Stunning (3 page)

“Are you okay?” Aria asked.

“I just can’t believe they aren’t listening to me about her.” Noel jutted a thumb in the direction of Klaudia’s room down the hall.

Aria wanted to point out that not long ago, Noel hadn’t listened to
her
about Klaudia
,
but now probably wasn’t the right time. “You only have a few more months until she goes back to Finland, right? Maybe you can just ignore her. And anyway, now that she likes someone else, maybe she’ll leave you alone.”

“Mr. Fitz, you mean?” Noel raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay with that?”

Aria sank down into the couch and stared out the window at the Kahns’ backyard guesthouse. Last week, while she and Noel were broken up, Ezra Fitz, Aria’s teacher-slash-boyfriend, had returned to Rosewood in hopes of winning her back. Everything had played out like the fantasy that had been running constantly in Aria’s head ever since Ezra had left town, until, unexpectedly, the dream turned sour. Ezra wasn’t the guy she remembered, but instead someone who was needy and insecure. When Aria couldn’t give Ezra the ego boost he needed, he’d turned to Klaudia instead. Last week, Aria had caught them making out in a coatroom at a cast party for the school’s production of
Macbeth
. Since then, Klaudia had bragged loudly that she and Ezra had gone on sexy dates around Rosewood and that they were apartment-hunting in New York City, where Ezra lived.

“I don’t care that Klaudia and Ezra are together,” she said, meaning it. “I’m with
you
.”

Noel put down the remote and pulled her close. Their lips met in a kiss. Noel pressed his hands along the sides of her face, then touched her neck and shoulders. His fingers grazed her bra strap, and she could tell he wanted more. She pulled away slightly. “We can’t. Not with your parents downstairs.”

Noel moaned. “So?”

“Perv.” She hit him playfully, but felt a pang of longing, too. That was another thing that had changed: Since they’d reunited, they’d slept together for the first time. It had happened only a few days ago, in Noel’s bedroom on a rainy afternoon, and it was all Aria could have hoped for—tender, slow, amazing. They’d whispered how much they cared about each other, and afterwards, Noel had told her it had been so special. Aria was glad they’d waited. They’d done it for the right reason—love.

Noel leaned back on his elbows and examined her. “Let’s never let anyone get between us again. Not Klaudia, not Ezra, no one.”

“Deal.” Aria massaged Noel’s forearm.

“I mean it.” Noel sat up straighter and looked into her eyes. “I want us to be completely honest with each other. No more secrets. That’s why my parents are still together—they don’t hide anything. I don’t want us to, either.”

Aria blinked hard. What would he say if she told him about what she’d done in Iceland this past summer? What would he say if she told him that she and her old friends had shoved the person they thought was Real Ali off the roof in Jamaica, only to find out later that it was actually an innocent girl named Tabitha Clark? What would he say about New A, the anonymous text messager who’d begun to torment Aria and her friends with their darkest secrets?

And who
was
new A? Spencer’s ex-friend, Kelsey Pierce, had made so much sense—she’d been in Jamaica over spring break, and Spencer had framed her for drug possession last summer. But when they’d confronted Kelsey at the Preserve at Addison-Stevens mental hospital, she genuinely hadn’t seemed to know about Tabitha or A.

And then there was the inscription on the bench they’d seen outside the hospital. TABITHA CLARK, RIP, it said, listing the dates Tabitha had been a patient at the Preserve. They matched the dates Real Ali had been there, too—clearly Tabitha and Real Ali had known each other.

“Hello? Aria?”

Noel was staring at her curiously. “You disappeared on me. Everything okay?”

“Of course,” Aria lied. “I . . . I was just thinking about how amazing you are. How I completely agree with being honest all the time.”

Noel’s face relaxed into a smile. He held up his Sprite. “Great. So no more secrets?”

“No more secrets.” Aria lifted her Sprite, too, and they touched the cans just like the Kahns had toasted at dinner. “Starting now.”

Okay, so “starting now” was a little bit of a cheat. But the horrible crimes Aria had committed were in the past, and they needed to stay that way—forever.

2

SPENCER’S NEW CHALLENGE

That night, a slim woman in skinny black pants proffered Spencer Hastings and her family four slices of cake on a silver tray. “Okay, we have chocolate with coffee frosting, vanilla sponge with lemon buttercream, chocolate cake with Frangelico liqueur, and carrot.” She placed them on the table.

