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  But when she tried to picture her options, all the racks in her fantasy were empty. Shira’s media ban meant no magazines, so Allie didn’t even know what was in style—being in last season’s duds wasn’t part of this fantasy. Allie shook her dark blond mane, reminding herself of the one awesome thing Alpha Academy had given her. She was her own person now. She might still love to shop, but she wasn’t a slave to fashion trends anymore. She would create her own style.

  Maybe a cute little shift dress, she thought, designing one in her mind’s eye. Maybe a retro pillbox hat. Something kind of… Jackie O.

  Just then, Allie caught a whiff of baked beans that made her salivate Niagara Falls. The sound of voices carried to her sunburned ears, and she stopped short in front of a rock formation. Slowly, silently, she crept between two giant boulders, making sure to try to stay hidden from the view of whoever might be gathered on the other side. It sounded like five or six people, all female—would they be friendly? Should she just make herself known to them and ask for a few bites of their dinner? Maybe they were a lost desert tribe who had been forced to burn one of her J.C. Penney catalogues for warmth. Maybe they would recognize her from the eight-page back-to-school layout she did last fall and think she was some kind of goddess. Maybe they would take her in and pray to her. Pledging to fatten her up because where they come from, beauty is booty. They would teach her how to make makeup from succulents and she would amaze them with stories of love lost and found.

  She just needed a way in. Something that said I am here, without scaring them into tranquilizer dart–throwing mode.

  Allie crept along with her breath held, finally summoning up the courage to peek over the boulders. Just as she suspected, a group of girls were sitting around a flaming pit. Allie crouched low to the ground and watched as one broad-shouldered girl paced back and forth in front of a large campfire, atop which was—ohmuhgod. An enormous wild boar was tied to a spit, and two girls cranked it so the meat spun over their roaring fire like a horizontal gyro machine. Animal rights be dammed, a different type of pita came to mind.

  Allie counted about twelve girls, all wearing the same khaki uniforms, cargo shorts with tucked-in shirts. They wore wide-brimmed straw hats with strings tied around their chins to keep them from blowing off. On their feet were hot-pink combat boots. Did they not feel heat?

  Allie eyed their sturdy footwear enviously. While they weren’t a good look, especially with shorts, they were definitely more suited to this rocky terrain than her clear gladiator sandals, which weren’t doing her blisters or pedicure any favors. Allie stared down at her own outfit, a metallic silver flight suit with the sleeves and ankles rolled up—and had to acknowledge that whatever these girls were lacking in style, their clothes were far better for the terrain.

  They looked like postal workers or zookeepers, but their badges were all Girl Scout.

  COOKIES!

  One of them—a tall, tan girl with a long braid draped over one of her broad shoulders—droned on, giving some sort of speech. Allie couldn’t quite hear her monologue, but she could almost taste the crispy skin on that wild boar.

  C’mon, Al. Focus. You need a plan.

  She wished Charlie was here right now. Charlie could always be counted on to be logical, to plan stuff out properly and to think a plan through from all angles. Allie was impulsive and went with her heart, barging around and hoping things would magically fall into place. Whereas Charlie led with her head.

  Allie sighed, still hurt and confused after losing the best friend she’d made since Trina. What happened on that plateau? How had Allie managed to drive Charlie away? Forget it, she admonished herself. The past was the past. All that mattered now was tearing into that pig and… No! Forget Mel. Revenge is best served cold. Wild boar? Not so much.

  It was time to eat.

  15

  THE MOJAVE DESERT

  CAMP DINNER

  NOVEMBER 3RD

  3:47 P.M.

  Adrenaline coursed through Charlie’s body as she prepared to dart, gazelle-like, in the direction of the roasting beast. Her peripheral vision faded to black, and all she could see from her crouched position behind a Volkswagen-sized tumbleweed was the boar roasting on the spit. Behind it, taunting her, was the cast-iron cauldron of beans.

  The Scouts meeting had finally wrapped up and the pack of khaki-clad girls had filed out of their campfire circle, but Charlie was waiting until their voices sounded sufficiently far away to make her move. She didn’t trust these intense nature girls to share their bounty with a dust-covered outsider in a silver flight suit, and she didn’t want to have to explain to them who she was before devouring some desperately needed grub.

