Crushed (3 page)

“Don’t worry,” Spencer murmured into his neck. “My mom’s gone. We’re alone.”

“Oh, okay.” Reefer pulled back. “Um, Spence, wait. I have to tell you something.”

“I have stuff to tell you, too!” Spencer grabbed his hands. “So, I think I mentioned that our prom is in two weeks, and—”

“Actually,” Reefer cut her off, “do you mind if I go first? I sort of need to get it out.”

There was a strange look on his face that Spencer couldn’t decipher. She led him into the kitchen and turned off the TV on the counter. When she gestured for him to sit down at the table, he smoothed the tablecloth again and again with his fingers, trying to get all the creases out. Spencer had to smile: Reefer probably hated the wrinkled tablecloth as much as she did. That was just one reason they went so well together.

“I got this internship I’ve really wanted,” he announced.

Spencer smiled. She wasn’t surprised. Reefer was a genius. He’d probably been offered hundreds of internships. “Congratulations! Where?”

“Colombia.”

“University? In New York?” Spencer clasped her hands together. “That is going to be so much fun! We can try out new restaurants, go to Central Park, check out a Yankees game. . . .”

“No, Spencer, not Columbia University. Colombia, the
country
.”

Spencer blinked. “In South America?” Reefer nodded. “Well, that’s cool, too. I mean, not as close, but it won’t be that long before you come back for school.” Then she noticed the stiff expression on Reefer’s face. “
Are
you coming back for school?”

Reefer took a deep breath. “Maybe not. It’s an amazing opportunity with this botanist, Dr. Diaz. He’s, like, a rock star in his field. I’ve always wanted to work with him—everyone does—but once he takes you on, you kind of can’t leave. I didn’t even mention it to you, because it was such a long shot. But I got the letter two days ago offering me a position. It’s for two years. I’m going to defer Princeton until I get back.” He brushed a dreadlock over his shoulder. “Honestly, I was thinking about deferring Princeton anyway—I felt like I needed a few years to just, you know,
be.
But then I met you, and . . .”

A zillion thoughts zoomed through Spencer’s brain. He’d heard about this
two days ago
? They’d talked on the phone a lot in the last two days. He hadn’t said a word.

And two years . . . wow. That was kind of forever.

She sat back. “Okay. That’s still amazing. So when are you leaving? We still have some time together, right?”

Reefer picked at his thumb. “Dr. Diaz needs someone ASAP, so I’m leaving tonight.”

“
Tonight?
” She blinked hard. “Can you postpone it a little while, maybe? I was kind of hoping you could come to my prom with me.” She hated the wheedling tone in her voice.

By the look on Reefer’s face, she could tell he was going to say no. “They really need me there now. And, Spencer, I’m not really sure we should . . . you know . . . wait for each other.”

Spencer felt like he’d just dumped a bucket of ice over her head. “Wait a minute.
What?
”

“I’m into you.” Reefer wouldn’t meet her eye. “But, I mean, it’s
two years.
I’m not very good at the long-distance thing. We could be different people after it’s all over. I don’t want you to be tied down, you know?”

“You mean
you
don’t want to be tied down,” Spencer blurted out angrily.

Reefer stared at the floor. “I understand that this is kind of a shock. But I wanted to tell you in person. That’s why I drove all the way out here, even though I should be packing.” He checked his watch. “In fact, I should probably go.”

Spencer looked on helplessly as he headed toward the front door. There were a million things she wanted to say, but her mouth couldn’t form the words.
So that’s it?
And,
Are you seriously trying to guilt-trip me for making you drive all the way out here?
And,
What about all those romantic texts?
You
were the one who pursued
me
!

She thought about how Reefer had promised to stick by her at Princeton and show her a good time. Who would do that now?

In the foyer, Reefer looked at her plaintively. “Spencer, I hope we can still be—”

“Just go,” Spencer cut him off, suddenly angry. She pushed him out the door and slammed it shut, collapsing against it and sliding to the wood floor, her legs splayed out in front of her.

What. The. Hell. Just. Happened?

She pictured the Eco Cruise in her mind’s eye. Reefer had taken her out to dinner, and they’d had their first kiss on the dance floor. It had been amazing—she knew he’d thought so, too. It was like Alien Reefer had just come over. The
one
good thing in her life had suddenly been ripped away.

