Movers and Fakers Read online

  Ten agonizing seconds later, Charlie’s aPod beeped.

  “Well?” whispered Skye.

  SHIRA: DARWIN IS A VERY GOOD CATCH. GIRLS ARE GOING TO WANT TO HANG AROUND HIM. YOU’D BETTER GET USED TO IT. NOW GET ME SOME REAL NAMES!

  Skye collapsed on the floor, curling up like an unwatered houseplant.

  As the three girls whisper-groaned in unison, the door downstairs slid open again. AJ’s patchouli essential oil found Allie’s nostrils, and in a moment AJ herself appeared at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a mangy faux-fur coat that looked like she’d rescued it from a Dumpster.

  “Hey ladies,” AJ drawled. “Fun night, right?”

  Allie’s eyes stung as her new roommate came closer. In the semi-dark room, she could make out a cinnamon-scented toothpick dangling from AJ’s ChapSticked mouth.

  “Yeah. Super-fun,” said Skye flatly.

  “Hey,” Allie whispered, swallowing a scream of frustration. She glanced over at the clock—1:03! Allie didn’t want to imagine AJ locking lips with Darwin for hours on end, but her mind couldn’t go anywhere else.

  “Let’s strategize in the bathroom,” Skye whispered to Charlie, turning her back on AJ and Allie. “Alone.”

  Charlie shot an unsmiling look at Allie before rolling out of bed and padding after Skye. Soon, Allie heard the sound of the bathroom door locking followed by muffled giggles. On her own again, Allie pulled her comforter up to her neck and wished again for sleep to put her out of her misery for a few hours.

  AJ changed into a pair of pearl-pink pajamas and laid down on Renee’s bed, flashing Allie a smug smile. “No wonder you wanted to be me. My life rocks.”

  For the first time that night, Allie wished she was still masquerading as the Queen of Green. She was trying to be herself, to prove that the real Allie was somebody, too, but the real Allie didn’t have much to offer. She had no talent, no special thing that was hers. Her friends were having private bathroom conferences without her, and AJ and Darwin were moving faster than the personal Alpha planes that waited to fly boring Allie back home if she failed here.

  Not only did Allie have no friends and no talent, she had no hope.

  15

  JACKIE O

  BATHROOM

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD

  1:29 A.M.

  Skye stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, adjusting the dial on the wall from “Flattering” to “Pore Examination” light. Yikes! Rubbing her eyes, she forced herself to stare hard at the girl reflected back at her under blinding full-spectrum lighting meant only to help catch errant eyebrow hairs and blackheads, not for soul-searching in the middle of the night. Two words came to mind, both starting with H and both the opposite of “hot”: haggard, hideous. She turned the dial back to “Flattering,” but even in the pinkish glow, she looked more crumpled than a leg warmer without a leg. She was tired, of course—it had been a crazy day and a busy night and it was now past her internal clock’s normal bedtime—but her spirit, the light in her eyes that showed the world Skye Hamilton was fun and fabulous, looked dulled and dim. Her once-sparkly Tiffany-box blue eyes were as faded as stonewashed jeans, her makeup smeared around them in bruisey, vaguely frightening patches.

  Skye had spent her whole life at the top of the food chain, always ranked first in dance class, always among the most popular girls in school. Ever since she could remember, boys loved her and girls wanted to be her. But now that Triple had officially been crowned queen bun-head and AJ had pulled an Edward Cullen and sucked all the joy from her party, Skye was in free fall. She should have been the star tonight, and the fact that she couldn’t yank her party out of AJ’s guitar-playing hands proved that she was losing her Skye-ness—the magical It factor that had always landed her on top.

  First, Triple had beaten her in the dance studio, and now AJ had bested her at hosting parties. The boys loved her lyrics and grooved to her beats, rocking out like they were extras in an Allie J music video. So what was Skye good for?

  “Still awake?” As if she had been summoned by Skye’s thoughts, AJ suddenly appeared in Skye’s flattering mirror light. Skye jumped, knocking an open bottle of foundation into the sink.

  Great. Now she wouldn’t even be able to hide her under-eye bags tomorrow. Yet another thing AJ took without asking.

  “Sorry. You can use my makeup if you want. It’s bareMinerals. Totally natural, chemical free, and good for the—” AJ’s monotonous earth-mama singsong had quickly gone from annoying to unbearable, and Skye couldn’t take another syllable.

