She thought of her mother’s face when she heard the news, of Natasha’s beautiful, mournful Russian features collapsing in disappointment over her only daughter ruining her chance to make it to the top as a dancer. She thought of her father sighing with disappointment, and tears sprang into her eyes. She thought of herself, twenty years from now, working as a ballet teacher for kindergarten girls in Westchester, her dreams discarded like a pair of ripped tights, and she swallowed hard.
She’d brought this on herself—on herself and on Triple!—all because she’d wanted a little fun. The fact that she’d ruined not just her own life but Triple’s, too, made her snap out of her pity party. She needed to fight. No, she needed to something even harder than that. She needed to beg.
“Shira, please,” Skye started, her voice cracking with tears. “It was all my idea… ,” she admitted. “Triple didn’t want any part of it,” she added. It was the truth. If that meant she had to go home, at least she would go with her head held high.
Skye looked over at Triple, who stood tall, her eyes dry. A faint smile played on her plump lips. Thalia padded quietly up the stairs, holding a rolling suitcase in her arms. She set it down silently in front of Triple.
“Wrong bag,” Triple informed her. “You meant to bring Skye’s bag.”
“Everything’s in order, Andrea,” Shira snipped. “You’re going home. Skye will be staying.”
“What?” Tears sprang into her gold-flecked eyes. “I don’t understand!”
Neither did Skye.
“It’s simple, really,” Shira smiled, twirling her folded umbrella like a baton. “Shall we tell them what happened tonight?”
Looking into Shira’s eyes, Triple folded like a card table, collapsing on her bed in a fit of tears. Skye’s mouth fell open in a shocked O as she looked from Triple to Shira, waiting for an explanation.
Shira walked closer to Skye, nodding at Charlie and Allie, who had gotten out of bed to stand next to Skye for moral support. “Andrea was caught by Mimi on the cruise, and she did the worst thing an Alpha can do. She tattled on Skye to save herself.” Shira’s red hair blew off her face, as if a wind machine were permanently blowing at her. “Skye, you proved you could improve, that you’re willing to work hard. But Andrea was unable to learn what she needed to learn, which was how to be a good friend. Backbends can be taught, but backbones cannot.”
Skye, Charlie, and Allie all nodded silently, absorbing Shira’s words.
“It’s not fair!” Triple wailed. “I’m the best student here!”
“Life isn’t fair,” Shira snapped. “That’s the great secret. Think about it on your PAP ride back to Chicago.”
“Michigan!”
“Whatever.”
Skye giggled internally. She felt lighter than a helium balloon, as if she might float away. Her guilt over the Muse Cruise escapade evaporated like the steam on her morning latte.
“Well, I must be off. I have forty-seven more girls to kick out tonight,” Shira sighed, flipping up the wide collar on her trench coat. “I warned them not to let boys get in the way of their studies and their friendships.” She shrugged.
Skye was smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt.
“Andrea—Triple—” Thalia stepped out of the shadows of the room holding Triple’s coat. It was black leather fringed in fake fur. As fake as Triple herself.
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. Dr. Seuss.” Thalia handed her the coat.
Triple shook her head, swallowing her last hiccupy sob, her blow-out clumped with the moisture of fresh tears. She grabbed her coat roughly and put it on, then picked up her suitcase and dragged it behind her, thumping each stair as she went. She held her head high—too proud or too furious to say goodbye.
“Wow,” Allie whispered, filling the empty silence that had descended on them in the wake of Triple’s departure. “How many girls are still here?”
Charlie pulled out her laptop and somberly began typing names into her spreadsheet. “Only thirty. But all that matters is that we’re still here.”
Skye laughed again. If she could survive tonight, she’d survive anything. The odds that she would be the last Alpha standing were better than ever. She hoped Charlie and Allie would make it with her to the end.
“Look,” Charlie said, pointing to the still stormy sky. The first of many PAPs traced an arc above them, headed back to wherever the girl inside had come from.
“So long,” Skye whispered, climbing into bed.
Humming “I Will Survive” in honor of Sergeant Triple, Skye slipped her HAD slipper under her pillow and shut her eyes, a whisper of a smile on her lips.
