“Oh my God,” Hanna whispered, searching the envelope for a return address. Nothing. Something occurred to her. The only person who really knew about Kate was Alison. Her eyes moved to the A on the note.

The Tofutti Cutie burbled in her stomach. She ran for the bathroom and grabbed the extra toothbrush in the ceramic cup next to the sink. Then she knelt down over the toilet and waited. Tears dotted the corners of her eyes. Don’t start this again, she told herself, gripping the toothbrush hard by her side. You’re better than this.

Hanna stood up and stared in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair was strewn around her face, and her eyes were red and puffy. Slowly, she put the toothbrush back in the cup.

“I’m Hanna and I’m fabulous,” she said to her reflection.

But it didn’t sound convincing. Not at all.

17

DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE!

“Okay.” Aria blew her long bangs out of her eyes. “In this scene, you have to wear this colander on your head and talk a lot about a baby we don’t have.”

Noel frowned and brought his thumb to his pink, bow-shaped lips. “Why do I have to wear a colander on my head, Finland?”

“Because,” Aria answered. “It’s an absurdist play. It’s supposed to be, like, absurd.”

“Gotcha.” Noel grinned. It was Friday morning, and they were sitting on desks in English class. After yesterday’s Waiting for Godot disaster, Ezra’s next assignment had been for them to break up into groups and write their own existentialist plays. Existentialist was another way of saying, “silly and out there.” And if anyone could do silly and out there, it was Aria.

“I know something really absurd we could do,” Noel said. “We could have this character drive a Navigator and, like, after a couple of beers, crash it into his duck pond. But he’s, like, fallen asleep at the wheel, so he doesn’t notice he’s in the duck pond until the next day. There could be ducks in the Navigator.”

Aria frowned. “How could we stage all that? It sounds impossible.”

“I don’t know.” Noel shrugged. “But that happened to me last year. And it was really absurd. And awesome.”

Aria sighed. She hadn’t exactly chosen Noel to be her partner because she thought he’d be a good cowriter. She looked around for Ezra, but he unfortunately wasn’t watching them in fitful jealousy. “How about if we make one of the characters think he’s a duck?” she suggested. “He could randomly quack.”

“Um, sure.” Noel wrote that down on a piece of lined paper with a gnawed-up Montblanc pen. “Hey, maybe we could shoot this with my dad’s Canon DV camera? And have this as a movie instead of a boring play?”

Aria paused. “Actually, that would be kind of cool.”

Noel smiled. “Then we could keep the Navigator scene!”

“I guess.” Aria wondered if the Kahns really had a spare Navigator to crash. Probably.

Noel nudged Mason Byers, who was paired up with James Freed. “Dude. We’re going to have a Navigator in our play! And pyrotechnics!”

“Wait. Pyrotechnics?” Aria asked.

“Nice!” Mason said.

Aria clamped her lips shut. Honestly, she didn’t have the energy for this. Last night, she hardly slept. Plagued by yesterday’s cryptic text message, she’d spent half the night thinking and furiously knitting a purple hat with earflaps.

It was awful to think that someone knew not only about her and Ezra, but also about that stuff with her dad. What if this A person sent her mom messages next? What if A already had? Aria didn’t want her mom to find out—not now, and not that way.

Aria also couldn’t shake the idea that the A message might actually be from Alison. There just weren’t that many people who knew. A few faculty members maybe, and Meredith knew, obviously. But they didn’t know Aria.

If the text was from Alison, that meant she was alive. Or…not. What if the texts were from Ali’s ghost? A ghost could have easily slid between the cracks of the women’s bathroom at Snooker’s. And spirits from the dead sometimes contacted the living to make amends, right? It was like their final homework assignment before graduating to heaven.

If Ali needed to make amends, though, Aria could think of a more deserving candidate than her. Try Jenna. Aria put her hands over her eyes, blocking out the memory. Screw therapy that said you should face your demons: She tried to block out The Jenna Thing as much as she tried to block out her dad and Meredith.

Aria sighed. At times like this, she wished she hadn’t drifted from her old friends. Like Hanna, a few desks over—if only Aria could walk up to Hanna and talk to her about this, ask her questions about Ali. But time really changed people. She wondered if it would be easier to talk to Spencer or Emily instead.

“Hey there.”

Aria straightened up. Ezra was standing in front of her desk. “Hi,” she squeaked.

She met his blue eyes and her heart ached.

Ezra tilted his hips awkwardly. “How are you?”

“Um, I’m…great. Really awesome.” She sat up straight. On the plane back from Iceland, Aria had read in a Seventeen she found in her seat pocket that boys liked enthusiastic, positive girls. And since brilliant hadn’t worked yesterday, why not try out peppy?

Ezra clicked and unclicked his Bic pen. “Listen, sorry to cut you off yesterday in the middle of your speech. Do you want to give me your index cards so I can take a look at them and grade you?”

“Okay.” Huh. Would Ezra do that for the other students? “So…how are you?”




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