The party was more awesome than Skye could have ever hoped. Girls were hopping from car to car, moving in time to the music.
When the chorus landed, everyone sang along.
“If you end up in a train car with a Brazille Boy, you have to kiss him!” one of the Michelle Obamas shouted, ramping up the
chaos and competition another notch.
Once all the girls seemed to get into the spirit of the game, they began lunging for the nearest Brazilles—Mel and Dingo.
Mel pushed past Skye and ran for the next train car, yelling over his shoulder to Dingo, “You go back, I’ll go forward! If
we split up, we can cover more ground and sample more lips!”
As Miley’s twangy guitar strings thrummed through the air, Skye felt a pair of muscular arms wrap around her toned shoulders.
“Hi,” Taz said, his breath tickling her ear. “Rules are rules. We have to kiss.”
Gladly,
thought Skye, turning her head and closing her eyes as he leaned his face toward hers.
Ohmuhgud, the big lip-kiss!
Skye’s limbs turned to molasses as Taz pressed his pillowy lips to hers. They slid for a second on Skye’s gloss, but pretty
soon they felt like they belonged there. Taz’s lips tasted faintly of chocolate, and his kiss was as confident as the rest
of him—not overly aggressive or rough, but not limp or fish-lipped, either. Skye’s skin tingled all over, and she felt weightless,
as if the train had suddenly become an antigravity chamber.
They pulled away from the kiss at the exact same time, and Taz gave her a now pink-tinted grin as the train car filled up
with roving passengers.
Ohmuhgud! Hawtness!
Skye’s heart did the cabbage patch as Taz squeezed her hand in his. She executed a perfect pirouette out of sheer delight.
She congratulated herself for leaving Syd off the list. Things could have gotten awkward if she hadn’t.
“Hey, Skye.” The scratchy baby-toned voice behind her was unmistakable, even over the pounding of the train’s sound system.
Skye whipped around and planted her feet in second position, her power stance.
“Hey.” She hate-smiled at the diminutive diva. AJ had to have made her way through fifteen crowded train cars to get here,
and it showed. Janis Chop-lin looked as if Simon Cowell had just ripped her a new one. Her tiny mouth was pursed and her forehead
was creased with worry.
“Have you seen Darwin?” AJ asked hopefully, peering around Skye in hopes that there were more train cars up ahead.
“Uh-uh,” said Skye, playing dumb. She wasn’t going to ruin Allie’s chances at forgiveness by putting AJ on the scent. “He’s
not here?”
“He said he’d probably make it….” AJ frowned, pulling out her phone. “I texted…. Maybe when he writes back I should tell him
that we’ll pick him up?”
Before Skye could even come up with an answer of faux sincerity, AJ’s phone beeped. She scooted closer to AJ and peeked over
her shoulder at her phone.
Darwin:
Can’t come right now. Maybe later. Gotta talk to Allie and clear the air.
Ohmugud!
Both AJ and Skye gasped. Allie did it! She’d convinced Darwin to hear her out.
Skye was happy for Allie, but even happier that AJ was being dissed.
“What is he talking about?” AJ whined, frantically texting back. “I’m a multiplatinum artist! This does not happen to me.
I don’t get stood up!”
Skye swallowed a smile. “Never woulda guessed.”
“I need to get off this train,” AJ coldly demanded. Her moss-green eyes darted helplessly around the car.
“We can let you off.” Skye felt the stirrings of brilliance ripple through her arms and legs. It was almost too easy. And
the best part was that AJ’s loss would be Allie’s gain. “Right, Taz?”
Taz turned around in the conductor’s chair. “You’re the boss!” he yelled over the music. “Time to Pretend” by MGMT blasted
out of the train’s loudspeakers, and he pushed a button on the steering panel that said BEACH DEPOT.
“Just… we can only open the doors of the caboose,” Skye lied, lowering her voice so only AJ could hear her. “The others make
too much noise, and we’re too close to Shira’s place to risk it.”
“Fine. I’ll be waiting there,” growled AJ, turning on her heel and hurrying toward the caboose.
Counting slowly to fifteen, a delicious smile spread over Skye’s face. When she was sure AJ had made it all the way through
the train, her turquoise eyes focused on a long bank of red levers on the wall marked DOOR LOCK underneath.
Score!
Quickly glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody saw her, she found the switch for the caboose and pulled down on it,
locking the door to AJ’s car.
Ha! See if she ruins another party now!
