“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 couldn’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.