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  18

  THE MOJAVE DESERT

  2.3 MILES NW OF WILDERNESS GIRL CAMP

  NOVEMBER 4TH

  4:45 P.M.

  “GO, GO, GO!” Tiger Lily’s screaming voice floated back down the churning water to Charlie’s ears as she jumped from one river rock to the next, struggling to keep up with the remade Wilderness Girl. Tiger’s chestnut-brown hair was now soft and shiny, trailing down her back in a waterfall of waves instead of dowdy braids, but Tiger Lily was still totally hardcore, leaping among river rocks like she was starring in a human version of Frogger. Charlie had already come close to getting swept away by the rapids at least three times, but Tiger never faltered. Her feet Spiderman-ed to the rocks.

  Tiger Lily had led the tracking expedition to this river by following AJ’s scent (for once, Charlie was glad she wore so much patchouli). The WGs were so psyched about their makeovers that they’d offered to show the Alphas a few more wilderness skills while they tried to pick up the scent again. They’d been doing white-water drills for nearly an hour, and Charlie was exhausted but also invigorated. Before today, she would have assumed she had zero in common with a girl like Tiger, but they’d actually become fast friends.

  Charlie squinted upriver, where Tiger waved at her from a huge boulder. She gulped a sip of water from her canteen and began to navigate the rocks again. Waves crashed against the stones as Charlie panicked, then jumped, then panicked again, then jumped again. Getting closer to Tiger’s spot in the center of the river, Charlie couldn’t help noticing how radiant the chief WG looked. Her skin glowed thanks to Allie’s desert-sand-and-aloe exfoliator, and her newly plucked eyebrows showed off her gorgeous bone structure.

  “I gotta say it again, Tiger. You look amazing.” Charlie smiled as she made the final leap onto Tiger’s boulder and joined her new friend. “Thanks for showing us all these wilderness skills.”

  “No problem,” Tiger grinned, revealing a single dimple in her left cheek. Shyly, she looked at the ground. “Thanks for prettifying me. I can’t wait to get home and surprise Wyatt at the next Wilderness cookout. Hopefully, all those beauty tricks you guys taught me will stick.”

  The truth was, Tiger had taught Charlie a million more important things than the few beauty tips the Alphas passed along. They’d covered which leaves not to brush up against in the wild, how to pee standing up (holding on to a tree trunk helped), how to combat B.O. without deodorant, how to train their eyes to see in the dark, how to extract water from cacti, how to kill a nest of fire ants… the list was endless. Now Tiger was focused on teaching them to be quick on their feet, to work with nature rather than fight against it.

  Charlie smiled as she caught sight of Mountain and Allie leaping over the trail of river rocks to join them. “Go, Allie!” she yelled, her heart surging from the drama of the river race and the joy of having her besties back.

  “We made it!” Allie yelled on her final jump, staggering atop the island and running over to give Charlie a sweaty hug. “This is actually fun!”

  Charlie nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “Okay,” Tiger said, putting on her game face once Mountain and Allie had each taken a swig from their canteens. “New drill. Here’s the scenario: You’ve dropped your pack into the rapids and have no provisions or tools. Now you’re being chased by a ferocious desert rat. Strong possibility it has rabies. What do you do, soldiers?!”

  Allie went into Avatar mode and channeled her best Na’vi. Her face hardened, and she suddenly looked more amphibious than a tree frog. “Cover myself in river mud and lie low!” she cried.

  Tiger raised one of her ping-pong paddle–sized hands and gave Allie a loud high five. “Right on, soldier.”

  Just then, Ember and Skye appeared on the riverbank twenty feet away, waving their hands wildly and shouting at the girls on the rock island to come out of the river and meet them.

  “They must have found the scent,” Tiger said. She reached into her pack and pulled out a hot-pink rope, threw it over a low-hanging tree branch, and quickly fashioned a pulley system using a carabiner. She motioned for the Alphas to hop on.

  Allie went first, her hands gripping the metal carabiner so hard her knuckles turned white. She screamed as she slid along the rope to the riverbank, but flashed Charlie and the WGs two thumbs up from shore.

  Charlie followed Allie, holding her breath as she whizzed along over the rapids, then gasping for air once her feet made contact with the muddy bank.

