Heartless (6 page)

“Melon?” Kate asked sweetly, pushing the bowl toward Hanna with her annoyingly thin arms.

“No thanks,” Hanna said in the same saccharine tone. It seemed like they’d called a cease-fire at the Radley party—Kate had even smiled when Hanna and Mike got together—but Hanna wasn’t about to push it.

Then Kate gasped. “Oops,” she whispered, pulling the Opinions section of this morning’s
Philadelphia Sentinel
toward her plate. She tried to fold it before Hanna saw the headline, but it was too late. There was a large picture of Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria standing in front of the burning woods.
How Many Lies Can We Allow?
screamed one of the essays.
According to Best Friends, Alison DiLaurentis Rises from the Dead.

“I’m so sorry, Hanna.” Kate covered the story with her bowl of cottage cheese.

“It’s fine,” Hanna snapped, trying to swallow her embarrassment. What was wrong with these reporters? Weren’t there more important things in the world to obsess over? And hello, it was smoke inhalation!

Kate took a dainty bite of melon. “I want to help, Han. If you need me to, like, be your advocate with the press-go on camera and stuff like that—I’d be happy to.”

“Thanks,” Hanna said sarcastically. Kate was
such
an attention whore. Then she noticed a photo of Wilden on the part of the Opinions page that was still visible.
RosewoodPD,
said the headline under his photo.
Are They
Really
Doing Everything They Can?

Now
that
was an op-ed worth reading. Wilden might not have killed Ali, but he’d certainly been acting bizarrely over the past few weeks. Like how he’d given Hanna a ride home from her jog one morning, driving at twice the speed limit and playing chicken with an oncoming car. Or how he’d vehemently demanded that they stop saying Ali was alive . . . or else. Was Wilden really trying to protect them, or did he have his own reasons for keeping them quiet about Ali? And if Wilden was innocent, who the hell set that fire . . . and why?

“Hanna. Good. You’re up.”

Hanna turned around. Her father stood in the doorway, dressed in a button-down and pin-striped pants. His hair was still wet from the shower. “Can we talk to you for a minute?” he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Hanna lowered the paper.
We?

Mr. Marin walked to the table and pulled back a chair. It scraped noisily against the tile. “A few days ago I received an e-mail from Dr. Atkinson.”

He was staring at Hanna as if she should understand. “Who’s that?” she finally asked.

“The school’s psychologist,” Isabel piped up in a know-it-all voice. “He’s very nice. Kate met him when she was touring the school. He insists that students call him Dave.”

Hanna fought the urge to snort. What, had goody-goody Kate sucked up to the entire Rosewood Day staff during her tour of the school?

“Dr. Atkinson said he’s been keeping an eye on you at school,” her father went on. “He’s very concerned, Hanna. He thinks you may have post-traumatic stress disorder from Alison’s death and your car accident.”

Hanna swirled the remaining coffee in her cup. “Isn’t PTSD the thing soldiers get?”

Mr. Marin spun the thin platinum ring he wore on his right hand. The ring had been a gift from Isabel, and when they got married, he was going to switch it over to his left.
Barf.
“Well, apparently it can happen to anyone who’s gone through something really terrible,” he explained. “Usually people get cold sweats, heart palpitations, stuff like that. They also relive what happened over and over.”

Hanna traced the wood grain pattern on the kitchen table. All right, she
had
been experiencing symptoms like that, usually experiencing the moment when Mona mowed her down with her SUV. But c’mon—anyone would freak about that. “I’ve been feeling great,” she chirped.

“I didn’t think much of the letter at first,” Mr. Marin went on, ignoring her, “but I pulled a psychiatrist aside at the hospital yesterday before you were discharged. Sweats and palpitations aren’t the only symptoms of PTSD. It can manifest itself in lots of other ways, too. Like self-destructive eating patterns, for example.”

“I don’t have eating problems,” Hanna snapped, horrified. “You guys see me eat all the time!”

Isabel cleared her throat, glancing pointedly at Kate. Kate wound a piece of chestnut hair around her finger. “It’s just, Hanna . . .” She gazed at Hanna with her enormous blue eyes. “You kind of told me you do.”

Hanna’s jaw dropped. “You
told
them?” A few weeks ago, in a moment of insanity, Hanna had spilled to Kate that she used to have an eensy-weensy binge-purge problem.

“I thought it was for your own good,” Kate whispered. “I swear.”

