Pretty Little Liars

Brad and Angelina Actually Met at the Rosewood Police...

‘Ladies, discover yourselves!’

As Oprah’s audience clapped wildly, Hanna sank into her coffee-colored leather couch cushions, balancing the TiVo remote on her bare stomach. She could use a little self-discovery on this crisp Saturday morning.

Last night was pretty blurry – like she’d gone through the night without her contacts in – and her head was throbbing. Had it involved some sort of animal? She’d found some empty candy wrappers in her purse. Had she eaten them? All of them? Her stomach hurt, after all, and it looked a little puffy. And why did she have a distinct memory of a Wawa dairy truck? It felt like piecing together a puzzle, except Hanna was too impatient for puzzles – she always jammed pieces together that didn’t actually fit.

The doorbell rang. Hanna groaned, then rolled off the couch, not bothering to fix her army-green ribbed tank top, which was turned around and practically exposing her boob. She cracked the oak door and then slammed it shut again.

Whoa. It was that cop, Mr. April. Er, Darren Wilden.

‘Open up, Hanna.’

She checked him out through the peephole. He stood with his arms crossed, seeming all business, but then his hair was a mess and she didn’t see his gun anywhere. And what kind of cop worked at 10 A.M. on a cloudless Saturday morning like this?

Hanna glanced at her reflection in the round mirror across the room. Jesus. Sleep marks from the pillow? Yes. Puffy eyes, lips in need of gloss? Absolutely. She quickly ran her hands over her face, pushed her hair into a ponytail, and put on her round Chanel sunglasses. Then she flung open the door.

‘Hey!’ she said brightly. ‘How are you?’

‘Is your mom home?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ Hanna said flirtatiously. ‘She’s out all morning.’

Wilden pursed his lips together, looking stressed. Hanna noticed Wilden had a little clear Band-Aid right above his eyebrow. ‘What, did your girlfriend deck you?’ she asked, pointing at it.

‘No . . .’ Wilden touched the Band-Aid. ‘I banged it on my medicine cabinet when I was washing my face.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not the most graceful person in the morning.’

Hanna smiled. ‘Join the club. I fell on my ass last night. It was so random.’

Wilden’s kind expression was suddenly grim. ‘Was that before or after you stole the car?’

Hanna stood back. ‘What?’

Why was Wilden looking at her as if she were the love child of space aliens? ‘There was an anonymous tip that you stole a car,’ he enunciated slowly.

Hanna’s mouth fell open. ‘I . . . what?’

‘A black BMW? Belonging to a Mr. Edwin Ackard? You crashed it into a phone pole? After you drank a bottle of Ketel One? Any of this sound familiar?’

Hanna shoved her sunglasses up her nose. Wait, that was what happened? ‘I wasn’t drunk last night,’ she lied.

‘We found a vodka bottle on the driver’s-side floor in the car,’ Wilden said. ‘So, someone was drunk.’

‘But—’ Hanna started.

‘I have to bring you into the station,’ Wilden interrupted, sounding a little disappointed.

‘I didn’t steal it,’ Hanna squeaked. ‘Sean – his son – said I could take it!’

Wilden raised an eyebrow. ‘So you admit you were driving it?’

‘I—’ Hanna started. Shit. She took a step back into the house. ‘But my mom’s not even here. She won’t know what happened to me.’ Embarrassingly, tears rushed to her eyes. She turned away, trying to get her shit together.

Wilden shifted his weight uncomfortably. It seemed like he didn’t know what to do with his hands – first he put them in his pockets, then they hovered near Hanna, then he wrung them together. ‘Listen, we can call your mom at the station, all right?’ he said. ‘And I won’t cuff you. And you can ride up front with me.’ He walked back to his car and opened the passenger door for her.

An hour later, she sat on the police station’s same yellow plastic bucket seats, staring at the same Chester County’s Most Wanted poster, fighting back the urge to start crying again. She’d just been given a blood test to see if she was still drunk from last night. Hanna wasn’t sure if she was – did alcohol stay in your body for that long? Now Wilden was hunching over his same desk, which held the same Bic pens and a metallic Slinky. She pinched her palm with her fingernails and swallowed.

Unfortunately, the events of last night had coalesced in her head. The Porsche, the deer, the airbag. Had Sean said she could take the car? She doubted it; the last thing she could remember was his little self-esteem speech before he’d ditched her in the woods.

‘Hey, were you at the Swarthmore battle of the bands last night?’

A college-age guy with a buzz cut and a uni-brow sat next to her. He wore a ripped flannel surfer’s shirt, paint-spattered jeans, and no shoes. His hands were cuffed. ‘Um, no,’ Hanna muttered.

He leaned close to her, and Hanna could smell his beery breath. ‘Oh. I thought I saw you there. I was and I drank too much and started terrorizing someone’s cows. That’s why I’m here! I was trespassing!’

‘Good for you,’ she answered frostily.

‘What’s your name?’ He jingled his cuffs.

‘Um, Angelina.’ Like hell she was giving him her real name.

‘Hey, Angelina,’ he said. ‘I’m Brad!’

Hanna cracked a smile at how lame that line was.

Just then, the station’s front door opened. Hanna jerked back in her seat and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Great. It was her mom.