  Once everyone made it across, Ember explained. “We picked up the scent of AJ’s tea tree oil back there,” she said hurriedly, gesturing behind her to a thicket of sage bushes and cacti. “I think she’s headed north.”

  “We’d better hurry,” Tiger nodded. The group set out along the river’s edge, Charlie and Allie bringing up the rear with Skye and Ember leading the way. Charlie tried to ignore the uneasy churning of her stomach. Surely with these expert trackers, they would find AJ and get back to Alpha Island before Shira’s deadline. It had to work out, she told herself. They’d earned a little luck, hadn’t they?

  “Ohmuhgud,” Charlie heard Skye say as they reached the top of a small hill lined with craggy rocks. “That’s AJ’s.”

  Charlie hurried to the top of the hill, scared to look but unable not to.

  Uh oh. Charlie stared at the green object flapping in the wind, dangling high up on a branch like a discarded parachute. It was definitely AJ’s grubby green tam.

  Her terrified brown eyes found Allie’s navy blue ones. Allie looked just as scared as Charlie felt. Charlie spun around in the futile hope that AJ was hiding somewhere nearby, enjoying watching them get punked. But she was nowhere in sight.

  Charlie felt downright ill. If AJ was injured—or worse than injured!—because of Charlie’s plateau freak-out, she would never forgive herself. AJ might have been senseless enough to cause their PAP crash, but she didn’t deserve a violent end. She was green, but she wasn’t evil.

  But just as Charlie began to create a dozen guilt-induced scenarios of what might have befallen the teeny greenie—coyote attack, killer bees, axe murderer, the list was endless—a simultaneous ping rang out from all three Alphas’ pockets.

  That ping meant one thing, and one thing only. Their aPods had reception!

  Charlie patted herself down like an airport TSA agent, frantically searching for her phone. It had been so long since she’d needed it that she couldn’t remember which pocket it was in. At last, she found it in a zippered cargo pouch against her right thigh. Her hands shook as she scrolled through her text messages, praying there wouldn’t be something about AJ showing up dead.

  First, she had to wade through a few dozen texts from a very apologetic Darwin.

  Darwin: Can’t believe the plane door shut! Feel terrible! Sending help ASAP.

  Darwin: Please tell me you guys are okay. Taz and Mel are morons.

  Darwin: Charlie? I’m so sorry. Can’t reach my mom. Trying for an outside signal to call the National Guard.

  Darwin: Please tell me you’re out there.

  Charlie paused mid-text, looking up at Skye and Allie. “You guys must have like a hundred texts from Mel and Taz, apologizing for the plane thing.”

  Allie sighed. “You’d think, but nope.”

  “Me either,” Skye said, her aqua eyes rolling. “Do they even get how rude they were?”

  “Guess not,” Allie murmured, looking back at her phone.

  Charlie’s stomach clenched into an anxious fist. She looked down at her phone, thumbing past the million messages from Darwin, expecting the worst. She could feel the gorp she’d eaten earlier with Tiger threatening to come back up.

  At last, Charlie found the text from AJ at the bottom of her inbox. Phew, at least she’s alive!

  But Charlie’s relief morphed instantaneously into panic when she read AJ’s message. She heard Skye murmur Uh oh, which meant AJ had made sure to write to all the Jackie O’s.

  AJ: See you around, Betas! I’m about to
make it back first. There can only be one Alpha. And there’s no U in one.

  Needles of disappointment and frustration pricked Charlie’s skin, but inside she felt numb. So numb, she might as well have been dead. But also, weirdly, underneath it all, she felt relief. She closed her eyes and pictured the river she had just jumped through. Like getting washed away in the swirling rapids, there was a perverse comfort in the idea that even if she didn’t win Shira’s twisted competition, the struggle would finally be over.

  So this is what it’s like to lose.

  Charlie shrugged her shoulders, as if trying the outfit of “loser” on for size. Maybe she could make her peace with what AJ had done and move on with her life. That would be the easiest thing to do.

  But then a wave of anger mixed with bitter frustration flowed through her veins. She closed her eyes and balled up her filthy, mud-crusted hands balling into furious fists and pounding her forehead. “That’s it,” she sigh-moaned sarcastically. “Game over. Winner take all, losers go home.”

  When Charlie opened her eyes, she saw Allie shaking her head, hard. So hard her dark blond river-soaked hair flew around her face. “No. No, no, no. We are not losing to AJ. This isn’t over.”