25
THE PAVILION
AMBROSIA BANQUET HALL
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11TH
7:19 P.M.
Charlie rubbed sleep from her eyes and swallowed a spoonful of yogurt, granola, and blueberries. She and Darwin had gone hiking with Mel and Allie yesterday, and even though they ended their double date with a late-night snack of Nutella-banana crepes, Charlie still ate with the gusto of an Olympic athlete. She took another bite and smiled at Allie across the table. Her best friend held a breakfast burrito in one hand and her aPod in the other, texting Mel non-stop.
Skye plopped into an empty seat at the table, a Belgian waffle sliding around her tray like an air hockey puck. She put her tray down on the table and stretched her arms high over her head, grabbing her elbows with the opposite hands and pulling until her shoulders popped. Her platinum wavelets shone as the morning sun beamed down on them from all eight giant windows in the octagonal dining hall. Skye took a bite of her waffle and leaned back in her chair. “Quiet around here.”
Skye was right; it was quiet. Until Shira’s surprise spree on Friday, the dining hall was always packed tighter than a sardine can. Alphas would squeeze in tightly around the shiny white tables, and the sound of chatting girls filled the giant room.
Charlie looked around the dining hall, absorbing the new, subdued relaxation in the air. Now that there were only thirty Alphas left, none of the tables were full and many stood empty. The entrance to the spa beckoned to Charlie on one side of the dining hall, and on the other was the door to the assembly room. Between the two stood six different boutiques where the girls could purchase new clothes and makeup with aBucks, earned by getting A’s.
Charlie hadn’t set foot in the boutiques in weeks, but suddenly she hungered for something more exciting to wear than her basic Alphas uniform, her old party dresses, and her lab coveralls. After all, she was officially Darwin’s girlfriend again. She might as well look the part. Even if he didn’t care what she wore, feeling pretty would only add to her newfound happiness. She looked in the windows of each boutique and decided that after breakfast she would try a few things on.
Her concentration on a cute sparkly shrug was broken when Allie elbowed her in the ribs. “AJ,” Allie leaned in and whispered in Charlie’s ear, tipping her head to the right.
Charlie followed Allie’s forehead thrust and saw AJ seated all alone at a corner table, still wearing her dingy green tam and scribbling in a notebook.
“She keeps trying to tell everyone it’s a mistake since she slept through the Muse Cruise,” Skye said. “But nobody’s buying it. Now she’s writing songs about being a misunderstood genius.”
Allie sat back in her chair and picked at her cuticles. “I think I’ll forgive her for lip-synching,” she said, and smiled. “In a few days, she’ll be a more humble person.”
Charlie nodded. “Maybe you’re right. I hear everyone hating you does wonders for your character.”
“Mimi hating me definitely turned out to be a good thing,” Skye chirped, waving to Ophelia and Tweety, who sat at a table across the room. “Working with Trip made me the best in the class.”
“Doesn’t hurt that Triple is gone, either,” Charlie added gently.
Skye’s eyes sparkled mischievously above a sly smile. “True.”
AJ looked up from h
er notebook and caught Charlie’s eyes for a second before looking back down and scrawling more lyrics. Charlie wondered if she’d ever grow to like AJ—it was hard to imagine, but you never knew. Now that she had Darwin back as a boyfriend and Allie and Skye as besties, she was open to anything.
Charlie leaned back in her chair and texted Darwin to see if he was coming to breakfast. She hadn’t felt this relaxed since before the Academy opened. With only thirty girls left, the school seemed less like a shark tank and more like a school of minnows swimming peacefully toward Shira’s finish line.
Alphas at the few occupied tables talked quietly among themselves. Everyone looked less haggard, less like a hamster on a wheel and more like what they were: lucky girls on an amazing island. Under the blow-outs and ponies were relaxed smiles, the faces of girls who knew they’d passed one of Shira’s biggest tests.
“Attention, Alphas,” the British voice of Charlie’s mom intruded on Charlie’s thoughts. “Please stand by for a special message.”
The brise-soleil shades on the Pavilion lowered over the windows, turning the bright dining hall pitch-black. A screen lowered over each window, and suddenly Shira’s face appeared in close-up on each one—giant, forbidding, and unreadable behind her dark sunglasses.