  “First,” Skye screech-blurted, “I’m allergic to talc, so bareMinerals gives me hives. And second, in case you didn’t notice, my skin has yellow undertones and yours has blue. So obvious-leh we can’t share foundation!” Twisting the cap back on her Lancôme bottle as tightly as possible, she wished her fingers were wrapped around AJ’s neck instead.

  “Oh well,” AJ said brightly, taking a wooden toothbrush out of a small wooden case. “Great party tonight. Everyone’s still texting about my little impromptu show.”

  As Skye began squeezing toothpaste onto her electric toothbrush, her hands trembled with rage. Impromptu! Right.

  “How awesome for you,” she finally managed to say over the hum of her Sonicare. Remain calm, she told herself. If AJ saw how jealous Skye was, then the party-terrorist had already won. “You’ve had a big first week here.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I just do what I do, you know? For some reason, people seem to love it.” AJ shrugged, spitting a blob of toothpaste into the sink.

  “That’s how life was for me once, back home,” Skye caught herself admitting.

  “Was it?” AJ said, flashing Skye a pity-smile and heading to the eucalyptus-scented Vichy shower. From behind the frosted glass, she added: “Never woulda guessed.”

  Skye stared at her reflection again, taking a deep sniff of calming eucalyptus and clamping her mouth shut so she wouldn’t blurt out something she would later regret. Everyone was obsessing about AJ, eating up her Pop-Tart personality without tasting the bitter saccharine that lay beneath. Skye couldn’t compete with AJ’s fame, but she couldn’t let the green meanie steamroll her spirit.

  Desperate for a sign, she scanned the touch-screen controls on the side of the mirror until she found the personal affirmation button, marked with a bubbly set of quotation marks. The mirror beeped, and a moment later produced a glowing neon-pink sentence that slid along the glass and stopped just under Skye’s chin.

  Personal affirmation for SKYE HAMILTON:

  Love looks through a telescope. Envy, through a microscope.

  Huh?

  Skye spit a blob of toothpaste into the bowl and undertook a final mirror-nalysis as she tried to figure out what the mirror wanted her to do. Blond hair—check. Big green eyes—check. But the eyes needed their magic back. Her mouth was twisted in an unattractive sneer, and her sinewy body was stooped with the weight of the world—AJ’s world—on her shoulders. How would she get her mojo back? Where would she find her telescope?

  And then it came to her. What do you do when someone steals your thunder? Steal it back, of course. Show her up. Skye had to throw an even bigger party—one so fabulous that there was no way AJ could find a way to ruin it. It had to be someplace that didn’t work well for guitar playing, someplace where Skye could divide and conquer the crowd if she needed to. She thought back to some of her best parties back home, remembering golf-cart racing at the country club, dance parties in abandoned swimming pools, subway-car takeovers—that was it!

  Deep in thought, Skye high-kicked her leg and pressed her calf against her forehead, enjoying the tingle of exertion that traveled from her hip to her ankle. Lowering her leg to the floor, she blew her mirror image an air kiss. She was a genius! Her next party would be the talk of the school for months. Her new plan firmly fixed in her mind, Skye smiled at the mirror now—not just with her mouth but with her eyes. She grabbed her aPod from the bathroom counter and
texted Taz with her idea.

  Her phone beeped three seconds later.

  Taz: PARTY TRAIN!!!

  Would Syd’s response be even more enthusiastic? Only one way to find out! Skye sent him the same message she’d sent Taz:

  Skye: Friday at midnight, let’s have an even bigger bash. Only this time, we’ll take the party on the road, or at least bubble-train tracks—gotta carpe diem while the cameras are down! Skye’s the limit!

  Skye waited impatiently for Syd’s response. It took ten times longer than Taz’s to arrive, and when it did, her chugging heart slammed to a stop.

  Syd: Shouldn’t you be using your energy to dance? And what if you get caught? I thought you were more than just a party girl.

  Staring at her reflection in the mirror, her blond waves a little bit frizzy from AJ’s steamy shower, Skye felt a deep blush of shame stain her skin. How embarrassing to come this close to falling for the wrong guy! She was mortified not to have noticed it sooner: Sydney was a total wuss.

