Hanna swiveled around and stared out the window. All kinds of emotions knifed through her. Relief, definitely—at least Madison would get help. But the regret was like a vise around her throat. Had moving Madison made her worse? What had just happened?
A low sob burst from her lips. She put her head in her hands and felt the tears come.
Emily started crying, too. So did Aria.
“Stop it, guys,” Spencer snapped, though tears were running down her cheeks as well. “The EMTs will take care of her. She’s probably fine.”
“But what if she’s not fine?” Aria cried. “What if we paralyzed her?”
“I was just trying to do the right thing by driving her home!” Hanna moaned.
“We know.” Emily hugged her tight. “We know.”
As the Subaru wound around the hairpin turns, there was something else everyone wanted to say but didn’t dare: At least no one will know about this. The accident had happened on a desolate stretch of road. They’d gotten away from the accident before anyone had seen.
They were safe.
The girls waited for the accident to hit the news: CAR CAREENS OFF EMBANKMENT ON REEDS LANE, they imagined the headlines would read. The story might recount the girl’s high blood-alcohol level and how badly the car had been smashed up. But what else would the reporters say? What if Madison was paralyzed? What if she remembered she hadn’t been driving, or even remembered the girls moving her?
All the next day, each of them sat by the TV, checked their phones for breaking news, and kept the radio on low, on alert. But no news came.
A day passed, and then another. Still nothing. It was like the crash had never happened. On the third morning, Hanna got in her car and drove slowly down Reeds Lane, wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing. But no, there was the bent guardrail. There were the skid marks in the mud and a few shards of glass on the forest floor.
“Maybe her family was really embarrassed about what happened and made a deal with the cops to keep it quiet,” Spencer suggested when Hanna called her to express her uneasiness at the lack of news. “Remember Nadine Rupert, Melissa’s friend? One night, when they were seniors, Nadine got drunk and wrapped her car around a tree. She was fine, but her family begged the cops to keep the DUI a secret, and they did. Nadine was out of school for a month getting rehab, but she told everyone she was at a spa retreat instead. Later, though, she got drunk again and told Melissa the truth.”
“I just wish I knew if she’s hurt,” Hanna said in a small voice.
“I know.” Spencer sounded worried. “Let’s call the hospital.”
They did, on three-way, but since Hanna didn’t know Madison’s last name, the nurses couldn’t give them any information. Hanna hung up the phone, staring into space. Then she went on the website for Penn State—which was the school Madison said she attended—and did a search for her, hoping she’d find her last name that way. But there were quite a few Madisons in the sophomore class, way too many to go through one by one.
Would she feel better if she came forward and confessed? But even if she explained that another car had come out of nowhere, knocking her off the road, no one would believe her—they’d assume she’d been as wasted as Madison. The cops wouldn’t congratulate her for being honest, either—they’d haul her off to jail. They’d also realize that she’d needed help moving Madison and had had to recruit her friends. They’d be in trouble, too.
Stop thinking about it, Hanna decided resolutely. Her family wanted to make it go away, and you should do the same. So she went to the mall. She tanned poolside at the country club. She avoided her stepsister, Kate, and was a bridesmaid in her father’s wedding to Isabel, wearing a hideous green dress. Eventually, she stopped thinking about Madison and the accident every second of the day. The crash hadn’t been her fault, after all, and Madison was probably fine. It wasn’t like she knew Madison, anyway. She’d probably never see her again.
Little did Hanna know that Madison was connected to someone they all knew very well—someone who hated them, in fact. And if that someone knew what they all had done, terrible things might happen. Acts of retribution. Revenge. Torture. That very person might take it upon himself—or herself—to become the very thing all four girls feared most.
A new—and far more frightening—A.
1
BEWARE, YE LIARS
On a blustery Monday morning in late March, Spencer Hastings stared into the vintage Louis Vuitton trunk on her queen-sized bed. It was packed full of things for her upcoming journey on the Rosewood Day Prep Eco Cruise to the Caribbean, a combination of class trip and environmental-science seminar. Using the trunk was a long-standing good-luck tradition: It had once belonged to Regina Hastings, Spencer’s great-great-grandmother. Regina had bought a first-class reservation on the Titanic but decided to stay in Southampton for a few extra weeks and take the next steamer out.
As Spencer tossed a third bottle of sunscreen onto the top of the pile, her phone let out a bloop. A text bubble appeared on the screen from Reefer Fredericks. Hey buddy, it said. What are you up to?
Spencer found Reefer’s number in her contacts list and dialed it. “I’m packing for the trip,” she said when he answered on the first ring. “You?”
“Just putting some last-minute things together,” Reefer answered. “But I’m bummed. I can’t find my Speedo.”
“Oh, please,” Spencer teased, curling a tendril of honey-blond hair around her finger. “You don’t own a Speedo.”