Sara Shepard - Twisted

Noel deserves better , said the English translation of Klaudia’s texts. He is so hot and American sexy and needs real girl.

Like you? Tanja wrote back. Klaudia replied with a winking smiley.

Aria’s stomach burbled. She hadn’t just read that. Babel Fish had made a mistake. Swallowing hard, she typed in Aria on peikko. The page loaded even slower this time.

“Aria?” Klaudia’s voice sounded from the other side of the dressing room. “It look good? You super ski bunny?”

“Uh . . .” Aria glanced frantically at the snowsuit hanging from the hook in the corner. It was so yellow it nearly blinded her. Why had Klaudia chosen it for her? Because Noel would appreciate the effort . . . or because it would make her look like a neon-yellow Sasquatch? Because he was a super hot American boy and needed an appropriate girlfriend, not a skiing-hating, artsy freak?

Don’t think that way , she told herself. Klaudia had been nice. There had to be another explanation.

But then the latest translated page popped up. Aria read the line slowly, her mouth suddenly bone-dry. Aria is a . . . troll.

Aria’s hands gripped her phone. Aria on peikko meant Aria is a troll.

“Is okay?” Klaudia called from outside, her voice still friendly and chipper.

Aria ran her hands down the length of her face and stared at her phone again. Suddenly, it made a loud trumpeting sound, nearly causing her to drop it. NEW TEXT MESSAGE FROM ANONYMOUS, the screen said.

Dizziness overcame her. Please no , Aria thought. But when she opened the text, she saw it was exactly what she feared.

Watch out, Aria—I think you have some competition. We both know Noel has a thing for blondes, after all. Mwah!

–A

“There’s a spot!” Spencer bellowed, pointing to an empty space on the side of Walnut Street in downtown Philadelphia.

Zach nodded, wrenched the wheel of his Mercedes to the right, and pulled in neatly behind a dented Ford Explorer. “Am I a genius parallel parker or what?”

“The best,” Spencer said.

She peeked at Zach out of the corner of her eye. Tonight, he was wearing fitted dark-denim jeans, a striped Paul Smith button-down, shiny wingtips, and a pair of aviator sunglasses on his head. He’d splashed himself with a spicy, woodsy cologne, and he’d combed his hair off his head so she could see every angle of his fine-boned face. Each moment Spencer spent with Zach, he got cuter and cuter.

And tonight, she had him all to herself.

It was Thursday, a school night, but Zach was sneaking out to Club Shampoo in Philly to see his favorite DJ spin and asked Spencer to come along. When he’d picked her up earlier this evening, she was thrilled to see Amelia wasn’t glaring at her from the front seat. “She had flute practice,” Zach said as soon as Spencer opened the door, as if reading her mind. “We’re free !”

A pulsing bass assaulted Spencer’s ears as soon as she stepped out of the car. She straightened her clingy black dress, rotated her ankles in the ultra-high Elizabeth and James heels she’d stolen from Melissa’s closet ages ago, and followed Zach toward the group of people waiting behind velvet ropes at the door. As she crossed the slick-with-rain city street to join the line, her cell phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her sequined clutch and stared at the screen.

Aria: I just heard from A. Have you?

The words sent a knife through Spencer’s chest. Should she have told the others about her A note?

I’m not paying attention to A , Spencer typed back. Neither should you.

Aria replied immediately. What if A knows?

A car blared its horn, nearly sideswiping Spencer. She jumped away, still staring at her phone. Should she reply? Should she worry? Or was that exactly what A wanted?

“Spencer?”

When she looked up, Zach was standing at the front of the line. The bouncer had unclipped the rope and opened the door for him.

“Coming!” Spencer slipped the phone back in her purse. She couldn’t deal with A right now.

The music thrummed in Spencer’s ears as she ducked into the dark, industrial space. Vague outlines of bodies stood at the bar and gyrated on the dance floor, backlit by neon flashing lights and round, swinging bulbs. Zach was right about Thursday being the night to go out—Shampoo was packed, and the air was humid and sweaty. Four bartenders worked efficiently, pouring drinks so quickly they barely even looked down at what they were doing. Beautiful girls in barely there dresses turned to smile at Zach, but Zach didn’t even notice them. His eyes were squarely on Spencer. Swoon.

“Two mojitos,” Zach told a bartender, using the proper Spanish intonation. Their drinks arrived quickly, and they found a table in the corner. It was almost too loud to speak, so for a while Spencer and Zach just sat and watched the crowd. More girls eyed Zach as they swept by, but Zach acted like they didn’t exist. Spencer wondered if everyone assumed the two of them were boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe they would be after tonight.

Finally, Zach leaned so close to Spencer that his lips nearly touched her forehead. “Thanks for coming with me tonight. I needed to blow off some steam—my dad’s been relentless lately.”

Spencer sipped her mojito, which tasted just like summer. “He’s that bad?”

One of Zach’s shoulders rose. Lights flashed across his face. “He wants us to be little clones of him, doing exactly what he wants at all times. The thing is, I’ll never be like him. For so many reasons.” This last part he seemed to mutter more to himself than to her.

“Your dad does seem intense.” Spencer agreed, thinking about how Mr. Pennythistle grilled her about her grades at the restaurant.

“Intense isn’t even the half of it. If I don’t go to Harvard like he wants, I’ll probably be disowned. I’m supposed to talk to some guy named Douglas when we go to New York this weekend. He’s on the Harvard admissions board. But I’m thinking about bailing.”

Spencer nodded, catching his reference to traveling to New York for the long holiday weekend. She and her mom were going to New York City, too—Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Pennythistle were attending a gala hosted by one of Mr. Pennythistle’s real estate friends. The idea of twenty-four hours in New York with Zach sounded delicious.

“What about your sister?” Spencer moved out of the way as a raucous bachelorette party, complete with penis balloons and a girl in a long, trailing veil, tramped through the narrow space. “Does she have to go to Harvard, too?”

Zach made a face. “My dad’s a lot easier on her. She’s quiet, demure, always proper—at least around him—so he adores her. But me—everything I do is wrong.”

Spencer stared into her glass. She could certainly relate. “That’s the way things used to be with my family, too.”

“Yeah? How?”

Spencer shrugged. “Whatever I did wasn’t good enough. I’d get cast in the school play, but Melissa would be cast as an extra in a movie being shot nearby. I’d get an A on a test, Melissa would get a perfect score on her SATs.”

Zach squinted at her in the dim light. “You guys seemed okay at dinner.”

“We’re better now—although it’ll probably never be perfect. We’re too different. And it took going through the Alison DiLaurentis thing together to really change things. Alison almost killed Melissa, too.”

It was strange to utter those words so baldly and effortlessly in a public place. The admission seemed to startle Zach, too, because he took a big sip of his drink and stared at her long and hard. “I don’t mean to pry about that Alison stuff, but are you okay?”