“I think I’m almost there,” she lied, testing out a few eyelash bats. She’d read somewhere that this was a surefire attractor
of the opposite sex, and that it worked for ostriches, llamas, and other not-so-hot animals. And while Charlie didn’t feel
as beautiful as some of the Alphas, she was certainly a lot cuter than a llama. “Thanks to you, that is.” Charlie pretended
to fiddle with a motherboard on an open desktop in front of her.
“Me? It was all you,” Jess said. He was still modest to a fault. “I just pulled the donkey.”
“Pulled the donkey?” Charlie laughed and blushed a deeper shade of pink, cocking her head to one side. Was Jess likening her
to a farm animal or just botching an expression?
“No donkey? Bad translation. Um… hang on.” Jess smiled sheepishly and typed something into his iPhone. “Okay… I just greased
the wheels. You steered the bus.”
“Well, it was a joint effort.” Charlie grinned. “Kinda like the time we rigged Mel’s phone to play ‘My Humps’ on repeat every
time he turned it on.” Charlie giggled at the memory. Jess had been horrified when she’d suggested it, but he loved figuring
out how to pull the prank.
Jess laughed, the corners of his eyes curling up affectionately. “So funny! Until he threw it in the ocean. After that, I
felt bad. Did he ever find out who did it?”
“Yeah. I’m still waiting for him to get back at me.” Charlie smiled. “And I’m pretty sure he’s still mad at you.”
“There’s nobody here like you, Charlie. Brains and beauty,” Jess continued. “Every boy you know has a crush on you, I’m sure.”
That might have been true once, Charlie conceded. Back when she was the planet around which the Brazille Boys orbited. Back
when there weren’t dozens of shiny, smiling Alphas to distract each one of them.
Jess’s iPhone trilled. “Gotta take this, Charlie. Can you hold on? It’s my dad.”
“Sure,” she said, and Jess jumped out of his chair and began to pace the beach.
Charlie sighed, thinking about the insurmountable distance between them. Absence made the heart grow fonder, though, didn’t
it? At least that was how it worked for Charlie’s mom and dad. Before her dad died, he had been a member of the Royal Navy,
monitoring peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. Bee and Charles (Charlie was named for her dad) only saw each other a few days
a month, when Charles was off duty. Charlie still had stacks of letters they sent to each other, and part of her always thought
she’d have a similar long-distance romance. But the way Bee coped with Charles being so far away was gabbing with her two
closest friends, Hildy and Mare. In talking about Charles with her two best girlfriends, Bee kept him near her heart.
Charlie flipped open the locket on her cameo bracelet, the one that held her father’s picture inside. He stared back at her,
his Royal Navy hat perched just so, his kind eyes reminding her that life was shorter than high school often led you to believe.
It flew by in a minute. Charlie flipped open the other cameo to the place Darwin’s picture used to be, but Shira had taken
it away from her when she’d accepted her into Alpha Academy.
Looking at that blank oval where Darwin’s face once belonged, Charlie had a sudden, fierce pang of missing Allie. Allie was
the one person on this island who would appreciate the tragic romance of her flirtation with Jess. She would eat up Charlie’s
Skype hype about how cute Jess had become. Charlie clicked the cameo closed with a sigh—she couldn’t talk to Allie. They just
weren’t friends anymore. Allie had lied, and their friendship was built under false pretenses. Then again, Charlie had lied
once, too—to get into Shira’s school.
Charlie sat back with a thud. The more she thought about it, the more obvious it became: She and Allie had both sold their
souls to get into Alpha Academy. Like Jess said, they had given up so much for the chance to shine for Shira. And at least
Allie didn’t hurt anyone she loved to go here! Charlie had wanted admission badly enough to get her mom fired and break her
boyfriend’s heart. All Allie had done was dye her hair and draw a mole on her upper lip. It wasn’t so awful, now that Charlie
thought about it. It was nothing that Charlie wouldn’t have done herself if she’d been in Allie’s shoes.
Charlie’s heart began to beat faster than the wings of the mechanical butterflies she’d built to teach herself circuitry.
She had to get out of here ASAP. She had to make things right with Allie.
“Jess!” she called, waving at the figure pacing the beach to sit down at his laptop again. When he saw her waving, he said
good-bye to his dad on the phone and sat back down.
