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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?”
Wilden paused from his coffee and peered about the room. Mr. Pennythistle’s brow furrowed, then he tutted. “Bad windows. It’s just a draft. ”
Then everyone went back to eating like nothing was amiss. But Spencer knew that noise wasn’t from a draft. It was the same laugh she’d been hearing for months. It was A.
3
THE BOY WHO GOT AWAY
Hanna Marin and her stepsister, Kate Randall, sat at a long table in the central corridor of the King James Mall. They tossed huge, irresistible, we’re-cute-and-we-know-it smiles at all the passersby.
“Are you registered to vote?” Hanna asked a middle-aged woman toting a bag from the artisanal cheese shop Quel Fromage!
“Want to come to Tom Marin’s town hall meeting Tuesday night?” Kate handed a flyer to a guy wearing a Banana Republic name tag.
“Vote for Tom Marin in the next election!” Hanna bellowed at a bunch of fashionable grandmothers checking out the Tiffany window display.
There was a lull in the crowd, and Kate turned to Hanna. “You should have been a cheerleader. ”
“Nah, cheerleading isn’t my style,” Hanna said breezily.
It was seven o’clock on Saturday night, and they were trying to drum up interest for Mr. Marin’s senate run. He was gaining in the polls, and the hope was that the town hall meeting and fund-raiser he was holding the next week would give him an advantage over his competitor, Tucker Wilkinson. Hanna and Kate were the youth voices in the campaign, launching Twitter feeds and organizing flash mobs.
Kate fiddled with the large VOTE FOR TOM MARIN button she wore on the lapel of her fitted jacket. “By the way, I saw another picture of Liam in the paper this morning with some skank on South Street,” she whispered. “It looks like he gained weight. ”
Ordinarily, Hanna would have thought that her stepsister’s mention of Liam, a boy Hanna had gotten burned by a week before, was just to make her squirm—especially since Liam was Tucker Wilkinson’s son. But amazingly, Kate had been really cool. She laid off the snarky, I’m-better-than-you comments at the dinner table. She let Hanna have the bathroom first three mornings in a row. And the night before, she dropped off the new LMFAO album, saying she thought Hanna would like it. Hanna had to admit the New Kate was kind of awesome, though she’d never actually tell Kate that.
“Maybe he’s stress-eating because I’m not picking up his calls,” Hanna said, snickering. “He’s left me a bunch of voicemails. ”
Kate inched closer. “What do you think Tom’s going to do about what you told him?”
Hanna stared absently at a bunch of seventh-grade girls clumped in front of Sweet Life, a gourmet candy shop. After she found out Liam was a big fat cheater, she’d told her father a juicy, damaging bit of gossip about Liam’s dad.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m not sure dirty politics is really his style. ”
“Too bad. ” Kate pressed her lips together and folded her hands over the stack of flyers in front of her. “That jerk deserves to go down. ”
“So where are Naomi and Riley tonight?” Hanna stretched out her long, thin legs under the table, eager to change the subject. “I thought you always spent Saturdays with them. ” Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe were Kate’s BFFs. They had been Hanna’s biggest enemies when she was best friends with Mona Vanderwaal, the girl who had turned out to be the first A.
Kate shrugged. “Actually, I’m taking some time off from Naomi and Riley. ”
“Really?” Hanna sat up with interest. “Why?”
Kate passed a flyer to a college-age girl in a leather jacket. “We had a fight. ”
“About what?”
Kate coughed awkwardly. “Um, about the upcoming Eco Cruise. And about you, actually. ”
Hanna wrinkled her nose. “What about me?”
“Forget it. ” Kate looked away. “It doesn’t matter. ”
Hanna was about to press Kate for more details when her father appeared from the food court with a cardboard container of Starbucks lattes and a bag of assorted muffins. “You girls are doing an amazing job,” he said, clapping a hand on Kate’s shoulder. “I’ve seen tons of people with flyers. I bet we’ll get a great turnout at the town hall meeting on Tuesday. And Hanna, I’m still getting a lot of positive feedback on the commercial. I may ask you to film another one. ” He winked.
