Alphas

by Lisi Harrison

  “Allie J!” Keifer tried again.

  But Allie J wasn’t her name, and she wasn’t answering to it. Not anymore.

  22

  THEATER OF DIONYSUS

  HONE IT: FOR DANCERS

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8TH

  2:44 P.M.

  Skye sat in the corner of the dance studio elevating her swollen ankle on a Recovery Lounger. The gel-filled La-Z-Boy alternated from hot to cold every twenty minutes to keep injuries from turning into surgeries. It also worked wonders on swelling heads. One more class on the sidelines and Skye’s ego would be the size of an airbrushed pore.

  Mimi sashayed by while demonstrating a cabriole. She landed a yard away from Skye’s foot and gasped, “Music, pause!” Every dancer stopped along with the music, and Mimi heel-toed over to the Recovery Lounger. She gripped her hips. “Sleeves, have you completely given up?”

  “Of course not, no.” Skye’s melting spine stiffened.

  What was Mimi talking about? She had spent the better part of an hour committing every step to memory; couldn’t she see Skye’s eyes working overtime? Her mind’s feet were moving to Mimi’s choreography, her ankle throbbing to the beat of the smoky jazz. Dutifully, she watched the girls embody trees, while she left like a felled sequoia gathering moss.

  “What is that?” Mimi asked Skye’s dance shoe. The gold satin was marred with crust that looked like toothpaste.

  Triple smirked, as if wanting the class to know she was partly responsible.

  “I don’t know,” Skye lied. But come on, what was she supposed to say? My housemates wrote Spy Hamilton in shaving cream and I stepped in it on my way to the bathroom? It’s a case of mistaken spydentity? Please don’t send me home?

  Mimi shook her head. “A true dancer always knows what’s on her shoes.” With that, she strutted back to the front of the class, mindful of where her insured feet were walking.

  The others turned their backs to Skye as though her swollen ankle was more contagious than swine flu. Even Tweety and Ophelia seemed disinterested in a you’re only as good as your last soutenu sort of way. And they were kind of right. What good was a girl with no friends and no game? Unless they planned on sacrificing her to the alpha gods or donating her organs to the science majors, Skye would be boarding a PAP by sundown.

  Mimi clapped sharply. “Even the tiniest flaws can sabotage your performance. And most of these flaws are bad habits you picked up when you were just starting out.” A black corkscrew curl escaped her bun and bounced alongside her cheek. Skye envied its playful giddiness and natural shine, two qualities she no longer possessed.

  Mimi grabbed her aPod off the holster around her hips and pressed some buttons. Six holograms flickered to life.

  “Wow!”

  “Amazing!”

  “Is that me?”

  “Ohmuhgud!”

  Staring at Skye from the other end of the Recovery Lounger was a little girl dressed in a tutu. Her wavy blond hair had been French-braided to bathing-cap tightness. Her broad smile was missing two teeth, and white-blond brows sat like silky bows on top of Tiffany box blue eyes.

  “Girls, meet your younger selves.” Mimi announced with the crazed smile of a mad scientist. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes radiated pride. “We created a computer composite based on the recital tapes you sent with your applications. I have pinpointed the exact moment you strayed from perfection and would like you to discover it as well. We must locate and understand the problem before we can fix it.”

  Triple raised her hand and spoke. “Um, excuse me, Mimi, but um, what if we don’t have a problem?”

  “Yeah,” echoed some of the others.

  The teacher’s ribs lunged up against her bronze bodysuit, then pulled back, like an angry attack dog chained to a fence. “Oh, you have flaws, Andrea, believe me. Starting with your need to give yourself a nickname so everyone knows you have talent. But that’s an issue for the psych department. I’m here to focus on your physical flaws, of which you have several. You all do.”

  Skye rolled her wrists nervously, willing Mimi to avoid rattling them off in public.

  “For example”—Mimi paced the row of five—“Andrea, you’re precise, but you lack passion. I watch you dance and I think back to the time I practiced kissing on my mirror. I hit my mark but felt nothing.”

  Tweety twittered.

  “I don’t know what you’re laughing about, Lacey.” Mimi circled the bobbleheaded girl. “You’re built like a lollipop. If you want to stop sucking, put more power below the neck, or your skull will always upstage you.”