“Sorry about that.” He smiled.
Even though Jess was adorable, Charlie didn’t have any time to waste.
“Can I Skype you tomorrow? There’s somewhere I have to be,” she said. She buckled her gladiator sandals around her ankles
as she talked, her mind already back at Jackie O with Allie.
“Of course,” Jess said, running his hand through his thick black hair. “Call me every day!”
Charlie felt a tingle run down her spine. If things went the way she hoped, maybe tomorrow she would tell Jess all about her
new friend, Allie—the girl who did the gutsiest thing to get into Alpha Academy. Well, the second gutsiest.
JACKIE O
BACK PORCH
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD
11:16 P.M.
Allie wondered if anyone had ever been driven insane by tropical birds before. She prodded at her makeshift earplugs, two
balled-up strips of toilet paper cribbed from the Jackie O bathroom, and wished they actually worked to block out the squawking
macaw that had planted itself outside Jackie O.
“Aren’t you supposed to sleep at night?” Allie yelled. She remembered that much from biology class—birds were diurnal, not
nocturnal like bats.
But the macaw had clearly not taken seventh-grade bio with mustachioed Mrs. Wilson, because it squawked back a shrill reply
that sounded like, “Nosiree!”
Allie shivered in the night air, pulling her blanket around her shoulders. If she was going to spend another night on the
chaise longue, at least this time she’d brought essentials. She had her pillow and blanket and all the books from her gazillion-class
schedule to keep her company. And she had her pride! She couldn’t bear the thought of another night spent “sleeping” (more
like staring at the floating numerals of the digital clock in abject misery, since she wasn’t getting any actual sleep) amid
a group of girls who all hated her. She’d take the chaise longue any day over that.
Allie stared down at the books and assignments piled around her. She couldn’t focus on any of them. None of her classes were
her
; nothing stuck out as a subject she could be passionate about. And the dyed-black hair that was taking forever to grow out,
well, that wasn’t
her
, either. Neither was having no friends. Even though her Allie J disguise was gone, Allie still had a hard time recognizing
herself. She couldn’t even remember who she was before all of this. What had made her laugh? What had she liked to eat? How
had she decided what to wear, what kind of music to listen to? She was in the middle of a serious identity crisis. If she
didn’t figure out who she was soon, Shira was going to give her the one identity she didn’t want: eliminated Alpha.
Allie thought she might have broken through the hate wall surrounding the Jackie O’s last night, but the love fizzled as soon
as Shira put the kibosh on their plan to get Sheryl Ho-bag booted out of the Academy. And so Allie was back to being lonely.
She was heartbroken over Darwin and exhausted by the Alphas ostracizing her, but the person she missed the most was Charlie.
Breaking up with a friend like Charlie and a guy like Darwin were painful reminders of losing her best friend, Trina, and
her boyfriend, Fletcher, at the same time. It wasn’t fair—why did Allie’s breakups always come in twos? How was she supposed
to get over a boy when she didn’t have a friend to tell her she could do better?
The sound of footsteps reached her over the shrieking of the macaw—probably just Thalia, wanting to pass along some more corny
words of wisdom. Allie picked up her French homework and pretended to study.
But when Allie looked up from her verb translations, the person standing in front of her wasn’t Thalia but Charlie. Allie’s
heart leapt, then cowered. She reached for her bottle of Purell, her default security gesture. When in doubt, at least she
could kill germs.
“Hi,” Charlie said.
“Hi,” Allie answered nervously. Was Charlie here to remind Allie (like she could possibly forget!) what a lying loser she
was?
“I wanted to ask you why,” Charlie said flatly. She squinted up at the sliver of moon high in the sky, barely illuminating
Alpha Island, giving the place an air of mystery.
“Why what?” Allie squeaked. Was this a trap?
“Why you did it. Why you came here…. Why you lied.”
Charlie sat down next to Allie, moving some of her books aside to make room. Allie didn’t have any more to lose, so she decided
to tell Charlie the truth.
She took a deep breath and started at the beginning. “I had this friend. Trina Turnbull. She and I were best friends from
way back, since we were five or six years old. We played Bratz dolls together, baked cookies together. She got me through
my boring childhood.”
