Four: Does Prada Make Straitjackets?

As the smell of fresh-brewed Starbucks French roast wafted up the stairs, Hanna Marin lay on her bed, soaking up the last few minutes before she had to get ready for school. MTV2 blared in the background; her miniature Doberman, Dot, snoozed fitfully on his back in his Burberry doggie bed; and Hanna had just finished polishing her toenails Dior pink. Now she was talking on the phone to her new boyfriend, Mike Montgomery.

"Thanks again for the Aveda stuff." She gazed again at the new products sitting on her nightstand. Yesterday, when Hanna been leaving at the hospital, Mike presented her with the deluxe distressing gift basket, which included a cooling eye mask, cucumber-mint body butter, and a handheld massager. Hanna had used all of them already, desperate to find a panacea that would wipe the fire—and the bizarre Ali sighting—from her mind. The doctors had chalked up the Ali vision to smoke inhalation, but it still seemed so real.

In some ways, Hanna was crushed that it wasn't. After all these years, she still had a burning wish for Ali to see with her own eyes how much Hanna had changed. The last time Hanna saw Ali, Hanna had been a chubby ugly duckling—definitely the dorkiest of the group—and Ali always made countless cracks about Hanna's weight, frizzy hair, and bad skin. She'd probably never have guessed that Hanna would transform into a thin, gorgeous, popular swan. Sometimes Hanna wondered if only way she'd truly know for sure that her transformation was complete was if Ali gave Hanna her blessing. Of course, now that could never happen.

"My pleasure," Mike answered, snapping Hanna out of her reverie. "And be forewarned—I sent some very juicy Twitters to some of the press people who were waiting outside the ER. Just to get them focused on something other than the fire."

"Like what?" Hanna asked, instantly on alert. Mike sounded up to something.

"Hanna Marin in talks with MTV about reality show," Mike recited. "Multimillion-dollar deal."

"Awesome." Hanna let out a breath and started waving her hands around to dry her nails.

"I wrote one about myself, too. Mike Montgomery turns down date with Croatian supermodel."

"You turned down a date?" Hanna giggled flirtatiously. "That doesn't seem like the Mike Montgomery I know."

"Who needs Croatian supermodels when you have Hanna Marin?" Mike said.

Hanna wriggled with giddy delight. If someone had told her a few weeks ago that she'd be dating Mike Montgomery, she would have swallowed her Crest Whitestrip in surprise—she'd only pursued Mike because her soon-to-be stepsister, Kate, wanted him too. But somehow in the process, she'd actually started to like him. With his ice blue eyes, pink kissable lips, and raunchy sense of humor, he was becoming more than just Aria Montgomery's popularity-obsessed younger brother to her.

She stood up, crossed her room to her closet, and ran her fingers along Ali's piece of the Time Capsule flag, which she'd taken at the hospital when Aria wasn't looking. She didn't feel guilty about it, either—it wasn't like the flag belonged to Aria. "So I heard that you guys were getting notes from a new A," Mike said. His voice was suddenly serious.

"I haven't gotten any notes from A," Hanna said truthfully. Since she'd gotten her new iPhone and changed her number, A had left her alone. It was certainly a welcome change from the old A, who had horribly turned out to be Hanna's former bestie, Mona Vanderwaal—something she tried very hard never to think about. "Let's hope it stays that way."

"Well, let me know if there's anything I can do," Mike assured her. "Kick someone's ass, whatever."

"Aw." Hanna flushed with pleasure. No other boyfriend had ever offered to defend her honor. She made a kissing sound, promised she and Mike would meet for lattes at Steam, Rosewood's coffee bar this afternoon, and hung up.

Then she padded down to the kitchen for breakfast, pulling a brush through her long auburn hair. The kitchen smelled like mint tea and fresh fruit. Her soon-to-be stepmother, Isabel, and Kate were already at the table, eating bowls of cut-up melon and cottage cheese. Hanna couldn't think of a more vomit-inspiring food combination.

When they saw Hanna in the doorway, they both leapt to their feet. "How are you feeling?" they gushed at the same time.

"Fine," Hanna answered tightly, scraping the brush against her scalp. Predictably, Isabel began to wince—she was germaphobe, and had a thing against hair-brushing near food.

Hanna plopped down in an empty chair and reached for the carafe of coffee. Isabel and Kate sat back down, and there was a long, pregnancy pause, like Hanna had interrupted something. They'd probably been gossiping about her. She wouldn't put it past either of them.

Hanna's father had been dating Isabel for years—even Ali had met both Isabel and Kate a few months before she disappeared—but they'd only began living in Rosewood after Hanna's mother was transferred to Singapore and Hanna's father took a job in Philly. It was bad enough that her dad had decided to marry a fake-tan-obsessed ER nurse named Isabel—such a trade down from Hanna's glamorous, successful mother—but throwing a tall, skinny stepsister Hanna's exact same age into the mix was just unbearable. In the two weeks since Kate had moved in, Hanna had had to endure her daily medley of American Idol songs in the shower, the foul-smelling raw-egg conditioner Kate concocted to keep her hair shiny, and her father's bottomless praise for every tiny thing Kate did well, as if she were his real daughter. Not to mention that Kate had won over Hanna's new underlings Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe and then told Mike that Hanna had asked him out on a bet. Then again, at a party a couple weeks ago, Hanna had blurted out that Kate had herpes, so many they were even now.