“The psychiatrist said lying could also be a symptom,” Mr. Marin went on. “First telling everyone you saw Ian Thomas’s dead body in the woods, and now with you girls saying you saw Alison. And that got me thinking about the lies you’ve told
us
—sneaking out of our dinner last fall to go to that dance at school, stealing Percocet from the burn clinic, shoplifting from Tiffany, crashing your boyfriend’s car, even telling your whole class that Kate had . . .” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to say
herpes
aloud. “Dr. Atkinson suggests that it might be best if you took a few weeks off from all this craziness. Go somewhere where you can relax and focus on your problems.”

Hanna brightened. “Like Hawaii?”

Her father bit his lip. “No . . . like a facility.”

“A
what?
” Hanna slammed her mug down. Hot coffee sloshed over the side, burning the side of her index finger.

Mr. Marin reached into his pocket and pulled out a pamphlet. Two blond girls were strolling down a grassy lane, the sun setting in the background. They both had bad dye jobs and fat legs.
The Preserve at Addison-Stevens
said swirly writing at the bottom. “It’s the best in the country,” her father said. “It treats all kinds of things—learning disabilities, eating disorders, OCD, depression. And it’s not too far from here, just over the border in Delaware. There’s an entire ward dedicated to young patients, like you.”

Hanna stared blankly at a wreath of dried flowers Isabel had hung up when she took ownership of the house, replacing Hanna’s mother’s far more preferable stainless-steel wall clock. “I don’t have problems,” she squeaked. “I don’t need to go to a mental institution.”

“It’s not a mental institution,” Isabel chirped. “Think of it as more like . . . a spa. People call it the Canyon Ranch of Delaware.”

Hanna wanted to wring Isabel’s scrawny, faux-orange neck. Hadn’t she ever heard of
euphemisms?
People also called the Berlitz Apartment Town, a dumpy, dilapidated housing complex on the outskirts of Rosewood, the Berlitz-Carlton, but no one took
that
literally.

“Maybe it’s a good time to escape from Rosewood,” Kate simpered, in an equally
I know what’s best
voice. “Especially the reporters.”

Hanna’s dad nodded. “I had to chase one guy off the property yesterday—he was trying to use a telescopic lens to get a picture of you in your bedroom, Hanna.”

“And someone called here last night, wanting to know if you’d give a statement on
Nancy Grace,
” Isabel added.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Mr. Marin concluded.

“And don’t worry,” Kate said, taking another bite of melon. “Naomi, Riley, and I will still be here when you get back.”

“But . . .” Hanna trailed off. How could her dad believe this bullshit? So she’d lied a few times. It had always been for a good reason—she’d ditched out on their dinner at Le Bec-Fin last fall because A had warned that her then recently ex-boyfriend, Sean Ackard, was at the Foxy benefit with another girl. She’d told everyone Kate had herpes because she was sure Kate was going to tell everyone about Hanna’s eating issues. Who cared? That didn’t mean she had post-traumatic stress whatever.

It was another painful reminder of how far apart Hanna and her dad had grown. When Hanna’s parents were still married, she and her father had been two peas in a pod, but after Isabel and Kate came along, Hanna was suddenly as obsolete as shoulder pads. Why did her dad hate her so much now?

And then, her blood pressure plummeted. Of
course.
A had finally found her. She stood up from the table, jostling the ceramic pot of mint tea near her plate. “That letter isn’t from Dr. Atkinson. Someone else wrote it to hurt me.”

Isabel folded her hands on the table. “Who would do that?”

Hanna swallowed hard. “A.”

Kate covered her mouth with her hand. Hanna’s father laid his cup on the table. “Hanna,” he said in a kindergarten-slow voice. “
Mona
was A. And she died, remember?”

“No,” Hanna protested. “There’s a new A.”

Kate, Isabel, and Hanna’s father exchanged nervous looks, as if Hanna was an unpredictable animal that needed a tranquilizer dart in her butt. “Honey . . .” Mr. Marin said. “You’re not really making sense.”

“This is just what A wants,” Hanna cried. “Why don’t you believe me?”

Suddenly, she felt overwhelmingly dizzy. Her legs went numb and a faint buzzing sounded in her ears. The walls closed in, and the minty aroma of tea turned her stomach. In a blink, Hanna was standing in the dark Rosewood Day parking lot. Mona’s SUV was barreling down on her, its headlights two angry homing beacons. Her palms began to sweat. Her throat burned. She saw Mona’s face behind the wheel, her lips pulled back in a diabolical grin. Hanna covered her face, bracing for impact. She heard someone scream. After a few seconds, she realized it was her.

