Movers and Fakers Read online

  “You sound like Taz,” Syd replied, reading her mind. Skye blushed a deeper shade of red. “Don’t let my brother and all his fun derail your ambition. He’s never worked hard at anything. You’re better than that.”

  Am I?

  “We’re docking in a minute!” Taz yelled merrily from up on deck. “I beat my record by thirty seconds!”

  Syd put his finger to his lips. “I don’t want Taz knowing I hang out down here,” he whispered.

  Syd had responded so differently to Skye’s frustrations than his brother had. He really listened to her, and not just with his ears but with his heart. Like a friend and confidant. Skye had never known a guy who actually paid attention to her problems.

  “Thanks for the advice. I didn’t realize how much I needed it,” Skye said truthfully. Just as she was starting to rethink her new plan to put fun before dancing, her aPod beeped.

  SHIRA: ASSEMBLY IN FIVE MINUTES.

  ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY. SOMEONE WILL BE GOING HOME.

  Ohmuhgud!

  Did Shira know where she was? That she had snuck onto the Joan of Ark with not one but two of her sons? Skye leapt up and spun around the room, her eyes scanning the dark mountains through the windows of the boat. Anyone could be watching, she realized with a shiver.

  She nodded a quick good-bye to Syd, mumbling, “See you around, hopefully,” as she backed away from the windows.

  “Hope so.” He grinned, oblivious to the deafening samba drum that had begun to beat in her temples.

  Skye forced her trembling legs to carry her up the stairs of the yacht and gasped a cleansing lungful of air when she reached the deck. Taz had docked the Ark and was tying up the boat on a short wooden pier. In the distance, through a stand of Joshua trees, Skye could make out a few swishing metallic miniskirts as the Alphas rushed toward the Pavilion.

  “Hey,” he said. “You disappeared.”

  “Sorry,” she breathed, already forgetting about Syd. “Thanks for the ride.” Looking at his confident, open smile, she wondered what had kept her so long.

  “Anytime.” He winked. He definitely knew how cute he was.

  “Your mom just called an assembly. I’ve gotta go,” she said. Without waiting for Taz to answer, she turned around and sprinted to catch up with the other girls.

  Her heart raced as her thoughts swirled faster than the water in the lake. What was intended to be a carefree escape had just confused her more than ever. Taz and Syd represented the two voices in her head: one that said to live her life for today because tomorrow would take care of itself, and the other that said to stay on track and keep working because life’s passions are important.

  As she ran along the path, kicking up gravel behind her with every pounding step, the two brothers blurred together like the trees flying past her. Which voice should she listen to? Which boy was the one for her?

  Tragically, she might never get the chance to find out.

  6

  THE PAVILION

  HALF-MOON THEATER

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST

  8:59 P.M.

  Allie’s thoughts spun and sputtered like a broken MacBook as ninety-nine nervous Alphas shuffled in and took their seats facing the stage in the croissant-shaped room. Every surface was shiny white, like the blank page that was her future. She blinked hard, holding back the tears that threatened to spill from her contact-lens-enhanced eyes. Someone was going home—that much had been clear from Shira’s terrifying all-caps text message—and Allie was sure that someone would be her. She sat cross-legged on an egg-shaped ergonomic chair, tucking her dirty feet (how badly she wanted clean feet and a clean conscience!) under her silvery blue yoga pants. Soon, all she’d have to remember the Academy by were these pants, with the Alpha logo splashed across the butt.

  She wished she could Purell this whole mess away.

  One by one, the other Jackie O’s arrived. As her friends sat down next to her—friends for just a few more minutes, until they find out the truth!—Allie’s stomach lurched. The Pavilion was bustling with rumors. Everywhere, girls sat in twos and threes speculating in hushed, urgent voices about who was going home and why. It seemed everyone thought they were about to be on the business end of Shira’s pointy-toed pumps, but the group paranoia wasn’t a comfort to Allie. She was pretty sure nobody but her was stupid enough to get caught masquerading as a famous multiplatinum folk singer.

