Stunning. Part 13

Ella thought about this for a moment, running her finger over her bottom lip. "Maybe not," she said. "I think I needed to be in the dark, at least for a little while longer. I needed to get strong enough to know what I wanted and realize that I was capable of living on my own. Moving to Iceland, figuring out a new country, that really helped me, but it was because of your father that we went there. So, actually, Aria, if I had known earlier, I never would have gotten that experience. In a weird way, I'm glad I found out when I did."

Aria nodded, working this over in her mind. "So you're saying that if you know a secret about someone, but you also know that someone else isn't ready to hear it, you should keep it to yourself?"

"I guess it depends." Ella wrinkled her brow, looking suspicious. "Why? Do you know a secret about someone?"

"No," Aria said quickly. "I was just speaking hypothetically."

Her mom's cell phone rang, saving Aria from having to explain further. But then she peered out the window and saw Noel's Escalade parked at the curb, and her stomach clenched. Ella's advice made perfect sense, but that meant she had to break up with Noel.

Swallowing hard, she waved good-bye to Ella, zipped up her denim jacket, and stepped out the door. Her heart broke when she saw Noel's smiling face through the window. "You look gorgeous, as usual," he crooned when she opened the door.

"Thanks," Aria mumbled, even though she'd worn her ugliest jeans and a big, bulky sweater that was one of her first knitting projects. She wanted to seem as unattractive as possible to soften the blow.

"So where do you want to go?" Noel shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb. "Williams-Sonoma for cooking supplies? I hear next week we're making popovers."

Aria stared at the pa.s.sing streetlamps until her vision blurred, keeping her mouth shut. She was afraid that if she said anything, she'd burst into tears.

"Okay, not in a Williams-Sonoma mood," Noel said slowly, turning the steering wheel. "What about that cool coffee bar we found in Yarmouth? Or hey, we could go back to that psychic shop by the train station. Where it all began." He nudged Aria playfully. He was referring to how they'd bonded at a seance at the shop last year.

Aria fiddled with the zipper on her jacket, wishing Noel would just be quiet.

"Last-ditch effort," Noel said cheerfully. "How about we go to Hollis and just get really drunk? Play some darts and beer pong, act like idiots . . ."

"Noel, I can't," Aria blurted.

Noel came to a stop at a light adjacent to a big strip mall. "Can't what? Drink?" He grinned. "C'mon. I saw you drink plenty in Iceland."

She winced. Iceland just twisted the knife more painfully-it was yet another secret she was keeping. "No, I can't do . . . this." Her voice cracked. "Me and you. It's not working."

A frozen smile appeared on Noel's face. "Wait. What?"

"I'm serious." She stared at the glowing red clock numbers on the dashboard. "I want to break up."

The light turned green, and Noel wordlessly swerved into the other lane and turned into the strip mall. It was one of those monstrous shopping plazas that contained a Barnes & n.o.ble superstore, a Target, a warehouse-size wine shop, and a bunch of upscale salons and jewelry boutiques.

Noel pulled into a parking s.p.a.ce, shut off the engine, and looked at her. "Why?"

Aria kept her head down. "I don't know."

"You've got to have some reason. It's not Klaudia, is it? Because I can't stand that girl, I swear."

"It's not Klaudia."

Noel ran his hands over his forehead. "Are you into someone else? That Ezra guy?"

Aria shook her head vigorously. "Of course not."

"Then what? Tell me!"

There was an imploring, desperate expression on his face. It took everything in Aria's power not to throw her arms around Noel and tell him she didn't mean it, but A's note was branded in her mind. She wouldn't be responsible for wrecking his family. She needed to get as far away from Noel as possible. She was poison to him.

"I'm sorry, but it's just something I have to do," she whispered. "I'll come by tomorrow and get the stuff I left at your house." Then she reached for the door handle and swung her legs to the pavement. The cold air a.s.saulted her senses. The aroma of brick-oven pizza wafted into her nostrils, turning her stomach.