Beep.

Her cell phone lay on the console table in the hall. Her heart sped up again as she pushed to her feet and looked at the screen. There was a new text from an unknown sender.

2
Hanna’s a Royal

Later that day, Hanna Marin sat at the bar at Rive Gauche, her favorite pseudo-French restaurant at the King James Mall. She was waiting for her boyfriend, Mike Montgomery, to arrive, and though the bartender wouldn’t serve her, she felt classier sitting at the bar instead of at one of the booths. Besides, the booths were packed with other kids from Rosewood Day, many of them underclassmen, which made Hanna feel melancholy and sort of old. In a few short months, she would be at FIT—she’d received her acceptance letter last week. Rive Gauche would be nothing but a place to visit during holiday breaks.

Well,
hopefully
she’d get to visit Rive Gauche over the holidays and not spend the rest of her life in jail, as New A wanted. Hanna didn’t like to think about that.

Her phone
ping
ed
,
and she grabbed it.
GOOGLE ALERT FOR THE SPLENDOR OF THE SEAS ECO CRUISE
. Hanna pressed
READ
. She’d set up an alert for the cruise she and her friends had just gone on for any news about who had set off the bomb in the boiler room. Both Aria and a boy she’d met, Graham Pratt, had been down there, but Hanna and the others were almost positive a third figure had been, too—the bomber. They were also pretty sure that person was A. If only the police could identify whoever that third person was. Then all this would be over.

Graham Pratt, a passenger on the bombed
Splendor of the Seas
Eco Cruise is still in a coma after suffering multiple burns sustained in the explosion
, the first line read.

Hanna looked up, staring aimlessly at a table full of senior lacrosse players, including Aria’s boyfriend, Noel Kahn, and James Freed. Graham wasn’t just a friend Aria had made on the trip—he was also Tabitha’s ex-boyfriend. For a while, the girls had thought he might be New A—especially when he’d started acting creepy and violent and chased Aria down to the boiler room, repeating over and over that he had something to tell her. Terrified that Graham was going to hurt her, Aria had shut herself in a back closet . . . and then the explosion had gone off.

Hanna kept reading.
Mr. Pratt has been transferred to the William Atlantic Plastic Surgery and Burn Rehabilitation Clinic outside Rosewood, Pennsylvania, for further treatment. The burn clinic has won the prestigious Best in the Tristate Area award for four years running, and . . .

Hanna stared at her stricken expression in the mottled, old-timey mirror across the bar. Her ex-boyfriend Sean Ackard’s father ran the William Atlantic Clinic, or the “Bill Beach,” and Hanna had volunteered there last year as penance for crashing Mr. Ackard’s BMW after Sean broke up with her. Jenna Cavanaugh had been treated for burns there, and so had Hanna’s old bestie, Mona Vanderwaal, the first A. Not that Hanna liked to think about
that,
either.

The rest of the article didn’t say much more—only that Graham’s injuries were severe. A chill snaked up Hanna’s spine. It seemed like Graham had been caught in A’s crossfire, just like Gayle Riggs, another A suspect who’d been gunned down in her driveway right in front of the girls. But why had A wanted to hurt Graham? At first, the girls all worried that Graham was A and that he’d wanted to confront Aria about what she and the others had done to his ex in Jamaica. But when they received more messages from A after Graham was in a coma, they wondered instead if he had been trying to warn Aria that A was after her.
Watching you
, he’d told Aria over and over through the heavy steel door in the boiler room. Maybe he’d meant
A
was watching her—maybe he’d seen A spying. So did he know who A was? If only he’d wake up . . .

Another e-mail popped into her in-box.
NEW MESSAGE FROM SPECIAL AGENT JASMINE FUJI
. Hanna squinted at the subject line. It read, simply,
TABITHA CLARK
.

The phone nearly slipped from her fingers.
Special Agent?

She opened the e-mail, her heart thudding hard. Jasmine Fuji was an FBI agent on Tabitha’s murder case, and Hanna’s name had come up on a roster of guests who’d been staying at The Cliffs resort in Jamaica the same time Tabitha Clark had been.
I would like to ask you a few questions about what you might remember from that night
, the note read.
I’m sure you understand that time is of the essence, so please contact me as soon as possible.

