But Charlie gritted her teeth and swallowed her rage. The new Charlie wasn’t going to let opportunities to impress the Brazille nut slide by anymore. She’d given up too much already.
“I can fix it,” she said.
“You know a good masseuse?” asked Shira, rubbing her neck and whimpering like a kicked puppy.
“No, I can fix the computer system.” If I figured out how to break it, surely I can fix it….
Shira snort-laughed, picking up a jar of Vegemite and examining its nutrition label. “Aren’t you adorable, Charlie. There’s a difference between making nail polish and fixing the most sophisticated camera system on the planet. I hardly think someone like you would know the first thing about it.”
Someone like me built it!
“Give me a chance,” Charlie said. “I might surprise you.”
And impress you.
“Fine,” sighed Shira, opening the Vegemite. “I suppose you can’t make things any worse.”
Charlie headed for the basement, and Shira trailed behind her.
“How do you know where the system is housed? I don’t recall telling you.” Shira glared at Charlie suspiciously as she swallowed a mouthful of crackers.
“Um, well… actually,” Charlie stalled, looking up at the crystal chandelier hanging in Shira’s hallway. Stupid! How could she have been so careless? “My mom…”
“Your mum?” Shira purred sarcastically.
Shira’s Vegemite-scented breath ticked her pores. She clutched frantically at the recesses of her brain. Suddenly, an excuse sprouted up like a weed from the mud.
“My mom, yeah. She kept the blueprints tacked up in our living room while this place was being built. Guess I absorbed them without even trying?” Charlie flashed a relieved smile.
“Quite perceptive.” Shira’s voice was disappointed but appeased. “Off you go, then.”
Charlie headed down the basement stairs, and the only peep out of Shira now was the rustling of cracker casing.
Realizing she needed to slip into the mainframe closet to reattach the disconnected wires, Charlie cleared her throat. She needed to distract Shira somehow.
“Oh, shoot.”
“What?” came the voice at the top of the stairs.
“I need to do a total restart. It requires a paper clip.” Charlie cocked her head at Shira, hoping she would take the hint.
“Oh, blimey. All right, I’ll get one.”
As soon as Shira disappeared from the top of the stairs, Charlie slipped into the mainframe closet and switched the two wires back. She quickly crept out and was back in her original seat when Shira came down with the paper clip. Now all she’d have to do was a few simple computer commands, and Shira would think she was a genius.
Charlie sat at a desk chair in front of a massive bank of computers just outside the network closet doors, all of which worked fine, except for the monitors that were supposed to be beaming pictures from around campus. Those were all black. She flipped a bunch of switches, faking her way along so Shira wouldn’t realize she’d been the one to break the system. Finally, after enough time had passed, Charlie began trying to repair the code she’d deliberately scrambled yesterday. She typed in a series of commands and repaired the strings of ALPHA-SQL sequencing she’d disturbed, keeping her toes crossed since her fingers were busy. She held her breath and pushed the ENTER key, practically tasting the victory in saving Shira’s precious cameras and finally proving herself as a tech whiz.
“Incorrect sequence! Shutting down in fifteen seconds,” the computer’s voice calmly informed her, followed by three loud bleeps.
“No!” Charlie leaned over and banged her forehead against the table, groaning quietly. Why was fixing something so much harder than breaking it? And why was that true for hearts as well as hard drives?
After everything that had happened in the last three weeks—ending things with Darwin, sending her mom home, losing the first friend she’d made on the island, and faking a blackout—Charlie was beginning to think she was better at breaking things than making them.
10
JACKIE O
BACK PORCH
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND
7:07 A.M.
Sprawled out on a white foam chaise longue, Allie reached up to wipe a drop of morning dew from her cheek.
“Ew! Ohmuhgud!”
This was not dew. It was thick and grainy. Worst of all, it was warm! Allie staggered up from her makeshift bed. Bird poop! She clawed furiously at her face, every cell in her germophobe heart screaming out in self-pity. But Allie was too tired to cry over this latest indignity. Besides, her tear ducts were drained dry from too much crying.
