Movers and Fakers Page 13

  • Allie is like the cargo hold of a 757—full of baggage. Luckily, so is Darwin! They can unpack together.

  • Forgiveness is like butter. A little goes a long way, and it makes everything taste better.

  • Seeing Darwin with AJ is like watching an adorable puppy playing with a skunk. Sooner or later, things are going to stink.

  • Allie is like a mall. She has a lot going on inside of her, and for a limited time, everything is on sale.

  When she finally spotted Darwin walking down the path, he smiled at her, his teeth as white as the hoodie he wore over a pair of relaxed jeans.

  “Hey,” he said. His hair flopped sweetly in his eyes until the wind lifted it up and blew it back into place. There was no toothpick in Darwin’s mouth, but Allie could smell cinnamon on his breath. It smelled like hope.

  “Hey.” Allie’s heart raced and her fingers tingled. She could hardly believe he was giving her another chance, but since he was here with her all alone, her mind leapt to the only logical conclusion of the evening: that he still liked her, too.

  “Thanks for coming. It means a lot.” Allie ran her fingers through her hair, but they got stuck in a snarl. The combo of a fresh bleach job and a windy beach didn’t make for smooth tresses. She pulled her hand out of her tangled hair as gracefully as possible, hoping her voice wouldn’t shake much when she gave her mini speech.

  “Sure. I wanted to tell you—”

  “Wait,” Allie interrupted. What if Darwin was going to say something bad? She needed to explain herself, and fast. “Let me say a few things first. I owe you a huge apology. The biggest apology of all time, actually. I’m sorry for lying to you. I—I know there is, like, no excuse for impersonating a pop singer to get into this school, and for letting you believe I was someone I wasn’t… but except for my name and the singing and stuff, it was all me.” She looked into his eyes to see if anything she said was making an impact, but Darwin was staring at the horizon like he was Free Willy getting ready to swim home.

  “And”—Allie decided she might as well hit a few more talking points, so she continued, pacing along the beach—“I’m actually a really loyal person. I may not be a songwriter, or even really know yet what I’m good at, but I think I will be good at something someday. I have a lot going on inside of me.”

  She snuck a look at Darwin to see how he responded to this statement, but his face was as unreadable as Allie’s French conjugation worksheets.

  “And, um, I think that if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, which I know will be really, really tough…” She tried to get a read on his forgiveness quotient, but he was just standing there staring at the ocean, adorable but inscrutable. “We could start over, and really get to know the real us.”

  Darwin took a breath and opened his mouth, and Allie crossed her fingers on both hands behind her back. Waiting was torture! Then she crossed her toes, too.

  “Oh, crap.”

  Huh?

  But then she followed his gaze and saw a small green light glowing in a palm tree just a few feet away.

  Before Allie had time to fully digest what was happening, Darwin sprang into action. He unzipped his hoodie and threw it over her head like she was 50 Cent on the way to a court appearance. That was when it finally clicked for Allie. Ohmuhgud, the cameras are on!

  And then came his cinnamon-scented whisper in her ear: “Now we run.”

  Staggering along the beach wrapped in Darwin’s arms and unable to see a thing through the thick fabric of his Old Spice–infused hoodie, Allie told herself not to scream. She needed to get out from under Darwin’s sweatshirt, delicious as it smelled. A lifelong semi-claustrophobe after accidentally locking herself in a bathroom at the Red Lobster when she was seven, Allie didn’t even like closing the dressing-room door all the way in Victoria’s Secret. There was only so long she could stand being wrapped up like a mummy before passing out from panic. Already, her lungs felt like they were collapsing.

  “Darwin?!” she sputtered. “I need to see! I need air!”

  “Just a minute,” he whisper-panted. “There are cameras all over this beach!”

  As Allie tried to fight off the feeling that her world was closing in on her, it dawned on her: Charlie had sold her out! But why?! It didn’t make sense. Unless…

  Ohmuhgud, Charlie still has feelings for Darwin.

  Allie may have gotten away with a giant lie, but what Charlie had done was worse. I’ve been set up! Allie struggled to control her breathing as her thoughts spun wildly under Darwin’s hoodie. And now I’m going down.