  The temperature on the Recovery Lounger switched to icy. But Skye couldn’t stop sweating as Mimi made her rounds.

  “Sadie, save the chopping for your culinary classes. In here I want smooth transitions. Ophelia, I’m going to hack off that braid if you don’t bun it up. It’s throwing off your balance. We dance with our hearts, not our hair. Prue, you’re tight.”

  Prue beamed relief.

  “Eat nothing but bran for three days straight. If that doesn’t loosen your blockage, consider a career as a mannequin. And Sleeves…” Mimi paused to tuck the errant curl back into submission. “Stop searching for love in the studio. Find it within yourself. If you don’t, you’ll bump up against walls for the rest of your life. Your freestyle isn’t dazzling—it’s distracting. Perfect the moves, then add the grooves.”

  The girls stood in silent horror. After a lifetime of being told they were the best of the best, they had been reduced to puddles of sweat—Skye included. Only her sweat had been frozen into a sheet of salty ice, thanks to the Recovery Lounger.

  Was Mimi right about her? Maybe. After all, she was right about the others. But as Skye replayed the teacher’s words, she felt her cryogenically frozen spirits lift. Mimi’s critique was about her personality, not her poise. Maybe she had to strip away all of that confidence and open her mind. Listen to her teachers and rebuild her foundation. Kind of like Icarus putting a new coat of wax on his melted wings and vowing not to fly so high next time. Sure, Icarus was dead, but Skye was just broken. There was still time. She still had a chance.

  “I want you to spend the remainder of the class studying your younger selves to see if you can tap into the moment your skills soured.” Mimi clapped. “Music on. Dancers, begin.”

  The girls watched in wonder as their mini me’s danced across the studio, showcasing routines they hadn’t seen in years.

  Skye’s mini took a seat on the arm of the Recovery Lounger, indifferent to the cold.

  “Dance,” Skye commanded, feeling semi-insane talking to the ghost of Skye past.

  The girl glanced at Mimi, then the other dancers, and shook her head no.

  “Why not?” Skye pressed.

  “No one is watching. I’ll wait until they’re paying attention to me. Then I’ll dance.”

  Problem identified.

  Skye had spent her life dancing for others: Natasha, Madame P, her friends, her crushes…

  Did she love dancing or performing? It was a hard question to answer. No one had ever made her think about it until now. She remembered a time when dance was the only thing that mattered. It was before she was good enough to be noticed. Before she got addicted to applause. Before it became the thing that made her special.

  “Sorry,” Skye heard herself apologizing to the flickering girl.

  “For what?”

  “For everything,” Skye mumbled, thinking of how she’d thought spa-ing with girls who weren’t even talking to her now had seemed more important than practicing. How flirting with Taz could have gotten her expelled. How trying to out-dance Triple had landed her in chair that went hot and cold more times than Blair and Nate.

  Pushing her butt off the lounger, Skye grinned at her younger self. “Who cares who’s looking. Let’s dance! I’ll watch you.”

  Little Skye yipped with excitement and broke into the jazz sequence from her first recital at age five.

  Skye tested her ankle on a simple
barrel turn. Owie! Agony reverberated through her body like one of those forked prongs used to test musical pitch. On the pain scale—one being a paper cut and ten being a wood chipper—it was a six.

  She tried again. “Ophf!” The move cranked her pain to a nine and she fell to her knees. Thankfully, Mimi was too busy patting Triple on the back to notice.

  “Music off!” Mimi called, and Skye crawled back to the lounger. A new, deep shade of plum mottled her screaming ankle.

  “Time to say goodbye to your pasts,” Mimi announced. “Forever.”

  A chorus of “bye”s echoed around the glass studio. Skye wrapped her arms around her younger self until she was holding nothing but air.

  “You are no longer Shira’s handpicked six-pack of wunderkind dancers. You are mindless slabs of clay waiting to be shaped by my hands, and my hands only.” Mimi glared at Skye when she said slab. “Tonight I want you to work on exorcising your demons. Dance today’s routine until your flaws slough off like old skin and then wash them down the drain. I will grade you on your progress tomorrow.” She swung her quilted black dancer bag over her shoulder and glided out without another word.