“Looks delicious.” Spencer’s mother grabbed her fork.

“You’re trying to make my wife-to-be fat, aren’t you?” Mr. Pennythistle, Mrs. Hastings’s new fiancé, joked.

Polite laughter ensued. Spencer clutched her own silver fork hard, trying to keep a smile pasted on her face even though she thought the joke was pretty lame. She was with her mother, her sister, Melissa, Melissa’s boyfriend, Darren Wilden, Mr. Pennythistle, and Mr. Pennythistle’s daughter, Amelia, at Chanticleer House. Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Pennythistle had chosen the stone mansion with its enormous private garden for their upcoming summer nuptials.

Amelia, who was two years younger than Spencer and went to St. Agnes, the snootiest school on the Main Line, tentatively poked her fork into the slice of carrot cake. “The cakes from Sassafras Bakery are prettier,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

Melissa took a bite and swooned. “They might be prettier, but this buttercream frosting is heaven. As maid of honor, I vote we go with this one.”

“You’re not the only maid of honor,” Mrs. Hastings pointed her fork in Spencer’s direction. “Spencer and Amelia get a vote, too.”

All eyes turned to Spencer. She wasn’t really sure why her mother was going through all the bridal bells and whistles, including purchasing a Vera Wang gown with a ten-foot-long train, putting together a guest list of more than three hundred people, and charging Spencer, Amelia, and Melissa with maid of honor duties, which so far had included interviewing wedding planners, drafting the
New York Times
and
Philadelphia Sentinel
announcements, and choosing the perfect gift bags for the reception. There were still days when Spencer thought her mom was going to wake up and realize that divorcing Spencer’s father had been a mistake. Okay, so her dad had had an affair with Jessica DiLaurentis and secretly fathered twin girls, Courtney and Alison. But still—all this for a second wedding?

Spencer cut a perfect rectangle of chocolate Frangelico cake, careful not to get any crumbs on her new Joie dress. “This one’s pretty good,” she said.

“Great minds think alike. That’s my favorite, too.” Mr. Pennythistle wiped his mouth. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Spencer. I got in touch with my friend Mark, who’s an off-Broadway producer. He was very impressed with your Lady Macbeth performance and might want you to audition for one of his upcoming plays.”

“Oh,” Spencer breathed, surprised. “Thanks.” She shot him a smile. In a family of standouts, it was nice to be noticed.

Amelia wrinkled her nose. “Is this the same Mark that produces dinner theater? Aren’t his plays usually about medieval jousts?” She snickered nastily.

Spencer narrowed her eyes.
Jealous much?
Even though Amelia had lived in the Hastings house for a few weeks now, their interactions consisted mostly of bitchy snipes, one-word grunts, or seething looks across the dinner table. Spencer had once had a sisterly relationship like that with Melissa. She and Melissa had finally made peace; she didn’t need another sibling adversary to take her place.

Amelia was still staring at Spencer. “By the way, have you heard from Kelsey lately? She, like, dropped off the face of the earth. My orchestra group is minus a violinist.”

Spencer shoved another bite of cake in her mouth to delay responding. Spencer’s old friend from the UPenn summer program was now at the Preserve at Addison-Stevens mental hospital and rehab center to get over her drug abuse—and it was partly Spencer’s fault. Spencer had framed Kelsey last summer for drug possession and gotten her sent to juvie. When she’d resurfaced in Spencer’s life recently, Spencer had thought Kelsey was the new A, exacting her revenge.

She knew now that Kelsey wasn’t A—she and her friends had received a text from A while Kelsey was in the Preserve, which didn’t allow phones. But who
else
could know so much about all of them?

“I haven’t heard from Kelsey at all,” Spencer said, which was the truth. She snuck a look at Darren Wilden, who was diving into a slice of chocolate cake. Though he’d been the head investigator for the Alison DiLaurentis murder case, he wasn’t a cop anymore. But Spencer felt slightly uneasy in his presence all the same. Especially now that she was keeping dangerous new secrets.

The waitress reappeared and smiled hopefully. “Are the cakes okay?”