  “All that work,” Skye said glumly, ignoring Allie’s denial. Her foot arced gracefully in front of her before making contact with a tree root sticking out of the mud and kicking it repeatedly. “And AJ, the least Alpha of Alphas, outsmarts us in the end. Obvious-leh the veggie oil in the plane was all part of her sabotage.”

  The WGs looked appalled.

  Charlie looked at the horrified expressions on the faces of Ember, Mountain, and Tiger. Her eyes misted over. She couldn’t help it—in spite of all her newly acquired wilderness warrior skills, she hadn’t yet learned how to keep angry tears inside where they belonged. She sat down on a dead log and snuffled, cringing inside but unable to stop. Pathetic!

  Tiger sat down next to her and put a tan, sinewy arm around Charlie’s shaking shoulders. “Stop crying, Charlie,” she said. Her voice was quiet yet firm.

  “Why?” Charlie managed, choking on an embarrassing sob-snort. “What does it matter?”

  “It matters. You need to look good for your homecoming. Honorary Wilderness Girls aren’t teary-eyed.”

  Homecoming?

  Ember nodded, pulling a small army-green walkie-talkie from her pack. “We’ll beat AJ back. No way we’re letting her get there first after she crashed your plane. That’s just wrong.”

  “What about teamwork?” Skye asked. “I thought we had to find her before we left.”

  “There’s no AJ in teamwork!” Tiger jumped up off the log and pulled Charlie up with her. “Ember, the walkie.”

  Ember nodded, flipping a switch. The radio buzzed to life in her freckle-dotted hands, and she passed it over to Tiger.

  A wide, Angelina-esque smile filled Tiger’s glowing face as she spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Lone Ranger to Scout Mobile. Come in, Scout Mobile. Ready for immediate pickup. CODE MAMA GRIZZLY. I REPEAT, CODE MAMA GRIZZLY.”

  Huh? Charlie stared open-mouthed at Tiger Lily’s perfect hair framing her polished face, too dejected to even ask what she was up to. But within minutes she heard the blades of a helicopter slicing noisily through the sky, and a few seconds later, a silver copter dipped into view, swooping lower until it hovered a hundred feet above them.

  Charlie’s heart soared. Had Darwin finally gotten the National Guard to find them? She grinned at Allie and Skye, flashing a thumbs-up in the din of the helicopter propeller. Both girls smiled back, then pointed at Tiger and gave another thumbs-up.

  Charlie looked back up at the copter and realized this wasn’t the National Guard or an Alpha Plane. Emblazoned on the side of aircraft, etched into the silver, was the same WG-plus-tree logo the scouts had on their boots. Charlie made a mental note to someday find a way to repay Tiger. For now, she ran up to the tall wilderness warrior and squeezed her in a tight hug.

  A hatch popped open in the bottom of the plane and a pair of hands dropped a rope-ladder down until it dangled just above Tiger Lily. “Hop aboard,” she yelled.

  Charlie allowed herself a sliver of hope as she grabbed the ladder and scrambled up toward the helicopter. If they put the heli-pedal to the metal, maybe they could actually pull off an upset and beat AJ back to Alpha Academy.

  It’s not over till the skinny singer screams, she thought, placing one foot above the other as she hustled up the wobbly rope ladder. With any luck, her next visit to Alpha Island would be just like this moment: a speedy climb to the top.

  19

  OVER THE ALPHA OCEAN AT 20,000 FEET

  WILDERNESS GIRLS’ HELICOPTER

  NOVEMBER 4TH

  6:27 P.M.

  The sun glowed red in the dimming sky as the WGs’ emergency helicopter zipped toward Alpha Island like a giant hummingbird. Inside the copter, Skye smoothed her hands over her new outfit, wishing the Wilderness Girl uniforms had a bit more pizzazz but happy to finally be out of her grubby Alphas flight suit. Once they had all hoisted themselves into the copter, Tiger had handed Skye, Allie, and Charlie each a stack of starched, crisply folded khaki shirts and shorts. Even if the uniforms were closer to UPS than AFL, the clothes were perfect for jumping and beating AJ to the finish line.