Giant-head Shira sat in a white leather passenger seat with massaging leather “fingers” extending from it. An A-shaped window next to her revealed palm trees, ferns, and the Delphi Observatory. A glass of sparkling water sat untouched in the foreground of the shot. Charlie knew that chair, the glass, and the window—Shira was broadcasting from the cabin of the Brazille Force One, her luxury Learjet.
“G’day, lollies,” Eight Shiras boomed from the screens. The view of trees framed in the A-shaped window began to move. “As you can see, I’m headed to the mainland. A situation there demanded my attention, unfortunately, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.”
Charlie’s eyes met Allie’s, then Skye’s. Both of her besties looked excited, but Charlie knew Shira too well. This had to be another trap, test, or trick. When her eyes returned to the screens, the plane had gathered speed. Outside the window of Brazille Force One, trees whizzed past in a green-brown blur.
All eight Shiras continued. “I have good news. While I’m gone, you will discover a leader. That person, whoever she may be, will distinguish herself through her ability to be fair, to be strong, to survive. Someone with vision. This visionary Alpha will receive special privileges upon my return. For one, she will be an Alpha for life. And the rest . . .” Shira paused dramatically, a thin smile appearing on her face for a fraction of a second before vanishing. “The rest will remain a surprise. Good luck, girls.”
All eight screens instantly went dark and slowly rolled up along with the brise-soleil shades, flooding the enormous room with light again.
Charlie hit SEND on her message to Darwin and put her phone in her skirt pocket. For a split second, the dining hall was quiet enough to hear a bobby pin drop.
Then Seraphina Hernandez-Rosenblatt—normally shy, sensitive, and introverted—did something out of character. She unclipped her long brown curls, shook out her hair so it was wild and full, then leapt out of her chair and climbed up on one of the tables, raising her hands high over her head like she’d just won a marathon. “Freedom!” she yelled, smiling wide and looking around the room, wiggling her thick eyebrows as if daring the other girls to embrace their new Shira-free existence.
Milliseconds later, the room burst into commotion like a cork had been popped from a bottle of champagne. Charlie looked around—there were no muses in sight, no teachers to speak of. In seconds, someone hacked the audio system in the pavilion to play the Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling.”
“If you can’t beat ’em…” Skye shrugged and jumped up to join the bun-heads in a celebratory dance-off.
Charlie and Allie watched as a few girls ran toward the boutiques and began tearing clothes off their hangers as if aBucks no longer applied.
Charlie wanted to be happy. She wanted to be free. But she also wanted to be an Alpha for life. She ran a hand uncertainly through her mahogany bangs and looked out the window, just in time to spot Brazille Force One slicing through the perfect blue sky.
Charlie’s fingers itched the way they always did when she wanted to create. She needed to get to the lab. It would take a lot of thinking to come up with a way to lead this crazy Alpha crew. For one, Alphas didn’t like to let others lead. That’s what made them Alphas.
But there could only be one. She knew that now.
Turning in a slow circle in the middle of the chaotic room, Charlie wiggled her wrist until she heard the reassuring clank of her three cameo bracelets. She made a silent promise to herself: to rise to the top, and to do it without any of her classmates noticing. Once her leadership was secured, Charlie would make sure Shira knew all about it.
After all, she didn’t come here to play. She came here to win.
Alpha Academy may be home to the best and the brightest, but the original alpha will always be Massie Block….
Turn the page for a peek at MY LITTLE PHONY, A CLIQUE NOVEL by Lisi Harrison
THE BLOCK ESTATE
THE BARN-TURNED-SPA
Friday, December 5th
2:37 P.M.
“I love getting stoned,” Massie Block sighed happily from one of the three massage tables set up in her family’s barn-spa. Heated stones lay on her back, radiating warmth through her entire body like she’d just downed three soy caramel lattes.
“If we were in school right now, we’d be in third-period French,” Kristen Gregory mumbled through the face hole in her massage table. The stones lined her spine like stegosaurus plates.
