Then twigs cracked. Bushes rustled. Aria saw Jason’s black T-shirt and blond hair and held her breath. She’d fantasized about seeing Jason that day…and there he was. She didn’t know what made her eyes go to the piece of the flag hanging out of his pocket. When Jason saw what she was looking at, he shoved the piece at her, saying nothing.
One minute it was in my bag, the next minute it was gone, Ali had told them. Why had Jason taken it from Ali? Aria wanted to think it had been for a practical and ethical reason, not just to be mean. There was no way Jason abused Ali, as Jenna implied and as Emily wanted to believe. In fact, Jason had always seemed fiercely protective of Ali. He’d jumped out of nowhere to intervene when Ali and Ian were talking in the courtyard the day Time Capsule was announced. Even the day they’d tried to steal Ali’s flag and Emily had shushed them to listen to a fight taking place inside Ali’s house, Jason had stormed out moments later, upset about something. When Ali came out to talk to them, she still seemed worried, nervously peeking over her shoulder toward the house. If she’d had issues with Jason, wouldn’t she have been relieved that he was gone?
This morning, Spencer had said she wanted to steal Ali’s flag because she thought Ali had cheated her way to winning. Maybe Jason felt guilty about cheating too. Maybe he’d told Ali to keep quiet that he’d told her where he’d hidden his piece, and had gotten annoyed when he heard Ali bragging about it to everyone in the courtyard.
Aria crouched next to the shoe box, her body tingling. It had been so long since she’d looked at Ali’s piece of the Time Capsule flag, she’d nearly forgotten what Ali had drawn on it. The lid bent as she pulled it off. A cloud of dust dispersed into the air.
“Aria?” Byron’s voice floated from downstairs. “Come down for Meredith’s shower!”
Aria paused. The very edge of the shiny blue flag poked out from underneath a bunch of old papers. “I’m coming,” she called, a little relieved she’d been interrupted.
Meredith, Byron, a bunch of scruffy men Aria recognized as Byron’s colleagues at Hollis, and a few twentysomething girls in yoga pants or paint-spattered jeans were milling around in the living room. A French press coffeemaker, bottles of wine and sparkling water, and a large plate of cucumber-hummus sandwiches sat on the table, and there was a big pile of gifts next to the sofa. Then someone to Aria’s left coughed. Mike was sitting in the corner of the sectional, a pretty brunette by his side. Aria blinked, temporarily speechless. It was Hanna’s soon-to-be stepsister, Kate.
“Um, hi?” Aria said cautiously. Kate smiled smugly. Mike smiled even more smugly. He put his hand on Kate’s thigh, and Kate let him. Aria frowned, wondering if her brain had been damaged from the dust in her new attic bedroom.
Heels clacked down the foyer, and Aria turned just in time to see Hanna enter. She wore a green silk halter-neck dress with her decorated Time Capsule flag looped around her waist as a belt. She carried a box wrapped in stork-printed paper. Aria was about to say hello, but Hanna wasn’t looking in her direction. She was staring at Kate. Her mouth tightened. “Oh.”
“Hi, Hanna!” Kate waved. “Glad you made it!”
“You weren’t invited,” Hanna blurted.
“Yes, I was.” Kate’s smile didn’t falter.
A muscle beneath Hanna’s right eye twitched. A bloom of red traveled from her neck to her cheeks. Aria swiveled back and forth between the girls, feeling both confused and fascinated at the same time.
Meredith looked amused. “Mike, you brought two dates?”
“Hey, it’s a party,” Mike said, shrugging. “The more the merrier, right?”
“That’s what I say!” Kate crowed. When superthin Kate smiled a certain way, she reminded Aria of the screeching gibbon on her National Geographic Animals of the World poster that still hung on her old bedroom door. Hanna was definitely the prettier of the two.
Hanna rolled her shoulders back, strutted over to Meredith, and stuck out her hand. “Hanna Marin. I’m an old friend of the family.” She proffered her gift to Meredith, and Meredith put it in the pile with the other things. Hanna glowered at Kate, then settled on the other side of Mike, squishing in so that their butts shared a couch cushion.
Kate ogled Hanna’s Time Capsule flag belt. “What’s that thing?” She pointed at a black blob Hanna had drawn.
Hanna shot her a haughty look. “It’s a manga frog. Duh.”
Aria sat down on the rocker, overwhelmingly weirded out. She caught Hanna’s eye, pointed to her cell phone, and started typing Hanna a text—Hanna had reluctantly given Aria and the others the number to her iPhone that morning. What R U doing here?
Hanna’s iPhone beeped. She read the text, glanced at Aria, and typed. Seconds later, Aria’s phone buzzed. Y didn’t U tell us U were moving 4 drs down from Ian?
Aria opened up a reply text. Hanna couldn’t dodge the question that easily. I just found out myself, she wrote back. So do U like Mike?
Maybe, Hanna wrote. He’s the one guy you can’t steal from me.
Aria gritted her teeth. Hanna was referring to the time last fall when Aria had dated her ex, Sean Ackard. To this day, Hanna seemed certain that Aria had stolen Sean from her.
Meredith began unwrapping her large pile of gifts, displaying everything on the coffee table. So far, she’d received a bunch of baby toys, a receiving blanket, and a breast pump from Mike. When she got to a gift wrapped in striped paper, Kate sat up straighter. “Oh, that one’s mine!” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Hanna’s scowl deepened.