A Tale of Two Pretties (19 page)

For someone who was about to announce the best news the PC could ever hear, Massie sure didn’t look thrilled about it. In
fact, Claire realized as she came closer, Massie looked ready to deliver the worst news of Claire’s life.

Claire made a desperate beeline for the nearest candy station. Luckily it was just next to the hot chocolate and coffee bar,
so she filled her hands with various gummies and dashed back to the PC just as Massie arrived, still looking glum. Claire
popped all the candy in her mouth. She wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but it felt like a sugar emergency.

“Everything okay, Massie?” Dylan asked.

Claire, still chewing her loot, leaned in closer. She studied her expression, looking for any sign of relief or excitement—anything
that would match what Claire’s mom had just told her. But instead, Massie looked like she’d just watched an episode of
Rock of Love
: confused, torn, and a little sick. Then she straightened up, adjusted her white sequin dress, and applied another coat
of lip gloss.

“My mom was just apologizing for nawt letting me stay at Claire’s,” Massie said assuredly. “And she reminded me that Hermia
was right. The Pretty Committee’s had an ah-mazing run.” She met each of their eyes, one by one. “But now we’re all off on
different adventures. Claire, you have a new house and photography class with Cam. Kristen, you’re going to be a star Soccer
Sister. Dylan, you’re going to be dodging paparazzi. Alicia, your troupe is going to dominate tap…”
Her sequined dress caught the light from a torch and reflected small teardrop-shaped lights across Claire’s face. “And I’m
moving.”

Everyone leaned in to Massie for another hug, but Claire stomped her foot. What was Massie talking about?

It took her a few more moments to completely swallow her candy, but as she expected, the sugar gave her an instantaneous rush.
She felt more energized—and confused—than she had all night.

“But Massie!” she question-cried. Everyone spun around to look at her. “You’re allowed to stay!”

Claire could barely breathe while she waited for Massie to say something. Kristen, Alicia, and Dylan glanced worriedly at
each other as Massie’s face flushed, then paled, and then finally crumpled.

“I am,” she finally confessed.

Everyone sucked in their breath, and the rest of the party fell away. It felt like it was just her and Massie and the PC,
hanging out at GLU headquarters, tallying gossip points, playing What Would You Rather, making packing lists, dressing the
Massiequin, busting on Alicia’s boobs, Dylan’s burps, Claire’s bangs, and Kristen’s boy shorts. Eating snacks, rating each
other, and evaluating their crushes. Claire crossed her fingers. Maybe if she wished for it hard enough, instead of the clock
ticking midnight and the YSL dropping, she could rewind time and stay with her best friends in the eighth grade at OCD forever.
Because that’s what would happen if this was a dream. And sometimes dreams came true.

Her friends were proof of that.

“So stay!” Claire urged. The words tumbled out faster than Shawn Johnson’s floor routine. But she had to know why Massie,
after everything, was choosing to move to England instead of staying in Westchester with Claire.

Massie looked at Claire head-on. Her amber eyes crackled with confidence. Before she said anything it was obvious her decision
had been made and would not be undone. “After everything Hermia said, and all of these changes, it feels like the right thing
to do. How VH1 would it be if I was still clinging to the past while everyone else moved on?”

Kristen, Alicia, and Dylan nodded, but Claire shook her head.

“What are we going to do without you?” She sighed.

“You don’t need to worry about me nawt being around, Kuh-laire,” Massie said. Her eyes lit up. “I’m taking the PC international!
We have Skype, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, and who knows what new thing will be out next year? We can talk every day! Summers
in Europe anyone?” Massie grinned triumphantly. Dylan and Kristen high-fived her and each other. “I’ve done all I can do in
Westchester. I can’t hold myself back anymore. And neither can any of you!”

“Point,” Alicia nodded.

Slowly, Claire began to understand what Massie was saying. Just because she wouldn’t physically be there with them didn’t
mean she wouldn’t be there at all. She was already so much a part of them, and them of her.

Massie took off her charm bracelet and held it out to Alicia. “You can do this.”