Mrs. Hastings nodded. Melissa waved her fork in the air, her mouth full of food. As the waitress pranced away, Spencer looked around the huge dining room. The walls were lined in stone and the floors were marble. Huge floral bouquets sat in small alcoves next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, an enormous hedge labyrinth stretched as far as the eye could see. There were a few other people eating in the dining room, most of them stuffy old men, probably conducting business deals. Then, she locked eyes with a tall, forty-something woman with ash-blond hair, steely gray eyes, and a Botoxed forehead. When she noticed Spencer looking, she quickly turned her attention to the menu in her hands.

Spencer looked away, too, feeling jittery. Ever since A had resurfaced, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched wherever she went.

Suddenly, Spencer’s iPhone let out a
bloop
. She pulled it out and inspected the screen.
Princeton Dinner Reminder!
the subject line read. Spencer pressed OPEN.
Don’t forget! You are cordially invited to a dinner honoring all of the Princeton early-admits in Pennsylvania and New Jersey!
The dinner was Monday night.

Spencer smiled. She loved correspondence from Princeton, especially since her future there had seemed so precarious last week—A had sent a letter saying that Spencer hadn’t been admitted after all, and Spencer had jumped through hoops trying to prove herself worthy until she realized the letter was a fake. She couldn’t wait until September, when she could start over somewhere fresh. Now that there was a new A, Rosewood felt more like a prison than ever.

Mrs. Hastings glanced at Spencer with curiosity, and Spencer flashed her phone screen. Mr. Pennythistle looked at it, too, and then took a sip of the coffee the waitress had just poured. “You’re going to really enjoy Princeton—you’ll make such great connections. Do you plan on joining an Eating Club?”

“Of course she does!” Melissa said matter-of-factly. “I bet you’ve already got your top three picked out, right, Spence? Let me guess. Cottage Club? Ivy? What else?”

Spencer fiddled with the wooden napkin ring next to her plate, not immediately answering. She’d heard of Eating Clubs, but hadn’t looked into them carefully—she’d been too busy studying vocabulary words, volunteering for a zillion community service activities, and chairing various school organizations just to get
into
Princeton. Maybe they were like the Rosewood Day Foodie Club, a group of kids who went out to fancy restaurants, had
Top Chef
viewing parties, and used the home ec ovens to cook
boeuf bourguignon
and
coq au vin.

Wilden laced his fingers over his stomach. “Anyone care to enlighten me about what an Eating Club is?”

Melissa looked a little embarrassed for her boyfriend—preppy, Ivy-League Melissa and blue-collar Wilden came from very different worlds. “The Eating Clubs are like secret societies,” she explained in a slightly patronizing voice (which Spencer wouldn’t have stood for if
she
were Melissa’s boyfriend). “You have to compete to get in through this process called bicker. But once you’re in, it’s like instant popularity, instant friends, and tons of perks.”

“Sort of like a frat?” Darren asked.

“Oh,
no
.” Melissa looked appalled. “For one thing, Eating Clubs are coed. For another, they’re way classier than that.”

“You can go a long way if you’re part of an Eating Club,” Mr. Pennythistle interjected. “I had a friend who was in Cottage Club, and a Cottage Club alumni who worked in the senate snapped him up for a job, sight unseen.”

Melissa nodded excitedly. “The same thing happened to my friend Kerri Randolph. She belonged to Cap and Gown, and she got an internship with Diane von Furstenberg’s design team through an Eating Club connection.” She looked at Spencer. “You have to let them know you’re interested early, though. I knew people who started buttering up Eating Clubs when they were sophomores in
high school
.”

“Oh.” Spencer suddenly felt nervous. Maybe it was a huge gaffe that she hadn’t gotten on the Eating Club bandwagon earlier. What if every early admission student had already brown-nosed their way into the Eating Club of their choice, and, like in an elaborate game of musical chairs, she would be left without a seat when the music stopped? She was supposed to feel grateful that she was going to Princeton,
period
, but that wasn’t how she functioned. She couldn’t just be a regular old student there. She had to be the best.

“An Eating Club would be stupid not to invite me,” she said, pushing a lock of long blond hair over her shoulder.

“Absolutely.” Mrs. Hastings patted Spencer’s arm. Mr. Pennythistle gave an “
Mm-hmm
” of support.

When Spencer sat back again, a high-pitched, keening giggle echoed off the walls. She tensed and looked around, the hair on her arms standing on end. “Did you guys hear that?”