Hanna tried not to twitch. Why was Hailey using that weird Valley Girl voice? Her voice didn’t sound like that, did it?
“I can’t just get rid of him,” Bridget argued. “What if he suspects something is up? Maybe I should just tell him the truth.”
“No way,” Hailey said, popping out a hip. “Like, Aria, that is the last thing you should do.”
Then she made vigorous chomping movements, like she was really chewing hard on a huge wad of gum. Hanna felt queasy. She didn’t even chew gum.
“Cut!” Hank cried a few moments later, reappearing on the set. Hanna figured he was going to give Hailey some advice on playing Hanna—she kind of needed it. But instead, Hank walked over to the band, speaking in a low voice to the lead singer.
Hailey turned and glided to Hanna’s table, her eyes shining. “So?” she chirped. “Don’t I make an ah-mazing you?”
She looked so pleased with herself. And though Hanna was kind of offended at, well, everything Hailey had just done, she couldn’t imagine saying so.
So Hanna smiled brightly. “You were great,” she said in a small voice.
“Okay, everyone, places!” Hank interrupted, running back to his post. “We’re going again!”
The cameras rolled once more. The band launched into the opening bars of “Three Little Birds,” and the partygoers milled around happily. Hanna pretended to talk to Penelope, all the while keeping her eye on Hailey as she did the scene exactly the same way, gum-snapping and all. A horrible feeling welled in the pit of Hanna’s stomach. If Hailey kept this up, Hanna would be the laughingstock of Rosewood—and FIT—once this movie came out. People would do hip-popping, gum-chewing, Valley Girl Hanna impressions. What if they actually thought she was like that?
She turned her head to idly look around the rest of the set, hoping for some distraction. Suddenly, a flash of blond hair shot through the back of the room. Hanna did a double take. There was another streak of blond. Hanna’s heart started to pound. There was something about the person’s movements that filled her with jitters.
She half-rose to her feet. The girl playing Riley gave her a strange look. “What are you doing?”
“Cut!” Hank yelled again. Everyone broke character. Hanna thought he was going to reprimand her, but he went over to Bridget. Seizing the opportunity, Hanna shot off the chair and pushed through the crowd. She had to see who that blonde was.
She had to weave around a lot of kids, fake palm trees, bistro tables, a large statue of a scuba diver, and several huge potted plants to get to the back. Then she peered around into the sea of extras. None of them was Ali. Spots formed in front of Hanna’s eyes. Had she imagined it?
But one of the exit doors was easing shut. Hanna rushed for it, nearly tripping over a light cable. She almost had her hand on the knob when someone grabbed her arm. She whirled around, her heart thudding hard.
It was Jared, the guy playing Mike. “Hanna, right?” His eyes shifted back and forth. “Everything okay?”
Hanna looked at the door. “I—I need to go outside for a sec.”
Jared shook his head. “Not through that door. An alarm will sound. Hank will freak.”
Hanna glanced at the door again. EMERGENCY EXIT, read big, bright letters above it. “But someone just went through here, though, and nothing happened,” she protested weakly. Her head was suddenly swimming.
Jared patted Hanna’s arm and guided her away from the door. “Take a deep breath, okay? I’ve worked on a lot of films, and first days can definitely be hairy. I’ve seen people with way more experience panic much worse than you.”
“But I’m not . . .” Hanna trailed off. She wasn’t panicking. She’d been perfectly calm and centered before Ali appeared in the crowd.
Only, had it been Ali? How could someone go through an emergency exit without setting off the alarm?
You imagined it, she told herself as fake-Mike escorted her back to the scene. But she peeked behind her one more time to be sure Ali wasn’t there.
She wasn’t, of course. But Hanna still had the eerie sense she was close. Watching.
6
AND NOW, INTRODUCING ROSEWOOD’S LATEST PRODIGY . . .
Aria sat in her father’s airy den, listlessly pulling apart a stick of Monterey Jack string cheese. Byron flitted around the room, doing his annual reorganizing of the bookshelves, a ritual in which he pulled all his tomes off the wall and arranged them in a new way that was understandable only to him. His new baby, Lola, cooed happily from a jungle-themed jumping apparatus in the corner, a tinny version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” tinkling through the tiny speakers.
Byron’s wife, Meredith, flipped through channels. Finally, she settled on a celebrity exposé on Bravo, which was utterly unMeredith—Aria had always thought she’d be the type of person who hated reality TV. She turned to Aria and smiled brightly. “I heard your friend Hanna is going to be in a movie!”
“Uh-huh,” Aria mumbled, hoping that Meredith wouldn’t ask the obvious follow-up question—why she wasn’t in the movie, too. Aria was happy that Hanna felt comfortable enough to act in the film—one of them should get to capitalize off this nightmare. But Aria was a behind-the-scenes kind of girl—when she and her friends were younger, she used to direct artsy movies, usually making Courtney-as-Ali the star. And anyway, she’d had enough time in front of a camera with all those torturous Ali interviews.
When the show broke for commercials, Meredith flipped the channel again, this time landing on a local newscast. Aria tuned out—now that their Ali struggle was old news, the reporters were back to talking about picayune stuff like squabbles at town hall or whether to put a new GAP on this corner or that corner. But then Meredith exclaimed brightly, “Oh! How nice!”