"Aria." Noel leaned over and caught her arm. "Please. Don't go." Aria bit back tears, staring blankly at the shopping cart corral. "There's nothing more to say," she said in a dead voice. Then she jumped out of the car, slammed the door hard, and started walking blindly toward the closest store, a Babies "R" Us. Noel called her name again and again, but she kept walking, staring at her boots, breathing in and out, and making sure no cars ran her over. Finally, the Escalade's engine revved, and the SUV backed up and gunned toward the exit.

Beep.

Aria's phone sounded from the bottom of her bag. The screen was lit up as she pulled it out. A new text had come in.

Kudos, Aria. No pain, no gain, right? Mwah! -A Aria threw her phone back in her bag, hard. You win, A, she thought, blinking through tears. You win every G.o.dd.a.m.n time.

She was at the curb of the Babies "R" Us by now. A stroller display took up the whole window, and banners of happy, giggling babies decorated the store. Pregnant women cruised the aisles, buying baby bottles, onesies, and diapers. All the happiness she saw felt like a kick in the stomach. She felt the urge to ram a shopping cart into the window and watch the gla.s.s shatter around the blissful scene.

The automatic doors swished open, and a woman in an expensive-looking black wool coat pushed a cart full of shopping bags down the ramp. She looked just as joyful as the others, though there was something about her expression that looked a little strained. Aria squinted hard, her pulse racing.

It was Gayle. But what was she doing here? Stocking up on stuff for when she kidnapped Emily's baby?

Without breaking her stride, Gayle met Aria's gaze. Her eyebrows shot up, and she winked, seeming pleased with herself. Probably because she'd been the one who'd written the note demanding that Aria and Noel break up. Probably because she saw Aria's tear-streaked face now and understood that Aria had gone through with it.

Because she was A, and she was pulling all the strings.

23.

LADIES WHO LUNCHEON.

Spencer rang the bell at the Ivy House, then stepped back and examined her reflection in the gla.s.s next to the door. It was Sunday afternoon, a few minutes after Harper had told her to arrive for the potluck, and she was ready. She'd managed to blow-dry her hair with the shoddy hair dryer at the motel and had done her makeup in the cracked mirror. The iron had worked to press the wrinkles out of the dress she'd brought, and, most importantly, she was holding three pans of gooey, chocolatey pot brownies in her hands.

The door flung open, and Harper, dressed in a polka-dotted sheath and high patent-leather heels, gave her a cool smile. "Hi, Spencer. You made it."

"Yep, and I brought brownies." Spencer proffered the foil pans. "Double chocolate." With a sprinkling of pot, she wanted to add.

Harper looked pleased. "Brownies are perfect. C'mon in."

Spencer figured the potluck would be filled with only desserts-pot brownies, specifically. But when Harper led her into an enormous, state-of-the-art kitchen, complete with a huge, eight-burner Wolf oven, a ma.s.sive fridge, and an island bigger than the Hastings' dining room table, there were all sorts of dishes spread out. Quinoa ca.s.seroles. Quiche. Baked ziti, steam rising from the tray. There was a large punch bowl full of reddish liquid with apple chunks floating on top. A cheese platter was piled high with Brie, Manchego, and Stilton.

She gaped at the spread. How had everyone managed to smuggle drugs into all this stuff? It had been a struggle for Spencer to simply bake the brownies; the oven in the motel's kitchen had been a G.o.dsend. She'd begged the guy on night desk duty to let her use it, mixing up the brownie batch in her ice bucket and crumbling in the pot at the last minute. She'd fallen asleep on the pleather couch in the lobby while they were cooking, waking up only when the buzzer went off. She had no idea if they'd be good or not, but it didn't matter-she'd done it.

Reefer's admonishing words rushed through her head. Do you really need a stupid club to tell you that you're cool? But he'd probably said all that disparaging stuff about Ivy because he knew he'd never get into something so prestigious. Loser.

"Plates and silverware are that way." Harper gestured to a table.

Spencer hovered over the food, amazed that every single item contained an illegal substance. She didn't want to eat any of it. She muttered something about not being hungry and followed Harper into the parlor.

The room was packed with well-dressed boys in ties and khakis and girls in dresses. Cla.s.sical music played in the background, and a waitress was wandering around with flutes of mimosa. Spencer overheard conversations about a composer she'd never heard of, nature versus nurture, foreign policy in Afghanistan, and vacationing on St. Barts. This was why she wanted to belong to Ivy-everyone spoke in such smart, informed, adult voices about sophisticated topics. Screw Reefer and his judgmental att.i.tude.