  Prue grimaced as she eased her feet out of her shoes. Her toes were bleeding. Ophelia shook her hair out. Tweety massaged her neck. And Mercedes dropped to the floor like a starfish.

  “Come on! We’ve got work to do.” Triple moved for her bag, nodding for the other girls to join her. But they took a collective pause, not quite ready to rejoin the star who’d so outshined them yet again.

  “I can’t move,” Prue whined.

  “What’s the point?” Ophelia asked. “I can’t change ten years of dancing habits overnight.”

  “I think I’m going to focus on culinary and drop dance down to a hobby.” The redhead sighed.

  Skye clapped the girls to attention. “Don’t give up, Mercedes!”

  “It’s Sadie,” the redhead corrected.

  “Oops.”

  “Look who’s talking.” Prue rubbed her toes. “You gave up days ago.”

  “How is getting injured giving up?” Skye snapped, shifting to her strong ankle. “I may have been sitting on the sidelines, but I’ve been watching. And I know this routine better than any of you. I also happen to agree with Mimi. We can all stand improving. And since I can’t do, I’ll coach,” Skye blurted. “If anyone is interested.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Sadie sat up and reached for her toes. “Bragging rights?”

  “I won’t even mention it to Mimi. I just want to get back to dancing. And this is the only way I can… for now.” She slipped on her black lace sleeves, feeling like Superman after a way-too-long stint as Clark Kent.

  Skye’s heart beat wildly while they considered her impulsive proposal.

  “I wonder what Mimi would say about you molding her slabs.” Triple leaned against the barre, an amused expression on her face.

  “Where I come from, professionals don’t care where good ideas come from, as long as they come. And Sadie, who knows? Maybe the Robot is making a comeback. But I doubt it.” With that, Skye limped for the door, taking her sweet time.

  “Skye, wait!” Ophelia called. “Can you meet us here after dinner?”

  “I was already planning on it.” Skye smiled to herself and kept on limping.

  Coaching was hardly her passion. Back home she’d done it to improve the BADS brand and help her BFFs. These girls weren’t exactly her besties, but maybe that was the point. She’d be doing it strictly out of love for the craft—not for the claps that came with. It would be her opportunity to teach Little Skye the true meaning of dedication—and maybe even make a few friends for Big Skye in the process.

  23

  JACKIE O

  SHOWER

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8TH

  3:07 P.M.

  “RE-JEC-TED!”

  “Darn it!” Charlie frustration-smacked the coin-tiled shower wall. “Owie, owie, owie!” She pressed her lips against her throbbing hand, urging both into silence.

  Her aPod kept beeping, signaling that she was supposed to be in the DAM (Dominating Alpha Males) seminar, but instead she was hiding out in a stall decorated in international currency, cowering from seven showerheads spraying lavender-infused water.

  Due to the expectation of privacy that comes with being in a bathroom, Shira couldn’t install cameras here without breaking the law. So in spite of the billowing steam and hair-curling humidity, it was the perfect location to crack the combination of the skeleton key.

  Unfortunately, the only things opening so far were her pores.

  “Okay, Shira. Let’s try your zip code.” Charlie punched in “6-6-6” with a sly giggle.

  “RE-JEC-TED!” the robotic key-voice answered back.

  A drop of water landed on her cheek like a hot tear. She brushed it away impatiently.

  She tried the founding date of AlphaGirl International: 9-1-9-1-9-9-0.

  “RE-JEC-TED!”

  3-5. Shira’s press age.

  4-3. Her real age.

  “RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED!”

  4-2. Darwin’s birthday.

  5-2-4. Melbourne’s birthday.

  9-1-9. Sydney’s birthday.

  8-9. Taz and Dingo’s birthdays.

  2-2-6-3-9. Bandy, Shira’s late husband’s name, spelled out on the keypad.

  3-5-8-3-3-9. Fluffy, the name of her childhood chinchilla.

  5-4-5-5-3-7. Killer, the name of her recently deceased cat.

  7-2-8-2-6. Satan, Shira’s father. Kidding!

  2-5-7-4-2. Alpha.

  1-7-8-3. The number of offices Shira had worldwide.