Alicia sniffed back a tear and nodded. Massie clipped the bracelet around her tanned wrist and stood back to admire it. “Perfect,”
she said, admiring the charms she had collected over the years. “Make sure you add more.”

Alicia began to sob. “Okay.”

They all looped arms until they were a closed circle standing tall under the stars. Love and perfume emanated from their pores
and drifted to the sky, forming an invisible heart-shaped cloud that would follow each one of the girls for the rest of her
life. No matter where they were, who they were with, or what they were doing, all they’d have to do was look up, and there
it would be.

Just then, the crowd began counting down to the New Year and the Pretty Committee joined in.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Their eyes were full of tears, as they shouted.

“Seven… six… five…”

It was the end of an era.

“Four… three…”

And the beginning of a new one.

“Two…”

The YSL bag touched down.

“One! Happy New Year!” they yelled, their voices getting lost in the merriment around them. Fireworks lit up the sky. The
band started up again with a rock version of “Auld Lang Syne,” and the crowd, led by Merri-Lee on the stage, sang along.

Claire met Massie’s eyes over the chaos and winked at her. Massie winked back, her eyes sparkling, and mouthed, “Heart you,
Kuh-laire.”

“Heart you, Mass,” Claire wanted to say but a swell of emotions left her mute. She lifted her head to reverse the tears just
as a heart-shaped firework exploded in the navy sky.

The Pretty Committee followed her gaze and watched as it faded to smoke and then vanished. Leaving behind five tear-soaked
faces and another perfect memory.

“One Glacéau Vitamin Water and one bowl of Evian water, puh-lease,” Massie said as the flight attendant reclaimed her cooling
hot towel with a pinch of his silver tongs.

Rule number one of flying was to stay hydrated. Rule number two was to stay entertained, which is why she’d brought the latest
Seventeen
,
Vogue
,
People
, and
In Style
magazines with her, as well as her MacBook, the season-two DVDs of
Vampire Diaries
, a cashmere BRAND throw, and some lavender-scented neck pillows for her and Bean. She spread all of them out on the empty
seat next to her and then leaned back, letting the first-class leather seat hold her like a hug.

“Cabin crew, prepare for takeoff.” The pilot’s Robert Pattinson accent danced throughout the aircraft. Massie felt her stomach
squeeze itself and then flutter back to its normal position. Was it possible she was nervous? She’d been flying since she
was three months old! Then again, she reminded herself, this
was
the first time she was leaving New York without a return ticket in her Gucci wallet.

William and Kendra were seated in front of her, reclined and sipping champagne, leaving Massie and Bean to stretch out in
a row of their own. Now that she was on the plane, her
Louis carry-on safely stowed above her seat, she could finally start to process everything that had happened since the New
Year’s Yves party:

The Block estate had been packed up and put on the market, its contents shipped to the Blocks’ new English castle.

Massie had officially withdrawn from OCD and registered at KISS (Knightsbridge Isle Secondary School).

Massie had purchased—and devoured—biographies and articles on B-Alphas like Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Kate Moss, Stella
McCartney, Victoria Beckham, and Sienna Miller, deciding that Madonna and Gwenyth hadn’t lived there long enough to qualify
as British Alphas.

Instead, she YouTubed recent interviews with the expats to study how they’d managed to tweak their American accents to sound
more British. And then decided never to do that.

She and Landon had a heart-to-heart about whether it was realistic to sustain a transnational relationship. There had been
tears, but once he had stopped crying, they parted amicably.

Bean had said goodbye to Bark Obama one last time. As she’d watched them run around the doggie playpen in Bark Jacobs, Massie
had realized that, just like her and Landon, Bean and Bark would always be friends.

Most important, Massie had said her
goodbye-for-now
s to Claire, Alicia, Dylan, and Kristen. And her parents had promised Massie could come back to Westchester in the summer
and stay with the Lyonses, unless they all wanted to come to
the castle. Either way they were committed for summer and bound by one of Len Rivera’s contracts.