  “Yo, eco-freako, you look even paler than usual. What gives?” Triple joked, plopping down in the egg chair next to Allie. Triple was the only Jackie O who didn’t look worried about tonight’s agenda. Most of the Alphas looked sloppy, dressed somewhere on the spectrum between pj’s and safari gear, but Triple wore her daytime school uniform. Her tawny skin glowed with carefully applied bronzer and highlighting powder. She had clearly dressed for the occasion—almost as if she was excited to see one of her bunk-mates go.

  “Uh…” Allie opened her mouth and quickly shut it, staring imploringly out the window at a flock of purple-bellied finches perched along the branches of a banyan tree. Just then, clad in a flimsy dress and trailing a long white scarf that Allie was sure was not regulation Alphas, Skye collapsed gracefully into the seat on Allie’s other side.

  “Say good-bye to Skye Hamilton, girls,” squeak-sighed Skye, waving one end of her scarf dramatically in a gesture of bon voyage. “I’m about to go down in flames.”

  “Why you?” Triple looked like she was struggling to choke down a smile. Allie made a mental reminder not to trust Triple—she was faker than a thirty-dollar Gucci clutch.

  “I met Taz for a joyride around the lake on Shira’s boat. Obviously she must have found out, and voilà”—Skye snapped her pink-polished fingers—“here we are.” She craned her neck toward the back of the room to see if any of the boys had bothered showing up.

  “Dumb da-dumb dumb,” replied Triple, rolling her eyes.

  “You’re safe, Skye—the cameras are still off. And that’s why I’m going home,” said Charlie, plopping down next to Skye with a defeated thud. “Not to mention the fake name I gave her. I’ll text you from Hoboken.”

  Just then, Allie saw Darwin slip in through a side door and find a seat toward the back of the room. Her brain did a backflip, taking her to that night last week in the subterranean tunnels under the vertical farm, where they had shared an unbelievable first kiss. Her insides fizz-melted like a root beer float. Darwin’s cinnamon-flavored lips on mine! The song he wrote about me!

  Allie thought her heart might explode as she locked eyes with him over the heads of fifty Alpha girls. The eye embrace lasted a heart-pumping three-Mississippis, until Darwin finally broke away. A second later, Allie’s phone beeped.

  Darwin: If cameras are still down after this, meet me at the entrance to the tunnel. I miss you.

  Allie couldn’t resist him any longer. She’d stayed away for two whole weeks, but on the slim chance she survived Shira’s assembly, her Darwin moratorium would be officially put to rest. Darwin wanted it, Charlie wanted it, and Allie desperately wanted it. She just wished she could warn him about what might be coming. But how do you tell someone you’re not who they think you are without sounding like a fake? Because there was nothing false about her feelings for Darwin.

  Allie: I’ll be there, if your mom doesn’t send me home tonight.

  She paused, trying to think of how to tell him that the real Allie—not the imposter version—missed him. She brought her fingers back to her keypad and typed.

  Allie: You make me feel like myself.

  Suddenly, the whole Pavilion sounded like it had been dropped into a popcorn machine. Overhead, the sky went from slate gray to stormy, and hailstones the size of golf balls angrily pelted the glass skylights. Ninety-nine Alphas and Darwin all went instantly silent, watching the storm and waiting for Shira to arrive. The island had been built inside its own biosphere, with Shira at its helm. When she was hot under the collar, the island compensated by cooling o
ff—the weather was more or less entirely dictated by her moods.

  “She’s pissed,” whispered Charlie. “And she’s almost here.”

  The crowd was nervous and mute as they waited for Shira to take the stage. Allie half expected a panel of judges to show up, or at least some Survivor-style torches. It was clear that heads were about to roll.

  Shira’s words from last week in her office thundered in Allie’s skull:

  Identity theft… illegal… tell everyone…

  But what she’d written to Darwin was true; she was herself here—a new kind of self, one who took risks, who was brave and adventurous—whenever she wasn’t busy worrying about being Allie J.

  Allie wanted to write him one more text, but the insistent tapping of a manicured finger against a microphone signaled Shira’s arrival at the Pavilion. A hush fell over the girls as Shira walked out onto the stage, her dark glasses reflecting the recessed stage lights. With her wild auburn waves and long black maxidress, she reminded Allie of the zombies from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video.

