Perfect (Book Two)

Twelve: Next Time, Stash Emergency Cover-Up In Your Purse.

"¿Cuándo es?" a voice said in her ear. "What time is it? time for Spencer to die!"

Spencer shot up. The dark, familiar figure that had been looming over her face had vanished. Instead, she was in a clean, white bedroom. There were Rembrandt etchings and a poster of the human musculature system on the bedroom wall. On TV, Elmo was teaching kids how to tell time in Spanish. The cable box said 6:04, and she assumed it was A.M.: out of the window, she saw that the sun was just coming up, and she could smell fresh bagels and scrambled eggs wafting up from the street.

She looked next to her, and it all made sense. Wren slept on his back, one arm thrown over his face, his chest bare. Wren's father was Korean and his mother was British, so his skin was this perfect, golden shade. There was a scar above his lip; he had freckles across his nose, and shaggy blue-black hair, and smelled like Adidas deodorant and Tide. The thick silver ring he wore on his right pointer finger glinted in the morning sun. He pulled his arm off his face and opened his gorgeous almond-shaped eyes.

"Hey." He slowly grabbed Spencer around her waist and pulled her toward him.

"Hey," she whispered, hanging back. She would still hear the voice from her dream: It's time for Spencer to die! It was Toby's voice.

Wren frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Spencer said quietly. She pressed her fingers to the base of her neck and felt her pulse race. "Just...bad dream."

"You want to share?"

Spencer hesitated. She wish she could. Then she shook her head.

"Well, then. C'mere."

They spent a few minutes kissing, and Spencer got a relieved, grateful rush. Everything was going to be all right. She was safe.

This was the first time Spencer had slept—and stayed over—in a guy's bed. Last night, she'd sped into Philly, parked on the street, and hadn't even bothered with the Club; her parents were probably planning on repossessing her car, anyway. She and Wren had fallen into bed immediately and hadn't gotten up since except to answer the door or the Chinese takeout delivery boy. Later on, she called and left a message on her parents' machine that she was staying the night at her hockey friend Kirsten's house. She felt silly, trying to be all responsible when she was really being so irresponsible, but whatever.

For the first time since her first A note, she'd slept like a baby. It was partly because she was in Philadelphia and not Rosewood, next door to Toby, but it was also because of Wren. Because they went to sleep, they'd talked about Ali—their friendship, what it had been like when Ali went missing, that someone had killed her—for an hour. He'd also let her choose the "crickets chirping" sound on the sound machine, even though it was his second—least favorite noise, after "babbling brook."

Spencer began kissing him more forcefully now, and slid out of his oversize Penn T-shirt, which she was wearing as a nightgown. Wren traced her naked collarbone, then pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. "Do you want to...?" he asked.

"I think so," Spencer whispered.

"Are you sure?"

"Uh-huh." She wriggled out o her underwear. Wren pulled his shirt over his head. Spencer's heart pounded. She was a virgin, and was a discriminating about sex as she was about everything else in her life—she had to do it with the perfect person.

But Wren was the right person. She knew she was passing the Point of No Return—if her parents found out, they'd never pay for anything ever, ever, ever again. Or pay attention to her. Or send her to college. Or feed her, possibly. So what? Wren made her feel safe.