“Stupid nature!” Allie grumbled, her throat coated in phlegmy gunk and her eyes crusty and swollen. She’d spent the night sleeping al fresco, curled up under a towel on the back porch of the Jackie O house. Nature had been up for hours: As the island came to life under a Creamsicle-orange sunrise, Allie had been tortured by screeching mynah birds, cooing quail, chattering monkeys, and a horrible insect intent on dive-bombing her ears.
“I’m up! You win!” Now that her eyes were open in puffy slits, it was only a matter of time before she had to face her new life. If she looked half as beat-up as she felt, it was going to be the longest day on earth.
She took a deep, shaky breath and tried to summon the courage to open the sliding glass door to the Jackie O house, where soap and Purell waited like old friends. Her only friends, actually, since everyone else was either not speaking to her or coming up with clever rap lyrics for a song called “Imposter Allie” that was making the rounds among the Alphas.
Last night, she’d been too ashamed to face her bunk-mates, too devastated after her confrontation with Darwin outside the Pavilion to defend herself to them. Darwin didn’t want anything to do with her ever again, and she was pretty sure the Jackie O’s felt the same way.
As Allie furiously wiped her face with her hand, the sliding glass door of the Jackie O house slid open. Thalia, their house muse, stepped out, wearing a silky yellow robe and holding a steaming mug in her enormous hands. A former point guard for her college basketball team, Thalia had turned to her psychology major after a knee injury sidelined her b-ball career. Since she couldn’t live her dream, she helped others live theirs.
“Hi Thalia.” Allie drew in a shaky breath and straightened her slumped shoulders.
“Hi Allie. I thought you could use some tea.” Thalia passed her the mug. “It’s got milk thistle and chamomile in it, both of which have calming properties.”
“Thanks,” said Allie, rubbing her poo-hand on her yoga pants. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes over Thalia’s kindness. She wondered how she could possibly have any more water in her body after all the crying she’d done last night.
“Waste not fresh tears over old griefs, Allie. Euripides,” Thalia said softly, sitting down next to Allie on the edge of the chaise.
Allie took a dejected sip from her mug and stared out at the tangle of trees, their branches home to dozens of yellow-bellied finches. She wished she could be as carefree as those stupid birds.
“People will forget. They’ll move on, and you’ll start over. Mary Pickford once said, ‘You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.’ ”
Allie nodded slowly, blinking as she examined Thalia’s pretty, poreless face. Allie had been down so long, she wasn’t sure she would recognize “up” if it landed on her like that pile of bird poop.
Thalia continued to fill the silence with her relentless optimism. “There is a reason you’re still here. Shira has faith in you. If she didn’t, she would have sent you home. Everything will feel more manageable after you head inside and face the music.”
Would everyone please stop using that corny expression?
Allie blinked back her tears and rubbed her aching eyes. Her contacts felt like
tiny circles of sandpaper. Trying to embrace the bright side of her miserable situation, she plucked them out and threw them into the bushes. “I guess I don’t need these green lenses anymore.” The gravelly sound of her voice surprised her. How many hours had it been since she’d spoken a word to anyone?
“Good, that’s a positive step forward.” Thalia beamed. “The Greek philosopher Thucydides said, ‘The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.’ You have the chance to find all of that now.”
Allie shrugged. Actually, throwing away her lenses did feel kind of freeing. Now her navy blue eyes would be free to shine again. And someday, her dull, dyed black-brown hair would grow out and her sandy-blond mane would return. Allie was voted best tressed two years in a row in junior high, after all. And now she could finally stop worrying about that dumb “mole” on her upper lip; no more sleeping exclusively on her left side for fear of smudges! Thalia was right—Allie would only be happy once she was free.
Free to be herself, to stop acting like she knew what a carbon footprint was. Free to wear shoes! To Purell a hundred times a day if she wanted! Free to quote her favorite lines from Katherine Heigl rom-coms. Free to wear makeup and eat meat and keep up with celebrity gossip. She could stop pretending she cared about the earth and focus on the stars.
