Perfect (Book Three)

One: Spencer's Hard Work Pays Off.

Spencer Hastings should have been sleeping at six-thirty on Monday morning. Instead, she was sitting in a therapist's blue-and green waiting room, feeling a little like she was trapped inside an aquarium. Her older sister, Melissa, was sitting on an emerald-colored chair opposite her. Melissa looked up from her Principles of Emerging Markets textbooks—she was in an MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania—and gave Spencer a motherly smile.

"I've felt so much clearer since I started seeing Dr. Evans," purred Melissa, whose appointment was right after Spencer's. "You're going to love her. She's incredible."

Of course she's incredible, Spencer thought nastily. Melissa would find anyone willing to listen to her for a whole uninterrupted hour amazing.

"But she might come on a little strong for you, Spence," Melissa warned, slapping her book closed. "She's going to tell you things about yourself you don't want to hear."

Spencer shifted her weight. "I'm not six. I can take criticism."

Melissa gave Spencer a tiny eyebrow-raise, clearly indicating that she wasn't so sure. Spencer hid behind her Philadelphia magazine, wondering again why she was there. Spencer's mother, Veronica, had booked her an appointment with a therapist—Melissa's therapist—after Spencer's old friend Alison DiLaurentis had been found dead and Toby Cavanaugh committed suicide. Spencer suspected the appointment was also meant to sort through why Spencer had hooked up with Melissa's boyfriend, Wren. Spencer was doing fine though. Really. And wasn't going to her worst enemy's therapist like going to an ugly girl's plastic surgeon? Spencer feared she'd probably come out of her very first shrink session with the mental-health equivalent of hideously lopsided fake boobs.

Just then, the office door swung open, and a petite blond woman wearing tortoiseshell glasses, a black tunic, and black pants poked her head out.

"Spencer?" the woman said. "I'm Dr. Evans. Come in."

Spencer strode into Dr. Evans's office, which was spare and bright and thankfully nothing like the waiting room. It contained a black leather couch and a gray suede chair. A large desk held a phone, a stack of manila folders, a chrome gooseneck lamp, and one of those weighted drinking-bird toys that Mr. Craft, the earth science teacher, loved. Dr. Evans settled into the suede chair and gestured for Spencer to sit on the couch.

"So," Dr. Evans said, once they were comfy, "I've heard a lot about you."

Spencer wrinkled her nose and glanced toward the waiting room. "From Melissa, I guess?"

"From your mom." Dr. Evans opened to the first page of a red notebook. "She says that you've had some turmoil in your life, especially lately."

Spencer fixed her gaze on the end table next to the couch. It held a candy dish, a box of Kleenex—of course—and one o those pegboard IQ games, the kind where you jumped the pegs over one another until there was only one peg missing. There used to be one of those in the DiLaurentis family den; she and Ali had solved it together, meaning they were both geniuses. "I think I'm coping," she muttered. "I'm not, like, suicidal."

"A close friend died. A neighbor, too. That must be hard."

Spencer let her head rest on the back of the couch and looked up. It looked like the bumpily plastered ceiling had acne. She probably needed to talk to someone—it wasn't like she could talk to her family about Ali, Toby, or the terrifying notes she'd been getting from the evil stalker who was known simply as A. And her old friends—they'd been avoiding her ever since she'd admitted that Toby had known all along that they'd blinded his stepsister, Jenna—a secret she'd kept from them for three long years.