Secrets of the Luna's of Rosewood

Step back in time to the summer between seventh and eighth grade, when you were lounging next to your sparkling pool, sporting your trendy Juicy sweats and daydreaming about your crush. As you munch on your Cocoa Krispies, you notice a girl's face on the milk carton - she's cute, with a fierce look in her eyes, and she's missing. You're stunned - how could someone like her, so much like you, go missing? You thought only beauty pageant contestants made it onto milk cartons. Suddenly, a sense of curiosity overtakes you - could she have been a kindred spirit who liked soggy cereal and shared your taste in boys? Well, think again. Maya Cruz burrowed her face in her best friend Avery Domas’s lawn. “Delicious,” she murmured. “Are you smelling the grass?” Eliza Rodriguez called from behind her, pushing the door of her mom’s Volvo wagon closed with her long, freckly arm. “It smells good.” Maya brushed away her pink-striped hair and breathed in the warm early-evening air. “Like summer.” Eliza waved ’bye to her mom and pulled up the blah jeans that were hanging on her skinny hips. Eliza had been a competitive swimmer since Tadpole League, and even though she looked great in a Speedo, she never wore anything tight or remotely cute like the rest of the girls in her seventh-grade class. That was because Eliza’s parents insisted that one built character from the inside out. (Although Eliza was pretty certain that being forced to hide her IRISH GIRLS DO IT BETTER baby tee at the back of her underwear drawer wasn’t exactly character enhancing.) “You guys!” Avery pirouetted through the front yard. Her hair was bunched up in a messy ponytail, and she was still wearing her rolled-up field hockey kilt from the team’s end-of-the-year party that afternoon. Avery was the only seventh grader to make the JV team and got rides home with the older Rosewood Day School girls, who blasted Jay-Z from their Cherokees and sprayed Avery with perfume before dropping her off so that she wouldn’t smell like the cigarettes they’d all been smoking. “What am I missing?” called Sienna Kim, sliding through a gap in Ali’s hedges to join the others. Sienna lived next door. She flipped her long, sleek dark-blond ponytail over her shoulder and took a swig from her purple Nalgene bottle. Sienna hadn’t made the JV cut with Ali in the fall, and had to play on the seventh-grade team. She’d been on a year-long field hockey binge to perfect her game, and the girls knew she’d been practicing dribbling in the backyard before they arrived. Sienna hated when anyone was better at anything than she was. Especially Avery. “Wait for me!” They turned to see Harper Adams climbing out of her mom’s Mercedes. She stumbled over her tote bag and waved her chubby arms wildly. Ever since Harper’s parents had gotten a divorce last year, she’d been steadily putting on weight and outgrowing her old clothes. Even though Ali rolled her eyes, the rest of the girls pretended not to notice. That’s just what best friends do. Avery, Maya, Sienna, Eliza, and Harper bonded last year when their parents volunteered them to work Saturday afternoons at Rosewood Day School’s charity drive—well, all except for Sienna, who volunteered herself. Whether or not Avery knew about the other four, the four knew about Avery. She was perfect. Beautiful, witty, smart. Popular. Boys wanted to kiss Avery, and girls—even older ones—wanted to be her. So the first time Ali laughed at one of Maya’s jokes, asked Eliza a question about swimming, told Harper her shirt was adorable, or commented that Sienna’s penmanship was way neater than her own, they couldn’t help but be, well…dazzled. Before Ali, the girls had felt like pleated, high-waisted mom jeans—awkward and noticeable for all the wrong reasons—but then Ali made them feel like the most perfect-fitting Stella McCartneys that no one could afford. Now, more than a year later, on the last day of seventh grade, they weren’t just best friends, they were the girls of Rosewood Day. A lot had happened to make it that way. Every sleepover they had, every field trip, had been a new adventure. Even homeroom had been memorable when they were together. (Reading a steamy note from the varsity crew captain to his math tutor over the PA system was now a Rosewood Day legend.) But there were other things they all wanted to forget. And there was one secret they couldn’t even bear to talk about. Ali said that secrets were what bonded their five-way best-friendship together for eternity. If that was true, they were going to be friends for life. “I’m so glad this day is