Crushed

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 pinged, 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.

“What the hell?” she said slowly. “I’m in!”

“Great!” Mike slipped his T-shirt back over his head. “I’ll help you campaign. We’ll buy out a salon and offer girls free manicures. Give fashion advice. I’ll even take one for the team and offer myself up for free kisses.” He shut his eyes and puckered up. “Only from hot girls, though.”

Hanna swatted him. “No kissing booths! But that other stuff sounds awesome.”

Then, a pretty girl in the doorway caught Hanna’s eye. She had sleek black hair and violet eyes, and wore a cute wrap dress Hanna had seen in the BCBG window. Hanna squinted at the girl’s face, feeling a twinge of recognition.

“Whoa.” Brant Fogelnest, one of the lacrosse players sitting nearby, tilted his head back to get a better look. “Chassey’s smokin’!”

Hanna did a double take. “Did he just say Chassey?” she whispered to Mike. “As in Bledsoe?”

“I think so,” Mike murmured, his forehead wrinkling. Kate nodded, too.

Hanna balked. Chassey Bledsoe was a dork who played with yo-yos, wore Cat in the Hat hats to formals, and favored large, limp bags that made her look like a postal worker. This girl wore Jimmy Choos and carried a dainty clutch under her arm. She looked like she was even wearing false eyelashes.

But then the girl spoke. “Oh, there you are!” she said to someone across the room. It was Chassey Bledsoe’s honking-horn voice, the same voice that had called after Hanna, Ali, and the others on the playground in middle school, desperate to be part of their group. New-and-improved Chassey flounced over to her best friend, Phi Templeton, who was sitting in a booth in the corner. Though Phi was in ill-fitting Mudd jeans and an oversized T-shirt with a stain over a boob, it didn’t seem to cramp New Chassey’s style.

“Wasn’t she out of school for, like, a month with shingles?” Hanna whispered. Chassey was in her calculus class; the teacher had taken pity on her because she’d had shingles once, too.

“I thought so.” Mike drummed his fingers on the bar. “But if that’s what shingles does to you, maybe more girls should get it.”

Kirsten Cullen, who was sitting at a bistro table near Hanna, raised an eyebrow, listening in. “She looks amazing. She should totally run for May Queen.”

More kids murmured that New Chassey should run—even some of the lax team Hanna-chanters called out a halfhearted “Chas-sey.” Hanna looked at Mike helplessly. “Can’t you do something?”

Mike raised his palms. “Do what?”

“I don’t know! May Queen is my thing!”

Beep.

Hanna’s cell phone flashed insistently inside her purse. She pulled it out. ONE NEW TEXT FROM ANONYMOUS.

Her stomach sank. She hadn’t heard from A all week, but she’d known it would only be a matter of time. She glanced around the restaurant, hoping to spot the texter. A figure slipped behind a fountain in the courtyard. The door to the kitchen swung shut fast, swallowing up a shadow.

Bracing herself, she pressed READ.

Only losers campaign against losers. Make any effort to win, and not only will you lose my respect—I’ll tell Agent Fuji about all your naughty little lies.

—A