Perfect (Book Three)

Twenty-Five: Special Delivery For Hanna Marin.

Friday evening, a pimply, over-gelled T-Mobile sales-person inspected Hanna's BlackBerry screen. "Your phone looks okay to me," he said. "And your battery is functioning."

"Well, you must not be looking hard enough," Hanna replied gruffly, leaning up against the store's glass counter. "What about the service? Is T-Mobile down?"

"No." The sales boy pointed to the bars in the BlackBerry's window. "See? Five bars. Looks great."

Hanna breathed forcefully through her nose. Something was going on with her BlackBerry. Her phone hadn't rung once all night. Mona might have ditched her, but Hanna refused to believe that everyone else would follow so quickly. And she thought A might text again, filling Hanna in with more information about Mona and her possible lipo, or explaining what it meant when A said that one of her friends had a big secret that had yet to be revealed.

"Do you just want to buy a new BlackBerry?" the sales guy asked.

"Yes," Hanna said sharply, conjuring up a voice that sounded surprisingly like her mother's. "One that works this time, please."

The sales guy looked tired. "I'm not going to be able to transfer over your information from this one, though. We don't do that at this location."

"It's fine," Hanna snapped. "I have a hard copy of everything at home."

The sales guy retrieved a new phone from the back, pulled it out of its Styrofoam bed, and started hitting some buttons. Hanna leaned on the counter and watched the shoppers stream through the King James Mall concourse, trying not to think about what she and Mona usually did on Friday nights. First, they'd buy a Happy Friday outfit to reward themselves for making it through another week; next, they'd hit a sushi place for the salmon platter; and then—Hanna's favorite part—they'd go home and gossip on Hanna's queen-size bed, laughing and making fun of the "Ouch! of the day" column in CosmoGirl!. Hanna had to admit that it was hard to talk to Mona about certain things—she'd sidestepped any emotional conversation about Sean because Mona thought he was gay, and they were never able to talk about Ali's disappearance because Hanna didn't want to dredge up bad memories about her old friends. In fact, the more she thought about it, she wondered what she and Mona did talk about. Boys? Clothes? Shoes? People they hated?

"It'll be a minute," the sales guy said, frowning and looking at something on his computer monitor. "For some reason, our network isn't responding."

Ha! Hanna thought. There was something wrong with the network.

Someone laughed as they entered T-Mobile, and Hanna looked up. She had no time to duck when she saw Mona walking in with Eric Kahn.

Mona's light blond hair stood out against her charcoal gray turtleneck sweater dress, black tights, and tall black boots. Hanna wished she could hide, but she didn't know where—the T-Mobile register counter was an island in the middle of the store. This stupid place didn't even have any aisles to sneak down or shelves to hide under, just four walls of cell phones and mobile devices.

Before she could do anything, Eric saw her. His eyes flashed with recognition, and he gave Hanna a nod. Hanna's limbs froze. Now she knew how a deer felt when it was face-to-face with an oncoming tractor-trailer.

Mona followed Eric's gaze. "Oh," she said flatly when her eyes met Hanna's.

Eric, who must have sensed girl trouble, shrugged and wandered to the back of the store. Hanna took a few steps toward Mona. "Hi."

Mona stared at a wall of phone headsets and car adapters. "Hey."

A long beat passed. Mona scratched the side of her nose. She had painted her nails with Chanel's limited edition La Vernis black lacquer—Hanna remembered the time they'd stolen two bottles from Sephora. The memory nearly brought tears to Hanna's eyes. Without Mona, Hanna felt like a great outfit without matching accessories, a screwdriver that was all orange juice and no vodka, an iPod without headphones. She just felt wrong. Hanna thought about the time in the summer after eighth grade when she'd tagged along with her mom on a work trip. Hanna's cell didn't get service there, and when she came back, there had been twenty voice mails from Mona. "It felt weird not talking to you every day, so I decided to tell you everything in messages instead," Mona had said.