmon platter; and then—Hanna’s favorite part—they’d go home and gossip on Hanna’s queen-size bed, laughing and making fun of the “Ouch! of the Day” column in CosmoGirl!. Hanna had to admit that it was hard to talk to Mona about certain things—she’d sidestepped any emotional conversations about Sean because Mona thought he was gay, and they were never able to talk about Ali’s disappearance because Hanna didn’t want to dredge up bad memories about her old friends. In fact, the more she thought about it, she wondered what she and Mona did talk about. Boys? Clothes? Shoes? People they hated?
“It’ll be a minute,” the sales guy said, frowning and looking at something on his computer monitor. “For some reason, our network isn’t responding.”
Ha! Hanna thought. There was something wrong with the network.
Someone laughed as they entered T-Mobile, and Hanna looked up. She had no time to duck when she saw Mona walking in with Eric Kahn.
Mona’s light blond hair stood out against her charcoal gray turtleneck sweater dress, black tights, and tall black boots. Hanna wished she could hide, but she didn’t know where—the T-Mobile register counter was an island in the middle of the store. This stupid place didn’t even have any aisles to sneak down or shelves to hide under, just four walls of cell phones and mobile devices.
Before she could do anything, Eric saw her. His eyes flashed with recognition, and he gave Hanna a nod. Hanna’s limbs froze. Now she knew how a deer felt when it was face-to-face with an oncoming tractor-trailer.
Mona followed Eric’s gaze. “Oh,” she said flatly when her eyes met Hanna’s.
Eric, who must have sensed girl trouble, shrugged and wandered to the back of the store. Hanna took a few steps toward Mona. “Hi.”
Mona stared at a wall of phone headsets and car adapters. “Hey.”
A long beat passed. Mona scratched the side of her nose. She had painted her nails with Chanel’s limited edition La Vernis black lacquer—Hanna remembered the time they’d stolen two bottles from Sephora. The memory nearly brought tears to Hanna’s eyes. Without Mona, Hanna felt like a great outfit without matching accessories, a screwdriver that was all orange juice and no vodka, an iPod without headphones. She just felt wrong. Hanna thought about the time in the summer after eighth grade when she’d tagged along with her mom on a work trip. Hanna’s cell didn’t get service there, and when she came back, there had been twenty voice mails from Mona. “It felt weird not talking to you every day, so I decided to tell you everything in messages instead,” Mona had said.