Elite 03 Simply Irresistible

by Jennifer Banash

  Madison crossed her arms over her C-cups and concentrated on staring at the brightly decorated Christmas tree instead of the slobbering make-out zombies in front of her. How much crap was she going to have to take before the humiliating fiasco that was her mother’s love life blew up in Edie’s face again? Ever since the divorce, her mother’s “relationships”—if you could even call them that—seemed to end as quickly as they’d begun, often with tears and empty bottles of Cristal strewn all over the lavish baroque splendor of the Macallisters’ penthouse apartment. Christmas, which had always been Madison’s favorite holiday, was definitely cancelled this year. Without her father it just seemed pointless. She hoped against hope that he might agree to stop by on Christmas Day—just for a few hours. But any expectations she’d previously entertained had been ripped away like discarded wrapping paper after his secretary informed her that “Mr. Macallister is planning a sailing trip to the South of France over the holidays, and won’t be back until the New Year.” Probably with some nineteen-year-old Penthouse pet, Madison fumed, brushing crumbs from her lap. Besides, even if she were bursting with Christmas cheer, what would she and Edie do anyway? Bake cookies and sing carols? Not likely. Screw the Christmas spirit. Madison glowered as Antonio looked over, shooting a weak smile in her direction.

  “Your mother has invited me to spend the holidays with you both—and I have accepted,” Antonio said carefully, wiping the crumbs from his full lips with a white linen napkin.

  “Great. I’ll alert the media,” Madison snapped as she stood up, throwing her black cashmere military-inspired D&G coat over her shoulders, the silver buttons flashing in the light. “It’ll be a miracle if you two survive past New Year’s,” Mad said as she pulled her arms through the sleeves, not bothering to fasten the buttons and exhaling loudly in annoyance. Not that Edie and Antonio were paying attention anyway. The minute she got up, Edie began whispering in Antonio’s ear and giggling like a love-struck teenager. As she looked at them, Madison couldn’t help but feel a giant wave of sadness crashing over her—a wave she hoped to God the cameras wouldn’t pick up on.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Madison said in a tone just saccharine enough to make Edie and Antonio quit their pawing and look up blankly into Madison’s sweetly smiling face. If she’d learned anything from Edie over the years it was definitely how to fake it—even when you felt like killing someone. Especially when you felt like killing someone. “Bah fucking humbug,” she snarled, turning on one heel and marching across the glittering, ornate lobby. After all, she told herself, blinking back an ocean of frustrated tears from her eyes, no one ever could accuse Madison Macallister of being a girl who didn’t know how to make an exit . . .

  But even so, as she walked out of the place that represented the happiest days of her childhood and into the frigid air blowing down Fifth Avenue, Madison couldn’t help wishing that she had something that even remotely approximated a real family. After all, it was one thing to lose your boyfriend to the new girl in town, but it was something else entirely when guys started dumping you for your mom! Madison bit her bottom lip as she pushed through the front doors, checking her reflection in the shiny glass. Had she lost her trademark Macalliser hotness? Was that even possible? Still, why would any guy in his right mind prefer Edie to her? There were cameras trailing her every move on a daily basis, and, in a few short weeks the show would premiere and she’d be famous—or infamous. So then why was she suddenly feeling so . . . invisible? Ugh, there was nothing like a breakup to make you feel completely insignificant—no matter who you were. She needed a Breakover—and fast. Madison stepped onto the street, pulling her phone from her bag, her finger scrolling through her call list, searching for Frederic Fekkai when her phone erupted in her hands and began buzzing shrilly.

  “What?” Madison barked, walking into the street and throwing out one hand to try to hail a cab, her platinum hair whipping around her head in a sudden gust of wind.

  “Hey,” Drew said nervously. “Glad I caught you.”

  “I’m in a hurry.” Mad rolled her eyes and uttered a sound that closely resembled the piercing, slightly guttural cry of an elephant being shot with a spear. “I’m trying to get a cab. But what’s up?”

  “I just wanted to see if we could meet up tomorrow night.” Drew cleared his throat, and in the depths of that scratchy noise she could hear how down he sounded. Come to think of it, he’d been weirdly depressed and totally unDrewlike since Sophie’s party—not that it was her problem anymore. “I really need to talk to someone.”

