Movers and Fakers (13 page)

“Or,” Allie chimed in, emboldened by being treated like part of the group again, “we could take pictures of me dressed up
as her eating burgers, wearing fur, and, like, clubbing penguins, and we could post them on MySpace!”

This time, nobody laughed.
Too soon?
Allie stared at AJ’s unmade bed and wrinkled her nose. AJ’s shiny white coverlet was crumpled on the floor, and her tangled
sheets were covered in glittery necklaces, dirty laundry, schoolbooks, and makeup. For such an eco-nut, AJ really didn’t take
very good care of her personal environment.

Triple sleep-sighed from her bed on the far side of the room, having checked out on ditching AJ in favor of catching z’s.

Charlie’s aPod buzzed with a new text. “How does she know I’m awake?” she whine-groaned, collapsing back into bed.

“Who?” Skye asked.

“Shira! Ever since the cameras went down, she’s been begging me for names. Did you guys notice that Shira called twelve names
for elimination, but only eleven girls left the Pavilion? I fed her a fake name—Ivy Lambert. I guess she still hasn’t found
out, because now she wants more!”Charlie groan-sighed, throwing her hands up hopelessly.

“Poor Ivy. She was out of her league.” Skye giggle-smirked, wiping away an imaginary tear.

“I always thought she had kind of a poisonous personality, though,” Allie said, and the three Jackie O’s giggled. It felt
so good to be part of the crew again! Allie looked around at her house-mates, praying things would stay like this and Imposter
Allie would finally be dead and gone. Maybe this was the fresh start Thalia was talking about—now that she was free to be
herself, perhaps Allie A would be a lot more fun than Allie J could ever be.

“Wait,” Skye whisper-screamed, leaping up from Charlie’s bed. “That’s it!”

“What?” said Allie.

“Charlie can turn AJ in for something.” Skye stood up and began to twirl-pace, rubbing her palms together the way movie villains
did when they hatched a plan. She was Cruella De Vil and Lord Voldemort rolled into one. “I can’t believe we didn’t think
of this sooner….” Skye trailed off, lost in thought.

“Great idea,” said Charlie, already typing a message to Shira on her phone. But then she stopped. “What should I say?”

Allie smiled, suddenly knowing exactly what it should be. A perfect synchronicity had visited the Jackie O’s, and soon everything
would go back to the way it was. “Tell the truth: Say she’s been hanging around Darwin!” If it worked, Allie thought, the
plan would lead to her getting her friends back. And if she was lucky, maybe even more.

“Okay, here goes,” Charlie mumbled, typing fast and furious before she had time to overthink and delete. “Aaaand—message sent!”
The three of them waited, blinking at one another and listening to Triple sawing logs.

Ten agonizing seconds later, Charlie’s aPod beeped.

“Well?” whispered Skye.

SHIRA:
DARWIN IS A VERY GOOD CATCH. GIRLS ARE GOING TO WANT TO HANG AROUND HIM. YOU’D BETTER GET USED TO IT. NOW GET ME SOME REAL
NAMES!

Skye collapsed on the floor, curling up like an unwatered houseplant.

As the three girls whisper-groaned in unison, the door downstairs slid open again. AJ’s patchouli essential oil found Allie’s
nostrils, and in a moment AJ herself appeared at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a mangy faux-fur coat that looked like
she’d rescued it from a Dumpster.

“Hey ladies,” AJ drawled. “Fun night, right?”

Allie’s eyes stung as her new roommate came closer. In the semi-dark room, she could make out a cinnamon-scented toothpick
dangling from AJ’s ChapSticked mouth.

“Yeah. Super-fun,” said Skye flatly.

“Hey,” Allie whispered, swallowing a scream of frustration. She glanced over at the clock—1:03! Allie didn’t want to imagine
AJ locking lips with Darwin for hours on end, but her mind couldn’t go anywhere else.

“Let’s strategize in the bathroom,” Skye whispered to Charlie, turning her back on AJ and Allie.
“Alone.”

Charlie shot an unsmiling look at Allie before rolling out of bed and padding after Skye. Soon, Allie heard the sound of the
bathroom door locking followed by muffled giggles. On her own again, Allie pulled her comforter up to her neck and wished
again for sleep to put her out of her misery for a few hours.

AJ changed into a pair of pearl-pink pajamas and laid down on Renee’s bed, flashing Allie a smug smile. “No wonder you wanted
to be me. My life rocks.”