  Maybe after she’d eaten a little, she told herself. Maybe then, she’d reevaluate and ask the girls to help her get home.

  Charlie cocked her ear and frowned, still hearing faint conversation nearby even though the Scouts were out of her line of vision. Her mouth watered; she could almost taste the meat from here. Any minute now, it would be making its way into her cramping stomach. She felt a pang of remorse that Skye and Allie weren’t here to reap the benefits of her find. They must be as hungry as she was, probably suffering somewhere out in the desert. Okay, and AJ, too. But if AJ were there she’d probably try and rescue the animal instead of eating it.

  A Girl Scout reappeared by the roasting pit. The uniformed girl looked about the same age as Charlie. She adjusted her wide-brimmed hat before cranking the lever on the side of the spit, turning the boar so that it cooked evenly. Then the girl turned around and headed back down the same path the other Scouts had taken.

  Charlie’s stomach gurgled so loud that for a second she was sure the girl had heard, but there was no sign of her. She took a quick sip from her canteen and forced herself to wait a little longer. Bide your time. Don’t blow your cover.

  In order to stay patient, Charlie decided to play a game to distract herself. She imagined the first thing she would do when she arrived back at Alpha Island. Kiss my boyfriend? Tell Shira off for putting our lives at risk? Or will I just suck it up and keep playing the game?

  Charlie truly had no idea. Lately, she’d been surprising even herself. She knew she hadn’t been easy to deal with since the plane crash, but why had it fallen to her to be responsible for everything and everyone? The Jackie O’s expected her to solve everyone’s problems, but nobody was stepping up to solve things for Charlie. Skye was always so caught up in the boy of the moment, and Allie was constantly entangled in some dramatic struggle with AJ or Mel. With friends like these, who needed friends? Where was the work ethic, the teamwork?

  Charlie shut her eyes and replayed her outburst on the plateau that morning, wishing she’d made a passionate speech about kicking butt instead of running away from all the drama. In hindsight, she knew all the right things to say: “We didn’t sacrifice everything to act like normal teenagers. We came here to win, and to win, we need to rise above this petty drama.”

  Buoyed by her own internal speech, Charlie opened her coffee-brown eyes and scanned the campfire area one last time. There wasn’t a straw hat in sight, not a trace of Scout-chatter permeating the silent air. Surely the Scouts had drifted far away by now to prepare for dinner.

  We came here to win, and I came here to eat.

  Charlie was ready to make her move. She channeled her inner jackrabbit and sprang into action, leaping on pointed toes toward her delectable, delicious meal. In seconds, she had reached the campfire and stood in front of the roasting meat. She grabbed a knife that had been left in the pig’s side, curling her fingers around it and pulling it out of the flesh so she could slice off a steaming, greasy bite…

  “OW!”

  Suddenly, her feet flew up beneath her and the sky and earth traded places. Charlie’s head nearly scraped the dry, cracked ground as she struggled to escape the rope, swinging by her useless feet and snared tighter than a pig at a rodeo hog-tie. Her ankles were bound together above her, and she flailed upside dow
n like a unwilling trapeze artist.

  Her heart raced with terror. Her mind reeled while her body spun Cirque du Soleil circles in the air. Who were these paranoid, militaristic Girl Scouts, and how had Charlie been dumb enough to step in one of their traps?

  “Um, hello? You may as well come out,” she yelled, trying to keep her voice unpanicked and neutral. The last thing she was prepared to do was let them see her freak, especially if Shira was really watching.

  Charlie whipped her head around and saw three sets of legs step out from behind some boulders. It was hard to get a read on their expressions from Charlie’s upside-down vantage point, but one thing was for sure: Judging by their muscled legs and the professional hunter–grade trap they’d set, they were built of steel. These girls made G.I. Jane look like Kate Bosworth.

  “We have another one,” one of the girls barked. Another one? How many people had they captured? Charlie swallowed a fearful lump forming in her throat.