  “You need to talk to someone,” Mad repeated tonelessly as a cab screeched to a stop right in front of her. She grabbed the door handle and fell into the backseat, breathing hard. “God, I fucking hate cabs.” The driver shot her a dirty look in the rearview mirror. “No offense,” Madison said, holding the phone away from her ear. “Fifty-sixth and Park,” she barked at the driver. “Look, Drew, do you need to talk to ‘someone’ or do you need to talk to me—there is a difference, you know.”

  God, she sounded like such a bitch sometimes. But she couldn’t seem to help herself—especially where Drew was concerned. Ever since last spring when they had sort-of-almost lost their virginity to one another, things had definitely been far from perfect between them. Not only had he immediately run off to spend the summer in Amsterdam without even saying good-bye, but he’d started flirting with the bane of her existence that was Casey McCloy—new girl and complete loser—the minute he’d stepped foot back on the island of Manhattan.

  “I know,” Drew said, exhaling loudly in frustration. “And I need to talk to you, okay?”

  “Meet me tomorrow night at Space. Nine o’clock.”

  “Space?” Drew said with no small amount of disbelief. “You mean you’re actually going to venture below Times Square of your own free will?” Drew scoffed playfully, referring to Madison’s disdain of anything not Upper East Side, as well as the fact that Space, one of the hottest new clubs in town, was located in SoHo—as far downtown as one could possibly get without being in Chinatown . . . or Brooklyn. “Who are you?” he demanded jokingly, “and what have you done with Madison Macallister?”

  “I’m not even hearing you,” Madison said sweetly, staring out the window at the traffic blurring by. “Besides, if it’s good enough for the cast of Gossip Girl, it’s definitely good enough for me.”

  Drew chuckled, sounding more like his old self than he had in weeks. “All right—I don’t usually make it a practice to descend into the inner apex of Hipdom on a school night, but I guess for you I can make an exception.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Mad answered with a hint of her trademark sarcasm, hoping Drew could feel how hard she was rolling her eyes at him. After all, he had mentioned once that he thought they had some kind of telepathic connection . . .

  Madison pushed END with one French-manicured nail before Drew could say anything else, tossing her phone back into her bag, taking a strand of platinum hair between two fingers and studying it carefully. She was definitely still pissed at Drew, that wasn’t even up for discussion—but, even so, she couldn’t ignore the fact that meeting him at the hottest new club in the city was the perfect excuse to unveil the new, improved Madison Macallister . . .

  cram session

  “I totally hate calculu s.” Sophie St. John threw her book to the floor of The Bramford’s entertainment lounge and twisted her golden hair, the color of buttered honey, into a messy bun, sticking a pencil through it to secure it firmly in place. It was ridiculous—even when Sophie was a mess, she was still one of the most glamorous, fashionable girls Casey McCloy had ever seen in all of her soon-to-be seventeen years. “I can’t wait to get out into the real world so I never have to do math ever again.”

  Casey laughed, pulling her own newly straightened yellowish blond hair into a ponytail. “I hate to break it to you, Sophs, but math isn’t exactly useless in everyday life.”

  “Well, that’s what I like to tell myself, anyway,” Sophie s
aid with a giggle, pushing her black Gucci glasses that she didn’t need—they were strictly an accessory, as Sophie’s vision was perfect—higher onto the bridge of her perfectly upturned nose, and sipping greedily at her soy latte, foam covering her lips before she licked it off, quick as a cat. With her hair pulled back, glasses on, and dressed in a tiny Ralph Lauren green-and-black plaid skirt, Wolford tights, and a kelly green Hermès wool sweater, Sophie looked more like a psychotically cheerful Catholic schoolgirl than a much-envied Upper East Side A-lister. But frequent costume changes were part of Sophie’s charm—and one of the things Casey liked best about the diminutive honey-haired Bramford resident. The best, or maybe worst thing, about Sophie St. John was that she rarely took herself seriously—and unfortunately, as a result, nobody else really did either . . . In reality, Sophie was titanically smart—so much so that she’d skipped the sixth grade entirely when her English teacher discovered her plowing through Jane Austen’s entire oeuvre one fateful semester, hiding battered paperbacks under her desk so she could read through her classes undisturbed.