"Melon?" Kate asked sweetly, pushing the bowl toward Hanna with her annoyingly thin arms.

"No thanks," Hanna said in the same saccharine tone. It seemed like they'd called a cease-fire at the Radley party—Kate had even smiled when Hanna and Mike got together—but Hanna wasn't about to push it.

Then Kate gasped. "Oops," she whispered, pulling the Opinions section of this morning's Philadelphia Sentinel toward her plate. She tried to fold it before Hanna saw the headline, but it was too late. There was a large picture of Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria standing in front of the burning woods. How Many Lies Can We Allow? screamed one of the essays. According to Best Friends, Alison DiLaurentis Rises from the Dead.

"I'm so sorry, Hanna," Kate covered the story with her bowl of cottage cheese.

"It's fine," Hanna snapped, trying to swallow her embarrassment. What was wrong with these reporters? Weren't more important things in the world to obsess over?and hello, it was smoke inhalation!

Kate took a dainty bite of melon. "I want to help, Han. If you need me to, like, be your advocate with the press—go on camera and stuff like that—I'd be happy too."

"Thanks," Hanna said sarcastically. Kate was such an attention whore. Then she noticed a photo of Wilden on the part of the Opinions page that was still visible. Rosewood PD, said the headline under his photo. Are They Really Doing Everything They Can?

Now that was an op-ed worth reading. Wilden might not have killed Ali, but he'd certainly been acting bizarrely over the past few weeks. Like how he'd given Hanna a ride home from her jog one morning, driving at twice the speed limit and playing chicken with an oncoming car. Or how he's vehemently demanded that they stop saying Ali was alive…or else. Was Wilden really trying to protect them, or did he have his own reasons for keeping them quiet about Ali? And if Wilden was innocent, who the hell set that fire…and why?

"Hanna. Good. You're up."

Hanna turned around. Her father stood in the doorway, dressed in a button-down and pin-striped pants. His hair was still wet from the shower. "Can we talk to you for a minute? "he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Hanna lowered the paper. We?

Mr. Marin walked to the table and pulled back a chair. It scraped noisily against the tile. "A few days ago I received an e-mail from Dr. Atkinson."

He was staring at Hanna as if she should understand. "Who's that?" she finally asked.

"The school's psychologist," Isabel piped up in a know-it-all voice. "He's very nice. Kate met him when she was touring the school. He insists that students call him Dave."

Hanna fought the urge to snort. What, had goody-goody Kate sucked up to the entire Rosewood Day staff during her tour of the school?

"Dr. Atkinson said he's been keeping on you at school," her father went on. "He's very concerned, Hanna. He thinks you may have post-traumatic stress disorder from Alison's death and your car accident."

Hanna swirled the remaining coffee in her cup. "Isn't PTSD the thing soldiers get?"

Mr. Marin spun the thin platinum ring he wore on his right hand. The ring had been a gift from Isabel, and when they got married, he was going to switch it over to his left. Barf. "Well, apparently it can happen to anyone who'd gone through something really terrible," he explained. "Usually people get cold sweats, heart palpitations, stuff like that. They also relive what happened over and over."

Hanna traced the wood grain pattern on the kitchen table. All right, she had been experiencing symptoms like that, usually experiencing the moment when Mona mowed her down with her SUV. But c'mon—anyone would freak about that. "I've been feeling great," she chirped.

"I didn't think much of the letter at first," Mr. Marin went on, ignoring her, "but I pulled a psychiatrist aside at the hospital yesterday before you were discharged. Sweats and palpitations aren't the only symptoms of PTSD. It can manifest itself in lots of other ways, too. Like self-destructive eating patterns, for example."

"I don't have eating problems," Hanna snapped, horrified. "You guys see me eat all the time!"

Isabel cleared her throat, glancing pointedly at Kate. Kate would a piece of chestnut hair around her finger. "It's just, Hanna…" She gazed at Hanna with her enormous blue eyes. "You kind of told me you do."

Hanna's jaw dropped. "You told them?" A few weeks ago, in a moment of insanity, Hanna had spilled to Kate that she used to have an eensy-weensy binge-purge problem.

"I thought it was for your own good," Kate whispered. "I swear."