  At the thought of what was surely coming next, Allie’s empty stomach fluttered like the school of angelfish she’d seen last week in the tunnels with Darwin. The Jackie O’s would hate her forever. Darwin would toss her aside like yesterday’s homework. The song he’d written for her would curdle like old milk, along with the night they’d had together and their amazing kiss. Another Alpha—probably the real Allie J!—would soon capture his heart forever.

  And Allie would have to slink home in disgrace. She couldn’t decide which fate was more hideous: being sent to juvie for identity theft or having to endure the sight of Fletcher and Trina with no possibility of escape until college.

  A smile played on Shira’s lips, thin and lethal as a razorblade.

  Ohmuhgud, my life is over.

  “This is it,” she heard Charlie mumble.

  Allie put her hand over Charlie’s and squeezed. “You’ll be fine,” she murmured. She wished more than anything that they both would.

  Shira paced back and forth across the stage until the silence that blanketed the crowd of Alphas went from expectant to terrified. The hailstorm died out as quickly as it had started, and now it was quiet enough for Allie to hear her heart thundering in her ears.

  “G’day, my lollies. Daphne Sacks. Chloe Merrill.Devendra Banks. Hazel Vellieux. Mallory Rice. Robin Nicoletti. Naomi Shultz. Elizabeth Sanders-Post. Jessie-Lynn Jones. Lauren Flowers. Isobel Abeles. Ivy Lambert. If I called your name, please stand up.”

  Eleven pale, terrified girls rose slowly from their seats, wringing their hands like finalists in a perverse pageant.

  “You are hereby dismissed from Alpha Academy, effective immediately. Your teachers have reported that you are not Alpha material.”

  A wave of relief swelled among the remaining Alphas as the executed eleven shuffled tearily out of the room. Allie, Skye, and Charlie stood up in a spontaneous three-girl hug—miraculously, they had dodged another round of Shira’s bullets!

  As the room buzzed with girls trying to figure out why the executed eleven had been cut, Allie looked over her shoulder at Darwin, still standing in the back corner. He winked. Allie grinned back. Uhmuhgud, am I really safe? Allie would keep posing as Allie J for the next four years if it meant tasting Darwin’s cinnamon-flavored lips again. Sure, there would be a lot more Purell and pumice stones for her feet, but…

  “Uh-oh,” Charlie whispered, interrupting Allie’s mental happy-dance. “There’s more. She’s got another bombshell. That’s her bombshell smile.”

  Sure enough, Allie could see Shira’s lips twitching like the whiskers of a cat.

  “And now,” Shira’s Aussie-inflected voice boomed, “a little something to celebrate another day at the most prestigious school on earth. Those of you who work hard—who are true to yourselves like the women for whom your houses are named—will rise to the top, not just here but in the real world. And speaking of the real world, it’s time for a show!”

  A curtain on the stage went up, revealing an electric guitar, a microphone, and three backup musicians. All that was missing was… Ohmuhgud ohmuhgud ohmuhgud.

  Allie’s posture hermit-crabbed as she tried to shrink into her egg-chair. All the pieces were falling into place. Shira wanted maximum humiliation, maximum effect. Allie watched Shira’s lips move in slo-mo as the full terror of what was happening sank in.

  “Allie J will now sing her hit song ‘I’m a Fuel for Your Love’! Come on up, Allie!”

  Charlie beamed at Allie. “You didn’t tell us you were performing!”

  “Go, girl, enjoy it,” said Skye.

  Ohmuhgud Ohmuhgud! My social homicide has officially arrived! Allie had the silent, ridiculous smile of a demented mime plastered on her parched lips. She stood up and nearly fell over on legs as supportive as JELL-O.

  She wobbled slowly toward the stage in a delirious fog, squeezing her hands together in a futile attempt to keep them from shaking. Trigger pulled.

  Eighty-seven Alphas cheered her on as she climbed onto the stage and took the guitar from Shira’s outstretched arms. She had memorized all the words to Allie J’s songs, but all the lyrics in the world couldn’t give her a good singing voice. Even worse, she hadn’t touched a guitar in her life, other than one unfortunate incident at age ten when she had won a backstage pass to a Justin Timberlake concert. Allie began to shake. Panic pressed down on her like a 300-pound elephant sitting on her chest.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this all week,” Shira said, leaning in and speaking in low tones over the applause.