  21

  CENTER FOR THE ARTS

  THEATER OF DIONYSUS

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH

  2:19 P.M.

  “Again, ladies! And this time stay on the beat! This isn’t a soccer field! You’re not Beckham and the rhythm isn’t a ball—so why are you chasing after it?” Mimi clapped her hands twice, her bangled wrists jingling like sleigh bells. She looked at Skye and her eyebrows shot up so high they almost vanished behind her hair. Shaking her head, she obviously thought Skye was the worst of the bunch. What else was new?

  Skye plastered on a fake smile and moved into first position, too tired to care about impressing Mimi today. Preparing to stumble her way through the sequence again, she glanced at the glowing digits above the hologram machine and saw class was almost over. About time! She still couldn’t believe they had classes on Saturdays, and she had been dragging all day. She craved a long soak with a Lush Bath Bomb and an eight-hour date with her pillow. Even so, last night’s party train ride was worth all of today’s agony.

  “SLEEEEVES!” Mimi screeched like someone had snapped the strap of her leo.

  Skye stopped, wincing at the sound of her awful nickname and the Christina Aguilera–esque decibel level of Mimi’s voice. “What!?” she spat. Her patience was thinner than Prue after a week on the cabbage soup diet.

  “Once again, Sleeves, you are behind the beat. Do you understand how offensive that is to my dancer’s eye?” Mimi paced as she yelled. “All of you! It’s a disgrace!”

  Everyone sucked harder than the cast of New Moon today. Everyone but Triple, of course, who wouldn’t dream of risking a day’s practice for a party. Skye glare-stared at Triple’s long, toned legs and butt-kissy smile. She was busy scissoring at the barre while Mimi frothed her way into rage-ville.

  A visual inventory of Skye’s fellow dancers proved that the party and the mad dash after Charlie’s text had wrought damage on everyone. Prue’s hair looked like she’d stuck a fork in an electrical socket, and her posture had a bigger hunch than Page Six. Ophelia’s flawless skin had sprouted three chin zits and her arms flapped through the routine like they belonged to a newly axed Thanksgiving turkey. Sadie was so sleep deprived that she’d managed to fall flat on her face at breakfast. She looked as if she’d wrestled a bowl of yogurt and lost. Strands of her hair were coated in still-wet Dannon low-fat lemon, and her upper lip was puffier than a down jacket.

  “Go home, everyone! Andrea, you too. Try not to breathe the same air as these sick sacks. And Sleeves…”

  “Yes, Mimi?” Skye did her best to sound humble, stifling a yawn.

  “Don’t come back until you get some sleep, an attitude adjustment, and a good under-eye concealer!” Mimi flounced out of the studio, wrapping a scarf around her mouth and nose as she left.

  Ugh!

  The other dancers gathered up their things and crawled into track suits or yoga pants. “Totally worth it,” yawned Prue. “I kissed Dingo! At least I think it was Dingo…” She looked around for confirmation, as if one of the bun-heads would know which of Shira’s identical twins she’d locked lips with.

  “Well, it wasn’t Taz!” giggled Skye. “Because he was all mine.”

  “I kissed Dingo, too,” Ophelia admitted, grinning at Prue as she stuck two chopsticks into her hair to hold it in place. “And Melbourne.”

  “Ah-mazing!” Skye st
retched her hamstring as the sweaty group stepped into the elevator. “Tomorrow, let’s start planning the next one. Today, I’m all about sleep.”

  The elevator doors opened and Skye twirled out into the bright afternoon, still buzzing with warm fuzzies for Taz in spite of Mimi vomiting negativity all over her. She didn’t have to think about her dance teacher for the rest of the day, which meant a full eighteen hours (if you counted dreaming) to obsess over boys, parties, and post-party detox regimens.

  “Razzma-Taz!” she sang, doing her version of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” booty-shake just for fun.

  “Sleeves!” Triple whisper-yelled. She grabbed Skye’s arm as it wiggled, beckoning to have a ring put on it. “Kill it. Brazille Boy, three o’clock.”

  “Wha—?” Ohmuhgud, is Taz here? Skye’s spirits soared. He couldn’t wait to see me again! She spun around, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the blazing afternoon sun. “Where?”