As Massie reached for a magazine, she caught sight of her wrists and smiled. Normally she would
ew
-schew the braided, colorful pieces of fabric that adorned them, but she’d made an exception for the Pretty Committee. Seeing
as she was leaving before OCD was back in session, Layne organized a friendship bracelet drive for Massie as a way of getting
the whole school to say good-bye. All of her friends, or rather, the people who had always wanted to be her friends, had left
bracelets on the doorstep of the estate. There were eighty-seven in all but she only wore five: the four that truly mattered,
and Layne’s.

The plane began careening down the runway. Bean trembled—she had a fear of flying—but Massie held her close as they peered
out the tiny window. The plane went up, up, up until New York, the only home Massie had ever known, began to look like a miniature
toy city, twinkling with lights, blowing her goodbye kisses. She pressed her glossy lips against the oval window and sent
one back. “I will heart you forever,” she muttered.

She and Bean stared out in silence as the plane soared higher. The city lights of her past disappeared behind them as they
leveled off over the dark-as-coal Atlantic. Suddenly they were surrounded in blackness: her future, waiting to be filled.
Massie rested her head back on the seat, flicked off the light, and wondered what that black space would look like one year
from now.

“Would you fancy my nuts?” asked a boy in a Harry Potter accent.

“
’Scuse me?
” she whip-turned toward the aisle and giggled. (If only the Pretty Committee had heard that one!) A smiling pair of brown
eyes were fixed on her. The boy who looked the same age as Landon was holding a silver bag of almonds. Thick black hair waved
around his tanned face, making his teeth look brighter than her New Year’s dress.

“I noticed you weren’t eating your biscuits and I thought maybe we could trade.” Dimples cut his cheeks, upgrading him from
a 9 to a 9.6. If he presented a driver’s license and proof of a trust fund, he might be a perfect 10.

“Done,” Massie said, handing her plate across the aisle.

“So you from New York, then?” he asked, biting into the warm chocolate chip cookie. Was it possible for someone to chew with
an accent? Or were his lips that compelling all on their own?

“Born and raised,” she said, proudly. “You?” she asked, regretting it immediately. “I mean, is that where you were? I mean,
ah-bviously you were because you came from there but were you visiting?”

Ehmagawd mayday!

He chuckled. “Yup. First time. I spent the holidays at my cousins’. They live right in the city. What a blast!” he wiped his
mouth on a cloth napkin and politely folded it so the chocolate skid faced the tray. Massie imagined Derrington wiping his
on a sleeve or even the back of the seat. No, they weren’t in American airspace anymore.

“Is that yours?” he asked, pointing at her ah-mazing new Louis Vuitton Keepall 55 carry-on.

“Yeah, I got it as a going-away present to myself,” she beamed.

“Wow, you must be easy to please,” he chuckled.

“Make fun all you want but I earned the money myself,” she bragged, even though it wasn’t entirely true. It would have been
if she didn’t use the sale money to buy clothes for her friends. So it wasn’t exactly a lie either.

“Really?” he looked confused. “I got mine for free. Kind of comes with the application.”

“Huh?” Massie said, eyeing her bag. Her KISS handbook was poking out the top of the bag. “Oh, you mean that?” she asked, kicking
it with the toe of her lace-up riding boots.

He nodded. “Quite a nice place. I go there.”

Ehmagawd, this Bawtie (British hawttie) goes to KISS?

“I’ll be starting there next week,” Massie said, restraining from jumping on the seat like Tom Cruise on
Oprah
.

“Well,” he smiled, “I’ll have to give you a tour.”

“Okay,” Massie smiled, nervously.

An awkward silence hung between them until he pointed to her wrist and asked, “What’re all those for?”

Massie held up her wrists and examined them again in the gray light. “Oh, these? Just some friendship bracelets.” She wiggled
her wrists around, hoping he’d notice the Tiffany & Co. cuff or ruby-and-diamond ring she was wearing instead. She felt the
sudden, deep need to impress him.

He whistled a low, long whistle. “You must have a lot of friends, then.”

If you only knew…

“I did in New York,” she said. “But I don’t know anyone in London.”

The boy turned his penny-brown eyes on her and smiled. “You do now.” He reached out his hand across the aisle. “Hi. I’m James.”