“AJ just texted me.” Skye giggle-danced back over to Taz. “She’s staying on the train after all.” It was her party. The least
she could do was help out Allie in the process. And if she wounded AJ at the same time, well, that was the way the vegan cookie
crumbled.
THE BRAZILLE RESIDENCE
CONTROL ROOM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH
12:14 A.M.
Charlie’s eyes had gone from twinkling to bloodshot and the bags underneath them were bigger than Shira’s Birkin. She looked
longingly at Jess’s face on the computer screen and tried to smile-swallow a yawn. It was barely noon in Thailand, judging
by the bright blue sky and the blindingly white sand on the beach outside Jess’s window. She didn’t want Jess to think she
was bored—she was far from it! During their forty-five-minute conversation, Jess had made her feel more interesting—and interested—than
anyone had since, well… she didn’t want to think about that. He was riveted by her stories about Alpha Academy, and she had
been catching up on his life in Phuket.
“So Skye planned this huge party for tonight, actually, and managed to get Taz to commandeer the bubble train. There are at
least thirty Alphas plus some Brazilles aboard right now….” Charlie lowered her voice in a fit of paranoia.
“Wow, sounds risky.”
“It
is
. I think I’m getting an ulcer. I’m not much of a risk taker.”
Except for that whole dumping-my-boyfriend-to-come-here thing,
she thought.
“Hey, guess what?” Jess said brightly. Charlie suppressed another yawn and hoped it didn’t look like she’d just farted. “My
dad is going to the US over Christmas to look at a new manufacturing plant. I was thinking we could make a little pit stop
to say hi to Shira… and to you.” His eyes sparkled in anticipation, the way Charlie’s did before it had gotten so late. “If
you want, I mean.”
Charlie’s heart bounced like a Ping-Pong ball set free in her rib cage. “Of course, I’d love to see you!” Her ears began to
burn with embarrassment when she realized she’d used the word
love
.
Ohmuhgud.
She had practically just told Jess she loved him.
Delete, delete!
Charlie frantically tried to think of how to backpedal.
“I mean, that would be fun,” she tried lamely, running a hand through her brown waves. Jess seemed unfazed and started looking
through his iPhone to check on the dates of the flight, but Charlie was still reeling.
When she thought
love
, she thought Darwin. The first time they’d said “I love you” and meant it romantically was just last Valentine’s Day. Darwin
had DIYed a feast for them and had even baked a heart-shaped flourless chocolate cake. They’d watched the sunset from the
lawn in Shira’s backyard, listening to the slap of the waves against the kayaks tied up on the dock. Charlie had her head
in Darwin’s lap, and he’d been playing with her hair, when he just came out and said it.
“I love you, Char.” It had been so natural and normal that Charlie hadn’t even blinked. She just said it right back to him.
“I love you, too.”
It was a perfect moment.
I’ll never have that easiness again with anyone,
Charlie caught herself thinking.
Nothing will ever be pure like that, not anymore.
Lost in thought, Charlie’s gaze had wandered away from the laptop and from Jess. She was staring at a black monitor on the
corner of the desk, projecting the movie of her life onto the darkened screen.
“Charlie?” Jess said. “You okay?”
Snap out of it!
Charlie thought-shouted. When would her heart follow her brain’s instructions and just move on? She yanked her attention
back to the Skype screen, gluing a smile on her face.
But just as her mocha-colored eyes focused on Jess’s espresso ones, his video-box dissolved into black pixels and a new screen
popped up like a rabbit from a hat.
Huh?
Charlie was smiling straight at Shira!
Charlie swallowed a babysitter-confronting-an-axe-murderer scream.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Charlie feigned calm, but inside she was spinning out of control.
“Shouldn’t you be fixing my cameras?” Shira spat back, mocking Charlie’s faux-concerned tone and mimicking her American accent.
“Uh, I almost have it, really—”
“This was a mistake. You’ve been wasting my time. I knew you didn’t have it in you to understand this sophisticated technology.
I’m going to call Steve Jobs and see when his people can come.” Shira sighed and began punching commands into her smart phone,
the frizzy mass of her hair flying out in all directions.
“Wait! Shira, I’m almost there—”
“How much longer can I be expected to wait?” the mogul demanded, narrowing her eyes at Charlie. “I was wrong to let you attend
my school, Charlie. You are simply not Alpha material. I don’t know what I was thinking, giving you this assignment. Forget
about all those classmates of yours who are undoubtedly sneaking around at the moment; I should kick YOU out!” Shira stood
up and leaned her whole body over the camera, planting her fisted hands on her hips.
Charlie’s Ping Pong–ball heart was now in jackhammer mode. In the dim light, the mogul wasn’t wearing her ubiquitous sunglasses.
If Charlie made full-visibility eye contact with Shira while she was this angry, she might disintegrate on the spot.
Every cell in her body on panic overload, Charlie did the only thing she could.
“I can fix them! I know how to do it!” she cringe-yelled.
“Then do it, damnit! I need those cameras up IMMEDIATELY, Charlie Deery.” Shira leaned even closer to the screen and Charlie
froze as she stared at her furious ice-blue eyes. “It’s those cameras or you!”
“Just give me fifteen minutes,” Charlie said quietly. She needed as much time as possible, so she could warn her fellow Jackie
O’s to get everyone home and tucked into bed.
“You have
twelve
minutes. Effective immediately.” Shira switched off her webcam. As soon as the Skype screen dissolved into black, Charlie
reached for her aPod with shaking hands.
Charlie:
SOS 911 SOS 911!!! Shira awake, cameras about to go back on. Get off train ASAP or we all get the X!!! You have 10 min!!!
Plz confirm you got this.
Skye:
Msg rcvd. Running home!
In truth, Charlie had fixed the cameras days ago, so when eleven and a half minutes had passed, she took a deep breath, clenched
her teeth, and hid her eyes behind her hands as she flipped the switch that would activate full-island surveillance. One by
one, sixteen monitors instantly buzzed to life, each split into four quadrants showing a different view of Alpha Academy.
Charlie searched the screens with her heart in her throat, desperately scanning them for evidence of life. But she couldn’t
find a single swishing miniskirt, swinging door, or non-sleeping Alpha girl anywhere. All the sixty-four screens revealed
was darkened bedrooms full of sleeping Alphas. The rest of the island was as untouched as a bran muffin in a sea of cupcakes.
Charlie finally exhaled, sitting back in the chair and grinning at just another uneventful night on Alpha Island.
“Good work, Charlie.” Shira opened the basement door at the exact twelve-minute mark.
“Thanks,” Charlie squeaked, still partially holding her breath.
Shira shuffled down the stairs in mink-lined mules and a beige cashmere bathrobe, an eye mask askew on her forehead holding
back auburn spirals of hair. Charlie tentatively brought her eyes up to the mogul’s face. She looked past the flakes of Dead
Sea Algae treatment Shira habitually smeared on her frown lines and crow’s-feet and searched her eyes as they scanned each
and every monitor for offenders. There, in the pale blue orbs under Shira’s sleep-puffed lids, Charlie thought she saw what
she had been searching for since she was a little girl: a glimmer, a gleam, a gaze that all added up to the same thing—Shira
Brazille was
impressed
.
“Everything looks like it’s in order at the moment. I suppose you’re relieved, Charlie.”
“I’m happy if you’re happy,” Charlie murmured. The statement couldn’t have been more true.
“I misjudged you on this. You had it in you after all.” Shira cleared her throat and flashed Charlie the kind of smile she
used for guests on her talk show—a smile full of kindness, warmth, and charisma. Most people only ever saw it on billboards
or on their TVs. “Your teachers at the lab are quite impressed with your work, Charlie. It hasn’t completely escaped my attention,
you know.”
Charlie was so surprised she could barely speak. She looked away, savoring this moment. “I’m glad,” she managed.
Charlie squeezed her lips together to hold back a smile. She didn’t want to get greedy. Shira’s respect was a delicacy that
could wither and turn sour in a millisecond. Charlie would hold this moment in her heart for the rest of her life. She wanted
to be careful not to say too much and destroy it.
Shira just gave me her blessing
.
And to think, it only took fourteen years.
OUTSKIRTS OF ALPHA ISLAND
PINK SAND BEACH
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH
12:36 A.M.
It was just like
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
, one of Allie’s favorite rom-coms. Like Kate Hudson, Allie had confessed her whole elaborate scheme. Now, like Matthew McConaughey,
only way cuter and without an elaborate scheme of his own, Darwin would have to forgive her. Actually, Allie reminded herself
as the jungle gave way to the narrow stretch of pebbly beach where she was supposed to meet Darwin, a lot of rom-coms ended
up that way. After a bunch of misunderstandings and mishaps that tore the beautiful couple apart, all the silly little lies
the characters told became water under the bridge. And the leading man fell for the leading lady that much harder because
of everything they’d been through together.