Noel looked quizzically at her, then walked toward her car and knocked on her window. She rolled it down.
“You’re that girl that went to the North Pole. Aria, right? You were Ali D’s friend?” Noel continued.
Aria’s stomach plummeted. “Um,” she said.
“No, dude.” James Freed, the second-hottest boy at Rosewood, came up behind Noel. “She didn’t go to the North Pole, she went to Finland. You know, like where that model Svetlana is from. The one who looks like Hanna?”
Aria scratched the back of her head. Hanna? As in, Hanna Marin?
A whistle blew, and Noel reached into the car to touch Aria’s arm. “You’re going to stay and watch practice, aren’t you, Finland?”
“Uh…ja,” Aria said.
“What’s that, a Finnish sex grunt?” James grinned.
Aria rolled her eyes. She was pretty sure ja was Finnish for yes, but of course these guys wouldn’t know that. “Have fun playing with your balls.” She smiled wearily.
The boys nudged each other, then ran off, flicking their lacrosse sticks to and fro even before they hit the field. Aria stared out the window. How ironic. This was the first time she’d ever been flirty with a boy in Rosewood—especially Noel—and she didn’t even care.
Through the trees, she could just make out the spire that belonged to the chapel at Hollis College, the small liberal arts school where her dad taught. On Hollis’s main street there was a bar, Snookers. She sat up straighter and checked her watch. Two-thirty. It might be open. She could go have a beer or two and find her own fun.
And hey, maybe beer goggles could make even Rosewood boys look good.
Where Reykjavík’s bars smelled like freshly brewed lager, old wood, and French cigarettes, Snookers smelled like a mixture of dead bodies, festering hot dogs, and sweat. And Snookers, like everything else in Rosewood, carried memories: One Friday night, Alison DiLaurentis had dared Aria to go into Snookers and order a screaming orgasm. Aria had waited in line behind a bunch of preppie college boys, and when the bouncer at the door wouldn’t let her in, she cried, “But my screaming orgasm is in there!” Then she realized what she’d said and fled back to her friends, who were crouching behind a car in the parking lot. They all laughed so hard they got the hiccups.
“Amstel,” she said to the bartender after crossing through the glass-paneled front doors—apparently there was no need for bouncers at two-thirty on a Saturday. The bartender looked at her questioningly but then set a pint in front of her and turned away. Aria took a big sip. It tasted bland and watery. She spit it back into the glass.
“You all right there?”
Aria turned. Three stools down was a guy with messy, blondish hair and ice-blue, Siberian husky eyes. He was nursing something in a little tumbler.
Aria frowned. “Yeah, I forgot how beer tastes here. I’ve been in Europe for two years. Beer’s better there.”
“Europe?” The guy smiled. He had a very cute smile. “Where?”
Aria smiled back. “Iceland.”
His eyes brightened. “I once spent a few nights in Reykjavík on my way to Amsterdam. There was this huge, awesome party in the harbor.”
Aria cupped her hands around her pint glass. “Yeah,” she said, smiling, “they have the best parties there.”
“Were you there for the northern lights?”
“Of course,” Aria replied. “And the midnight sun. We had these awesome raves in the summer…with the best music.” She looked at his glass. “What are you drinking?”
“Scotch,” he said, already signaling to the bartender. “Want one?”
She nodded. The guy moved three stools down next to her. He had nice hands with long fingers and slightly ragged fingernails. He wore a small button on his corduroy jacket that said, SMART WOMEN VOTE!
“So you lived in Iceland?” He smiled again. “Like for a junior year abroad?”
“Well, no,” Aria said. The bartender set the Scotch down in front of her. She took a big, beer-size gulp. Her throat and chest immediately sizzled. “I was in Iceland because…”
She stopped herself. “Yeah, it was my, uh, year abroad.” Let him think what he wanted.
“Cool.” He nodded. “Where were you before that?”
She shrugged. “Um…back here in Rosewood.” She smiled and quickly added, “But I liked it over there so much better.”
He nodded. “I was really depressed to come back to the States after Amsterdam.”
“I cried the whole way home,” Aria admitted, feeling like herself—her new, improved Icelandic Aria self—for the first time since she’d been back. Not only was she talking to a cute, smart guy about Europe, but this might be the only guy in Rosewood who didn’t know her as Rosewood Aria—the weirdo friend of the pretty girl who vanished. “So, do you go to school here?” she asked.
“Just graduated.” He wiped his mouth off with a napkin and lit a Camel. He offered her one from the pack, but she shook her head. “I’m gonna do some teaching.”
Aria took another sip of the Scotch and realized she’d finished it. Wow. “I’d like to teach, I think. Once I finish school. Either that or write plays.”
“Yeah? Plays? What’s your major?”
“Um, English?” The bartender set another Scotch in front of her.
“That’s what I’m teaching!” the guy said. As he said it, he put his hand on Aria’s knee. Aria was so surprised she flinched and nearly knocked over her drink. He pulled his hand away. She blushed.