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ Ms. Marin said to Wilden.

This morning, Ms. Marin wore a simple white boat-neck tee, low-waisted James jeans, Gucci slingbacks, and the exact same Chanel shades that Hanna was wearing. Her skin radiated – she’d been at the spa all morning – and her red-gold hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. Hanna squinted. Had her mom stuffed her bra? Her boobs looked like they belonged to someone else.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Ms. Marin said to Wilden in a low voice.

Then she walked over to Hanna. She smelled of seaweed body wrap. Hanna, certain that she smelled of Ketel One and Eggo waffles, tried to shrink in her seat.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hanna squeaked.

‘Did they make you take a blood test?’ she hissed.

She nodded miserably.

‘What else did you tell them?’

‘N-n-nothing,’ she stuttered.

Ms. Marin laced her French-manicured hands together. ‘Okay. I’ll handle this. Just be quiet.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered back. ‘Are you going to call Sean’s dad?’

‘I said I’ll handle it, Hanna.’

Her mother rose up from the plastic bucket seats and leaned over Wilden’s desk. Hanna tore through her purse for her emergency pack of Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel. She’d just have a couple, not the whole pack. It had to be in here somewhere.

As she pulled out the Twizzlers, she felt her BlackBerry buzzing. Hanna hesitated. What if it was Sean, chewing her out via voice mail? What if it was Mona? Where the hell was Mona? Had they actually let her go to the golf tourney? She hadn’t stolen the car, but she’d come along for the ride. That had to count for something.

Her BlackBerry had a few missed calls. Sean . . . six times. Mona, twice, at 8 A.M. and 8:03. There were also some new text messages: a bunch from kids at the party, unrelated, and then one from a cell number she didn’t know. Hanna’s stomach knotted.

Hanna: Remember the KATE toothbrush? Thought so! —A

Hanna blinked. A cold, clammy sweat gathered on the back of her neck. She felt dizzy. The Kate toothbrush?

‘Come on,’ she said shakily, trying to laugh. She glanced up at her mother, but she was still bent over Wilden’s desk, talking.

When she was in Annapolis, after her father told Hanna that she was, essentially, a pig, Hanna shot up from the table and ran inside. She ducked into the powder room, shut the door, and sat down on the toilet.

She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. Why could-n’t she be beautiful and graceful and perfect like Ali or Kate? Why did she have to be who she was, dumpy and clumsy and a wreck? And she wasn’t sure who she was angriest at – her dad, Kate, herself, or . . . Alison.

As Hanna choked on hot, angry tears, she noticed the three framed pictures on the wall across from the toilet. All three were close-ups of someone’s eyes. She recognized her father’s squinty, expressive eyes right away. And there were Isabel’s small, almond-shaped ones. The third pair of eyes were large, intoxicating. They looked like they were straight out of a Chanel mascara ad. They were obviously Kate’s.

They were all watching her.

Hanna stared at herself in the mirror. A peal of laughter floated in from outside. Her stomach felt like it was bursting from all the popcorn everyone had watched her eat. She felt so sick, she just wanted it out of there, but when she leaned over the toilet, nothing happened. Tears spilled down her cheeks. As she reached for a Kleenex, she noticed a green toothbrush sitting in a little porcelain cup. It gave her an idea.

It took her ten minutes to work up the nerve to put it into her throat, but when she did, she felt worse – but also better. She started crying even harder, but she also wanted to do it again. As she eased the toothbrush back in her mouth, the bathroom door burst open.

It was Alison. Her eyes swept over Hanna kneeling on the floor, the toothbrush in her hand. ‘Whoa,’ she said.

‘Please go away,’ Hanna whispered.

Alison took a step into the bathroom. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Hanna looked at her desperately. ‘At least close the door!’

Ali shut the door and sat on the side of the tub. ‘How long have you been doing this for?’

Hanna’s lip quivered. ‘Doing what?’

Ali paused, looking at the toothbrush. Her eyes widened. Hanna looked at it too. She hadn’t noticed before, but KATE was printed on the side in white letters.

A phone rang loudly in the police station and Hanna flinched. Remember the Kate toothbrush? Someone else might have known about Hanna’s eating problem, or might have seen her going into the police station, or might even know about Kate. But the green toothbrush? There was only one person who knew about that.

Hanna liked to believe that if Ali were alive, she’d be rooting for her, now that her life was so perfect. That was the scene she replayed in her mind constantly – Ali impressed by her size 2 jeans. Ali oohing over her Chanel lip gloss. Ali congratulating Hanna on how she’d planned the perfect pool party.

With shaking hands, Hanna typed, Is this Alison?

‘Wilden,’ a cop shouted. ‘We need you in the back.’

Hanna looked up. Darren Wilden rose from his desk, excusing himself from Hanna’s mom. Within seconds, the whole precinct burst into action. A cop car flew out of the parking lot; three more followed. Phones rang maniacally; four cops sprinted through the room.

‘It looks like something big,’ said Brad, the drunk trespasser sitting next to her. Hanna flinched – she’d forgotten he was there.

‘A donut shortage?’ she asked, trying to laugh.

‘Bigger.’ He jiggled his handcuffed hands excitedly. ‘Looks like something very big.’