  Allie walked toward the mic, praying for a miracle. She could barely see or breathe, and she didn’t know whether she was about to cry or hurl. A snotty, blubbering, full-blown sob-fest loomed in her throat and her vision had gone fuzzy from fear. She looked up at Darwin through a curtain of tears and saw his blurred form in the back row, clapping wildly, his gorgeous face sporting a proud grin for the girl she was pretending to be.

  As Allie reached for the guitar, a panel began to open up in the center of the stage floor. From the hole in the floor came the first few familiar notes of “I’m a Fuel for Your Love.”

  And playing them was the real Allie J. Guitar in hand, wearing a tattered white dress and a dozen dangly necklaces, smiling and confident—with a real mole.

  As the audience gasped, every part of Allie remained frozen onstage except for the fat, mascara-tinted tears that rolled down her cheeks. Here at last was the real thing, the one with all the talent and fame, the girl she’d been pretending to be, easily stepping (barefoot, with a minimal carbon footprint, but still!) into a life that was now Allie A’s.

  Just a few feet away, Allie J began to sing:

  Without you I am cold

  A chin without a goatee

  So if the truth be told

  I need you to ignite me

  The audience looked from fake-Allie to real-Allie and murmured confusedly to one another. Then most of them jumped to their feet and started to dance, deciding, Allie guessed, to enjoy themselves and figure out what was wrong with this picture later. Allie J continued her throaty performance:

  This is where I’m torn

  You’re bad energy

  Now I fill up on corn

  It’s all about synergy

  Allie A couldn’t move. Her legs were stuck to the stage floor like they’d been glued there. Never in her life had she felt this humiliated. The time she tripped while working as a mall model, busting open her lip and bleeding all over the clothes, didn’t even come close. Fletcher and Trina’s betrayal was a cakewalk compared to this. She closed her eyes in a futile attempt to block out the circus-mirror effect her mortification was having on the room. But even behind closed eyes, Allie saw the sneers on every pretty Alpha face.

  Take a hint

  You’re totally done

  Reduce the carbon footprint

  It’s best for everyone


  As Allie J played the final bridge of the song, Allie A opened her eyes and searched out the Jackie O’s. They hadn’t stood up for the performance. They paid no attention to the real Allie J, focusing only on Allie, their eyes flashing with shock… then rage. What was worse, behind the seething anger, each of them looked hurt. Especially Charlie. Allie swallowed—her throat felt like Brillo. The pain she had caused her friends was ten times scarier to contemplate than their anger.

  I acted like a fool

  Before I knew better

  Don’t pump me full of fuel

  Don’t dry-clean my hemp sweater

  Finally Allie’s eyes found Darwin in the back row. He stared straight ahead, not willing to even make eye contact with her. The look on his face was stony and furious and devastatingly sad.

  As the last bars of Allie J’s song faded out, Shira stepped back onto the stage, clapping her hands along with the rest of the audience. Everyone but the Jackie O’s and Darwin hollered and whistled.

  “Allie J. Abbott, everyone! Let’s give her another big round of applause, shall we?” As the clapping died out, Shira crossed the stage and rested a manicured hand on Allie’s shoulder. “And, of course, you’ve already met Allie A. Abbott.”

  Allie willed herself not to flinch at Shira’s icy touch.

  “Whose talent, up until today, has been impersonating a folk singer. Let’s hope Ms. Abbott finds her real talent soon, or she’ll be leaving us like our twelve friends tonight. Assembly dismissed.” Shira flounced offstage, leaving the two Allies—one drinking in the adoration of a quickly forming crowd of girls, the other standing alone, wishing she could morph into a hologram and vanish into thin air.

  Fresh tears sprang into Allie’s eyes as Darwin flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt and stormed out of the room without even glancing her way. Her gaze moved to the Jackie O’s, who lingered in their chairs, talking in hushed voices. Through her tears, they looked streaky and blurred like a Van Gogh.

  Each of them glared at her with a mixture of hurt, anger, and pity. They seemed embarrassed, too: maybe a little bit for Allie, but also for themselves, for having believed her lies.