Friday morning, Spencer stepped into Daniel on Sixty-fifth Street between Madison and Park, a quiet, well-maintained block somewhere between Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side. It looked like she'd stepped onto the set of Marie Antoinette. The restaurant's walls were made of carved marble, which reminded Spencer of creamy white chocolate. Luxurious dark red curtains billowed, and small, elegantly sculpted topiaries lined the entrance to the main dining room. Spencer decided that when she earned her millions, she would design her house to look exactly like this.
Her entire family was right behind her, Melissa and Ian included. "Do you have all your notes?" her mother murmured, fiddling with one of the buttons on her pink houndstooth Chanel suit—she was dressed as if she were going to be interviewed. Spencer nodded. Not only did she have them, she'd alphabetized them.
Spencer tried to quell the churning feelings in her stomach, although the smell of scrambled eggs and truffle oil wafting in from the dining room wasn't helping. There was a sign that said Golden Orchid Interview Check-In over the hostess station. "Spencer Hastings," she said to a shiny-haired Parker Posey look-alike who was taking names.
The girl found Spencer on the list, smiled, and handed her a laminated name tag. "You're at table six," she said, gesturing toward the dining room entrance. Spencer saw bustling waiters, giant flower arrangements, and a few adults milling about, chatting and drinking coffee. "We'll call you when we're ready," the check-in girl assured her.
Melissa and Ian examined a marble statuette near the bar. Spencer's father had migrated out to the street and was talking to someone on his cell phone. Her mom was on her cell phone, too, half-concealed behind one of Daniel's bloodred curtains. Spencer heard her say, "So we're booked? Well, fantastic. She'll love it."
I'll love what? Spencer wanted to ask. But she wondered if her mom wanted to keep it a surprise until after Spencer won.
Melissa slipped off to the bathroom, and Ian plopped down on the chaise beside Spencer. "Excited?" He grinned. "You should be. This is huge."
Spencer wished that just once, Ian would smell like rotting vegetables or dog breath—it would make it much easier to be near him. "You didn't tell Melissa you were in my room last night, did you?" she whispered.
Ian's face became businesslike. "Of course not."
"And she didn't seem suspicious or anything?"
Ian put on aviator sunglasses, concealing his eyes. "Melissa isn't that scary. you know. She's not going to bite you."
Spencer clamped her mouth shut. These days, it seemed like Melissa wasn't just going to bite her—she was going to give Spencer rabies. "Just don't say anything," she growled.
"Spencer Hastings?" the girl at the desk called. "They're ready for you."
When Spencer stood up, her parents gathered around her like bees swarming a hive. "Don't forget about the time you played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with the raging stomach flu," Mrs. Hastings whispered.
"Don't forget to mention that I know Donald Trump," her father added.
Spencer frowned. "You do?"
Her father nodded. "We sat next to each other at Cipriani once and exchanged business cards."
Spencer breathed yoga fire breaths as covertly as she could.
Table six was a small, intimate nook at the back of the restaurant. Three adults had already gathered there, sipping coffee and picking at croissants. When they saw Spencer, they all stood. "Welcome," a balding, baby-faced man said. "Jeffrey Love. Golden Orchid '87. I have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange."
"Amanda Reed." A tall, wispy woman shook Spencer's hand. "Golden Orchid 1984. I'm editor in chief at Barron's."
"Quentin Hughes." A black man in a beautiful Turnbull & Asser button-down nodded at her. "Nineteen-ninety. I'm a managing director at Goldman Sachs."
"Spencer Hastings." Spencer tried to sit down as daintily as possible.
"You're the one who wrote the 'Invisible Hand' essay." Amanda Reed beamed, settling back down in her chair."
"We were all very impressed with it," Quentin Hughes murmured.
Spencer folded and unfolded her white cloth napkin. Naturally, everyone at this table worked in finance. If only they could've thrown her an art historian, or a biologist, or a documentary filmmaker, someone she could talk to about something else. She tried to picture her interviewers in their underwear. She tried to picture her labradoodles, Rufus and Beatrice, humping their legs. Then she imagined telling them the truth about all this: that she didn't understand economics, that she really hated it, and that she'd stolen her sister's paper for fear of messing up her 4.0 average.
At first, the interviewers asked Spencer basic questions—about where she went to school, what she liked to do, and what her volunteering and leadership experiences were. Spencer breezed through the questions, the interviewers smiling, nodding, and jotting notes down in their little leather Golden Orchid notebooks. She told them about her part in The Tempest, how she was the yearbook editor, and how she'd organized an ecology trip to Costa Rica her sophomore year. After a few minutes, she sat back and thought, This is okay. This is really okay.
And then her cell phone beeped.
The interviewers looked up, their stride broken. "You were supposed to turn off your phone before you came in here," Amanda said sternly.