For the first time that night, Allie wished she was still masquerading as the Queen of Green. She was trying to be herself,
to prove that the real Allie was somebody, too, but the real Allie didn’t have much to offer. She had no talent, no special
thing
that was hers. Her friends were having private bathroom conferences without her, and AJ and Darwin were moving faster than
the personal Alpha planes that waited to fly boring Allie back home if she failed here.

Not only did Allie have no friends and no talent, she had no hope.

JACKIE O

BATHROOM

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD

1:29 A.M.

Skye stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, adjusting the dial on the wall from “Flattering” to “Pore Examination” light.
Yikes!
Rubbing her eyes, she forced herself to stare hard at the girl reflected back at her under blinding full-spectrum lighting
meant only to help catch errant eyebrow hairs and blackheads, not for soul-searching in the middle of the night. Two words
came to mind, both starting with
H
and both the opposite of “hot”:
haggard, hideous
. She turned the dial back to “Flattering,” but even in the pinkish glow, she looked more crumpled than a leg warmer without
a leg. She was tired, of course—it had been a crazy day and a busy night and it was now past her internal clock’s normal bedtime—but
her spirit, the light in her eyes that showed the world Skye Hamilton was fun and fabulous, looked dulled and dim. Her once-sparkly
Tiffany-box blue eyes were as faded as stonewashed jeans, her makeup smeared around them in bruisey, vaguely frightening patches.

Skye had spent her whole life at the top of the food chain, always ranked first in dance class, always among the most popular
girls in school. Ever since she could remember, boys loved her and girls wanted to be her. But now that Triple had officially
been crowned queen bun-head and AJ had pulled an Edward Cullen and sucked all the joy from her party, Skye was in free fall.
She should have been the star tonight, and the fact that she couldn’t yank her party out of AJ’s guitar-playing hands proved
that she was losing her Skye-ness—the magical It factor that had always landed her on top.

First, Triple had beaten her in the dance studio, and now AJ had bested her at hosting parties. The boys loved her lyrics
and grooved to her beats, rocking out like they were extras in an Allie J music video. So what was Skye good for?

“Still awake?” As if she had been summoned by Skye’s thoughts, AJ suddenly appeared in Skye’s flattering mirror light. Skye
jumped, knocking an open bottle of foundation into the sink.

Great. Now she wouldn’t even be able to hide her under-eye bags tomorrow. Yet another thing AJ took without asking.

“Sorry. You can use my makeup if you want. It’s bareMinerals. Totally natural, chemical free, and good for the—” AJ’s monotonous
earth-mama singsong had quickly gone from annoying to unbearable, and Skye couldn’t take another syllable.

“First,” Skye screech-blurted, “I’m allergic to talc, so bareMinerals gives me hives. And second, in case you didn’t notice,
my skin has yellow undertones and yours has blue. So obvious-leh we can’t share foundation!” Twisting the cap back on her
Lancôme bottle as tightly as possible, she wished her fingers were wrapped around AJ’s neck instead.

“Oh well,” AJ said brightly, taking a wooden toothbrush out of a small wooden case. “Great party tonight. Everyone’s still
texting about my little impromptu show.”

As Skye began squeezing toothpaste onto her electric toothbrush, her hands trembled with rage.
Impromptu! Right.

“How awesome for you,” she finally managed to say over the hum of her Sonicare.
Remain calm,
she told herself. If AJ saw how jealous Skye was, then the party-terrorist had already won. “You’ve had a big first week
here.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just do what I do, you know? For some reason, people seem to love it.” AJ shrugged, spitting a blob of toothpaste
into the sink.

“That’s how life was for me once, back home,” Skye caught herself admitting.

“Was it?” AJ said, flashing Skye a pity-smile and heading to the eucalyptus-scented Vichy shower. From behind the frosted
glass, she added: “Never woulda guessed.”

Skye stared at her reflection again, taking a deep sniff of calming eucalyptus and clamping her mouth shut so she wouldn’t
blurt out something she would later regret. Everyone was obsessing about AJ, eating up her Pop-Tart personality without tasting
the bitter saccharine that lay beneath. Skye couldn’t compete with AJ’s fame, but she couldn’t let the green meanie steamroll
her spirit.

Desperate for a sign, she scanned the touch-screen controls on the side of the mirror until she found the personal affirmation
button, marked with a bubbly set of quotation marks. The mirror beeped, and a moment later produced a glowing neon-pink sentence
that slid along the glass and stopped just under Skye’s chin.