  Triple pointed in the direction of the jungle, where a Brazille Boy leaned against an açaí palm, looking at her expectantly. Skye blinked hard: Her expectation of Taz’s chiseled jaw and confident smile was dashed by the reality of Sydney’s lean frame and tousled hair. His brooding features were the opposite of his brother’s open ones, and he looked especially tortured when he realized she’d spotted him. It was like ordering a burger and fries and getting a complicated salad instead—Syd might technically have been the better boy for Skye, but Taz was the only beefcake that would satisfy her craving.

  “Oh, it’s Syd.” Skye stated the obvious in a flat voice. Realizing all the bun-heads’ eyes were bouncing from her to Syd and back again, she managed to paste on her third faux-happy face of the day. “See you later, girls. Get some rest, mmmkay?” She strode away from the cluster of dancers, tuning out their whispered postulations and the sounds of their furiously texting fingers.

  Skye took a deep breath as she approached Syd. He smiled and held out his hand, clutching a bouquet of plumerias and wild jasmine. Smells strong, looks weird, thought Skye.

  Her face aching from the effort of the forced smile, she took the bouquet. “Thank you, Syd,” she breathed through her mouth.

  “I brought you this, too.” He thrust a slim paperback into Skye’s hand.

  “Leaves of Grass,” Skye read. “Walt Whitman. Um . . . thanks.” She tucked the book under her arm, not wanting to make a big deal out of it, considering (1) she hated poetry that wasn’t set to hip-hop beats, (2) Whitman went so far over her head in eighth-grade English class that she had to buy an old paper from Missy MacDowell at the high school. Missy famously overcharged for her so-called perfect papers, but this one only got a B- and Missy refused to give Skye a refund. Bad memories. And, most important, (3) she didn’t want to give Syd the impression that she was into him, even for a moment, because (4) she was about to break his heart, like, now.

  “What Whitman says about connecting to nature really applies for me here, on this island,” mumbled Syd. “I thought you might like it.” His eyes reminded her of the ocean—deep and unpredictable. Skye took a breath and hoped she wouldn’t see them fill up with salt water.

  As an Alpha of the DSL Daters, Skye had boys falling at her feet since sixth grade, and that sometimes led to the inevitable squashed heart.

  “Uh… Syd.” She smiled, twirling once and landing in second position.

  “Why didn’t you invite me to your party?” Syd blurted, staring fiercely at a tree about a foot above Skye’s head. “I mean, I know I told you it was a bad idea, but I was right. You should be focusing on you and your dancing—not on stupid stuff like parties. You’re throwing your life away.”

  Had Syd just called parties stupid? Skye stared at him, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. Syd was so not the one, and now he’d proven it for the second time.

  “Um, Syd?” She executed a double pirouette, regaining her confidence. “My parties aren’t stupid. And I don’t think I’m throwing my life away. Just the opposite, actually. Life is about having fun. And since you don’t believe that, I really don’t think the two of us have much more to say to each other.”

  Ka-blam! The words hit Syd like a punch in the stomach. Skye almost felt bad, but it had to be done.

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry, Syd.” And she was. Sorry she had ever gotten involved with a judgmental wuss like him, who could dish it out but couldn’t take it.

  “You will be, if you aren’t now,” Syd squeaked. “Taz isn’t going to care about you for more than a week. He has fem-ADD.”

  “We’ll see,” Skye said to his retreating back. She was like human Ritalin—she would keep Taz focused, and with minimal side effects.

  Ping!

  A text on Skye’s aPod killed her peaceful moment dead.

  What now???

  SHIRA: REPORT TO MY OFFICE AFTER YOUR NEXT CLASS.

  HAD No. 8: Mercy.

  22

  THE THINKER’S GROTTO

  STONE BENCH

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH

  4:58 P.M.

  Allie plopped down onto the stone bench and stared up at the shimmering gold statue, a replica of Rodin’s Thinker coated in 24-karat gold like a giant Oscar award. The grotto was at the end of a gravel walkway, in the center of a grove of poplars between the Pavilion and the dorms. Late-afternoon sun bounced off The Thinker’s melancholy eyes, and Allie squinted against it, wondering what he would be thinking if he were real. He was probably thinking about someone who broke his heart, just like she was. Only now she wasn’t sure who had left her more heartbroken: Darwin when he ran off after depositing her at the door of Jackie O or Charlie for setting her up to get caught.

