Survival of the Fiercest

by Anna Carey

  “Hey.” Cate held on to the wrought iron fence, steadying herself. “Yeah, I meant to introduce myself the other day. I’m Cate—Cate Sloane.”

  “I’m Eli. I would shake hands, but I’m a little sweaty.” Cate studied him as he ran his thumbs along the straps of his backpack. His dark eyes were surrounded by a thick curtain of black lashes, and he was the three T’s that Ashton girls always used when classifying the Haverford basketball team: tall, tan, and toned. “I just moved this weekend, from Connecticut.”

  I know, Cate thought. After Danny gave her the first batch of intel, she’d Googled Westport and found out Eli had run a 5K there, finishing in an impressive 20:34. She discovered an old camp photo of him on a sailboat and an article on deer he’d written for the school paper. Even if he’d only spoken twenty-two words to her, she was starting to feel like she knew him better than anyone else. “How do you like New York so far?”

  Eli smirked, his lips twisting like he’d just licked a lemon. “Well…I still don’t instinctively know which way is uptown and which way is downtown like everyone else seems to, and this morning some cabbie tried to make me roadkill.” He rested his foot on the fence, his leg just inches away from Cate’s.

  Mrs. Ashford turned away from her mums and raised an eyebrow at Cate. She had been friends with Cate’s mother and felt that entitled her to eavesdrop on all Cate’s conversations. Cate shot her an evil glare and turned back to Eli.

  “Well, if you need any help, I’m right next door.” She imagined taking the 6 train downtown with Eli, pressed close together in the crowded subway car. They’d walk arm in arm around the über-modern Whitney Museum and giggle as they tried to figure out how a plain red canvas made “art.” Cate couldn’t wait for Blythe, Priya, and Sophie to spot them holding hands on Madison Avenue, or sharing a kiss in Bergdorf ’s. It would be official proof that Cate was over the Chi Beta Phis. She could finally stop thinking about how Sophie’s birthday was coming up in October, or how Priya’s parents were taking her to India in December, and move onto bigger and better—not to mention cuter and cuddlier—things.

  “I could use a personal tour guide…” Eli said, emphasizing the word personal. Cate twisted her dark brown hair into a ponytail and smiled. She would do anything to have five hours alone with Eli, even if it meant walking Manhattan from the Hudson to the East River. “I’ll take you up on that.” Then he started up his stoop.

  Cate watched him go, her hand gripping the fence. She couldn’t hold a stake out every night, hoping he’d walk by. She needed a goal, a plan, so she could stop imagining hanging out with him and start actually hanging out with him. “Maybe I’ll check out one of your basketball games sometime?” she called after him. She’d already looked at the schedule.

  Eli paused on the top step and put his key in the door. “Yeah, there’s one tomorrow. You should come,” He smiled, then disappeared inside.

  “You should come,” Cate whispered to herself. She held the folder to her chest, her heart pounding like she’d just run ten blocks. Tomorrow Eli would scan the stands and see her sitting there, her hair straightened, lips glossed, cheering him on. By Friday they’d be sitting in the Rose Planetarium in the dark, huddled together under a fake sky of stars. And next week she’d be lying out on the Great Lawn after school, using his chest as a pillow. Forget the fitted vest—Eli Punch was the hottest new fall accessory.

  SHARING IS CARING

  Stella winced as Myra Granberry plunged the scalpel into the pig’s heart, half expecting to get squirted in the eye with formaldehyde. She’d been stuck with Myra as a lab partner ever since her first day at Ashton Prep, when Cate banned her from the Chi Beta Phis. Myra was brilliant at biology and genuinely nice, but standing next to her made Stella a nerd by association. Myra had a clunky mobile that she clipped to her uniform skirt, was the star of the Mathletes, and fancied using words like golly and gosh.

  “The first cut should be vertically down the center.” Mrs. Perkins, their just-out-of-grad-school biology teacher, drew a line over the diagram of the heart taped to the board. Whenever she raised her arms too high, her Ann Taylor cardigan rode up, exposing her Celtic lower-back tattoo. Around the room, girls hovered over their dissection trays. Analeigh Price, the girl who’d declared herself an “animal lover” before class, choked back tears as she made the first cut.