Allie paused, worrying she was already boring Charlie silly, but Charlie had a faraway, bemused expression.
“Sounds great,” she said, nodding at Allie to go on.
“It was, I guess. It was fine. Anyway, my first real boyfriend, Fletcher—we were totally into each other. At least I thought
we were. And Trina hung out with us all the time.” Allie paused to check on Charlie again. She hadn’t talked this much in
days. Again, Charlie nodded at her to go on.
“She never acted jealous or anything. Maybe she was on the inside, but I didn’t suspect a thing. I thought I had the perfect
life. A great best friend, a cute new boyfriend…”
“So what happened?” Charlie asked.
“One day, the three of us went to Disneyland. Fletcher and Trina kissed. They were sitting right next to me on a ride. We
went through a tunnel. It was…” Allie’s eyes searched the rustling palm trees as she tried to find the right words.
Charlie waited patiently for Allie to continue.
“It was devastating. I lost them both at the same time. Everything I thought I had, I didn’t have anymore.”
“I know how it feels to be that low,” murmured Charlie, her voice hoarse.
“Right. It sucks. And that’s when I got the letter for Allie J. It seemed like a chance to…” Allie’s dark blue eyes met Charlie’s
brown ones. “It seemed like my chance to finally be special. To escape and start over. To stand on my own two feet.”
A few tears slid down Allie’s cheeks and she wiped them away. She looked over at Charlie, who was staring straight ahead through
the scrim of jungle plants to the flat horizon beyond.
What a relief to finally tell someone about this,
Allie thought. It felt as if the whole memory was floating away as it spilled out of her.
“I don’t blame you for what you did,” Charlie finally said. She turned her head and Allie was surprised to see that Charlie’s
eyes were glassy with tears, too. “I can relate, actually.” Charlie sighed and leaned back on the chaise, staring up at the
moon. “And it’s amazing that you pulled it off for as long as you did.”
“What do you mean, you can relate?” Allie asked. How could Charlie possibly relate?
“Oh,” Charlie laughed, “you’d be surprised how much we have in common. You really want to know?”
“Um, yes?!” She pulled her sweatshirt over her knees and curled up on the chaise. She remembered something else Mrs. Wilson
taught her in seventh-grade bio: that females responded chemically to sharing their lives with each other. Gabbing with girlfriends
released oxytocin, which was like a happiness hormone. Maybe oxytocin was why she felt so calm confessing everything to Charlie.
“I didn’t get into Alphas by receiving a letter,” Charlie said ruefully. A pained smile flitted across her face like a firefly’s
glow, flashing once and disappearing.
“I know,” Allie reminded her. “You were already here with Shira while this place was being built. It must have been amazing.”
“Well, yeah, it
would
have been amazing, except Shira wasn’t going to let me attend once the school was completed.”
“What?” Allie was appalled. Why would AJ get in and not Charlie? Did Shira base admissions on fame alone? “But you’re one
of the smartest people I’ve ever met!”
“Shira doesn’t think so. She wasn’t going to let me in, even when my mom left her job to avoid the conflict of interest. She
made me give up the only other person who really cared about me.” Charlie’s voice shook, and she looked up at Allie.
“Who?” Allie asked, not getting it. And then it hit her. “Oh.”
Darwin.
So that was why Charlie always seemed so wise and so sad. She’d given up her mother and her boyfriend, all for the chance
to shine for Shira. Allie shivered in the night air as she wondered whether or not it was worth it.
“You can’t tell anyone. If it ever got out, Shira would expel me. And if that happens, all of it will have been for nothing.”
“I know what
that
feels like,” said Allie, looking at Charlie with new respect.
Charlie’s aPod beeped, interrupting the moment before it turned into a Hallmark Channel Movie of the Week.
“Shira again.” Charlie sighed. “The woman never stops!”
“Charlie?” Allie had one more question for her new/old friend. “Are you disappointed that I’m not Allie J? I mean, I know
I lied to you, but were you also upset that you weren’t friends with a world-famous singer?”
Charlie looked at Allie like she was one taco short of a combination plate. “Not at all. I’m glad you’re
not
actually her. I liked you in
spite
of Allie J’s songs, not because of them.”
“So… you liked me… for
me.
Not for her.” Allie looked shyly at Charlie now, suddenly embarrassed.