  Casey looked around the lounge, taking in the enormous movie screen hanging at the front of the room, which was currently blasting VHl’s exercise in nostalgia, I Love the Eighties , at maximum volume, the screen filled with the image of George Michael jumping around on a runway, his hands covered in Day-Glo green gloves that were beyond horrific. A stainless steel, state-of-the-art popcorn machine that, as far as Casey could tell, nobody ever used stood in the corner, and an adjacent sculpted outdoor garden was clearly visible through a long row of windows.

  Just a short month ago, merely stepping into a room like this would’ve caused her mouth to fall open in stunned silence. Now it was just kind of . . . normal. Casey sighed, closing her history book and tossing it on the couch beside her, crossing her legs beneath her, a pair of cabled J. Crew gray cashmere ballet flats swaddling her toes in luxurious warmth. Ever since this whole reality show thing had begun, her footwear wasn’t the only thing that had changed drastically. Almost overnight she’d gone from new girl and perennial social misfit to almost . . . popular.

  “How could anyone have ever doubted for, like, a millisecond that George Michael was gay?” Sophie said, shaking her head disbelievingly at the screen, taking in the singer’s perfectly feathered golden hair, tight red athletic shorts, and signature gold hoop earring. “I mean,” Sophie went on, pointing at the screen, “the ball-hugging shorts alone leave no doubt.”

  Casey burst out laughing, her shoulders shaking hard beneath her gray Fair Isle cable-knit cashmere sweater, the soft wool mirroring the exact shade of her wide-set eyes.

  “Apparently no one realized that Boy George was a drag queen right away either, if you can believe that,” Casey pointed out after she’d composed herself, pushing her hair back from her face with one hand. “So go figure. But, you know,” she added, frowning as the Wham! video flashed off, and the girls from Bananarama started belting out “Venus,” “it’s weird how much better all these eighties’ pop stars look now—it was like the eighties were a veritable black hole of spandex, bike shorts, leg warmers, and other assorted fashion nightmares.”

  With her new designer wardrobe courtesy of the producers of De-Luxe—and the occasional forays into both Sophie’s and Phoebe’s overstuffed closets—her newly straightened hair, freckles that were now magically airbrushed away with Gior gio Armani foundation, along with her newfound celebrity status, Casey had succeeded in making quite the transformation herself. When she peered into the mirror these days, she barely recognized the girl staring back at her. The weird, frizzy-haired, socially inept Casey seemed to have been banished for good with a click of a remote and the whir of the camera. The only problem was that she still wasn’t sure how she actually felt about any of it.

  But whether she really wanted to come to terms with it or not, Casey couldn’t help noticing that not being treated like a social outcast was definitely preferable to being terminally typecast as a gauche, Midwestern loser. But every time she caught sight of her own reflection in one of the glossy shop windows lining Fifth Avenue, she was filled with a sudden shock, a sense of complete dislocation, and an out-of-body, Twilight Zone-esque sensation when she realized that the smiling, sophisticated blond staring back at her was none other than, umm . . . herself. Who was that girl, she sometimes wondered as Meadowlark’s best and brightest routinely waved at her in the hallways and IMed her late into the night.

  As soon as the student population had gotten word that Madison and Casey had been chosen for their own reality show, the invitations to the Upper East Side’s most exclusive parties and events had begun flooding in with a force and regularity that made Casey feel slightly dizzy as she stood in the kitchen each night while opening the piles of thick envelopes that were now routinely strewn across Nanna’s granite kitchen counters. But did it really mean anything when the only reason people were interested in you was because you were on some stupid TV show? Casey shifted uncomfortably on the soft couch, the thought making her squirm.