  Just then Priya strolled in, whispering an apology to Mrs. Perkins. Her curly black hair was pulled back in a loose bun, and the collar of her pink Ben Sherman button-down was popped up. She made a beeline to Stella’s lab table, clutching a lavender flyer in her hand. Stella recognized it immediately.

  “Just when I thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous. Now you’re advertising for friends?” Priya shook her head as she set the flyer down in front of Stella. Her black eyes were lined with silver shadow, making them sparkle.

  Stella scraped her nails along the wooden stool. She’d never had to advertise for friends before—ever. In London she, Pippa, and Bridget were invited to every party and every cricket match, cheering as their mate Robin Lawrence ran between wickets. After they started having tea at the Ritz on Saturday afternoons, the entire school showed up, ordering the same carrot cake Stella loved. Last fall a fifth-year had even started a blog, showing girls which shops carried the designer samples Stella inherited from her mum. But in Manhattan—at Ashton—she was a bloody pariah.

  Stella was tired of waiting for classes with Cate to have a decent conversation with someone, tired of getting points off her English papers for spelling color colour or center centre, and most important, she was tired of the Beta Sigma Phis treating her like some poor, desperate loner.

  She glanced at Myra, who was now cutting at the heart sideways, licking her lips in concentration like it was a juicy slab of Kobe beef. Stella grabbed the tray from her and shoved it into Priya’s arms, knocking her in the ribs. “Here—I know how much you love dissecting things.”

  Priya backed away. “No, I’ll leave that to you and your”—she smirked, eyeing Myra—“friend.” She retreated to a table on the other side of the classroom, where Sophie was watching everything. As Priya put on her latex gloves, Sophie snuck a small wave.

  Stella couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes she felt like Sophie was the real victim in all of this. Just yesterday, she’d ambushed Stella in the gym loo. I’m sorry! she’d whispered under the stall. I just want us all to be friends again!

  “What did she mean—advertise?” Myra asked. Her gloves were covered with pink fluid, so she was trying to scratch her nose with her arm.

  “It’s just…Cate and I got into a huge fight with Blythe, Priya, and Sophie.” Stella put on her latex gloves and held the tray steady. “Now we’re forming our own sorority, and we’re looking for a third member. It’s a long story. Basically they were mad that I lied about some things.” Even now, Stella couldn’t believe how angry they’d gotten. What was she supposed to do, say Hi, nice to meet you, my dad cheated on my mum with Cloud McClean? You know, that British pop singing twit with the new line of glitter thongs? Before last week, she’d only told two people outside of her family about Cloud: Pippa and Bridget. It wasn’t the type of thing you sent a mass e-mail about.

  “What kinds of things?” Myra pressed. As she leaned over the tray, strands of white blond hair fell in her eyes. She wore a short-sleeved cotton turtleneck, the Ashton Prep crest pinned to the collar.

  Myra Granberry was, quite possibly, the only person in the world Stella could tell about Cloud without worrying the rumors would spread like chicken pox. At the very worst, she would only repeat it to their geometry teacher, Miss Katz, or her pet sea monkeys. She didn’t talk to anyone else—or rather, no one else talked to her. “Do you know who Cloud McClean is?”

  “Is she that eleventh-grader with the blue hair?” Myra asked, her brown eyes wide.

  Stella laughed, but Myra kept looking at her. She had a bleached white mustache, and her nearly invisible brows were furrowed in confusi
on. Stella had never met anyone who didn’t know who Cloud McClean was. It seemed like her song “Kick It” was playing on every radio station, that that silly advertisement of her eating lollipops was in every tube station, and that her line of glitter thongs was in every store, perched right next to the cash register. “No, not quite…. She’s a pop singer. They were mad I was keeping a secret from them about my dad….” Stella glanced around the room, lowering her voice so only Myra could hear. “He cheated on my mum with her.”

  Myra dropped the knife on the dissection tray, making a loud metallic clink! The entire room turned. “Oh my gosh,” Myra hissed. She looked around and leaned in close, lowering her voice. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Right, thanks.” Stella felt her cheeks flush. Nobody had ever apologized for her dad cheating on her mum. Pippa and Bridget hadn’t a bloody clue what to say when she told them—they mostly stared at their hands. Her mum had spent a week in her bedroom with the curtains drawn and her dad, Duke “Toddy” Childs, had apologized that “they had to go through this,” or said he was sorry that “this had happened.” He made it sound like an earthquake, a perfect eight on the Richter scale, had destroyed their home and there was simply nothing he could’ve done about it.

