Sara Shepard - Perfect

Eventually, they were lying on one of the couches, Lucas on top of her, his hands drifting up and down her bare stomach. He took off his shirt and pressed his chest against hers. After a while, they stopped and lay there, saying nothing. Hanna’s eyes grazed across all the books, chess sets, and busts of famous authors. Then, suddenly, she sat up.

Someone was looking in the window.

“Lucas!” She pointed to a dark shape moving toward the side door.

“Don’t panic,” Lucas said, easing off the couch and creeping toward the window. The bushes shook. A lock began to turn. Hanna clamped down on Lucas’s arm.

A was here.

“Lucas…”

“Shhh.” Another click. Somewhere, a lock was turning. Someone was coming in. Lucas cocked his head to listen. Now there were footsteps coming from the back hall. Hanna took a step backward. The floor creaked. The footsteps came closer.

“Hello?” Lucas grabbed his shirt and pulled it on backward. “Who’s there?”

No one answered. There were more creaks. A shadow slithered across the wall.

Hanna looked around and grabbed the largest thing she could find—a Farmer’s Almanac from 1972. Suddenly, a light flicked on. Hanna screamed and raised the almanac over her head. Standing before them was an older man with a beard. He wore small, wire-framed glasses and a corduroy jacket and held his hands over his head in surrender.

“I’m with the history department!” the old man sputtered. “I couldn’t sleep. I came here to read….” He looked at Hanna strangely. Hanna realized the neck of Lucas’s sweatshirt was pulled to the side, exposing her bare shoulder.

Hanna’s heart started to slow down. She put the book back on the table. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought—”

“We’d better go anyway.” Lucas sidestepped the old man and pulled Hanna out the side door. When they were next to the house’s iron front gate, he burst into giggles.

“Did you see that guy’s face?” he hooted. “He was terrified!”

Hanna tried to laugh along, but she felt too shaken. “We should go,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I want to go home.”

Lucas walked Hanna to the valet at Mona’s party. She gave the valet the ticket for her Prius, and when he brought it back, she made Lucas look all through it to make sure no one was hiding in the backseat. When she was safely inside with the door locked, Lucas tapped his hand against the window and mouthed that he’d call her tomorrow. Hanna watched him walk away, feeling both excited and horribly distracted.

She started down the planetarium’s spiral drive. Every twenty feet or so was a banner advertising the new exhibit.

THE BIG BANG, they all said. They showed a picture of the universe exploding.

When Hanna’s cell phone beeped, she jumped so violently, she nearly broke out of the seat belt. She pulled over into the bus lane and whipped her phone out of her bag with trembling fingers. She had a new text.

Oops, guess it wasn’t lipo! Don’t believe everything you hear!

—A

Hanna looked up. The street outside the planetarium was quiet. All the old houses were closed up tight, and there wasn’t a single person on the street. A breeze kicked up, making the flag on the porch of an old Victorian house flap and a jack-o’-lantern-shaped leaf bag on its front lawn flutter.

Hanna looked back down at the text. This was odd. A’s latest text wasn’t from caller unknown , as it usually was, but an actual number. And it was a 610 number—Rosewood’s area code.

The number seemed familiar, although Hanna never memorized anyone’s number—she’d gotten a cell in seventh grade and had since relied on speed dial. There was something about this number, though….

Hanna covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She thought about it another moment. Could it seriously be?

Suddenly, she knew exactly who A was.

“Another coffee?” A waitress who smelled like grilled cheese and had a very large mole on her chin hovered over Aria, waving a coffee carafe around.

Aria glanced at her nearly empty mug. Her parents would probably say this coffee was loaded with carcinogens, but what did they know? “Sure,” she answered.

This was what it had come to. Aria sitting in a booth at the diner near Ezra’s house in Old Hollis with all of her worldly goods—her laptop, her bike, her clothes, her books—around her. She had nowhere to go. Not Sean’s, not Ezra’s, not even her own family’s. The diner was the only place open right now, unless you counted the twenty-four-hour Taco Bell, which was a total stoner hangout.

She stared at her Treo, weighing her options. Finally, she dialed her home number. The phone rang six times before the answering machine picked up. “Thanks for calling the Montgomerys,” Ella’s cheery voice rang out. “We’re not home right now….”

Please. Where on earth would Ella be after midnight on a Saturday? “Mom, pick up,” Aria said into the machine after it beeped. “I know you’re there.” Still nothing. She sighed. “Listen. I need to come home tonight. I broke up with my boyfriend. I have nowhere else to stay. I’m sitting at a diner, homeless.”

She paused, waiting for Ella to answer. She didn’t. Aria could imagine her standing over the phone, listening. Or maybe she wasn’t at all. Maybe she’d heard Aria’s voice and walked back up the stairs to bed. “Mom, I’m in danger,” she pleaded. “I can’t explain how, exactly, but I’m…I’m afraid something’s going to happen to me.”

Beep . The answering machine tape cut her off. Aria let her phone clatter to the Formica tabletop. She could call back, but what would be the point? She could almost hear her mother’s voice: I can’t even look at you right now.

She lifted her head, considering something. Slowly, Aria picked up her Treo again and scrolled through her texts. Byron’s text with his number was still there. Taking a deep breath, she dialed. Byron’s sleepy voice answered.

“It’s Aria,” she said quietly.

“Aria?” Byron echoed. He sounded stunned. “It’s, like, two in the morning.”

“I know.” The diner’s jukebox switched records. The waitress married two ketchup bottles. The last remaining people besides Aria got up from their booth, waved good-bye to the waitress, and pushed through the front door. The diner’s bells jingled.

Byron broke the silence. “Well, it’s nice to hear from you.”

Aria curled her knees into her chest. She wanted to tell him that he’d messed up everything, making her keep his secret, but she felt too drained to fight. And also…part of her really missed Byron. Byron was her dad, the only dad she knew. He had warded off a snake that had slithered into Aria’s path during a hiking trip to the Grand Canyon. He’d gone down to talk to Aria’s fifth-grade art teacher, Mr. Cunningham, when he gave Aria an F on her self-portrait because she had drawn herself with green scales and a forked tongue. “Your teacher simply doesn’t understand postmodern expressionism,” Byron had said, grabbing his coat to go do battle. Byron used to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder, carry her to bed, and tuck her in. Aria missed that. She needed that. She wanted to tell him she was in danger. And she wanted him to say, “I’ll protect you.” He would, wouldn’t he?

But then she heard someone’s voice in the background. “Everything okay, Byron?”

Aria bristled. Meredith.

“Be there in a sec,” Byron called.

Aria fumed. A sec ? That was all he planned to devote to this conversation? Byron’s voice returned to the phone. “Aria? So…what’s up?”