But if she were so free, why did she still feel so trapped?
“Go on,” said Thalia, motioning toward the open door.
Allie nodded, summoning her courage. She swallowed hard and stood up, putting one bare foot in front of the other. “Okay,” she said in a tiny voice.
Her heart clanging like a firehouse bell, Allie stepped into the climate-controlled study lounge. She placed her palm on the “SnakScan” touch-screen snack dispenser and waited as the machine performed a bio-analysis to determine what she should eat. Expecting a packet of kale chips or a PowerBar, Allie smiled when the Plexiglas slot in the wall popped open and offered her a little yellow bag of peanut M&M’s.
Allie ripped open a corner of the bag and poured the M&M’s into her mouth, chewing furiously in an attempt to quiet her growling stomach.
She slowly climbed the clear spiral staircase to the bedroom, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her yoga pants to hide their shaking. Stepping into the snow-globe-shaped dome, she flinched, expecting the Jackie O’s to throw things at her—shoes, pillows, insults, something.
But when she walked in, nobody even looked up. The girls were all sprawled on Renee’s old bed, crowded around its new occupant.
The real Allie J.
Ohmuhgud.
“And, you know, when Shira told me what was going on here in my name, I mean, I knew I had to come and set the record straight. I just felt so violated, you know? Like a snake being forced to molt before her time, just for someone’s ugly snakeskin shoes! Which is just so ironic, because I don’t even wear shoes, you know?”
Triple, Skye, and Charlie each nodded sympathetically, as if Allie J had actually been traumatized by the experience of meeting Allie A.
“You handled it really well, AJ. I don’t think I would have been as nice about it if it were me,” said Skye, wrapping her white-blond waves into a bun and stabbing a pen through it to keep the hair in place.
She’s AJ now?
Everyone stood up, still pointedly ignoring Allie, and began getting ready for the day. They all vanished into the bathroom or the study lounge. Allie was alone again with the whole bedroom all to herself. She walked over to her bed and wasn’t surprised to find it roped off with metallic Alpha-issue scarves. Hanging from them was a sign:
CRIME SCENE—IDENTITY-THEFT ZONE
A chalk outline of Allie J and her guitar had been traced on the ground at the foot of Allie’s bed. What was it Thalia said about courage?
Allie’s aPod beeped in her pocket and she pulled out the gold device. An envelope with an A seal opened on the screen, and a virtual form letter slid out, followed by a schedule.
Dear Allie A. Abbott: Our records indicate that you have not yet declared an area of concentration. As such, your course schedule has expanded to include more offerings. Failure to choose an ALPHA track by the end of the semester will lead to expulsion.
Allie’s stomach lurched at the word expulsion. She scrolled through her new class schedule and felt more exhausted than ever.
Time Class Location
7:30 a.m. BREAKFAST AND MOTIVATIONAL
LECTURE
Every day you will receive a lecture from a different muse about handling life’s challenges and finding your true self. (Note: Your true self must be found by the end of the semester.) Pavilion
8:40 a.m. FROM ARISTOTLE TO BERNANKE:
FINANCE AND PHILOSOPHY FOR THE
SELF-MADE WOMAN
Put your money where your mouth is because smart Alphas finish rich. Philosophy will be your surfboard as you ride the waves of today’s economy. The Acropolis
9:40 am ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Be a globe-trotting Alpha in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. A prerequisite for Chinese and Arabic. Sculpture Garden
10:10 a.m. PROTEIN BREAK
Nourish your mind and body with a personalized smoothie. You’ll need it! Health Food Court
10:20 a.m. THE ART OF EXCELLENCE
Betas work to live. Alphas live to work. Map your professional goals with a life coach and reach for the stars! Elizabeth I Lecture Hall
11:30 a.m. HONE IT: FOR WRITERS
Whether fact or fiction, when Alphas write, the world reads. The Fuselage
12:40 p.m. LUNCH AND SYMPHONY
Digest lunch and life as you commune with Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. Pavilion
1:50 p.m. GREENER PASTURES
Once you go green, you’ll never go back. Learn to keep your footprint small while wearing fabulous shoes. Biosphere
2:55 p.m. SPOTLIGHT TRAINING: POISE IN THE
PUBLIC EYE
Achieve poise in the public eye with red carpet, talk show, and political campaign training. Buddha Building
4:10 p.m SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR FUTURE
MOGULS
Go viral and go big. Alphas are what keep the Internet running. Melinda Gates Computer Lab
5:10 p.m FIGURE DRAWING
It’s all in the details. Train your eye, and your hands and spirit will follow. Sculpture Garden
6:00 p.m IYENGAR YOGA & MEDITATION
Connect with universal oneness—essential to looking out for number one. Buddha Building Meditation Hall
Allie thought again about going to Shira and telling her she wanted to leave the Academy. But that would mean going home a loser. She would have to face Fletcher and Trina and explain the whole shameful fiasco. Exhaling a rattly sigh, Allie realized she would just have to do what Shira wanted: She would have to find her passion and succeed at it.
