The first time Mona Vanderwaal falls in love, she’s out shopping for school clothes with her mother. They have plenty of money thanks to those huge alimony payments from her dad, but no matter how hard she tries, Mona can never make herself look quite like the girls in the fashion magazines. She wishes she could be friends with Alison DiLaurentis. She’s so popular that she can make even geeky girls like Spencer Hastings seem in.
Mona catches sight of one of Alison’s other friends, Hanna, heading into the dressing room of the boutique. She’s shopping alone, which is rare, you hardly ever see any of Alison’s girls outside the pack. Mona carefully notes the items Hanna’s taking inside: seven shirts, a black bra, two skirts, and skinny jeans that are clearly going to be three sizes too small.
When Hanna emerges, she discards the items in a heap. A skirt and two shirts are missing. Hanna stole them Mona realizes. She has a secret, and Mona knows what it is. She’s a criminal. A thief. Mona could call store security right now, or tell her mom, and Hanna would be in so much trouble. Mona doesn’t do any of these things. She takes the items that she was planning to try on and goes into the dressing room, grabbing the black bra off Hanna’s pile on the way. It’s not exactly the right size, but it’s a thing that has touched Hanna Marin’s skin moments before she did something really naughty. Mona feels a shiver down her spine at the thought. She checks for a security tag, then slips the bra on beneath her own. She pulls her bulky sweater back down over her chest, and walks out of the store feeling like a totally different person.
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The second time, she’s at the beach, sitting all alone on her towel, under a giant orange umbrella for shade. She’s watching Emily Fields come out of the water, her bathing suit dripping wet and clinging to her body like a second skin. Ben Coogan stumps out of the water behind her, Emily just beat him in a swim out to the far pier and back. The set of his jaw indicates that he doesn’t take losing very well, especially to a girl.
Ben is Emily’s boyfriend, or at least, they always go to school dances together and he’s usually her ride to parties and sometimes he holds her hand in the hallway or drapes his arm around her shoulders. But Mona has noticed that Emily doesn’t seem to like Ben very much. She never follows any of the advice you read about in Cosmo, she doesn’t laugh at his jokes or touch him flirtatiously during casual conversation. She wears him like an accessory, Mona thinks. A bracelet that looks good on your arm but pinches weirdly or rubs your wrist raw.
Mona watches closely as Ben shakes the water off himself like a dog, as Emily ignores him completely, scanning the beach for someone else. Mona traces Emily’s line of sight from beneath her giant sunglasses, notes how it stops to rest on Alison. Everyone looks at Alison, of course, all the time. But there’s something important in Emily’s eyes, a flash of pain as she sees Ali standing with one hand against the muscled chest of a life guard, the way she seems to be trying to force herself to look away but also can’t stop staring. Well now, Mona thinks to herself. Isn’t that interesting?
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The third time starts when she’s trailing Alison and the pink haired one down the street. Aria turns around when Mona calls to them, Mona’s almost sure that means she’s not as rude as Alison, that she might be nice enough if Mona got her alone. From behind a hedge, she sees Aria drop her spoon on the sidewalk, watches as Aria and Alison freeze in place, watching Byron Montgomery steaming up the windows of his car with some floozy.
Mona is all sympathy. Men are pigs. And who does Aria’s dad think he is, rutting right there on a public street for anyone to see? Mona scurries over to Aria’s house, considers ringing the doorbell to get Mrs. Montgomery, dragging her over to that alleyway with some story (Aria’s hurt, she got run over by car. Mike is in trouble with the police, you need to come right away), but she doesn’t. Instead, she climbs the tree and goes in an open window on the second floor. She hides herself in the closet. She’s tiny, and totally invisible behind all the manic animal print shirts.
She waits patiently, and is rewarded a few hours later by the sound of Aria clunking up the stairs with her father in tow. She listens indignantly as he convinces Aria that it’s over, that there’s no need to tell her mother. Aria, the dumb bunny, buys it. But she still cries herself to sleep.
Mona kisses her lightly on the forehead, pulls a blanket up around her shoulders as she snores.
She sneaks back in the next day, plants listening devices around the house. She needs to keep an eye on the situation. She doesn’t want to miss anything.
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The fourth time, she’s at the club, waiting for her mother to be done with a lesson from the tennis pro. Mona’s not so much into tennis, but they’re having lunch later, so she’s sitting around idly flipping through last month’s Vogue. Her horoscope is cryptic, it says she’s still coming into her power. Alison’s horoscope, which Mona always checks for good luck, promises that something big is about to happen. A big change. Mona really wants this prediction to be about her.
Suddenly, a half-dozen workers run into the room and dive into a frantic cycle of activity: straightening cushions on the chairs, sweeping the already pristine flooring, polishing the door handle that leads to the women’s locker room. They blend back into the shadows right as Spencer Hastings and her mother stride into view, their old money heels tapping smartly against the floor, like an insistent knocking against a closed door, the Hastings women demanding entrance and then tributes -- every door handle shined to perfection before it touches their lily white hands. But something about Spencer seems off balance today. Her heel clack is a half beat off her mother’s, and her right hand looks like she’s been biting her nails. Her whole body seems full of a jittery energy and her eyes seem like they’re open a little too wide, as if she’s given up blinking as inefficient.
Mona counts to twenty, then follows them quietly into the locker room. Spencer’s mom is on her cell phone, yammering about plausible deniability as they get changed for the courts. Once they’ve taken their sleek rackets and pleated skirts outside, Mona slips over to Spencer’s locker and quickly uses a hair pin to break in. Spencer’s purse contains her phone (increasingly rare texts from Alison, almost none from the other girls. A few slightly steamy ones from Ian Thomas, including a ridiculous selfie of him flexing in front of a bathroom mirror), make up, and a small baggie filled to bursting with various pharmaceuticals. Mona eyeballs one as a high dose Adderall, another one a half capsule of Ritalin, the rest of which looks like it’s been ground into powder. She’s snorting, Mona realizes. God, she’s really far gone.
Mona helps herself. Who cares if Spencer freaks out later, she’ll probably think she took them all and can’t remember. Mona licks a finger and puts the ground up powder on her tongue. She crushes two other pills and inhales the powder herself, then chases them with three more that she swallows with water from the drinking fountain. The effects are almost immediate. She feels focused and blown apart all at once, like she can be anywhere, see everything. A mother fucking god. She closes the locker, dropping the rest of the pills into her own pocket.
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The last time, she’s watching the tail lights of a stolen rental car pull out of the parking lot of the Lost Woods resort. Alison is alive, but she’s leaving, she’s going on the run alone. No one knows, no one except Mona. Alison’s power is broken, snapped in half like a wand with no more magic. Her power belongs to whoever can take it now, and Mona intends for that to be her. She understands now that power isn’t the same as being class president or having an American Express Black card in her purse. It’s not even having a posse of friends to sit with at lunch. It’s information, secrets, knowledge. A willingness to be ruthless, with herself as well as others. Alison told her she didn’t have to be a loser, and Mona gets it, she knows it to be true. She’s going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of Alison’s ruin. She’s going to become something so much more epic than anything Alison has ever dreamed of being.
She’s Mona Vanderwaal, a girl who fell in love with secrets and grew up into a woman who would be the deepest darkest one of all.