Perfect by Sara Shepard

his stepdaughter. Maybe he hadn’t called Hanna back because Hanna was one daughter too many.
    Whatever, Hanna told herself, taking off her blazer and straightening her sheer pink Rebecca Taylor camisole. Kate was a prissy bitch—if her father chose Kate over her, then they deserved each other.
    When she looked through the French doors to the back porch, Spencer, Aria, and Emily were indeed sitting around the giant teak patio table, the light from the stained-glass window sparkling against their cheeks. Officer Wilden, the newest member of Rosewood’s police force and Ms. Marin’s newest boyfriend, stood near the Weber grill.
    It was surreal to see her three ex–best friends here. The last time they’d sat on Hanna’s back porch had been at the end of seventh grade—and Hanna had been the dorkiest and ugliest of the group. But now, Emily’s shoulders had broadened and her hair had a slight greenish tint. Spencer looked stressed and constipated. And Aria was a zombie, with her black hair and pale skin. If Hanna was a couture Proenza Schouler, then Aria was a pilly, ill-fitting sweatshirt dress from the Target line.
    Hanna took a deep breath and pushed through the French doors. Wilden turned around. There was a serious look on his face. The tiniest bit of a black tattoo peeked out from under the collar of his cop uniform. It still amazed Hanna that Wilden, a former Rosewood Day badass, had gone into law enforcement. “Hanna. Have a seat.”
    Hanna scraped a chair back from the table and slumped down next to Spencer. “Is this going to take long?” She examined her pink diamond-encrusted Dior watch. “I’m late for something.”
    “Not if we get started,” Wilden looked around at all of them. Spencer stared at her fingernails, Aria chomped on her gum with her eyes freakishly closed, and Emily fixated on the citronella candle in the middle of the table, like she was about to cry.
    “First thing,” Wilden said. “Someone has leaked a homemade video of you girls to the press.” He glanced at Aria. “It was one of the videos you gave the Rosewood PD years ago. So you might see it on TV—all the news channels got it. We’re looking for whoever leaked it—and they’ll be punished. I wanted to let you girls know first.”
    “Which video is it?” Aria asked.
    “Something about text messages?” he answered.
    Hanna sat back, trying to remember which video it could be—there were so many. Aria used to be obsessive about videotaping them. Hanna had always tried her hardest to duck out of every shot, because for her, the camera added not ten pounds but twenty .
    Wilden cracked his knuckles and fiddled with a phallic-looking pepper grinder that sat in the center of the table. Some pepper spilled on the tablecloth, and the air immediately smelled spicy. “The other thing I want to talk about is Alison herself. We have reason to believe that Alison’s killer might be someone from Rosewood. Someone who possibly still lives here today…and that person may still be dangerous.”
    Everyone drew in a breath.
    “We’re looking at everything with a fresh eye,” Wilden went on, rising from the table and strolling around with his hands clasped behind his back. He’d probably seen someone on CSI do that and thought it was cool. “We’re trying to reconstruct Alison’s life right before she went missing. We want to start with the people who knew her best.”
    Just then, Hanna’s BlackBerry buzzed. She pulled it out of her purse. Mona.
    “Mon,” Hanna answered quietly, getting up from her chair and wandering to the far side of the porch by her mother’s rosebushes. “I’m going to be a couple minutes late.”
    “Bitch,” Mona teased. “That sucks. I’m already at our table at Rive Gauche.”
    “Hanna,” Wilden called gruffly. “Can you please call whoever that is back?”
    At the same time, Aria sneezed. “Bless you,” Emily said.
    “Where are you?” Mona sounded suspicious. “Are you with