Riley twirled a piece of coppery hair around her fingers. “But you can’t sneak wine here like you can at Rive Gauche.”
“Yes, but you can’t bring dogs to Rive Gauche,” Hanna said, cupping Dot’s little face in her hands. She gave him another tiny bite of Pinkberry.
Naomi took a bite of yogurt and immediately reapplied a coat of Guerlain KissKiss lipstick. “And the lighting in here is so…unflattering.” She peered into the round mirrors that lined Pinkberry’s walls. “I feel like my pores are magnified.”
Hanna slammed her Pinkberry cup on the table, making the little plastic spoon jump. “Okay, I didn’t want to resort to this, but before we broke up, Lucas told me that Rive Gauche has rats in the kitchen. Do you really want to hang out somewhere with a rodent problem? There could be rat poop in your frites.”
“Or do you not want to hang out there because of a Lucas problem?” Naomi snickered, tossing her pale blond hair over her bony shoulder. Kate giggled and raised the cup of mint tea she’d bought earlier at Starbucks in a toast. Who drank mint tea besides old ladies, anyway? Freak.
Hanna glowered at her quasi-stepsister’s turned head, unable to read her. Earlier the week before, Kate and Hanna had almost bonded, sharing some secrets over breakfast. Kate alluded that she had a “gynecological problem” but didn’t explain what it was, and Hanna confessed to bingeing and purging. But when A started hinting to Hanna that Kate was less of a new BFF and more of an evil stepsis, Hanna fretted that trusting Kate had been a huge mistake. So at the Rosewood Day benefit, Hanna blurted out to the entire school that Kate had herpes. If Hanna hadn’t, she was certain that Kate would have spilled Hanna’s secret instead.
Naomi and Riley had recognized the herpes incident as a big power play immediately, calling both Hanna and Kate this Sunday morning to see if they wanted to go to the King James like it never even happened. Kate seemed to brush it off, too, turning to Hanna in the car on the way to the mall and saying in a cool and unbothered voice, “Let’s just forget about last night, okay?”
Unfortunately, not everyone saw the herpes trick as the queen bee move it really was. Right after Hanna said it, Lucas, Hanna’s then-boyfriend, said it was over between them—he didn’t want to be with someone who was so obsessed with popularity. And when Hanna’s dad had found out, he mandated that Hanna must spend every spare minute with Kate so they could bond. So far, he was taking the punishment seriously. This morning, when Kate wanted to go to Wawa for a Diet Coke, Hanna went along. Then, when Hanna wanted to take a Bikram yoga class, Kate ran upstairs and changed into her Lululemon yoga capris. And this afternoon, the press had shown up to Hanna’s door to ask her questions about Ian breaking house arrest last week to meet with Spencer. “What were they talking about?” the reporters crowed. “Why didn’t you tell the police Ian had busted out?” “Are you girls keeping something from us?” As Hanna explained that she hadn’t known that Ian showed up on Spencer’s porch until long after Ian had escaped, Kate was right there at her side, applying a fresh coat of Smashbox lip gloss in case the reporters needed an extra Rosewood girl’s opinion. No matter that she’d only been a Rosewood girl for a week and a half. She’d moved into Hanna’s house after Hanna’s mother took a high-paying job in Singapore. Kate’s mother, Isabel, and Hanna’s father had moved into the house too, and the two planned to marry. Yecch.
Now, a pitying smile formed on Kate’s lips. “Do you want to talk about Lucas?” She touched Hanna’s hand.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Hanna snapped, drawing her hand away. She wasn’t about to open up to Kate—that was so last week. She was sad about Lucas and had already started to miss him, but maybe they weren’t right for each other.
“But you seem pretty upset yourself, Kate,” Hanna shot back, matching Kate’s sweetie-pie voice. “You haven’t heard from Eric, huh? Poor thing. Are you heartbroken?”
Kate lowered her eyes. Eric Kahn, Noel’s hot older brother, was interested in Kate…well, he had been until the herpes remark, anyway.
“It’s probably for the best,” Hanna said airily. “I heard Eric’s a big player. And he only likes girls with big boobs.”
“Kate’s boobs are fine,” Riley jumped in quickly.
Naomi wrinkled her nose. “I never heard Eric was a player.”
Hanna balled up her napkin, annoyed that Naomi and Riley were so quick to jump to Kate’s defense. “You guys don’t have the same kind of inside info that I do, I guess.”
They all turned back to their Pinkberries, saying nothing. Suddenly, a flash of blond hair in the atrium caught Hanna’s eye, and she whirled around. A group of girls in their twenties passed, swinging Saks shopping bags. They were all brunettes.
Hanna had been seeing a lot of phantom flashes of blond hair lately, and was constantly haunted by the eerie feeling that it could be Mona Vanderwaal, her old best friend. Mona had died almost two months earlier, but Hanna still thought of her many times a day—all the sleepovers they’d had, all the shopping trips they’d gone on, all the drunken nights at Mona’s house, giggling over boys who had crushes on them. Now that Mona was gone, there was a huge hole in Hanna’s life. At the same time, she felt like an idiot. Mona hadn’t really been her friend—Mona had been A. She’d ruined Hanna’s relationships, aired her dirty laundry, and tortured her for months. And BFFs definitely didn’t hit BFFs with Daddy’s SUV.
After the shoppers passed, Hanna noticed a familiar dark-haired figure just outside Pinkberry, talking on a cell phone. She squinted. It was Officer Wilden.