Personal affirmation for SKYE HAMILTON:

Love looks through a telescope. Envy, through a microscope.

Huh?

Skye spit a blob of toothpaste into the bowl and undertook a final mirror-nalysis as she tried to figure out what the mirror
wanted her to do. Blond hair—check. Big green eyes—check. But the eyes needed their magic back. Her mouth was twisted in an
unattractive sneer, and her sinewy body was stooped with the weight of the world—AJ’s world—on her shoulders. How would she
get her mojo back? Where would she find her telescope?

And then it came to her. What do you do when someone steals your thunder? Steal it back, of course. Show her up. Skye had
to throw an even bigger party—one so fabulous that there was no way AJ could find a way to ruin it. It had to be someplace
that didn’t work well for guitar playing, someplace where Skye could divide and conquer the crowd if she needed to. She thought
back to some of her best parties back home, remembering golf-cart racing at the country club, dance parties in abandoned swimming
pools, subway-car takeovers—that was it!

Deep in thought, Skye high-kicked her leg and pressed her calf against her forehead, enjoying the tingle of exertion that
traveled from her hip to her ankle. Lowering her leg to the floor, she blew her mirror image an air kiss. She was a genius!
Her next party would be the talk of the school for months. Her new plan firmly fixed in her mind, Skye smiled at the mirror
now—not just with her mouth but with her eyes. She grabbed her aPod from the bathroom counter and texted Taz with her idea.

Her phone beeped three seconds later.

Taz:
PARTY TRAIN!!!

Would Syd’s response be even more enthusiastic? Only one way to find out! Skye sent him the same message she’d sent Taz:

Skye:
Friday at midnight, let’s have an even bigger bash. Only this time, we’ll take the party on the road, or at least bubble-train
tracks—gotta carpe diem while the cameras are down! Skye’s the limit!

Skye waited impatiently for Syd’s response. It took ten times longer than Taz’s to arrive, and when it did, her chugging heart
slammed to a stop.

Syd:
Shouldn’t you be using your energy to dance? And what if you get caught? I thought you were more than just a party girl.

Staring at her reflection in the mirror, her blond waves a little bit frizzy from AJ’s steamy shower, Skye felt a deep blush
of shame stain her skin. How embarrassing to come
this close
to falling for the wrong guy! She was mortified not to have noticed it sooner: Sydney was a total wuss.

BRAZILLE RESIDENCE

CONTROL ROOM

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD

5:34 P.M.

Charlie examined her face in the shiny rectangular reflection of the laptop screen: big brown eyes (her best feature, she’d
always thought); adequate lips (semi-rosebud, neither full nor thin, with a light coat of tinted ChapStick, since lipstick
made her feel overdone); long, chestnut-brown, good-hair-day hair (yes!). Leaning in closer to the laptop, Charlie pinched
her cheeks for color. Then she wiped her sweaty hands on her new Alpha uniform, a belted shirtdress in shimmery copper that
had recently been introduced to their wardrobe.

Over the years, Darwin had seen her at her ugliest. He’d been with her when she got food poisoning in Barcelona, renaming
the city “Barf-celona”; when she contracted an unfortunate case of forehead zits just before Darwin’s thirteenth birthday
party (a hair spray allergy, she’d lied); and when an African mantis had bitten her eyelid, making her look like a newborn
gerbil. After a boy saw you like that, being pretty didn’t seem as important.

Thinking about
her
Darwin and the Darwin she witnessed last night, the one who hung on AJ’s every obnoxious word, made Charlie want to find
a hammer and smash a few of the monitor screens. How could he not see how manipulative AJ was? Or worse: What if he saw it
and
liked
it? It was too much to contemplate. Charlie clicked on the green Skype icon and resolved to put Darwin out of her mind for
now and focus on Jess.

Jess picked up her call after just one ring. His smile was as white as the sand of the beach behind him. He looked as if he
smelled like salt and cocoa butter.

“Hi Charlie.” Jess smiled. Charlie wished there was something more interesting behind her than boxes of computer equipment.
“So… did you fix the cameras yet?”

Charlie had, in fact, figured it out. She just had to connect a circuit to the breaker and the security system would be up
and running. But she wasn’t ready to do that just yet. If she fixed the cameras entirely, what excuse would she have to Skype
with Jess?