Whatever it was.
An aPod beeped. Allie looked back down, but it wasn’t hers.
“Well, that was fast. It’s Darwin!” AJ padded barefoot back from the bathroom. The Jackie O’s—everyone but Allie, of course—gathered around her again. Allie swallowed the knot in her throat and pretended to be absorbed in remaking her already-made bed.
“He says he wants to hang. Huge fan, blah blah.” AJ scanned the message.
Allie stared at her perfectly tucked-in comforter. She wished she could crawl into bed and never get out. This was agony. How could Darwin move on so quickly?
“Hoo boy,” murmured Triple under her breath. She arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow at Allie. “From awkward to awkward-er.”
Charlie and Skye were strangely quiet, looking from Allie to AJ and back again.
“How’s tonight?” said AJ, reading her message aloud as she typed and pressing SEND before snapping her phone closed with a flourish. “He introduced himself after my performance last night,” she announced in her high, breathy voice. “Seems cool for a high school boy. I usually skew older.”
>
Allie’s newly navy blue eyes filled with tears for the fourth time that morning. Her gaze was inexorably drawn across the room to Charlie, who was folding a pair of pants with a surgeon’s precision, running her finger along a crease again and again. Her friend’s jaw pulsed as she stress-chewed the inside of her cheek. Finally, Charlie looked up from the pants, her brown eyes making contact with Allie’s. Allie registered a flicker of the same panic over AJ that she herself was feeling. But just as Allie thought that maybe the two friends still had something in common, Charlie looked away, snapping the windows to her soul shut as if Allie was a total stranger.
Hoping the M&M’s she’d downed wouldn’t make their way back up, Allie bent down to strap on her never-before-used pair of clear gladiator sandals. Back in Santa Ana, her platforms, ballet slippers, boots, and sandals were the envy of all her less-fashionable classmates. But nobody wanted to be in her shoes anymore.
Least of all Allie herself.
11
BRAZILLE RESIDENCE
CONTROL ROOM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND
5:27 P.M.
Sitting in front of forty-four giant computer monitors and listening to the hum of countless hard drives, Charlie should have been excited. A roomful of technology usually made her heart sing and her fingers itch to dive in and explore it. But today, alone in Shira’s basement, Charlie’s usual enthusiasm had flatlined.
Spotting a stack of Brazille Hour Post-it notes, she peeled one off and began impatiently ripping the Shira-emblazoned square into shreds. As the computer rang for the twentieth time, she balled up the paper squares and flicked them at the black monitors. Charlie was trying to reach her old friend Jessupha Rabate. She’d met the tech whiz in Thailand two years ago, when Shira had taken everyone there to set up a manufacturing plant. Jess was the first computer genius Charlie had ever known. He had managed to help Charlie rewire Shira’s Palm Pilot as a satellite that could poach American TV channels. Maybe he could help her rewire Shira’s surveillance system, too?
Movers and Fakers Page 7