  Skye’s teal eyes shot sideways at Charlie and Allie sitting next to her, and she saw that they looked as excited and nervous as she felt. Charlie was making some sort of Charlie-ish list on her aPod, while Allie was busy rubbing Purell between her sandaled toes. They were readying themselves for whatever awaited them back at Alpha Island—the good, the bad, and the angry.

  For the first time since the plane crash, Skye felt the stirrings of real optimism thrumming in her chest. She wished she could embrace the positivity and execute a few pirouettes, but she was strapped to a metal bench against the wall of the helicopter cabin. The best she could do was twirl her ankles and crack her wrists to the rhythm of a whirring propeller, while mentally leap-spinning through space. She took a swig of river water from her canteen and directed her feet from first to second to third position on the aircraft’s floor. She peeked into the cockpit, where the pilot, a girl the WGs called Sarge, was gunning the engine, her ears obscured by giant plastic earphones and her eyes covered in tinted goggles. When Tiger had explained the situation—that they were racing to beat another aircraft back to Alpha Island—Sarge had nodded, remarking that she’d never lost an air race in her life.

  Skye sat back and reviewed the past forty-eight hours, knowing that the minute they landed she’d have no time to think, only to act. Images from the PAP crash flashed through her mind, followed by the fun night with the boys around the campfire, her kiss with Taz, the scary night they’d spent in the WGs’ tent, and the friendships they’d ended up making. When a memory of the awful fight on the plateau surfaced, Skye shook her head and tossed it away. All that was behind them now.

  Training her eyes on Charlie and Allie sitting beside her, Skye lifted her chapped lips in a bemused smile. While the past few days had held some of the lowest lows she’d ever experienced, their time in the Mojave had also been surprisingly fun.

  She sighed with relief over the biggest accomplishment of all—making up with Charlie and Allie after the plateau blowout. She couldn’t imagine the game ending with the three Jackie O’s not on speaking terms. Now that they’d made it through this, she knew Charlie and Allie were the real deal—the kind of besties she would keep as FFLs (Friends For Life). If a plane crash, a wilderness expedition, nearly dying of thirst, and getting held hostage in a tent didn’t bond you to your friends, what would?

  Sarge’s voice crackled over the helicopter speakers. “Stand by for landing.”

  Across the cabin, the three WGs sat on the bench opposite Skye’s. Ember gave her a thumbs-up and Skye mimicked the gesture, flashing a toothy smile at her new friend. Then she turned and stared out the window at the @-shaped island rising out of the woman-made ocean below, its curved tai
l sparkling with pink phosphorescent sand.

  She shivered at a sudden realization: The next time she saw this view, she would be flying home—either expelled or as an Alpha for life.

  Skye began to search the island, her eyes combing the campus for signs of life as the copter lowered its altitude. Where was everyone? The campus seemed deserted. No metallic-clad girls lounged outside on the great A-shaped lawn. Nobody hurried to class at the Sophocles Theater Arts Building or the Marie Curie Inventor’s Lab or—and here Skye shuddered, realizing that an empty campus meant a lot of people she loved had probably been expelled—to the dance cube that dangled sixty feet in the air above the island. Had all her fellow bun-heads been kicked out?

  Eyes on the prize, she reminded herself. There was no point in worrying about the fates of her dance buddies Ophelia, Tweety, and Prue right now. It would only slow her down. Besides, if she won, it would be a win for them, too. Skye nodded decisively, her platinum wavelets bouncing a little. If she was crowned AFL, she would find a way to help the bun-heads in their own careers.

  Because it’s all about teamwork. A little laugh escaped Skye’s lips. The WGs had rubbed off on her more than they knew.

  The second the helicopter touched down on the great lawn, Tiger jumped up and began unbuckling the Alphas from their safety harnesses. “Move, move, move!” she yelled, in full WG platoon-leader mode. “This is a race, remember? Every second counts.”

  Skye remembered. She threw off her harness and bolted from the bench, Charlie in front of her and Allie behind. Seconds later, the three Jackie O’s jumped the ten feet from the copter door and onto Shira’s sweater-soft blue-green lawn, made of a special variety of grass flown in from New Zealand. I’ll miss this island was Skye’s first thought as she rolled onto the sweet-smelling grass. Her second thought was more upbeat: Maybe someday I’ll buy this island.

  “No time for goodbyes,” Tiger grunted, jump-rolling onto the grass along with Ember and Mountain.