Harper had joined Quinn and Jessie. The girls looked at Spencer with surprise, but then gave her a cautious smile and a cordial h.e.l.lo. Everyone sank into a leather couch and resumed their conversation about a girl named Patricia; apparently, her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant over the holiday break.

"Is she going to keep the baby?" Harper asked, forking a bite of macaroni salad.

Jessie shrugged. "I don't know. But she's terrified of telling her parents. She knows they're going to freak."

Quinn shook her head sympathetically. "Mine would, too."

It was disconcerting that the girls were talking about an issue that was so close to Spencer's heart. Looking at Emily's situation objectively, it was crazy that Emily had hidden her pregnancy from almost everyone she knew. It was even crazier that she'd smuggled the baby out of the hospital and left it on someone's doorstep. Even worse, A-Gayle-had figured out exactly what happened. Was Gayle going to tell? Not just about that, but about everything else they'd done?

She stared down at her empty plate, wishing she had something to do with her hands.

"Spencer, these are really good," Harper said, pointing to a brownie she'd cut from one of Spencer's pans. "Try."

She shoved the brownie toward Spencer's mouth, but Spencer recoiled. "That's okay."

"Why? They're amazing!"

Quinn narrowed her eyes. "Unless you're anti-sugar, too?"

The girls were all staring at her so quizzically that Spencer began to feel insecure. She wondered if it was a requirement to eat the food, like an Ivy rite of pa.s.sage. Maybe she had no choice. "Thanks," she said, accepting a bite. Harper was right: The brownie was gooey and delicious, and Spencer couldn't even taste the baked-in pot. Her stomach rumbled in response; she hadn't eaten since last night. One little brownie wouldn't hurt, would it?

"Okay, you convinced me," Spencer said, rising from her seat to get a brownie square for herself.

When she returned, having eaten almost the whole brownie by the time she sat down again, the girls were talking about how they wanted to make a film to enter into the Princeton Student Film contest. "I want to make one about toy tops, just like Charles and Ray Eames did," Quinn said.

"I was thinking of making a movie about Bethany. Remember how I told you about her? The really fat girl who sits in front of me in Intro to Psych?" Jessie rolled her eyes. "It could be called Girl Who Eats Donuts."

Spencer took a bite of brownie and wished she was brave enough to tell Jessie she wasn't exactly a sylph. For some reason, the word sylph suddenly struck her as funny. The oversize freckles on Jessie's cheeks were kind of funny, too. Jessie looked at her strangely. "What?"

"Uh, I don't know," Spencer said, taking another nibble of the brownie. A few crumbs fell onto her lap, reminding her of gerbil p.o.o.ps. She started laughing again.

Harper stood, giving Spencer a you're hopelessly weird look. "I'm going to get another brownie. Girls, you in?"

"Grab me one," Quinn said. Jessie nodded too.

The brownies. That was why Spencer found everything so funny. She'd only smoked pot twice before, both times at parties at Noel Kahn's house, but the familiar sensations rushed back. Her pulse slowed. Her normally obsessive tendencies began to fade into the background. She leaned back and grinned at the beautiful kids around her, marveling at their brightly colored dresses and silk ties. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her limbs relaxed into the couch.

Suddenly, she roused herself. A couple was making out across the room, their hands all over each other, their tongues flailing. Another couple was kissing by the grand piano. They were so into it that they leaned on the keys, a tinkle of sounds ringing out. There was a clump of kids staring at a gla.s.s-paned china cabinet in the corner, remarking on how amazing the plate patterns were. Quinn was standing in the doorway, telling a story about how her housekeeper always said acrossed instead of across in a snotty, cleaning-people-are-such-lower-cla.s.s-citizens voice. Jessie's eyes were gla.s.sy and red, and she was wiggling her fingernails in front of her face like they were amazing.

Spencer rubbed her eyes. How long had she been out?

"Streaker!" someone yelled, and a guy in a Princeton beanie and nothing else ran through the parlor, a half-eaten brownie in his hand. A couple of kids stripped off their clothes and followed him down the hall.