  After her parents told her about the divorce, Stella walked around their neighborhood alone, blaming the cold winter air for the tears in her eyes. She’d passed her house on Cheyne Walk three times, circling the block and wishing any other place was hers. She wanted to go back inside and have it be the summer again, when her family was celebrating Lola’s eleventh birthday in the garden. Before Cloud ever met her dad. Before things went wrong.

  “It’s just—that’s really awful.” Myra’s brown eyes looked wet. She held a latex glove to her heart, like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. A tiny bit of pale pink liquid stained her shirt.

  Stella turned away, trying to avoid Myra’s gaze. “I’m fine, really.” Compared to Lola, she was. Lola hadn’t talked to their dad since last winter. Every time he called her mobile, she sent it straight to voice mail. Before they left for New York, the three of them had eaten dinner at Pasha, the Turkish restaurant Lola had always loved. Lola played the mute card and refused to speak, even after their dad gave her a Burberry cat carrier for Heath Bar. He’d finally gotten so frustrated he’d canceled their dessert order.

  “I kind of understand,” Myra continued. “My mom remarried a few years ago. It’s just me and my dad. He invented the underwater flashlight?”

  Myra waited for Stella to respond. She nodded as if to say, Oh yes! The underwater flashlight! Myra smiled, looking even happier than she had yesterday when Mrs. Perkins announced they were dissecting pig hearts. She was starting to make sense—the striped rainbow knee-highs she wore under her uniform skirt, her barely visible eyebrows, or the way her part was always crooked (and not in a cool, intentional way). Most mums would’ve broken out the home waxing kit before sending their daughter out of the house with a bleach blond mustache. Even if your dad did invent the underwater flashlight, or the underwater hair dryer, microwave, and popcorn maker—there were some things men just couldn’t do.

  “Anyway,” Myra continued, cutting back into the pig heart. “What do you think my chances are?”

  Stella glanced around the room, which smelled of formaldehyde and bleach. Analeigh Price watched in horror as her lab partner picked the heart up, making it “dance.” Mrs. Perkins was sitting cross-legged on the corner of her desk, reapplying her lipstick. “Chances of what?” Stella asked, confused.

  “Of making it into your sorority?” Myra pulled off her gloves. The heart was pinned open on the wax tray.

  Stella tried to smile, but her skin felt as hard as plastic. Statistically speaking, Myra’s chances were not even point one percent of point one percent. Cate would rather let Heath Bar use her Balenciaga bag as a litter box than let Myra Granberry, Mathlete president and proud owner of a ferret named Pythagoras, into Chi Sigma.

  Stella looked down at the heart. She imagined a depressed Myra eating a frozen dinner at her kitchen table, lit up by a single exposed lightbulb. Her father would keep on about the inner workings of his newest invention, pausing every so often to drop some crumbs to Pythagoras. “You have as good a chance as everyone else,” she offered.

  “Gosh,” Myra said, clasping her hands together. “Thanks!” She enveloped Stella in a hug, squeezing her tightly.

  Stella closed her eyes and hoped Cate would never find out she’d extended the invite. But more than that, Stella hoped Myra would have a last-minute Mathlete meeting, a sudden cold, or a cousin in on a surprise visit from Albuquerque—anything that would keep her from actually showing up.

  TO: Cate Sloane

  FROM: Blythe Finley

  DATE: Wednesday, 7:22 p.m.

  SUBJECT: Desperate much?

  Saw your flyer around school today. I heard Liza Bartuzzo (you know, the head of the marching band flag twirlers?) was particularly excited about the open call. You’ve really given all the Ashton underlings something to strive for.

  I’m off to Sophie’s now—Beta Sigma Phi is having its first midweek sleepover. Good luck sorting through our leftovers.

  Blythe

  Blythe Finley

  President of Beta Sigma Phi

  “With great power comes great responsibility.”—F.D.R.

  TO: Blythe Finley

  FROM: Cate Sloane

  DATE: Wednesday, 7:26 p.m.

  SUBJECT: Missing me much?

  Dearest Blythe,

  I know this is hard for you. And I know these e-mails are just your lame attempt to talk to me. You’re lonely, I can tell. Who can blame you? No one knows how you’re surviving, now that you have no one to give you a constant stream of fashion advice, or decide what you’re going to eat for lunch.