“Of course!” Hanna said brightly. In the six years since her father had divorced her mom, moved out of the house, and forgotten Hanna existed, she’d yearned for his acceptance, trying so hard to get him to notice her. Ever since she’d tested well in the focus groups, she was a star in his eyes. Her dad asked her opinion about campaign strategy, and he actually wanted to be around her.
Then Mr. Marin turned and took the arm of a woman behind him. Hanna expected to see Isabel, her dad’s new wife and Kate’s mother, but instead it was a tall, stately woman in her early forties. She wore a gorgeous camel hair coat and high, pointed Jimmy Choo boots.
“Ladies, this is Ms. Riggs,” he said. “She just moved to Rosewood, and she’s promised a huge donation to the campaign. ”
“You deserve it, Tom. ” Ms. Riggs’s voice was very refined, like Katharine Hepburn’s. “We need more people like you in Washington. ”
She turned to the girls, shaking Kate’s hand, then Hanna’s. “You look very familiar,” she said, looking Hanna up and down. “Where have I seen you?”
Hanna’s lips twitched. “People magazine, probably. ”
Ms. Riggs smiled. “Goodness, why?”
Hanna’s eyebrows shot up. Did this woman seriously not know?
“People did a profile on Hanna,” Mr. Marin said. “Her best friend was Alison DiLaurentis. The girl m
urdered by her twin sister. ”
Hanna squirmed in her seat, not wanting to correct her dad on the details. Technically, her best friend had been Courtney DiLaurentis, the girl who’d impersonated Alison while Alison had been forced to take Courtney’s place at the mental hospital. But it was way too complicated to get into.
“I did hear something about that. ” Ms. Riggs gazed at Hanna sympathetically. “You poor thing. Are you all right?”
Hanna shrugged. She was sort of all right . . . and sort of not. Could you ever really get over something like that? And then there was a new A on the scene. A knew about Tabitha, about Hanna’s naughty pictures with Patrick, the photographer who’d promised he’d make her a model but just wanted to get in her pants, and about her tryst with Liam. Any of those things could ruin her life—and her dad’s campaign. Thank God A didn’t know about the accident she’d been in last summer.
Ms. Riggs checked her watch. “Tom, we’re late for the strategy talk. ”
“You go on ahead. I’ll be there in a second,” Mr. Marin said. Ms. Riggs waved good-bye to the girls, and then headed in the direction of The Year of the Rabbit, an upscale Chinese restaurant. Mr. Marin lingered behind, eyeing Hanna and Kate when Ms. Riggs was a safe distance away. “Be nice to Ms. Riggs, okay?” he murmured.
Hanna made a face. “I was nice!”
“I’m always nice, Tom,” Kate added, looking offended.
“I know, I know, girls, just keep it up. ” Mr. Marin’s eyes were wide. “She’s a huge philanthropist and very influential. We need her funds to air our commercials throughout the state. It could mean the difference between winning and losing. ”
Her father scampered after Ms. Riggs, and Kate headed to the bathroom. Hanna gazed at the passersby again, annoyed that her father had lectured her like she was a naughty six-year-old. Since when did Hanna need a lesson on being nice to donors?
A figure emerged from Armani Exchange, and Hanna perked up. Hanna took in the boy’s wavy hair, square jaw, and slim-cut, beat-up leather jacket. Something inside her stirred. It was her ex, Mike Montgomery. She’d avoided him ever since the Macbeth cast party a few weeks ago, where he’d asked for her to take him back and she’d rejected him. But he looked positively delicious tonight.
Hanna called his name, and Mike looked up and smiled. As he walked toward her, Hanna adjusted her polka-dotted silk blouse so that a teensy bit of her bra strap was showing and quickly checked her reflection in the back of her iPod. Her auburn hair was shiny and full, and her eyeliner was smudged to perfection.
“Hey. ” Mike leaned his elbows on the table. “Campaigning, huh?”
“Yup. ” Hanna crossed her legs coquettishly, a nervous buzz in her stomach. “And you’re . . . shopping?” She wanted to smack herself for sounding so lame.
Mike held up the A/X bag. “I got that black sweater you and I looked at a while back. ”