  6-7-9-1. The number of assistants Shira had hired.

  6-7-9-0. The number of assistants Shira had fired. (Technically, Bee had quit.)

  1. Shira’s favorite number.

  9-5. The day Shira succeeded in breaking up Charlie and Darwin.

  “RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED! RE-JEC-TED!”

  “ARGGGG!” Charlie banged her head against some pesos. Even a key was rejecting her. Steam, frustration, and anxiety were making it hard to breathe.

  Think, Charlie. THINK!

  There was no way Shira had picked something random. A woman who controlled the weather would not leave anything to chance.

  Charlie twirled her cameo bracelets around her wrist. She twisted so hard that one of the cameos flew open, and her mom’s picture smiled up at her.

  Of course!

  No wonder she couldn’t crack the Brazille Code—Shira hadn’t created it. Bee had. Bee planned everything for Shira—why not this?

  And Charlie knew without hesitation what was important to her mother.

  2-4-2-7-5-4-3. Charlie.

  “AC-SESS GRANT-ED.”

  “Ha!” Charlie laughed, kicking the spray of water with her feet. “I did it!”

  In just a few short hours she’d introduce the Jackie O’s to the tunnels, where Dingo had disappeared to when he’d slipped behind Bandy’s portrait. It was the only place other than the bathrooms where Shira’s digital army couldn’t find them. But in addition to making friends, she’d be delivering Allie J to Darwin. Suddenly Charlie’s palms started sweating and she found it hard to breathe. It was kind of like setting up a playdate between a coyote and your new puppy. But she’d broken Darwin’s heart, and the least she could do was help mend it. And if all went according to plan, she’d have a house full of new BFFs mending hers.

  Now all Charlie had to do was stay dry and wait.…

  Finally the bathroom door opened. Bare feet slapped against the heated marble.

  “Allie J? C’mere,” Charlie whispered from the shower. “Bring shaving cream.”

  “Ew, no way!”

  Charlie giggled to herself, thinking of how that must have sounded.

  “Trust me, it’s not creepy, I swear.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Allie J whisper-shou
ted.

  Charlie pressed her mouth against the slight crack in the stall door. “Because I have something for you.”

  “Double ew!” Allie J sounded repulsed. “I like boys, okay?”

  Charlie rolled her eyes. “I know. That’s what I have for you.”

  Allie J paused. “Huh?”

  Charlie inhaled deeply, bracing herself, or rather forcing herself, to say the next word.

  “What are you talking about?” Allie snapped.

  “Darwin.” Charlie swallowed back the bitter taste of sacrifice. Her head took a dizzying dip. It was out there. There was no turning back.

  Allie J opened the stall with trepidation, can of Pure Silk in hand. “If this is some ploy to get me to help you shave some hard-to-reach area, I’m so not—”

  Charlie rolled her eyes and pulled Allie J into the shower.

  “Ahhhhhh!” Water sprayed all over her. “My hair!”

  She panic-stuffed her black hair into the back of her champagne-colored blouse in a very not-so-down-to-earth sort of way; odd behavior for someone who cruised communal bathrooms barefoot.

  “Shhhhh!” Charlie grabbed the can of shaving cream and wrote I SPY on her right leg, in case Thalia’s superhuman ears were in range. The admission smelled like baby oil and relief.

  “I knew it!” Allie J exclaimed, still panic-stuffing. “Wait. Why are you telling me?”

  DBL AGENT Charlie spelled out on her left thigh, then put the can down.

  “Why are you—”

  Charlie covered Allie J’s mouth.

  Allie J grabbed the can and wrote in the spaces between the straps on her gladiators.

  Y R U TELLING ME?

  WANT FRIENDS, Charlie sprayed onto her arm. She hated how pathetic that sounded but decided not to care. It was the truth.

  “Why would I trust you?” Allie J asked aloud.

  Charlie lifted the gold key, then wrote: STOLE FROM S. OPENS TUNNELS SO WE CAN MEET BOYS.

  Allie J’s green eyes blinked in genuine surprise. Then they hardened into emerald stones. “Oh, I get it. You’re setting me up so I get sent home and you can have Darwin all to yourself.”