  I can’t really e-mail, though—Stella and I have to finish planning the open call, and I have to decide what I’m going to wear tomorrow. Eli invited me to his game (you know, Eli Punch? The newest member of the Haverford varsity basketball team?).

  Cate Sloane

  Co-president of Chi Sigma

  CHI SIGMA…ALPHA?

  Andie hit the shuttle with her racquet, sending it soaring over the net. It was Thursday morning gym class, and Mrs. Taft had paired her off with Hannah Marcus. Andie had always hated badminton. It was like a lame version of tennis, for people who were over seventy-five or just plain lazy. Hannah fell into the second category. Playing with her was like playing with a statue—she refused to move even six inches to keep the game going.

  Hannah swung her racquet and missed, the shuttle falling a few feet to the right of her feet. Andie gazed longingly at Cindy, who was running around the corner court, having a quick back-and-forth with Addison Isaacs. “So,” Hannah said, as she walked to retrieve the shuttle. She was moving so slowly, it was like she was stuck in mud. “It seems like Cate is coping okay without Blythe.” When she bent over, her purple tank top rode up, revealing her chubby back.

  “Yeah,” Andie offered. She had heard that Cate and Blythe weren’t friends anymore—everyone had heard. “She’s great.” The truth was, most girls at Ashton Prep—even ones Cate wasn’t friends with—were better qualified to answer that question than Andie. Hannah gave the shuttle a halfhearted whack and Andie smashed it right back. It bounced off the shiny gym floor, not going anywhere near Hannah’s racquet.

  Andie and Cate were close when they were younger, before their mother died. They’d throw birthday parties for Andie’s American Doll, Molly—even wrapping up Winston’s Tiffany cuff links as a gift. They’d put on elaborate plays in the den and borrow their mother’s pearls and diamond brooches to pretend they were princesses, trapped in an ogre’s castle. And when their mom was really sick, it was Cate who had worn one of her wigs, pretending it was just another play so Andie wouldn’t be so scared. But it hadn’t been like that in years.

  Hannah huffed to the far corner of the badminton court and served the shut
tle back over the net. “Everyone’s talking about the rush. A few girls stole some flyers from the upper school.”

  “What do you mean?” Andie caught the shuttle in her hand and just held it there.

  “Do not tell me you haven’t heard.” Hannah’s brown hair was a mess of frizzy curls, and she had a mole on her chin the size of a pencil eraser. Cindy only referred to her as “Holy Mole-y.” She dropped her racquet to her side, like she’d given up on the game completely. “She and Stella are having an open call today to find a third member for Chi Sigma.”

  Andie tugged on the highlight in her bangs. She knew Chi Beta Phi was done. But she didn’t know Cate and Stella were starting their own sorority…and looking for one more member. Over the last few years, there hadn’t been any space in Cate’s life for her. Every weekend Cate was holed up in her room with “her real sisters,” the Chi Beta Phis, watching marathons of The City and singing all three hundred songs on her karaoke machine. Andie used to listen to them through the heating vent in her bathroom, wishing, just for once, they’d ask her to join. “When is it?” Andie asked.

  “After school. I just assumed you were going.” Hannah started to sit down on the court, but Mrs. Taft blew her whistle, bringing her to attention.

  “Back to the game, Hannah, period’s almost over,” she called. She was standing next to the gymnasium doors with her clipboard. Her thick legs were packed into gray Ashton Prep sweatpants, making them look like Polish sausages.

  “I mean, you’re the most obvious third member,” Hannah continued, as Andie served back to her. “You are related to them.” She looked at Hannah’s pale face and decided, right then, that she was more likeable than people gave her credit for.

  “Maybe I will go.” She and Cate always got along on vacation, when Cate’s only choices were to hang out with Andie or be alone. Last winter in Killington, Cate had jumped out of the hot tub on Andie’s dare, rolling around in the snow until her skin was pink. In Australia they’d snorkeled side by side over the Great Barrier Reef, gripping each other’s hands because they were so terrified of sharks. Andie wanted that Cate to be her sister—the one who could go more than an hour without snapping at her, or slamming a door in her face. To Andie, those vacations always felt like proof that they could get along. Cate just had to be willing to give her a chance.