  Now that Allie thought about it, she was suffering from three heartbreaks: over Charlie, Darwin, and herself. Now she’d never get to find out if she had real potential, if she could actually hack it as an Alpha. She had about as much chance of not getting kicked off the island as AJ had of showing up to class in a leather bomber jacket and snakeskin boots.

  Her crazy schedule was wearing her out faster than Jessica Simpson went through boyfriends, and she was no closer to figuring out what she was good at. Today in Social Networking for Future Moguls, the girls were supposed to use Twitter to post Alphas-inspired nursery rhymes. After listlessly clicking around for a while, the highlight of Allie’s day came when she settled on a few choice hate-tweets:

  Roses are red, violets are blue, I trusted a friend, now I feel like poo.

  Eenie meanie Charlie foe, catch a liar by the toe. When she frames you, it will show. Charlie dearest, now I know.

  Charlie Charlie oh-so-gnarly,

  how does your cold heart grow?

  With evil plans and techno-scams

  And broken hearts all in a row.

  In Romance Languages, Allie was informed she had flunked her quiz in three languages. In her Art of Excellence class, when asked to draw a picture of her life plan, Allie drew a picture of herself working at Hot Dog on a Stick. Soon enough, Shira would most likely be dipping her in batter and frying her butt.

  “If you lack vision in this class, you lack vision in life,” her teacher Eunice Vanderlawn, life coach to the stars, had said. She’d given Allie a worried look, adding: “Failure isn’t as hard to come by as you might think at your age.” Allie didn’t think failure was hard to come by at all. She lived it every day. She promised to try harder from now on, but when she imagined her future, all she saw was a blank page.

  And in Iyengar Yoga and Meditation, Allie tried for pigeon pose and ended up closer to dead duck, pulling a muscle in her back that sent her into agonizing spasms for an hour afterward. It still hurt, which was why she’d stopped to rest next to The Thinker on her way to Jackie O. Staring glumly at the statue, Allie willed her back to stop throbbing so she could crawl between her sheets and close her eyes.

  And to think she was feeling so hopeful just last night—less than twenty-four hours ago! Before
the cameras blinked on and ruined her perfect rom-com makeup moment with Darwin, Allie actually thought she might find happiness again at Alpha Academy. But all she’d found last night was more exhaustion and a stronger-than-ever feeling of not belonging here. None of her nine classes spoke to her; she wasn’t better than average in any of them. And at this school, surrounded by the most competitive, talented, driven-to-succeed girls on earth, just being average was the same as being a failure. Allie was an Alpha in Reverse: as insubstantial as AIR. She had no talent, no friends, and no future.

  What am I doing here?

  Allie beamed her question at The Thinker, willing him to provide some sort of answer, but his chin remained planted on his hand, his eyes fixed on some inscrutable point in the distance.

  “If you’re trying to start a staring contest, he’ll beat you every time.”

  Charlie.

  Allie stood up and faced her former friend, who smiled at her like nothing was wrong, like she hadn’t betrayed her last night, framing her like they were sorority rivals in The House Bunny. In fact, Charlie looked weirdly happy to see Allie.

  So you’re my friend to my face, and you stab me in the back only when you’re bored at night?

  “So…?” Charlie smiled, seemingly oblivious to the death-daggers shooting out of Allie’s eyes. “What happened last night? How did everything go with Darwin? Did AJ get on the party train? Did Skye choose between Syd and Taz? Fill a girl in!”

  Allie couldn’t believe Charlie’s nerve! Did she seriously think Allie wouldn’t figure out the setup?

  “You’re a better actress than I am,” she finally said, crossing her arms protectively over her Alpha uniform, shielding herself against Charlie’s syrupy-sweet lies.

  Charlie blinked, cocking her head at Allie as if to ask if she’d watched one too many episodes of One Life to Live. “What am I acting like?”

  “A friend!” Allie exploded. “But you were never a friend! You were always just a spy for Shira, out for your own best interests. But the worst part of all of this is that you let me believe you were over Darwin! That is so… so… freaky!”