  Charlie heard a staticky “Ten-four” come out of a walkie-talkie. She tried again to spin around on her rope to get a read on their faces, but all she could see clearly was hot-pink hiking boots, each toe box stamped with the initials WG in a bold font, with a silhouetted drawing of a tree fanning out behind the letters.

  You can talk your way out of this, Charlie told herself as blood rushed to her head.

  “I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding,” she tried. “I’m not the enemy. I’m just lost, and I stumbled onto your camp and there was nobody here and I—”

  “Save it,” a different set of pink shoes interrupted. “We have our orders. You can talk to Tiger Lily.”

  “Tiger Lily?” Charlie squeaked. “Orders?” Had she stumbled onto the set of a Pocahontas remake?

  Suddenly, the pink shoes cut the rope that held her feet and flipped her over so she was standing up. Before she could get a look at her captors, they had pulled a dusty burlap sack over her head. Eeek!

  Seeing nothing but brown burlap, Charlie felt two sets of hands grabbing hers. They yanked her arms behind her back and quickly tied her hands with a knot so tight it burned her wrists. A second later, flanked on either side by the demented trio of Girl Scouts, Charlie was being hustled forward along what her feet told her was the same path she’d seen these girls use earlier.

  Charlie’s forehead was slicked in sweat and her heart began to race even faster. She couldn’t decide if it made more sense to remain quiet and agreeable or if now was a good time to start screaming. Maybe Shira would swoop in and save her, too? After all, she was kind of family, wasn’t she? Two very familiar voices interrupted her thoughts. Voices that were arguing, loudly. A relieved smile spread over Charlie’s face underneath the burlap sack. Too bad this Jackie O reunion had to happen in captivity.

  Skye! Allie! Charlie thought-shouted, not wanting to risk giving any info to the psycho Scouts still holding her hostage. She had never been so happy to hear her two friends yelling at each other.

  “Get in,” one of the Scouts grunted, tugging the burlap sack off Charlie’s head and shoving her into a large army-green tent.

  “Ow! I’m going, no need to push,” Charlie snipped, wishing more than anything that her hands weren’t tied up behind her. The first thing Charlie’s half-blind eyes focused on was the WG logo stitched on one wall in hot-pink thread. “Say hi to your friends.”

  Charlie blinked in the tent’s dim light and saw Allie and Skye sitting cross-legged on the ground, their hands hog-tied just as tightly as her own. “Hi.” She flashed them a genuine smile, forgetting for a second how mad she’d been at her fellow O’s on the plateau.

  “Hi.” Allie’s lips twitched into a tight micro-grin, but her face was pale and her navy blue eyes clouded with fear.

  “Hi. Don’t bother with the knots, they’re grade-A Wilderness Girl–certified.” Skye sighed, her turquoise eyes flashing angrily in a shaft of dust-flecked light.

  “What do they want?” Charlie whispered. Skye and Allie looked as scared as she felt.

  Allie shrugged and furrowed her brow. “We just got here. They won’t tell us anything. That food was a trap. Why else would they not be eating it themselves? Obvious-leh they’re not counting calories.”

  Skye chortled bitterly, uncrossing her legs to stretch them out on the canvas-covered ground. “Obvious-leh. But the real feast is coming soon. Alpha, medium rare.”

  “You don’t really think—” Charlie started, but her sentence trailed off.

  The three Jackie O’s sat in brooding, scared silence for a minute, but then one of the G.I. Janes unzipped the door and stuck her head in. “We’re bringing you some grub. After you eat, you can go to the latrine for a supervised pee. Then you hang out here until we’re ready to start the Tribunal.”

  Charlie grimaced. Sounded like a terrible few hours, but she’d definitely eat the food. She was too hungry to care anymore. They weren’t going to poison the Jackie O’s now, not before the Tribunal…

  Wait. The wha?

  16

  THE MOJAVE DESERT

  WILDERNESS GIRL CAMP

  NOVEMBER 4TH

  6:09 A.M.

  Again with the burlap sack.

  This place was like a Project Runway challenge gone horribly wrong. Even with her hands tied tightly behind her back, Skye had managed to sleep soundly thanks to the thermal sleeping bags tossed into their tent by their jail keepers. By the time Skye opened her sleep-crusted eyes, the nature nerds had already covered her head in potato packaging.

