“Okay,” Lucas said, holding up his hands in surrender.
“Okay,” Hanna stated again, squaring her shoulders. But when she closed her eyes, she saw herself in her Prius again. The Hollis Planetarium flag flapped behind her. Her eyes stung from crying. Something—maybe her BlackBerry—beeped at the bottom of her bag. Hanna tried to grab hold of the memory, but it was useless.
She could feel warmth radiating off Lucas’s body, he was sitting so close. He didn’t smell like cologne or fancy deodorant or other weird things boys sprayed on themselves, but just kind of like skin and toothpaste. If only they lived in a world where Hanna could have both things—Lucas and Mona. But she knew that if she wanted to stay who she was, that wasn’t possible.
Hanna reached out and grabbed Lucas’s hand. A sob welled up in her throat, for reasons she couldn’t explain or even understand completely. As she moved forward to kiss him, she tried yet again to access her memory of what was surely the night of her accident. But, as usual, there was nothing there.
24
SPENCER GETS THE GUILLOTINE
Friday morning, Spencer stepped into Daniel on Sixty-fifth Street between Madison and Park, a quiet, well-maintained block somewhere between Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side. It looked like she’d stepped onto the set of Marie Antoinette. The restaurant’s walls were made of carved marble, which reminded Spencer of creamy white chocolate. Luxurious dark red curtains billowed, and small, elegantly sculpted topiaries lined the entrance to the main dining room. Spencer decided that when she earned her millions, she would design her house to look exactly like this.
Her entire family was right behind her, Melissa and Ian included. “Do you have all your notes?” her mother murmured, fiddling with one of the buttons on her pink houndstooth Chanel suit—she was dressed as if she were going to be interviewed. Spencer nodded. Not only did she have them, she’d alphabetized them.
Spencer tried to quell the churning feelings in her stomach, although the smell of scrambled eggs and truffle oil wafting in from the dining room wasn’t helping. There was a sign that said GOLDEN ORCHID INTERVIEW CHECK-IN over the hostess station. “Spencer Hastings,” she said to a shiny-haired Parker Posey look-alike who was taking names.
The girl found Spencer on the list, smiled, and handed her a laminated name tag. “You’re at table six,” she said, gesturing toward the dining room entrance. Spencer saw bustling waiters, giant flower arrangements, and a few adults milling about, chatting and drinking coffee. “We’ll call you when we’re ready,” the check-in girl assured her.
Melissa and Ian examined a marble statuette near the bar. Spencer’s father had migrated out to the street and was talking to someone on his cell phone. Her mom was on her cell phone, too, half-concealed behind one of Daniel’s bloodred curtains. Spencer heard her say, “So we’re booked? Well, fantastic. She’ll love it.”
I’ll love what? Spencer wanted to ask. But she wondered if her mom wanted to keep it a surprise until after Spencer won.
Melissa slipped off to the bathroom, and Ian plopped down on the chaise beside Spencer. “Excited?” He grinned. “You should be. This is huge.”
Spencer wished that just once, Ian would smell like rotting vegetables or dog breath—it would make it much easier to be near him. “You didn’t tell Melissa you were in my room last night, did you?” she whispered.
Ian’s face became businesslike. “Of course not.”
“And she didn’t seem suspicious or anything?”
Ian put on aviator sunglasses, concealing his eyes. “Melissa isn’t that scary, you know. She’s not going to bite you.”
Spencer clamped her mouth shut. These days, it seemed that Melissa wasn’t just going to bite her—she was going to give Spencer rabies. “Just don’t say anything,” she growled.
“Spencer Hastings?” the girl at the desk called. “They’re ready for you.”
When Spencer stood up, her parents gathered around her like bees swarming a hive. “Don’t forget about the time you played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with the raging stomach flu,” Mrs. Hastings whispered.
“Don’t forget to mention that I know Donald Trump,” her father added.
Spencer frowned. “You do?”
Her father nodded. “We sat next to each other at Cipriani once and exchanged business cards.”
Spencer breathed yoga fire breaths as covertly as she could.
Table six was a small, intimate nook at the back of the restaurant. Three adults had already gathered there, sipping coffee and picking at croissants. When they saw Spencer, they all stood. “Welcome,” a balding, baby-faced man said. “Jeffrey Love. Golden Orchid ’87. I have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Amanda Reed.” A tall, wispy woman shook Spencer’s hand. “Golden Orchid 1984. I’m editor in chief at Barron’s.”
“Quentin Hughes.” A black man in a beautiful Turnbull & Asser button-down nodded at her. “Nineteen-ninety. I’m a managing director at Goldman Sachs.”
“Spencer Hastings.” Spencer tried to sit down as daintily as possible.
“You’re the one who wrote the ‘Invisible Hand’ essay.” Amanda Reed beamed, settling back down in her chair.
“We were all very impressed with it,” Quentin Hughes murmured.
Spencer folded and unfolded her white cloth napkin. Naturally, everyone at this table worked in finance. If only they could’ve thrown her an art historian, or a biologist, or a documentary filmmaker, someone she could talk to about something else. She tried to picture her interviewers in their underwear. She tried to picture her labradoodles, Rufus and Beatrice, humping their legs. Then she imagined telling them the truth about all this: that she didn’t understand economics, that she really hated it, and that she’d stolen her sister’s paper for fear of messing up her 4.0 average.
At first, the interviewers asked Spencer basic questions—about where she went to school, what she liked to do, and what her volunteering and leadership experiences were. Spencer breezed through the questions, the interviewers smiling, nodding, and jotting notes down in their little leather Golden Orchid notebooks. She told them about her part in The Tempest, how she was the yearbook editor, and how she’d organized an ecology trip to Costa Rica her sophomore year. After a few minutes, she sat back and thought, This is okay. This is really okay.
And then her cell phone beeped.
The interviewers looked up, their stride broken. “You were supposed to turn off your phone before you came in here,” Amanda said sternly.
“I’m sorry, I thought I did.” Spencer fumbled in her bag, reaching to turn the phone to silent. Then, the preview screen caught her eye. She had received an IM from someone called AAAAAA.
AAAAAA: Helpful hint to the not-so-wise: You’re not fooling anyone. The judges can see you’re faker than a knockoff Vuitton.
P.S. She did it, you know. And she won’t think twice about doing it to you.
Spencer quickly shut off her phone, biting hard on her lip. She did it, you know. Was A suggesting what Spencer thought A was suggesting?
When she looked again at her interviewers, they seemed like completely different people—hunched and serious, ready to get down to the real questions. Spencer started folding the napkin again. They don’t know I’m fake, she told herself.