over.” Avery moaned before gently pushing Sienna back through the gap in the hedges. “Your barn.” “I’m so glad seventh grade is over,” Maya said as she, Eliza, and Harper followed Avery and Sienna toward the renovated barn-turned-guesthouse where Sienna’s older sister, Melissa, had lived for her junior and senior years of high school. Fortunately, she’d just graduated and was headed to Prague this summer, so it was all theirs for the night. Suddenly they heard a very squeaky voice. “Avery! Hey, Avery! Hey, Sienna!” Avery turned to the street. “Not it,” she whispered. “Not it,” Sienna, Eliza, and Maya quickly followed. Harper frowned. “Shit.” It was this game Ali had stolen from her brother, Jason, who was a senior at Rosewood Day. Jason and his friends played it at inter-prep school field parties when scoping out girls. Being the last to call out “not it” meant you had to entertain the ugly girl for the night while your friends got to hook up with her hot friends—meaning, essentially, that you were as lame and unattractive as she was. In Ali’s version, the girls called “not it” whenever there was anyone ugly, uncool, or unfortunate near them. This time, “not it” was for Mona Vanderwaal—a dork from down the street whose favorite pastime was trying to befriend Sienna and Avery—and her two freaky friends, Chassey Bledsoe and Phi Templeton. Chassey was the girl who’d hacked into the school’s computer system and then told the principal how to better secure it, and Phi Templeton went everywhere with a yo-yo—enough said. The three stared at the girls from the middle of the quiet, suburban road. Mona was perched on her Razor scooter, Chassey was on a black mountain bike, and Phi was on foot—with her yo-yo, of course. “You guys want to come over and watch Fear Factor?” Mona called. “Sorry,” Avery simpered. “We’re kind of busy.” Chassey frowned. “Don’t you want to see when they eat the bugs?” “Gross!” Sienna whispered to Maya, who then started pretending to eat invisible lice off Harper’s scalp like a monkey. “Yeah, I wish we could.” Avery tilted her head. “We’ve planned this sleepover for a while now. But maybe next time?” Mona looked at the sidewalk. “Yeah, okay.” “See ya.” Avery turned around, rolling her eyes, and the other girls did the same. They crossed through Sienna’s back gate. To their left was Ali’s neighboring backyard, where her parents were building a twenty-seat gazebo for their lavish outdoor picnics. “Thank God the workers aren’t here,” Ali said, glancing at a yellow bulldozer. Eliza stiffened. “Have they been saying stuff to you again?” “Easy there, Killer,” Avery said. The others giggled. Sometimes they called Eliza “Killer,” as in Ali’s personal pit bull. Eliza used to find it funny, too, but lately she wasn’t laughing along. The barn was just ahead. It was small and cozy and had a big window that looked out on Sienna’s large, rambling farm, which had its very own windmill. Here in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, a little suburb about twenty miles from Philadelphia, you were more likely to live in a twenty-five-room farmhouse with a mosaic-tiled pool and hot tub, like Sienna’s house, than in a prefab McMansion. Rosewood smelled like lilacs and mown grass in the summer and clean snow and wood stoves in the winter. It was full of lush, tall pines, acres of rustic family-run farms, and the cutest foxes and bunnies. It had fabulous shopping and Colonial-era estates and parks for birthday, graduation, and just-’cause-we-feel-like-it fêtes. And Rosewood boys were gorgeous in that glowing, healthy, just-stepped-out-of-an-Abercrombie-catalog way. This was Philadelphia’s Main Line. It was full of old, noble bloodlines, older money, and practically ancient scandals. As they reached the barn, the girls heard giggles coming from inside. Someone squealed, “I said, stop it!” “Oh God,” Sienna moaned. “What is she doing here?” As Sienna peeked through the keyhole, she could see Melissa, her prim and proper, excellent-at-everything older sister, and Ian Thomas, her tasty boyfriend, wrestling on the couch. Sienna kicked at the door with the heel of her shoe, forcing it open. The barn smelled like moss and slightly burned popcorn. Melissa turned around. “What the fu—?” she asked. Then she noticed the others and smiled. “Oh, hey guys.” The girls eyed Sienna. She constantly complained that Melissa was a venomous super-b***h, so they were always taken aback when Melissa seemed friendly and sweet. Ian stood up, stretched, and grinned at Sienna. “Hey.” “Hi, Ian,” Sienna replied in a much brighter voice. “I didn’t know you were here.”