  “Ow!” Skye cringe-yelled, instantly awakened as the rough material scraped her chin, hoping she wasn’t allergic to burlap. Who knew what skin contaminant lay nestled in the itchy potato-scented fibers? Facing a tribunal of potential cannibals was bad enough—she didn’t want to add a bad case of chin-zits to the list.

  “Is this really necessary?” Allie asked, her voice shaky and plaintive from the far corner of the tent.

  If anyone answered, Skye couldn’t hear.

  “Let’s go,” her handler ordered, pulling her to her feet. Skye stumbled forward, blindly groping for the exit to the tent.

  “This would be a lot easier if I could see,” she pointed out as her guard directed her shoulders through the flap.

  “Sorry, it’s protocol,” her handler whispered back. The word sorry was reassuring, Skye had to admit. Someone who apologized wasn’t likely to chop her up into little pieces, were they?

  Soon, Skye was in motion, walking to God-knew-where with nature warriors flanking her on either side to make sure she didn’t bolt before the Tribunal. Whatever that was.

  All she could see was the poo-brown inside of the burlap sack, but she could smell everything. There was hot chocolate (Swiss Miss Instant with marshmallows?) and frying eggs, and—ohmuhgud—the hissing sizzle of bacon hitting the pan. Skye stopped to get a whiff of the frying meat.

  “Keep walking, astronaut.”

  “This is a flight suit, not a space suit,” Allie snapped from somewhere nearby. “And it’s Alpha Academy couture.”

  From the kind of school you could never get into in a million years, Skye thought.

  Pretty soon, a pair of hands yanked Skye’s burlap sack from her head. She blinked in the pink-and-orange light of the desert sunrise and took in her surroundings: The three Jackie O’s stood in a row under an army-green canvas shade canopy, and in front of them sat three girls, each perched on a sawed-off tree stump. Behind the stump-sitters, lined up cross-legged on the ground in two neat lines like chess pieces, sat the rest of the evil girl scout brigade, blinking their eyes at the Jackie O’s and looking scarily alert, considering it was only six A.M.

  Skye shivered slightly and channeled her stage training. She straightened her spine and flashed a wan smile—if only charisma could kill. There was still a chill in the desert air, but in an hour the desert would again be hotter than a habanero. She shifted her weight from one freezing foot to the other and sized up the three girls seated on the logs.

  Ea
ch of the three khaki-clad girls wore her hair in an atrocious and unflattering style. Two-Braids, the apparent leader, sat in the middle, a brunette with long hippie braids trailing down each shoulder. She was short and stocky, but her hands were out of proportion to her stature and looked like they could palm a basketball. Her eyebrows were bushy and unkempt, and she had a wide, pretty mouth that would have been totally Angelina if she wasn’t chomping a wad of pink bubblegum like a cow chewing its cud.

  To the left of Two-Braids sat a sunburned redhead with a braid that snaked down the side and ended almost at her waist. Skye named her Side-Braid. She reminded Skye of a young Nicole Kidman, except Nicole would never wear a black bandana tied around her head like Rambo. And Side-Braid’s eyelids were pink and puffy, as if she’d contracted scurvy out here in the desert, or at least a bad case of hay fever.

  Finally, on the other side of Two-Braids sat Pigtails. Pigtails had dark blond hair and was slumped on her tree stump with her legs splayed. She was a little rounder than the other girls. Her gorgeous olive skin looked a shade too green, maybe because of her khaki shirt. In fact, she sort of resembled a green olive—curvy in the middle with narrow shoulders.

  All three girls wore those hot-pink combat/hiking boots. In front of them was a rectangular boulder they were using as a kind of table to hold pens and clipboards.

  Skye cleared her throat, wishing the Tribunal would start. A silence thicker than organic almond butter hung over the proceedings. Not one of the three girls smiled, and behind them, their uniformed minions sat there quietly like blades of khaki grass. Skye leaned forward and turned to make eye contact with Charlie, but Charlie’s brown eyes were neutral and focused. She had her guard up.