  16

  BRAZILLE RESIDENCE

  CONTROL ROOM

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD

  5:34 P.M.

  Charlie examined her face in the shiny rectangular reflection of the laptop screen: big brown eyes (her best feature, she’d always thought); adequate lips (semi-rosebud, neither full nor thin, with a light coat of tinted ChapStick, since lipstick made her feel overdone); long, chestnut-brown, good-hair-day hair (yes!). Leaning in closer to the laptop, Charlie pinched her cheeks for color. Then she wiped her sweaty hands on her new Alpha uniform, a belted shirtdress in shimmery copper that had recently been introduced to their wardrobe.

  Over the years, Darwin had seen her at her ugliest. He’d been with her when she got food poisoning in Barcelona, renaming the city “Barf-celona”; when she contracted an unfortunate case of forehead zits just before Darwin’s thirteenth birthday party (a hair spray allergy, she’d lied); and when an African mantis had bitten her eyelid, making her look like a newborn gerbil. After a boy saw you like that, being pretty didn’t seem as important.

  Thinking about her Darwin and the Darwin she witnessed last night, the one who hung on AJ’s every obnoxious word, made Charlie want to find a hammer and smash a few of the monitor screens. How could he not see how manipulative AJ was? Or worse: What if he saw it and liked it? It was too much to contemplate. Charlie clicked on the green Skype icon and resolved to put Darwin out of her mind for now and focus on Jess.

  Jess picked up her call after just one ring. His smile was as white as the sand of the beach behind him. He looked as if he smelled like salt and cocoa butter.

  “Hi Charlie.” Jess smiled. Charlie wished there was something more interesting behind her than boxes of computer equipment. “So… did you fix the cameras yet?”

  Charlie had, in fact, figured it out. She just had to connect a circuit to the breaker and the security system would be up and running. But she wasn’t ready to do that just yet. If she fixed the cameras entirely, what excuse would she have to Skype with Jess?

  “I think I’m almost there,” she lied, testing out a few eyelash bats. She’d read somewhere that this was a surefire attractor of the opposite sex, and that it worked for ostriches, llamas, and other not-so-hot animals. And while Charlie didn’t feel as beautiful as some of the Alphas, she was certainly a lot cuter than a llama. “Thanks to you, that is.” Charlie pretended to fiddle with a motherboard on an open desktop in front of her.

  “Me? It was all you,” Jess said. He was still modest to a fault. “I just pulled the donkey.”

  “Pulled the donkey?” Charlie laughed and blushed a deeper shade of pink, cocking her head to one side. Was Jess likening her to a farm animal or just botching an expression?

  “No donkey? Bad translation. Um… hang on.” Jess smiled sheepishly and typed something into his iPhone. “Okay… I just greased the wheels. You steered the bus.”

  “Well, it was a joint effort.” Charlie grinned. “Kinda like the time we rigged Mel’s phone to play ‘My Humps’ on repeat every time he turned it on.” Charlie giggled at the memory. Jess had been horrified when she’d suggested it, but he loved figuring out how to pull the prank.

  Jess laughed, the corners of his eyes curling up affectionately. “So funny! Until he threw it in the ocean. After that, I felt bad. Did he ever find out who did it?”

  “Yeah. I’m still waiting for him to get back at me.” Charlie smiled. “And I’m pretty sure he’s still mad at you.”

  “There’s nobody here like you, Charlie. Brains and beauty,” Jess continued. “Every boy you know has a crush on you, I’m sure.”

  That might have been true once, Charlie conceded. Back when she was the planet around which the Brazille Boys orbited. Back when there weren’t dozens of shiny, smiling Alphas to distract each one of them.

  Jess’s iPhone trilled. “Gotta take this, Charlie. Can you hold on? It’s my dad.”

  “Sure,” she said, and Jess jumped out of his chair and began to pace the beach.

  Charlie sighed, thinking about the insurmountable distance between them. Absence made the heart grow fonder, though, didn’t it? At least that was how it worked for Charlie’s mom and dad. Before her dad died, he had been a member of the Royal Navy, monitoring peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. Bee and Charles (Charlie was named for her dad) only saw each other a few days a month, when Charles was off duty. Charlie still had stacks of letters they sent to each other, and part of her always thought she’d have a similar long-distance romance. But the way Bee coped with Charles being so far away was gabbing with her two closest friends, Hildy and Mare. In talking about Charles with her two best girlfriends, Bee kept him near her heart.