"I'm sorry, I thought I did." Spencer fumbled in her bag, reaching to turn the phone to silent. Then, the preview screen caught her eye. She had received an IM from someone called AAAAA.
AAAAA: Helpful hint to the not-so-wise: You're not fooling anyone. The judges can see you're faker than a knockoff Vuitton.
P.S. She did it, you know. And she won't think twice about doing it to you.
Spencer quickly shut off her phone, biting hard on her lip. She did it, you know. Was A suggesting what Spencer thought A was suggesting?
When she looked again at her interviewers, they seemed like completely different—hunched and serious, ready to get down to the real questions. Spencer started folding the napkin again. They don't know I'm fake, she told herself.
Quentin folded his hands next to his plate. "Have you always been interested in economics, Miss Hastings?"
"Um, of course." Spencer's voice came out scratchy and dry. "I've always found…um…economics, money, all that, very fascinating."
"And whom do you consider to be your philosophical mentors?" Amanda asked.
Spencer brain felt hollowed out. Philosophical mentors? What the hell did that mean? Only one person came to mind. "Donald Trump?"
The interviewers sat stunned for a moment. Then Quentin began to laugh. Then Jeffrey, then Amanda. They were all smiling, so Spencer smiled, too. Until Jeffrey said, "You're kidding, right?"
Spencer blinked. "Of course I'm kidding." The interviewers laughed again. Spencer wanted so badly to rearrange the croissants in the middle of the table into a neater pyramid. She shut her eyes, trying to focus, but all she saw was the image of a plane falling from the sky, its nose and tail in flames. "But as far as inspirations…well, I have so many. It's hard to name just one," she sputtered.
The interviewers didn't look particularly impressed. "After college, what's your ideal first job?" Jeffrey asked.
Spencer spoke before thinking. "Working as a reporter at the New York Times."
The interviewers looked confused. "A reporter in the economics section, right?" Amanda qualified.
Spencer blinked. "I don't know. Maybe?"
She hadn't felt this awkward and nervous since…well, ever. Her interview notes remained in a neatly stacked pile in her hands. Her mind felt like a chalkboard erased clean. A peal of laughter floated over from table ten. Spencer looked over and saw the brunette girl from the W smiling easily, her interviewers happily smiling back. Beyond her was a wall of windows; outside, on the street, Spencer saw a girl looking in. It was…Melissa. She saw just standing there, staring blankly at her.
And she won't think twice about doing it to you.
"So." Amanda added more milk to her coffee. "What would you say is the most significant thing that's happened to you during your high school career?"
"Well…" Spencer's eyes flicked back to the window, but Melissa was gone. She took a nervous breath and tried to get a grip. Quentin's Rolex gleamed in the light of the chandelier. Someone had put on too much musky cologne. A French-looking waitress poured another round of coffee at table three. Spencer knew what the right answer was: competing in the econ math bowl in ninth grade. Summer interning on the options trading desk at the Philly branch of J. P. Morgan. Only, those weren't her accomplishments, they were Melissa's, this award's rightful winner. The words swelled on the tip of her tongue, but suddenly, something unexpected spilled out of her mouth instead.
"My best friend went missing in seventh grade," Spencer blurted out. "Alison DiLaurentis? You may have heard about it. For years, I had to live with the question of what happened to her, where she'd gone. This September, they found her body. She'd been murdered. I think my greatest achievement is that I've held it together. I don't know how any of us have done it, how we've gone to school and lived our lives and just kept going. She and I may have hated each other sometimes, but she meant everything to me."
Spencer shut her eyes, returning to the night Ali went missing, to when she had shoved Ali hard, and Ali slid backward. A horrible crack through the air. And suddenly, her memory opened an inch or two wider. She saw something else…something new. Just after she shoved Ali, she heard a small, almost girlish gasp. The gasp sounded close, as if whoever it was had been standing right behind her, breathing on her neck.
She did it, you know.
Spencer's eyes sprang open. Her judges seemed to be on pause. Quentin held a croissant an inch from his face. Amanda's head was cocked at an awkward angle. Jeffrey kept his napkin at his lips. Spencer wondered, suddenly, if she'd just voiced her newly recalled memory out loud.
"Well," Jeffrey said finally. "Thank you, Spencer."
Amanda stood, tossing her napkin on her plate. "This has been very interesting." Spencer was pretty sure that was shorthand for You have no chance of winning.
The other interviewers snaked away, as did most of the rest of the candidates. Quentin was the only one who remained sitting. He studied her carefully, a proud smile on his face. "You're a breath of fresh air, giving us an honest answer like that," he said in a low, confidential voice. "I've followed your friend's story for a while now. It's just awful. Do the police have any suspects?"
The air-conditioning vent far above Spencer's head showered cold air on her full force, and the image of Melissa beheading a Barbie doll popped into her mind. "They don't," she whispered.
But I might.