Pretty Little Liars: The Beginning {Episodes 1-10} (REVISED)

37. Hanna 💋

Hanna followed the other three girls through the forest on the outskirts of Rosewood. It was getting hotter by the minute, bugs were flying all around them, and they were starting to get irritated with each other. They were on their way to an old shed in the middle of the woods, where they used to hang out with their old friend, Alison.

They'd decided to come out to the shed to have a final remembrance for Alison. The funeral just hadn't seemed like enough for Hanna, and she was sure that the other girls felt the same way. There was something that told Hanna that she was still around, but she wasn't sure if it was a need to say goodbye or the fact that A was taunting them all with secrets that only Ali knew.

"Whose idea was this again?" Hanna asked as she pushed another branch out of her way.

"Emily's mom," Spencer answered.

"The shed was me," Emily said. "My mom just said we should do something for us."

Hanna was starting to get annoyed with the other girls. The heat was starting to piss her off, and she was pretty sure she was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. "Well, couldn't we do something without mosquitoes?" she snapped.

"They're not mosquitoes," Aria said. "They're gnats."

"Whatever! They're small and annoying, and they're flying up my nose," Hanna said grumpily.

Spencer chuckled as they climbed a small hill. "They're attracted to your perfume. And your hair product. And your lip gloss."

Hanna rolled her eyes. "What are you saying? I attract flies?"

"Gnats," Aria corrected.

"Why do I feel like this is the wrong way?" Emily asked, stopping under the shade of a large tree and ignoring her friends bickering.

Hanna stopped behind her, enjoying the coolness of the shade. The grove of trees around them looked exactly the same as every other cluster of trees they had passed in the last fifteen minutes. Hanna just wanted to go back home where it was nice and air conditioned 24/7. Even the birds were dead silent in this heat, but the buzzing of the mosquitoes never ceased.

"No, this is it. I remember that tree. It's the halfway point," Spencer said. They all looked at the large tree that they had stopped under. It looked vaguely familiar to Hanna, but there hadn't been that much ivy on the side of the tree last time they'd been out here. "There's one hundred and thirty six steps left to the shed."

Hanna looked at Spencer with confusion. The fact that she could remember the exact number of steps left to the shed was absolutely insane. Emily and Aria were looking at her the exact same way. "Have you been out here since Alison?" Emily asked, lowering her voice when she said Ali's name.

"Me? No, no way," Spencer said quickly.

"But you remember that tree," Aria said.

That was just how Spencer was. She had a knack for remembering the tiniest details of almost anything she studied: dates, names, numbers, etc. Hanna didn't really think anything of it. She was too busy trying to keep the mosquitoes—and they were mosquitoes, no matter what Aria said—away from her as much as possible.

"You guys, it's not that weird. We came out here in eighth grade, like, every day. Even after," Hanna said.

"I think this is the wrong place to do this—whatever you call it—shrine," Spencer said.

"It's not a shrine," Emily defended. "It's just a place to remember Alison. What's wrong with that?"

Spencer shrugged. Hanna was on Emily's side with this one. As much as she tried to forget that Alison's body had been found barely two weeks ago, she wanted a place to remember it too. She couldn't think of another place to do it, and she would bet that Spencer didn't either.