Lucas raised his hands in surrender. “Absolutely not. Just as…friends.”
Hanna swallowed. She needed a friend right now. Bad. “All right,” she said quietly, feeling too exhausted to argue. Then, with a sigh, she pushed out of the boys’ Old Faithful bathroom and headed for her next class. Strangely, she felt a teensy bit better.
But as she turned the corner to the foreign languages wing, Hanna reached around to put her blazer back on and felt something sticking to the back. She pulled off a wrinkled piece of paper. Feel sorry for me, it said, in spiky pink handwriting.
Hanna looked around at the passing students, but no one was paying attention. How long had she been walking around with the note on her? Who could have done this? It could have been anyone. She’d been in that crowd during the fire drill. Everyone had been there.
Hanna looked down at the paper again and turned it over in her hands. On the other side was a typewritten note. Hanna got that familiar sinking feeling in her stomach.
Hanna: Remember when you saw Mona leaving the Bill Beach plastic surgery clinic? Hello, lipo!! But shh! You didn’t hear it from me.
—A
20
LIFE IMITATES ART
Thursday afternoon at lunch, Aria turned the corner to Rosewood Day’s administrative wing. All the teachers had offices here and often tutored or advised students during their lunch periods.
Aria stopped at Ezra’s closed office door. It had changed a lot since the beginning of the year. He’d installed a white board, and it was chock-full of blue-inked notes from students. Mr. Fitz—Want to talk about my Fitzgerald report. I’ll stop by after school.—Kelly. There was a Hamlet quote at the bottom: O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! Below the marker board was a cutout of a New Yorker cartoon of a dog on a therapist’s couch. And on the doorknob was a DO NOT DISTURB sign from a Day’s Inn; Ezra had turned it to the DISTURB side: MAID,
PLEASE CLEAN UP THIS ROOM.
Aria tentatively knocked. “Come in,” she heard him say from the other side. She’d expected Ezra to be with another student—from snippets she heard in class, she’d thought his lunchtime office hours were always busy—but here he was alone, with a Happy Meal box on his desk. The room smelled like McNuggets.
“Aria!” Ezra exclaimed, raising an eyebrow. “This is a surprise. Sit down.”
She plopped down on Ezra’s scratchy tweed couch—the same kind that was in the Rosewood Day headmaster’s office. She pointed at his desk. “Happy Meal?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I like the toys.” He held up a car from some kids’ movie. “McNugget?” He proffered the box. “I got barbecue.”
She waved him away. “I don’t eat meat.”
“That’s right.” He ate a fry, his eyes locked with hers. “I forgot.”
Aria felt a swoosh of something—a mix of intimacy and discomfort. Ezra looked away, probably feeling it too. She looked around on his desk. It was littered with stacks of paper, a mini zen rock garden, and about a thousand books.
“So…” Ezra wiped his mouth with a napkin, not noticing Aria’s expression. “What can I do for you?”
Aria leaned her elbow on the couch’s arm. “Well, I’m wondering if I can have an extension on the Scarlet Letter essay that’s due tomorrow.”
He set down his soda. “Really? I’m surprised. You’re never late with anything.”
“I know,” she mumbled sheepishly. But the Ackards’ house was not conducive to studying. One, it was too quiet—Aria was used to studying while simultaneously listening to music, the TV, and Mike yammering on the phone in the next room. Two, it was hard to concentrate when she felt like someone was…watching her. “But it’s not a big deal,” she went on. “All I need is this weekend.”
Ezra scratched his head. “Well…I haven’t set a policy on extensions yet. But all right. Just this once. Next time, I’m going to have to mark you down a grade.”
She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I’m not going to make a habit of it.”
“Good. So, what, are you not liking the book? Or haven’t you started it?”
“I finished it today. But I hated it. I hated Hester Prynne.”
“Why?”
Aria fiddled with the buckle on her Urban Outfitters ivory suede flats. “She assumes her husband’s lost at sea, and so she goes and has an affair,” she muttered.
Ezra leaned forward on his elbow, looking amused. “But her husband isn’t a very good man, either. That’s what makes it complicated.”
Aria stared at the books that were crammed into Ezra’s cramped, wooden bookshelves. War and Peace. Gravity’s Rainbow. An extensive collection of e. e. cummings and Rilke poetry, and not one but two copies of No Exit. There was the Edgar Allan Poe collection Sean hadn’t read. All of the books looked creased and worn from reading and rereading. “But I couldn’t see past what Hester did,” Aria said quietly. “She cheated.”
“But we’re supposed to feel for her struggle, and how society has branded her, and how she strives to forge her own identity and not allow anyone to create one for her.”
“I hated her, okay?” Aria exploded. “And I’ll never forgive her!”
She covered her face with her hands. Tears spilled down her cheeks. When she shut her eyes, she pictured Byron and Meredith as the book’s illicit lovers, Ella as Hester’s vengeful, wronged husband. But if life really imitated art, Byron and Meredith should be suffering…not Aria. She’d tried to call her house last night, but as soon as Ella picked up and heard Aria’s voice on the other end, she hung up. When Aria waved at Mike across the gym, Mike had quickly spun on his heel and marched back into the locker room. No one was on her side.