  “So,” Casey began, trying to change the subject and distract herself from the thoughts about her shifting identity that she really didn’t want to focus on, “have you talked to your . . . mom lately?” Sophie’s smile faded away as the words left Casey’s lips, and she looked down at her skirt and began picking at a loose yellow thread, her normally open, happy face set with concentration. Six weeks ago Sophie had met her biological mother, Melissa Von Norton—an infamous Hollywood actress who’d given Sophie up for adoption when she was just an infant—at Sophie’s lavish, Studio 54-themed sweet sixteen. Needless to say, they didn’t exactly leave the party making plans to have sleepovers and wash each other’s hair on a regular basis. The night ended with Sophie running out of her own party, leaving Melissa—not to mention the rest of the Upper East Side—standing on the street, mouths agape. Ever since that night, Sophie had refused to talk about it with anyone . . . until now.

  “She’s called . . . and e-mailed a few times,” Sophie said with a sulky sigh, eyes still fixated on her skirt. “But I haven’t exactly been dying to talk to her.” She tossed the loose thread to the floor, her sweater falling back from her wrists to reveal a series of angry-looking red cuts that marred her pale skin. Casey couldn’t help staring at the jagged, diagonal markings, her gray eyes widening with questions she knew she couldn’t—shouldn’t—ask as Sophie quickly pulled her sleeves down and picked up her history book, making a show out of busily rifling the thick, smooth paper. Maybe it was her cat, Casey thought as she groped for something to say. Yeah, right, her inner skeptic snarled, clearly not buying her own half hearted explanation for a second. Her cat just happened to scratch both of her wrists? In exactly the same place? Not likely.

  “But she’s your mom,” Casey went on, unsure of where exactly she was going with any of this—only that she knew she had to keep talking or she’d be likely to blurt out something stupid and insensitive like, “What happened to your arm?” And that, Casey knew instinctively, would be a complete disaster. “Don’t you want to try to have some kind of relationship with her?”

  Sophie snorted, closing her history book again in exasperation. “Oh, right,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Like your relationship with your mom is so great? Where is she again anyway?”

  Casey blushed hard, adjusting her silky straight hair in its ponytail. She still couldn’t believe that after years of wrestling with her impossibly curly locks that went every which way with a mind of their own, that freedom could’ve been as simple as a trip to Elizabeth Arden—courtesy of the beauty guru that was Madison Macallister, of course.

  “She’s in London, working on her book. She got some big, fancy-pants grant to go to Oxford, so she’ll be there all year,” Casey said, running her hands over the smoothness of her ponytail. Casey looked down at her cashmere-swaddled body and wondered what her mother, Barbara, a professor of Women’s Studies at Illinois State University and card-carrying feminist,
would have to say about her new look—not to mention the news that her daughter was a soon-to-be reality television star. Nothing good, that was for sure.

  “You’re playing right into the hands of the patriarchy—not to mention supporting the most abominable aspects of American consumerism!” Barbara would probably yell, slapping her hand down onto the battered wooden kitchen table for added emphasis. Barbara was big on punctuating her declarative sentences with furniture slaps or meaningful grunts—which was kind of strange considering that her mother had a Ph.D. . . . For someone with an advanced degree that took years to earn, her communication skills definitely left something to be desired.

  “Well, it’s definitely weird,” Sophie said, giggling. “Every time she calls you hold the phone practically a mile away from your ear and roll your eyes until you hang up. She must be a nightmare.”

  “Yes,” Casey said with a giggle, “but she means well . . .”

  “Speaking of nightmares,” Sophie said, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose for the millionth time and getting down to business. “What’s up with you and Drew lately? It’s been practically forever since I’ve seen you two licking each other’s faces in the hallway, or force-feeding one another stupid amounts of baked goods at lunch.”

  Now it was Casey’s turn to sigh and look at the floor, the smile fading from her rosy face, her pulse quickening at the mere mention of her almost-kind-of-not-really-even-her-boyfriend’s name. The truth was that things between her and Drew were worse than ever. Since he’d inexplicably left her on the dance floor and run out of Sophie’s sweet sixteen six weeks ago, they’d barely exchanged more than two words. Complicating things even further was the fact that Casey had been hanging out with Darin Hollingsworth, the skinny Emo guy with the shock of black hair who’d rescued her from total wallfloweritis once Drew cut out of the party without so much as a backward glance and left her standing there looking decidedly pathetic.