“J’adore snow days,” trilled Alicia Rivera, lying on her back at the end of the row, her long, dark brown hair fanned out behind her head. Her masseuse, Amber, spritzed her with Evian mineral water.
“Oui, oui,” Kristen agreed.
“Woof!” Bean chimed in from her own mini massage bed.
“Tatiana, how do you say ‘snow day’ in Russian?” Massie asked innocently.
“Shhhhh,” hissed Tatiana. “Talking eees naht relaaacksing. Jash theenk abut a bee-yoo-ti-ful snoh-flok.”
Tatiana claimed to be “frahmm RAH-shah,” but Massie had a feeling her accent was about as real as Heidi Pratt’s new body. Not that it mattered. Her hands were pure gold. And with all those rocks lined up on her back, Massie felt like the black diamond stretch bracelet on her Christmas list: relaxed, beautiful, and almost a million bucks.
Massie turned her head to look out the barn’s sophisticated yet rustic plate-glass windows. It had snowed more than two feet the night before. The patios were dusted with shimmery powder, and the trees sparkled in the early December sun. It looked as though the MAC fairy had sprinkled pearly White Frost eye shadow over the entire Block estate and then blown it a kiss with her Sugarrimmed Dazzleglass–coated lips.
“CLAAAAAAAAAAAAIRE!” Layne Abeley’s gravelly voice boomed from outside.
“AHHHHH! I’ve been hit!”
CRASH!
Outside, a body slammed against the barn wall, and the spa shook. A high-pitched giggle followed.
“Eh-ma-annoying!” Massie flipped over, her heated stones tumbling to the floor. Her ex-BFF, Claire Lyons, had been squealing and giggling with her new friends all afternoon. Leave it to Claire to find the only ninth-grade girls who thought snowball fights were more fun than high school gossip. It was a total waste of an upgrade.
“Eeeen-hayel the soo-theeng ah-rom-ah,” Tatiana instructed, guiding Massie back down to the table and replacing the rocks. Spicy steam startled Massie’s pores as the masseuse kneaded the tension from her shoulders. But it was a lost cause. No amount of eucalyptus-infused steam could ease the pain of Claire ditching the Pretty Committee for Layme Abeley and two fourteen-year-old theater geeks.
Suddenly, the barn’s wooden door flew open. Dylan Marvil rushed in, along with an arctic blast of air. Snowf
lakes speckled the back of her black cashmere coat like dandruff. Her white-mittened hands grasped the handles of a dozen brightly colored shopping bags, and her cheeks were as red as her hair.
“Where’ve you been?” Alicia sat up, pressing a fluffy green towel against her C-cups.
“Shooooooooooooooppping!” Dylan burped. She set down a cardboard tray full of venti Starbucks hot chocolates and wiped her brown-stache with the back of her mitten. A cocoa-colored skid mark cut across the cashmere. “Ooops!” she shrugged. “Good thing I got a new pair. I cleaned out Neiman’s, Juicy, and Michael Kors. Snow-day shopping is the best.”
“Point-t-t-t,” Alicia agreed through chattering teeth.
Massie pressed a button on a sleek silver remote. A second later, the electric fire in the stone fireplace ignited.
Dylan tossed her stained mittens into the hungry flames and then shook her crimson locks.
“Nice lice, Dyl!” Kristen cackled. Alicia snickered, her freshly manicured toes dangling just above the heated tile floor.
As Dylan whirled back toward them, her Brazilian blowout whipped around her face. “Don’t even joke! When Megan Lambert got lice, her friends scattered like roaches in a Raid storm.” She stuck her butt out to warm it in the fire’s glow.
“Let’s see what you got.” Massie stood, and once again the pile of rocks cascaded off her warm back and crashed to the ground. Bean bolted under the glass coffee table.
“Nyyyetttttt!” Tatiana let out a yelp as one of the rocks bounced against her toe. “Off! Off!” she insisted, waving Kristen and Alicia to their feet. With a grimace, she nodded at the other masseuses, who quickly folded up their tables, packed up their oils, picked up their rocks, and followed her out into the cold afternoon.
“Danke very much,” Massie called after them sweetly, putting on a fluffy white robe.
The three women responded by slamming the barn door shut.
Belle of the Brawl Page 14