Harper appeared above Spencer and pulled her to her feet. "Let's join in, sleepyhead!"

Spencer woozily pulled her cotton dress over her head, feeling naked in her slip. They followed a string of students through the library, the dining room, and then the kitchen. There were pots and pans all over the floor in the kitchen, an upturned tray of nachos on the table, and, for some reason, a roll of toilet paper was strung around the chandelier over the prep island. Her tray of brownies was almost empty. Spencer grabbed the last square and popped it into her mouth.

When they got back to the parlor, even more kids were making out, and a group was playing a version of Strip Twister, using the large rug in the center of the room as the board. Spencer flopped back on the couch. "Is it me, or has this party suddenly gotten really wild?" she asked Harper.

"Isn't it awesome?" Harper's eyes gleamed. "Everyone is flying high, right?"

Uh, isn't that the point? Spencer wanted to say, but Harper had already whipped around and was staring at the windows. "Hey, you know what I want to do?" she said excitedly. "Make myself a dress out of the curtains just like Scarlett O'Hara did in Gone with the Wind!"

She leapt onto the windowsill and ripped the curtains from the poles before anyone could stop her. Then, grabbing a letter opener from the nearby desk, she slashed the fabric into long strips. Spencer half-giggled, half-winced. Those were probably valuable antique curtains.

Quinn pulled out her cell phone. "This is amazing. It should be our film for the festival!"

"And I want us all to be the stars!" Harper said sloppily, stumbling over the syllables. She looked at Spencer. "Can you record us on your phone?"

"Okay," Spencer said. She called up the video function on her iPhone and started recording. Harper yanked down more curtains and pulled the stuffing out of the pillows on the leather couch, looking crazed.

"Yeah!" Daniel, the boy who'd hosted the party on Friday, grabbed a swath of curtain fabric and wrapped it around his naked body-he'd been part of the streaking parade-like a toga. A few other guys followed suit, and they all marched around in a circle chanting "To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!"

As they paraded past, Spencer caught a glimpse of a guy with longish dark hair. Was that Phineas? She hadn't seen him since before her run-in with the law at Penn last year. But when she blinked, he'd vanished, like he'd never been there at all. She pressed her fingers to her temples and made several slow circles. She was so high.

Spencer turned back to Harper. She had seemingly grown bored of ruining the curtains and was now lying on the carpet with her legs up in the air. "I just feel so . . . alive," she trilled. Then she eyed Spencer. "Hey. I have something to tell you. You know that guy, Raif-Reefer? He has a crush on you."

Spencer groaned. "What a loser. How'd he get into Princeton, anyway? Is he a legacy?"

Harper's eyes grew wide. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

Harper put her fingers to her lips and giggled. "Spencer, Reefer is, like, a genius. Like Einstein."

Spencer snickered. "Uh, I don't think so."

"No, I'm serious." Suddenly Harper looked dead sober. "He got a full scholarship. He invented some chemical process that, like, converts plants into renewable energy really cheaply. He received a MacArthur Genius Grant."

Spencer snorted. "Um, are we talking about the same person?"

Harper's expression was still serious. Spencer leaned back on her elbows and let this sink in. Reefer was . . . smart? Ridiculously smart? She thought about what he said yesterday at his house. Don't judge a book by its cover. She started to laugh. The giggles came so fast and furious tears started to stream from her eyes and she could barely breathe.

Harper started laughing, too. "What's so funny?"

Spencer shook her head, not even sure. "I've had one too many pot brownies, I think. I'm a lightweight."

Harper frowned. "Pot brownies? Where?"

The muscles in Spencer's mouth felt gummy and loose. She studied Harper carefully, wondering if this was a hallucination, too. "I baked pot into the brownies I brought," she said in an isn't-it-obvious voice.

Harper's mouth made an O. "No way," she whispered, slapping Spencer five. "That's the best idea ever." She started to laugh for real. "No wonder I feel so bubbly! And here I thought someone spiked the punch with absinthe!"

Spencer laughed nervously. "Well, it's not necessarily my brownies, is it?" Harper had eaten all kinds of other dishes, after all. Who knew what they had baked into them.