It was over as quickly as it had begun. When Hanna opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor, clutching her chest. Her face felt hot and wet. Kate, Isabel, and Hanna’s father loomed over her, their brows furrowed with concern. Hanna’s miniature Doberman, Dot, was frantically licking Hanna’s bare ankles.

Her father helped her up and back into a chair. “I really think this is for the best,” he said gently. Hanna wanted to protest, but she knew it wasn’t any use.

She rested her head on the table, addled and shaky. All the sounds around her grew sharp and acute in her ears. The fridge hummed softly. A garbage truck rumbled down the hill. And then, underneath that, she heard something else.

The hair on the back of her neck rose. Maybe she
was
crazy, but she swore she heard . . . a
laugh.
It sounded like someone snickering gleefully, delighted that things were going precisely according to plan.

Chapter 5

A Spiritual Awakening

Monday morning, Byron offered to drive Aria to school in his ancient Honda Civic since Aria’s Subaru was still on the fritz. She moved a pile of slides, battered textbooks, and papers off the passenger seat to the back. The area below her feet was littered with empty coffee cups, SoyJoy wrappers, and a bunch of receipts from Sunshine, the eco-friendly baby store that Byron and his girlfriend, Meredith, shopped at.

Byron turned the ignition, and the old diesel engine grumbled to life. One of his acid jazz tapes blared through the speakers. Aria stared at the blackened and twisted trees in her backyard. Little curls of smoke rose from the woods, the fire still smoldering in places. An entire roll of yellow
DO NOT CROSS
tape had been strung up along the tree line, as the woods were now too brittle and dangerous to enter. Aria had heard on the news this morning that cops were combing through the woods in search of an answer as to who might have set the fire, and last night she’d received a call from the Rosewood PD, wanting to know about the person she’d seen in the woods with the can of gasoline. Now that the person definitely
wasn’t
Wilden, Aria didn’t have much to tell them. It could have been anyone under that enormous hood.

Aria held her breath as they rolled past the large colonial that belonged to Ian Thomas’s family. The lawn was covered with morning frost, the red mailbox flag was up, and a couple of coupon circulars were scattered on the Thomases’ driveway. There was fresh graffiti on the garage door that said
Murderer,
the paint an exact match to the
KILLER
graffiti someone had painted on Spencer’s garage door. On instinct, Aria reached into her yak-fur bag and felt for Ian’s class ring in the inside pocket. She’d been tempted just to give it to Wilden yesterday—she didn’t want to be responsible for it—but Spencer had a point. The Rosewood PD had missed the ring entirely during their massive search through the woods; they might assume Aria had planted it there. But why
hadn’t
they found the ring? Maybe they hadn’t searched the woods at all.

And where
was
Ian, anyway? Why had he given them the wrong information in his IMs? And how had he not noticed that his ring was gone? Aria doubted that it had just slipped off his finger—the only time that had happened to her was when she washed out brushes after painting, and she always noticed her rings falling off right away. Was it possible that Ian
was
dead, and that the ring had fallen off him as someone roughly dragged his body away when Aria and the others had run back to find Wilden? But if that was the case, then who was speaking with them on IM?

She sighed loudly, and Byron gave her a surreptitious look. He was extra disheveled today, his dark hair standing up in thinning tufts. Despite the cold, he wasn’t wearing a coat, and there was a big hole in the elbow of his heavy wool sweater. Aria recognized it as one he’d bought when the family had been living in Iceland. She wished her family had never left Reykjavik.

“So how are you doing?” Byron asked gently.

Aria shrugged. At the corner, they passed a bunch of public school kids waiting for the bus. They pointed at Aria, instantly recognizing her from the news. Aria pulled her faux-fur hood around her head. Then they passed Spencer’s street. A big tree service vehicle was parked at the curb, a police car behind it. Across the street, Jenna Cavanaugh and her German shepherd service dog walked daintily to Mrs. Cavanaugh’s Lexus, avoiding patches of ice. Aria shivered. Jenna knew more about Ali than she’d let on. Aria even wondered if Jenna was keeping a burgeoning secret—on the day of Meredith’s baby shower, Jenna had been standing in the middle of Aria’s yard as if she needed to tell Aria something. But when Aria asked Jenna what was wrong, Jenna turned and fled. She seemed to know Jason DiLaurentis pretty well, too—but why would Jason have barged into her house last week and started arguing with her? And why did A want them to know it, if Jason truly had nothing to do with Ali’s death?