Survival of the Fiercest

by Anna Carey

  xoxox

  Cindy

  PS: I still think you’re being insane. Just tell her the truth!

  PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

  Stella bounded down the stairs, skipping every other step. She was supposed to meet Myra at Bliss for manicures and pedicures, and she was running late. Last night after dinner, she’d spent an hour in Barneys, picking out a pair of kitten heels to go with Myra’s new dress. As she circled the shoe section for the fourth time, trying to decide if Myra would think feathered Manolo Blahniks were tacky, she suddenly realized: Myra hadn’t even worn heels before. She was the complete opposite of any girl Stella had ever been friends with, and lately that felt like a very good thing.

  After the e-mail from Bridget and Pippa, Stella couldn’t stop thinking about their “friendship.” When the rag mags posted a picture of Stella’s mum crying after the divorce Stella had spent a whole weekend in Bridget’s room. She’d been furious, only to discover the same magazine under Bridget’s bed. When she broke her arm at the Kew Gardens ice rink, Lola was the one who ran for help. Pippa and Bridget just stood there giggling, convinced she was putting them on. Now Stella kept picturing that moment in Saks—with Blythe—and imagining what Pippa and Bridget would’ve said if they’d been there. The only answer she could come up with was…nothing.

  Stella turned down the hall and raced toward the wide mahogany staircase. “Perfect timing!” Cate’s voice called as she emerged from the den. “Can you be ready in ten?” She glanced at the notebook in her hand. “We need to go to Dylan’s Candy Bar to get the M&M’s, and I want to make a banner that says ‘Chi Sigma Mu.’ Then, I was thinking of getting a few Polaroid cameras, that way everyone can take pictures. Which reminds me—we’ll need somewhere for people to post them…” She trailed off, scribbling something in the book. “Maybe a corkboard or something? Is that too lame?” She chewed on the end of her pencil and stared at Stella.

  “That sounds…brilliant,” Stella finally said. She glanced down at the shoe box in her hands. “But I made plans today with Myra. I should’ve met her five minutes ago.” She thought she and Cate had an unspoken agreement—Stella would prepare Myra for the party, and Cate would do everything else. Divide and conquer.

  “Myra?” Cate snapped. “I told you. She looks amazing. Job well done. Now we have more important things to do.” She dug her thumbnail into the pencil, feeling the wood give. The whole point of Chi Sigma Mu was so she had a new group of friends—two people who could calm her down before musical auditions or tell her when she was being too mean to Andie. People who would stand beside her when Blythe, Sophie, and Priya passed in the hall, staring her down like she was some sort of juvenile delinquent, out on parole. She didn’t found the sorority so she could plan parties alone. “Just cancel.” Stella winced, as though that weren’t an option. “Or invite her to come with us. Whatever. I need you.”

  Stella imagined Myra waiting in the lobby of Bliss, nervously checking her mobile. They’d been so busy with the makeover, Stella had decided that today they would just relax. Myra would get her first pedicure, and they’d go to brunch at Sarabeth’s—the cozy restaurant Stella kept passing on Madison Avenue that always smelled of pancakes. Stella planned on talking to her about Bridget and Pippa, and maybe even debrief her about Cate, who was bound to call Myra “Mug” again, or obsessively watch her upper lip like a Chia Pet, waiting for signs of growth. You could take the girl out of Chi Beta Phi, but you couldn’t take the Chi Beta Phi out of the girl. “I promised her I’d be there,” Stella said slowly.

  Cate stood frozen. “You’re serious?” she asked.

  “I’ll help you this afternoon. Promise.” Stella offered a weak smile. If she had any chance of making her pedicure appointment she had to leave now. She headed down the stairs, glancing over her shoulder at Cate. “I’ll be back so soon. It’s not a big deal.” But as she darted through the foyer and out the door, she couldn’t shake the feeling that to Cate, it was.

  Just being in Dylan’s Candy Bar gave Cate a stomachache. There were giant plastic lollipops stacked to the ceiling, bar stools designed to look like peppermint candies, and every wall was a rainbow of jelly beans, gummi bears, and M&M’s. Cate hated sweets. She hated chocolate cake, oatmeal raisin cookies, lemon drops, and anything else with sugar in it. And right now she hated Stella for making her come to this Willy Wonka crack den alone.

  After Stella left for Bliss, Cate had sat in the den, feeling more rejected than a tone-deaf cross-dresser on American Idol. She’d reviewed her to-do list and tried to estimate how long, exactly, it would take Stella to get there, have a manicure and pedicure, and get back. But after two hours and not one single text, she’d finally given up and left. The M&M’s weren’t going to customize themselves.

  Cate stood at the end of a long line of tourists, their arms piled with candy bars, Disney Pez dispensers, and tins of malt balls. A little girl with a sparkly DIVA shirt sucked on a rainbow-swirl lollipop the size of her head. Cate turned away, disgusted by her sticky blue mouth. That’s when she spotted them. In the back corner, eating ice cream sundaes at a table by the window, were Blythe, Priya, and Sophie. They were laughing.

  Sophie pulled her plastic spoon back and aimed, as though she were about to launch some chocolate ice cream right in Blythe’s face. “Don’t you dare, Sophie!” Blythe hooted, so loudly the people at the next table turned to watch. Cate tried to hide behind a spinning rack of candy bars. It was bad enough she had walked down all of Third Avenue alone—the last thing she needed was Beta Sigma Phis knowing.

  “Do it!” Priya yelled, egging Sophie on.

  Blythe was smiling as she pushed her chair farther and farther from the table. “I swear, Sophie. You better not.” Cate gazed longingly at the empty seat beside them. Just a few weeks ago Sophie was chasing her around with a glass of Crystal Light, threatening to pour it over her head. Once she’d waited under Cate’s bed for a whole hour, only to scare her half to death by grabbing her ankles. Sophie’s immaturity always seemed like this annoying thing Cate had to put up with, but now she missed it most. It made everything—sleepovers, brunch, or just gym class—more fun.

  Sophie finally turned the spoon on herself, launching the ice cream into her mouth. As she wiped her lips with a napkin she noticed Cate peering out from behind the candy bar rack. Priya and Blythe both followed her gaze.

  Cate picked up some peanut brittle and read the nutrition label, feeling like she’d just gotten caught spying on them through Priya’s bedroom window. It didn’t matter if she was alone—they had already seen her. And if she didn’t want to look like some sort of creepy Peeping Tom, she needed to save face immediately.

  She took a deep breath and strolled over to the table. “I thought that was you guys,” she called, trying to sound breezy. She rested her hand on the back of the empty chair. Even if she’d wandered around alone all morning, she’d spent the last three years in the Ashton drama club. