Belle of the Brawl (6 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. “They are pretty much the same thing.”

“Of course I’m right.” Charlie grinned. “And I have a way to put your acting skills to use.”

“How?” asked Allie.

“I brought you this,” Charlie said, reaching into her bra. She rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling as she pulled out a glossy page of a magazine that had been folded to the size of a stick of gum. “It’s from Italian
Vogue
.” Charlie passed it to Allie.

“You want me to fake being Kate Moss in Italy?” Allie unfolded it slowly, careful not to rip the glossy paper.

“Just open it,” Charlie said.

Gently smoothing out the paper on her rolling hospital tray, Allie sucked in her breath.
Adorable!
It was Darwin’s older brother, the blond and chiseled Melbourne, posing in an ad for an Italian denim company called Cara Mio. In the black-and-white picture, Melbourne was shirtless and leaning up against a wall, eyeing a miniskirted girl who was halfway out of the frame.

“Nice six-pack. Nice jaw. Good angles. Hot ad,” Allie murmured, studying the picture with the eye of a former model. Allie had to admit, Mel was more crushable than cardboard. If her heart hadn’t already been bulldozed by one of the Brazille Boys, she might have jumped on the bandwagon.

“It’s Mel!” Charlie exclaimed, as though the fact weren’t obvious.

“I
know
it’s Mel,” said Allie, struggling to keep irritation out of her voice. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“I know you’re not over Darwin,” Charlie said patiently. “But Mel is a mega-hawttie, and he’s single, and I think you
two might have a lot in common. If nothing else, he’d be a distraction. One that’s healthier than”—she waved her hand dismissively around the room—“than pretending to be so unhealthy!”

“No thanks,” she said, shaking her head so her blond waves smacked her pillow. “I can’t just shut my feelings for Darwin off and turn on a crush on Mel. I’m not a fuse box!” She squinted her lash-fringed eyes at Charlie, wishing her aPod could read a person’s motives and not just their bio. How could Allie be sure Charlie’s intentions were pure? What if Charlie wanted to get back together with Darwin? They used to be soul mates—wasn’t it possible that Charlie decided she wanted him back? “You’re not… just doing this to get back together with Darwin, are you? If you like him, just be honest and tell me.”

Charlie recoiled in her chair, sitting back so fast it looked like she’d been punched by an invisible hand. Her cheeks reddened and she studied the tiles of the infirmary floor as if searching for what to say.

“I-I-I know you’re not a fuse box,” Charlie finally stammered, looking up from the floor and grabbing Allie’s hand. “And I don’t want Darwin back. I just want you to be happy. Will you go out with Mel once, just to see? If nothing else, you can practice your acting and get some of your self-confidence back. And it
might
make Darwin jealous enough to realize what he’s giving up.”

Allie breathed out a gushing sigh. If going out with Mel could get Darwin to like her again, maybe Charlie’s idea was worth considering. And the possibility of gaining some notoriety at the Academy for something other than impersonating Allie J was hard to resist. There was no point in trying to erase her feelings for Darwin by dating his brother, but maybe Charlie was right. Maybe hanging with a guy who actually liked her would be a good feeling? Allie had her doubts, but she shrugged them off like an ill-fitting trench.

“How do we make this happen?”

Allie nodded and listened as Charlie sketched the outlines of a plan for meeting up with Mel, acting excited as she went on. And on. Because, Allie told herself, that’s what actors do. They act.

MOUNT OLYMPUS
CHAIRLIFT

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2ND
12:26 P.M.

“Are we there yet?” Skye asked miserably. Her stomach lurched as the A-shaped air-chair she shared with Charlie and Allie swayed in high-altitude wind, hoisting the three Jackie O’s up Mount Olympus, the tallest landmass on Alpha Island. Fifty feet below the chairlift she could see the tops of pine trees shivering, mirroring her own trembling nerves. If today’s assault on Syd’s senses didn’t work, she might have to join Allie in the infirmary for fear of a nervous collapse.

“Smell that mountain freshness,” Allie shouted into the wind, taking a big gulp of pine-scented, snow-cooled air. “Reminds me of the ski slopes in Tahoe!”

“Reminds me of an out-of-control roller coaster run by drunk carnies,” mumbled Skye, unzipping her gunmetal gray parka halfway. The breeze-battered chairlift was just like her life right now—out of her control. But looking across the air-chair at her fellow O’s, the same could be said
about them, too. Charlie had been nervous, jumpy, and clumsy all morning, and Allie was weirdly chipper for no discernable reason—almost manically so. In her gold belted puffer and matching gold fleece headband wrapped around her honeyed hair, Allie reminded Skye of an Austrian ski champion. Charlie looked cute, too, in an optic white parka that offset her mahogany hair, but she had chewed her nails down to the quick. Her forehead was creased with worry.

Skye clutched the safety bar on the chairlift and leaned forward, scanning the ground for Alpha girls. The competition to land the Brazille brothers was so fierce among the eighty-eight Alphas that Charlie had decided to leak fake locations for their picnic to throw girls off the scent. Down by the beach, Skye spotted fifteen girls in glittery bikinis, standing around sniffing the air for testosterone.

“I can almost see the burn lines from here,” Skye said, pointing at the beach and wondering which Brazille bro they were waiting for.

“I hope they don’t find out Darwin was with us today,” Charlie sigh-nodded. Down at the foot of Mount Olympus, at the Academy’s riding stables, three girls dressed in breeches and boots were hitting one another angrily with riding crops. “And it looks like Shelly Yip, Britney Saperstein, and Nuala Lapore realized Mel isn’t showing up for that trail ride. Oops.”

All week, Alphas had been driven to desperate acts in
the hope of impressing a Brazille Boy. It was like an episode of
The Bachelor
and
24
combined. So far, Skye had heard about a broken ankle (Jeanette Hollis, trampled by a pack of girls running after Dingo near the Arts Building) and more sabotage than on an episode of
America’s Next Top Model
. Tales were circulating of bleach in shampoo bottles, Sharpie ink in toothpaste, garlic oil in perfume bottles.

But nobody had been sabotaged as much as Skye had sabotaged herself. In her quest to gross Syd out, she’d gone from a toned ten to a grungy, greasy, ill-tempered two. Still, Syd clung to her like toilet paper on a shoe. But that was all about to change, hopefully, and maybe she would get another chance at…
ohmuhgud.

Skye craned her neck to get a better view of the
Joan of Arc
, Shira’s yacht in the middle of Lake Alpha. Standing on the deck was a tiny, ant-sized Taz, squeezing sunscreen onto his hands, surrounded by a pack of bathing suit–clad Alphas.

“Sorry, babe.” Charlie flashed Skye a sympathetic smile. “Taz could never resist a party. But someday soon, you two will put Syd behind you. I think Taz liked you more than he’s ever liked any one girl before.”

“Until I ruined it!” Skye moaned, reaching a dirt-encrusted fingernail inside the greasy tangle of hair. “My life is hell. My only hope is that today, Syd will realize that if he sticks with me, his life will be hell, too.”

“I thought your life was
smell
,” joked Allie.

Skye nodded, chewing her lip. Allie was right—Skye had finally achieved maximum nastiness. To be any grosser, she would have to contract a case of scabies along with gingivitis, both of which were too icky to contemplate. “Yeah, today is as gross as I get. Which reminds me,” Skye dug through the picnic basket at the girls’ feet. “I packed a snack.”

Skye fished out a yellow onion and began to peel off the skin, her stomach recoiling at the thought of what she was about to do.

Allie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Skye, you are
not
going to eat that.”

“I have to!” Skye snapped. “This is my last hope! If Syd leans in for a kiss and smells this, maybe he’ll reconsider our undying love.” She pinched her nostrils shut with two fingers and bit into the onion as if it were an apple, chewing it miserably as tears streamed down her face. Her gag reflex kicked in and she fought through it to swallow a mouthful of raw onion.

“Nice touch,” Charlie giggle-grimaced, gesturing toward Skye’s jaw line, where an eruption of chin-zits now dotted her otherwise flawless complexion.

“Lip liner,” Skye gag-grinned, shrugging as she tossed the half-eaten onion overboard into the pine forest. “Triple’s idea.”

As the air-chair skidded toward the clearing at the top of the mountain, the girls zipped up their parkas, applied Purell (Allie), chewed her cuticles inscrutably (Charlie), and dusted faux dandruff made of cornstarch and cookie crumbs across her shoulders (Skye).

“What’s my motivation again?” Allie sat up straighter and adjusted her ski headband, channeling her new budding-actress persona as she grilled Charlie.

Charlie let out a tiny sigh and shot a quick look at Skye before launching into a pep talk. Evidently, Allie was about to set into motion the performance of a lifetime. “You’re pretending you’re over Darwin, and into Mel. Act confident, cool, and totally in control. That way, Darwin will see what he’s missing and Mel will fall for you, which, with any luck, might make Darwin want you that much more.”

Skye swallowed a bitter laugh. If there was one thing she’d learned while trying to shake Syd, it was that people never responded how you hoped they would.

Charlie paused, taking a breath and leaning over to scan the clearing for signs of the guys. “Best-case scenario,” she continued, “you’ll have
two
Brazille brothers fighting over you.”

Allie nodded and chewed her lip in concentration as she whispered “cool, calm, confident” to herself as if preparing to walk onstage for Hollywood week on
American Idol
.

“Good luck, Al,” Skye said. “May
one
of us make a love connection today, and may it not be me.”

Skye narrowed her aquamarine eyes at the group of boys waiting for them. Syd stood next to the lift clutching a huge bunch of yellow and pink-flecked branches. Behind the flowers, his smile was as all-consuming as a black hole.

But as the air-chair slid in for a landing, Skye found Charlie’s optimism infectious. After all, if Allie could act her way into Mel’s heart, why couldn’t Skye act her way out of Syd’s? With any luck, Skye would be single by dinner, and she could wash that man—and a week of filth—right out of her hair.

HIGH ABOVE ALPHA ISLAND
MOUNT OLYMPUS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2ND
12:40 P.M.

As the air-chair dipped in for a landing, Charlie gritted her teeth and hoped the hamster-wheel of nerves in her stomach would slow to a halt soon. She snuck a peek at Allie’s serene-looking face and hoped for the millionth time that her crazy plan would work: that Mel would fall for Allie, and that in time, Allie would be so wrapped up with Mel that she wouldn’t be able to remember Darwin’s name. And most of all, that she would come out of this high-altitude triple date without making any enemies. She glanced across from her at Skye, who looked as bad as Charlie felt. If Syd was as grossed out by Skye as Charlie was, soon all the Jackie O’s would have what they wanted.

“There they are,” whispered Allie, a slow smile creeping across her glossed lips. She looked confident and radiated calm.

“Picnic time,” Charlie sing-songed lamely. She was way
too nervous to eat anything, but the mountaintop would make a great romantic backdrop for Allie and Mel’s first date.

Just as they were about to jump off the lift, Allie reached over and grabbed Charlie’s hand in hers and squeezed it hard. Suddenly it was as though the real Allie jumped out of actress-Allie’s exterior and flashed Charlie a wild-eyed look. “Are you sure you’re over Darwin? Something still feels weird about this.”

No, I’m not sure at all!

“Of course,” lied Charlie, praying her voice wouldn’t shake. “I want this to work more than anyone.” Charlie did want this to work, and by
this
, she meant the Mel-Allie connection.

The air-chair touched down for a moment and Charlie grabbed Allie and Skye’s hands as they all jumped off. Charlie waved at the boys, who stood near a stand of pines on three sides of a huge picnic blanket, and said an internal prayer that Allie wouldn’t find out what she was up to, that Mel would be all over Allie like blue on a Na’vi, and that Darwin would forgive her someday for making him lie. It was a lot to ask, but Charlie would find a way to repay the universe if she got what she wanted. She was an Alpha Inventor, wasn’t she? Maybe she’d cure cancer. At the very least, she would cure Allie’s broken heart. And, if all went well, Charlie would also mend her own.

A few minutes later the three Jackie O’s trudged toward the immense picnic blanket, each nervous for her own reasons.

“This is ah-mazing.” Charlie couldn’t help marveling over the spread.

Darwin was a serial DIY-er, hating to let others do what he could do himself, and this picnic had his trademark favorites all over it. There were three kinds of everything: fresh-squeezed fruit juice (pear-pomegranate, grapefruit-guava, and ginger lemonade), flatbread pizzas (rosemary portobello, tomato basil, and chicken apple sausage), and three cakes (flourless chocolate, lemon mousse, and strawberry shortcake).

“Wow,” breathed Allie, wiping tears of shock-appreciation from her eyes. She smiled sweetly at Darwin as he sat down on the blanket, then shot a furtive glance at Melbourne, who looked ready for his close-up as he leaned against a nearby pine tree. “I didn’t know guys could do stuff like this,” she said to the whole group.

“We’re not your average guys.” Mel’s lavender eyes twinkled as he flashed a smile, highlighting his strong jaw and cleft chin. He wore forest green snowboarding pants with a white down jacket. His straight blond hair matched Allie’s newly restored locks. “It might not be the food court at the mall, but we came close.”