Hanna paid for a day pass and walked into the main exercise room, which consisted of racks of free weights, lines of bench-press machines, and a long bank of mirrors. There was the ear-splitting clang of metal weights hitting steel bars. When Hanna looked in the corner by the windows, her heart began to pound. James Freed and Mason Byers were doing pull-ups on side-by-side machines. Standing next to them, dressed in an old Phillies T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, staring dreamily at something across the room, was Mike.
Hanna swiveled around and followed Mike’s gaze to a large exercise classroom. On the front of the door was a sign that said POLE DANCING, 6:30. A bunch of metal poles had been spaced evenly in front of the mirrors. A few middle-aged women dressed in tight-fitting leotards, flirty miniskirts, and wobbly high heels stood around the room. Positioned in the very center, balanced perfectly in pointy stripper heels, was Colleen.
Mike’s new girlfriend raked her fingers through her hair. It didn’t seem quite so mousy brown today, and her body looked both curvy and lithe at the same time in tight spandex shorts and a yellow bra top. When Colleen noticed Mike’s reflection, she turned around, waved, and blew him a kiss. Mike blew one back.
Hanna balled up her fists, thinking of the two of them in bed together.
She stormed to the dressing room, dropped her duffel on the floor, and stepped into a tiger-printed, stripper-style crop top she’d found at the mall earlier that afternoon. After pouring herself into it—she’d bought a size smaller than normal for maximum cle**age—she checked herself out in the mirror. Her hair was full and wild, thanks to tons of hairspray. She had on triple the amount of makeup she normally wore, though she’d stopped before applying false eyelashes. And then there was the pièce de résistance: a pair of incredibly high, incredibly spiky, silver Jimmy Choo sandals. She’d only worn them once before, to last year’s prom; Mike had thought they were so sexy he even made her wear them to the after-party with her jeans. Hanna slipped them on her feet and pivoted back and forth. They looked perfect. She just hoped she could pole dance in them.
Her cell phone buzzed, and she eyed it nervously. One new text message. Luckily, it was only from Kate, asking if she’d be willing to help her hand out fliers at a 10k race around Rosewood Saturday morning. Sure, Hanna wrote back, trying to ignore her shaking hands as she typed. Now that Spencer and Emily had received new notes from A, she’d been waiting all day for hers.
Could Gayle be A? Hanna hadn’t met the woman over the summer—she only heard about her when Emily reached out shortly before her C-section—but the phone messages Gayle had left the night they sneaked Emily and the baby out of the hospital had stayed with her. They weren’t the desperate, sobbing voicemails most people would leave if they thought they might not get the child they’d hoped and prayed for—they were steely and enraged. Gayle was not the kind of person you crossed, and now she was knee-deep in Mr. Marin’s campaign.
That morning at breakfast, Hanna had sat down next to her dad at the table. “How do you know Gayle? Are you old friends?”
Mr. Marin continued to butter his toast. “I actually didn’t know her until about a week ago. She called me up to say she’d recently moved to Pennsylvania and really liked my platform. The amount of money she’s promised is astounding.”
“You didn’t do a background check on her? What if she’s, I don’t know, a Satan worshipper?” Hanna’s face had felt hot. Or a crazy person who’s stalking your daughter?
Her father gave her a curious look. “Gayle’s husband just gave a substantial donation to Princeton to build a new cancer research lab. I don’t know too many Satan worshippers who would do that.”
Discouraged, Hanna had gone upstairs and Googled Gayle’s name, but nothing damning came up. She was influential in countless charities in New Jersey, and she’d participated in a dressage competition at the Devon Horse Show ten years ago. Then again, what would come up? It wasn’t as if Gayle would keep a blog about how she was systematically torturing four high-school girls and calling herself A.
The door to the locker room squeaked open and a buff, sweaty woman strutted in. Hanna stuffed her duffel in a locker, spun the combination lock, and tottered toward the fitness classroom. Mason and James stopped their pull-ups as she passed. They nudged Mike. Hanna pretended not to notice as he turned and looked, rocking her hips back and forth and praying that her butt looked amazing.
“Welcome!” A woman in a skimpy black leotard and tights and tall eighties bangs waved as Hanna walked through the door. “You’re new, right? I’m Trixie.” The instructor gestured to a spare pole in the center of the room, right next to Colleen. “That pole has got your name on it.”
Hanna sauntered up to it and shot Colleen a smile. “Oh, hey!” she chirped in a mock-surprised voice, as though their meeting was completely by accident and Hanna hadn’t strategically planned this out from the moment she’d heard the boys talking about it in the locker room at school.
“Hanna?” Colleen looked Hanna up and down. “Omigod! How fun! I didn’t know you pole danced.”
“It’s not like it’s hard,” Hanna sniffed, summoning her inner Ali. She checked out her reflection in the mirror. Her hips were thinner than Colleen’s, but Colleen had bigger boobs.
“Well, you’re going to love this class,” Colleen said. “Of course, if you pole dance all the time, you’ll probably find it really easy. I bet you’re really good.” She leaned in closer. “And we’re cool about Mike, right?”