Sara Shepard - Pretty Little Liars

“Here, Hanna, have another profiterole,” Ali had whispered to her that day they visited her dad in Annapolis. Then Ali turned to Kate, her dad’s girlfriend’s daughter, and said, “Hanna’s so lucky—she can eat anything and not gain an ounce!”

It wasn’t true, of course. That’s what made it so mean. Hanna was already chubby and seemed to be getting more so. Kate giggled, and Ali—who was supposed to be on Hanna’s side—laughed too.

“I got you something.”

Hanna jumped. Her mom sat at the little telephone table in a hot pink Champion sports bra and black flared-leg yoga pants. “Oh,” Hanna said quietly.

Ms. Marin appraised Hanna, her eyes settling on the ice-cream sandwiches in her hands. “Do you really need three ?”

Hanna looked down. She’d chomped through one sandwich in less than ten seconds, hardly even tasting it, and had already unwrapped the next.

She smiled faintly at her mom and quickly stuffed the remaining Cuties back into the freezer. When she turned back around, her mother set a little blue Tiffany bag on the table. Hanna looked at it questioningly. “This?”

“Open it.”

Inside was a little blue Tiffany box, and inside that was the complete Tiffany toggle set—the charm bracelet, round silver earrings, plus the necklace. The very same kind she’d had to hand over to the Tiffany’s woman at the police station. Hanna held them up, letting them sparkle in the overhead light. “Wow.”

Ms. Marin shrugged. “You’re welcome.” Then, to signify that the conversation was finished, she retreated to the den, unrolled her purple yoga mat, and turned on her Power Yoga DVD.

Hanna slowly slid the earrings back in the bag, confused. Her mom was so weird . That was when she noticed a creamy, square card envelope sitting on the little telephone table. Hanna’s name and address were typewritten in all caps. She smiled. An invite to a sweet party was just the thing she needed to cheer up.

Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth , the soothing yogi instructed from the TV in the den. Ms. Marin stood with her arms placidly by her sides. She didn’t even move when her BlackBerry started singing Flight of the Bumblebee, which meant she had an e-mail. This was her Me time.

Hanna grabbed the envelope and climbed upstairs to her room. She sat down on her four-poster bed, felt the edges of her billion-thread-count sheets, and smiled at Dot, sleeping peacefully on his doggie bed.

“Come here, Dot,” she whispered. He stretched and sleepily climbed into her arms. Hanna sighed. Maybe she just had PMS, and these jittery, uneasy, the-world-is-caving-in feelings would go away in a few days.

She sliced the envelope open with her fingernail and frowned. It wasn’t an invitation, and the note didn’t really make sense.

Hanna,

Even Daddy doesn’t love you best!

—A

What was that supposed to mean? But when she unfolded the accompanying page stuffed inside the envelope, she yelped.

It was a color printout from a private school’s online newsletter. Hanna looked at the familiar people in the photo. The caption said, Kate Randall was Barnbury School’s student speaker at the benefit. Pictured here with her mother, Isabel Randall, and Ms. Randall’s fiancé, Tom Marin.

Hanna blinked quickly. Her father looked the same as when she’d last seen him. And although her heart stopped when she read the word fiancé —when had that happened?—it was the image of Kate that made her skin itch. Kate looked more perfect than ever. Her skin was glowing and her hair was perfect. She had her arms gleefully wrapped around her mom and Mr. Marin.

Hanna would never forget the moment she first saw Kate. Ali and Hanna had just gotten off Amtrak in Annapolis, and at first Hanna saw only her dad leaning up against the hood of his car. But then the car door opened, and Kate stepped out. Her long chestnut hair was straight and shiny, and she held herself like the kind of girl who’d taken ballet since she was two. Hanna’s first instinct was to crouch behind a pole. She looked at her snug jeans and stretched-out cashmere sweater and tried not to hyperventilate. This was why Dad left, she thought. He wanted a daughter who wouldn’t embarrass him.

“Oh my God,” Hanna whispered, searching the envelope for a return address. Nothing. Something occurred to her. The only person who really knew about Kate was Alison. Her eyes moved to the A on the note.

The Tofutti Cutie burbled in her stomach. She ran for the bathroom and grabbed the extra toothbrush in the ceramic cup next to the sink. Then she knelt down over the toilet and waited. Tears dotted the corners of her eyes. Don’t start this again, she told herself, gripping the toothbrush hard by her side. You’re better than this.

Hanna stood up and stared in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair was strewn around her face, and her eyes were red and puffy. Slowly, she put the toothbrush back in the cup.

“I’m Hanna and I’m fabulous,” she said to her reflection.

But it didn’t sound convincing. Not at all.

“Okay.” Aria blew her long bangs out of her eyes. “In this scene, you have to wear this colander on your head and talk a lot about a baby we don’t have.”

Noel frowned and brought his thumb to his pink, bow-shaped lips. “Why do I have to wear a colander on my head, Finland?”

“Because,” Aria answered. “It’s an absurdist play. It’s supposed to be, like, absurd.”

“Gotcha.” Noel grinned. It was Friday morning, and they were sitting on desks in English class. After yesterday’s Waiting for Godot disaster, Ezra’s next assignment had been for them to break up into groups and write their own existentialist plays. Existentialist was another way of saying, “silly and out there.” And if anyone could do silly and out there, it was Aria.

“I know something really absurd we could do,” Noel said. “We could have this character drive a Navigator and, like, after a couple of beers, crash it into his duck pond. But he’s, like, fallen asleep at the wheel, so he doesn’t notice he’s in the duck pond until the next day. There could be ducks in the Navigator.”

Aria frowned. “How could we stage all that? It sounds impossible.”

“I don’t know.” Noel shrugged. “But that happened to me last year. And it was really absurd. And awesome.”

Aria sighed. She hadn’t exactly chosen Noel to be her partner because she thought he’d be a good cowriter. She looked around for Ezra, but he unfortunately wasn’t watching them in fitful jealousy. “How about if we make one of the characters think he’s a duck?” she suggested. “He could randomly quack.”

“Um, sure.” Noel wrote that down on a piece of lined paper with a gnawed-up Montblanc pen. “Hey, maybe we could shoot this with my dad’s Canon DV camera? And have this as a movie instead of a boring play?”

Aria paused. “Actually, that would be kind of cool.”

Noel smiled. “Then we could keep the Navigator scene!”

“I guess.” Aria wondered if the Kahns really had a spare Navigator to crash. Probably.

Noel nudged Mason Byers, who was paired up with James Freed. “Dude. We’re going to have a Navigator in our play! And pyrotechnics!”

“Wait. Pyrotechnics?” Aria asked.

“Nice!” Mason said.

Aria clamped her lips shut. Honestly, she didn’t have the energy for this. Last night, she hardly slept. Plagued by yesterday’s cryptic text message, she’d spent half the night thinking and furiously knitting a purple hat with earflaps.