“Sorry,” he said, a little sheepishly. “I’m Ezra, by the way.”
“Aria.” Suddenly her name sounded hilarious. She giggled, off balance.
“Whoa.” Ezra grabbed her arm to steady her.
Three Scotches later, Aria and Ezra had established that they’d both met the same old sailor bartender at the Borg bar in Reykjavík, loved the way bathing in the mineral-rich blue lagoon hot springs made them feel sleepy, and actually liked the rotten-egg sulfur smell of the geothermal hot spring water. Ezra’s eyes were getting bluer by the second. Aria wanted to ask if he had a girlfriend. She felt warm inside, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just from the Scotch.
“I kind of have to go to the bathroom,” Aria said woozily.
Ezra smiled. “Can I come?”
Well, that answered the girlfriend question.
“I mean, uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Was that too forward of me?” he asked, looking up from under his knitted eyebrows.
Her brain buzzed. Hooking up with strangers wasn’t really her thing, at least not in America. But hadn’t she said she wanted to be Icelandic Aria?
She stood up and took his hand. They stared at each other the whole way to Snookers’ women’s bathroom. There was toilet paper all over the floor and it smelled even worse than the rest of the bar, but Aria didn’t care. As Ezra hoisted her onto the sink and she wrapped her legs around his waist, all she could smell was his scent—a combination of Scotch, cinnamon, and sweat—and nothing had ever smelled sweeter.
As they said in Finland or wherever, ja.
3
HANNA’S FIRST TOGGLE
“And apparently they were having sex in Bethany’s parents’ bedroom!”
Hanna Marin stared at her best friend, Mona Vanderwaal, across the table. It was two days before school started and they were sitting in the King James Mall’s terraced French-inspired café, Rive Gauche, drinking red wine, comparing Vogue to Teen Vogue, and gossiping. Mona always knew the best dirt on people. Hanna took another sip of wine and noticed a fortysomething guy staring lecherously at them. A regular Humbert Humbert, Hanna thought, but didn’t say out loud. Mona wouldn’t get the literary reference, but just because Hanna was the most sought-after girl at Rosewood Day didn’t mean she was above sampling the books on Rosewood Day’s recommended summer reading list now and then, especially when she was lying out next to her pool with nothing to do. Besides Lolita looked deliciously dirty.
Mona swiveled around to see who Hanna was looking at. Her lips twisted up into a naughty smile. “We should flash him.”
“Count of three?” Hanna’s amber eyes widened.
Mona nodded. On three, the girls slowly pulled up the hems of their already sky-high minis, revealing their panties. Humbert’s eyes boggled and he knocked his glass of pinot noir into the crotch of his khakis. “Shit!” he yelled before he shot off to the bathroom.
“Nice,” Mona said. They threw their napkins on their uneaten salads and stood to leave.
They’d become friends the summer between eighth and ninth grade, when they both got cut from Rosewood’s freshman cheerleading tryouts. Vowing to make the squad the following year, they decided to lose tons of weight—so they could be the cute, perky girls that the boys tossed in the air. But once they got skinny and gorgeous, they decided cheerleading was passé and the cheerleaders were losers, so they never bothered trying out for the team again.
Since then, Hanna and Mona shared everything—well, almost everything. Hanna hadn’t told Mona how she’d lost weight so quickly—it was too gross to talk about. While hard-core dieting was sexy and admirable, there was nothing, nothing glamorous about eating a ton of fatty, greasy, preferably cheese-filled crap and then puking it all up. But Hanna was over that bad little habit by now, so it didn’t really matter.
“You know that guy had a boner,” Mona whispered, gathering the magazines into a pile. “What’s Sean gonna think?”
“He’ll laugh,” Hanna said.
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
Hanna shrugged. “He might.”
Mona snorted. “Yeah, flashing strangers goes well with a virginity pledge.”
Hanna looked down at her Michael Kors purple wedges. The virginity pledge. Hanna’s incredibly popular, extraordinarily hot boyfriend, Sean Ackard—the boy she’d lusted over since seventh grade—was behaving a little strangely lately. He’d always been Mr. All-American Boy Scout—as in volunteering at the old-age home and serving turkey to the homeless on Thanksgiving—but last night, when Hanna, Sean, Mona, and a bunch of other kids were hanging out in Jim Freed’s cedar hot tub, covertly drinking Coronas, Sean had taken All-American Boy Scout up a notch. He’d announced, a little proudly, that he’d signed a virginity “promise” and vowed not to have sex before marriage. Everyone, Hanna included, had been too stunned to respond.
“He’s not serious,” Hanna said confidently. How could he be? A bunch of kids signed the promise; Hanna figured it was just a passing trend, like those Lance Armstrong bracelets or Yogalates.
“You think?” Mona smirked, brushing her long bangs out of her eyes. “Let’s see what happens at Noel’s party next Friday.”
Hanna gritted her teeth. It seemed like Mona was laughing at her. “I want to go shopping,” she said, standing up.