"The psychiatrist said lying could be a symptom," Mr. Marin went on. "First telling everyone you saw Ian Thomas's dead body in the woods, and now with you girls saying you saw Alison. And that got me thinking about the lies you've told us—sneaking out of your dinner last fall to go to that dance at school, stealing Percocet from the burn clinic, shoplifting from Tiffany, crashing your boyfriend's car, even telling your whole class that Kate had…" He trailed off, clearly not wanting to say herpes aloud. "Dr. Atkinson suggests that it might be best if you took a few weeks off from all this craziness. Go somewhere where you can relax and focus on your problems."

Hanna brightened. "Like Hawaii?"

Her father bit his lip. "No…like a facility."

"A what?" Hanna slammed her mug down. Hot coffee sloshed over the side, burning the side of her index finger.

Mr. Marin reached into his pocket and pulled a pamphlet. Two blond girls were strolling down a grassy lane, the sun setting in the background. They both had bad dye jobs and fat legs. The Preserve at Addison-Stevens said swirly writing at the bottom. "It's the best in the country," her father said. "It treats all kinds of things—learning disabilities, eating disorders, OCD, depression. And it's not too far from here, just over the border in Delaware. There's an entire ward dedicated to young patients, like you."

Hanna stared blankly at a wreath of dried flowers Isabel had hung up when she took ownership of the house, replacing Hanna's mother's far more preferable stainless-steel wall clock. "I don't have problems," she squeaked. "I don't need to go to a mental institution."

"It's not a mental institution," Isabel chirped. "Think of it as more like…a spa. People call it the Canyon Ranch of Delaware."

Hanna wanted to wring Isabel's scrawny, faux-orange neck. Hadn't she ever heard of euphemisms? People also called the Berlioz Apartment Town, a dumpy, dilapidated housing complex on the outskirts of Rosewood, the Berlitz-Carlton, bit on one took that literally.

"Maybe it's a good time to escape from Rosewood," Late simpered, in an equally I know what's best voice. "Especially the reporters."

Hanna's dad nodded. "I had to chase one guy off the property yesterday—he was trying to use a telescopic lens to get a picture of you in your bedroom, Hanna."

"And someone called here last night wanting to know if you'd give a statement on Nancy Grace," Isabel added.

"It's only going to get worse," Mr. Marin concluded.

"And don't worry," Kate said, taking another bite of melon. "Naomi, Riley, and I will still be here when you get back."

"But…" Hanna trailed off. How could her dad believe this bullshit? So she'd lied a few times. It had always been for a good reason—she'd ditched out on their dinner at Le Bec-Fin last fall because A had warned that her then recently ex-boyfriend, Sean Ackard, was at the Foxy benefit with another girl. She'd told everyone Kate had herpes because she was sure Kate was going to tell everyone about Hanna's eating issues. Who cared? That didn't mean she had post-traumatic stress whatever.

It was another painful reminder of how far apart Hanna and her dad had grown. When Hanna's parents were still married, she and her father had been two peas in a pod, but after Isabel and Kate came along, Hanna was suddenly as obsolete as shoulder pads. Why did her dad hate her so much now?

And then her blood pressure plummeted. Of course. A had finally found her. She stood up from the table, jostling the ceramic pot of mint tea near her plate. "That letter isn't from Dr. Atkinson. Someone else wrote it to hurt me."

Isabel folded her hands on the table. "Who would do that?"

Hanna swallowed hard. "A."

Kate covered her mouth with her hand. Hanna's father laid his cup on the table. "Hanna," he said in a kindergarten-slow voice. "Mona was A. And she died, remember?"

"No," Hanna protested. "There's a new A."

Kate, Isabel, and Hanna's father exchanged nervous looks, as if Hanna was an unpredictable animal that needed a tranquilizer dark in her butt. "Honey…" Mr. Marin said. "You're not really making sense."

"This is just what A wants," Hanna cried. "Why don't you believe me?"

Suddenly, she felt overwhelmingly dizzy. Her legs went numb and a faint buzzing sounded in her ears. The walls closed in, and the minty aroma of tea turned her stomach. In a blink, Hanna was standing in the dark Rosewood Day parking lot. Mona's SUV was barreling down on her, its headlights two angry homing beacons. Her palms began to sweat. Her throat burned. She saw Mona's face behind the wheel, her lips pulled back in a diabolical grin. Hanna covered her face, bracing for impact. She heard someone scream. After a few seconds, she realized it was her.

It was over as quickly as it had began. When Hanna opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor clutching her chest. Her face felt hot and wet. Kate, Isabel, and Hanna's father loomed over her, their brows furrowed with concern. Hanna's miniature Doberman, Dot, was frantically licking Hanna's bare ankles.

Her father helped her up and back into a chair. "I really think this is for the best," he said gently. Hanna wanted to protest, but she knew it wasn't any use.

She rested her head on the table, addled and shaky. All the sounds around her grew sharp and acute in her ears. The fridge hummed softly. A garbage truck rumbled down the hill. And then, underneath that, she heard something else.

The hair on the back of her neck rose. Maybe she was crazy, but she swore she heard…a laugh. It sounded like someone snickering gleefully, delighted that things were going precisely according to plan.