  Charlie flipped open the locket on her cameo bracelet, the one that held her father’s picture inside. He stared back at her, his Royal Navy hat perched just so, his kind eyes reminding her that life was shorter than high school often led you to believe. It flew by in a minute. Charlie flipped open the other cameo to the place Darwin’s picture used to be, but Shira had taken it away from her when she’d accepted her into Alpha Academy.

  Looking at that blank oval where Darwin’s face once belonged, Charlie had a sudden, fierce pang of missing Allie. Allie was the one person on this island who would appreciate the tragic romance of her flirtation with Jess. She would eat up Charlie’s Skype hype about how cute Jess had become. Charlie clicked the cameo closed with a sigh—she couldn’t talk to Allie. They just weren’t friends anymore. Allie had lied, and their friendship was built under false pretenses. Then again, Charlie had lied once, too—to get into Shira’s school.

  Charlie sat back with a thud. The more she thought about it, the more obvious it became: She and Allie had both sold their souls to get into Alpha Academy. Like Jess said, they had given up so much for the chance to shine for Shira. And at least Allie didn’t hurt anyone she loved to go here! Charlie had wanted admission badly enough to get her mom fired and break her boyfriend’s heart. All Allie had done was dye her hair and draw a mole on her upper lip. It wasn’t so awful, now that Charlie thought about it. It was nothing that Charlie wouldn’t have done herself if she’d been in Allie’s shoes.

  Charlie’s heart began to beat faster than the wings of the mechanical butterflies she’d built to teach herself circuitry. She had to get out of here ASAP. She had to make things right with Allie.

  “Jess!” she called, waving at the figure pacing the beach to sit down at his laptop again. When he saw her waving, he said good-bye to his dad on the phone and sat back down.

  “Sorry about that.” He smiled.

  Even though Jess was adorable, Charlie didn’t have any time to waste.

  “Can I Skype you tomorrow? There’s somewhere I have to be,” she said. She buckled her gladiator sandals around her ankles as she talked, her mind already back at Jackie O with Allie.

  “Of course,” Jess said, running his hand through his thick black hair. “Call me every day!”
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  Charlie felt a tingle run down her spine. If things went the way she hoped, maybe tomorrow she would tell Jess all about her new friend, Allie—the girl who did the gutsiest thing to get into Alpha Academy. Well, the second gutsiest.

  17

  JACKIE O

  BACK PORCH

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD

  11:16 P.M.

  Allie wondered if anyone had ever been driven insane by tropical birds before. She prodded at her makeshift earplugs, two balled-up strips of toilet paper cribbed from the Jackie O bathroom, and wished they actually worked to block out the squawking macaw that had planted itself outside Jackie O.

  “Aren’t you supposed to sleep at night?” Allie yelled. She remembered that much from biology class—birds were diurnal, not nocturnal like bats.

  But the macaw had clearly not taken seventh-grade bio with mustachioed Mrs. Wilson, because it squawked back a shrill reply that sounded like, “Nosiree!”

  Allie shivered in the night air, pulling her blanket around her shoulders. If she was going to spend another night on the chaise longue, at least this time she’d brought essentials. She had her pillow and blanket and all the books from her gazillion-class schedule to keep her company. And she had her pride! She couldn’t bear the thought of another night spent “sleeping” (more like staring at the floating numerals of the digital clock in abject misery, since she wasn’t getting any actual sleep) amid a group of girls who all hated her. She’d take the chaise longue any day over that.

  Allie stared down at the books and assignments piled around her. She couldn’t focus on any of them. None of her classes were her; nothing stuck out as a subject she could be passionate about. And the dyed-black hair that was taking forever to grow out, well, that wasn’t her, either. Neither was having no friends. Even though her Allie J disguise was gone, Allie still had a hard time recognizing herself. She couldn’t even remember who she was before all of this. What had made her laugh? What had she liked to eat? How had she decided what to wear, what kind of music to listen to? She was in the middle of a serious identity crisis. If she didn’t figure out who she was soon, Shira was going to give her the one identity she didn’t want: eliminated Alpha.