Bile rose in Hanna’s throat. The girls knew now that they hadn’t killed Tabitha, but A had incriminating photographs of them talking to her on the vacation—and even one of Aria shoving Tabitha off the roof while Hanna and the others stood there, watching. A had so much
else
on them, too: Hanna had covered up a serious car accident, Spencer had framed another girl for drug possession, Emily had accepted money for a baby . . . though she’d tried to give it back. Once A dumped all that in Agent Fuji’s lap, she would never believe they were innocent.

“Hanna?” Mike’s voice rang out behind her.

She swung around to see him. He looked adorable in his Rosewood Day Lacrosse T-shirt, fitted black jeans, and beat-up Vans. There was an excited-little-boy smile on his face.

“I have a surprise for you!”

“What?” Hanna asked warily, dropping her phone back into her bag. She wasn’t really in the mood for a surprise right now.

Mike snapped his fingers, and suddenly a line of JV lacrosse players trooped in. At the count of three, in one synchronized motion, they whipped off their shirts and faced Hanna. Letters had been painted onto their rock-hard abs. First was an
H,
then an
A,
and then . . .

Hanna blinked hard. Their bodies spelled out
Hanna for May Queen.

Someone in the restaurant applauded. Kate Randall, Hanna’s stepsister, who was sitting in one of the booths, nodded appreciatively. A waitress’s eyes popped wide at the boys’ well-developed pecs and abs, and she almost dropped her tray. Then, Mike turned around, tore off his shirt, and grinned at Hanna. On his bare chest was an exclamation point.

“You’re going to run, right?” he asked excitedly. “You’ve already got the lax team behind you—JV
and
varsity.”

Speechless, Hanna fingered the Tiffany chain around her neck.
May Queen
was Rosewood Day’s term for prom queen. Hanna and Mike were going to prom together—she’d bought her dress last month at a Marchesa sample sale. It cost more than her dad wanted to spend, but he knew how much prom meant to her—she used to wax poetic about her ideal prom night in the same way most little girls dream of a fairy-tale wedding.

But
queen
? Sure, Hanna had thought about it,
dreamed
about it, but after this crazy year, she hadn’t really taken it seriously. “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly, looking at Mike and then the line of shirtless guys. “What about Naomi?”

Naomi Zeigler was Rosewood’s queen bee. Naomi hadn’t let Hanna join her clique after Mona’s death, and though Hanna had begun to make inroads with Naomi on the cruise, that all had come crashing down when Hanna discovered that Naomi’s cousin was Madison, the girl she’d left for dead on the side of the road after crashing her car last summer. Hanna had even suspected Naomi was A . . . but she had been wrong. When Hanna confessed what she’d done, Naomi had been so disgusted that she’d gone back to not speaking to her again.

A hand touched Hanna’s arm. Kate swam into view. “Naomi’s not running, Han. Her GPA isn’t high enough.” She smiled triumphantly. For reasons Hanna still wasn’t sure about, Naomi and Kate were in a fight.

“And you’re not running, either?” Hanna asked her. With Kate’s long chestnut hair, even features, and runner’s body, she was more than pretty enough.

Kate shook her head. “Nah. Not my thing. You should totally run, though. I’ll get everyone to vote for you.”

Hanna blinked hard. She and Kate had made up in the past month, but after years of being enemies, she still wasn’t used to it. “What about Riley?” she asked.

Kate snickered. Mike gave Hanna a crazy look. “Riley? Are you serious?”

Hanna pictured Riley’s startlingly red hair and vampire-pale skin—definitely not May Queen material. “Okay. I guess you’re right.”

Mike turned around and started riling up the rest of the team. “Han-
na
!” he chanted.

“Han-
na
!” The other boys joined in. Kate did, too.

Hanna grinned and started to consider it. She could already picture the fabulous, slightly spooky photo of herself and the king in the graveyard near the Philadelphia Four Seasons, a yearly Rosewood Day tradition that was printed in a special insert in the yearbook. If she won, her legacy at Rosewood would be that of a beautiful girl wearing the May Queen crown—not the girl who’d been tortured by A.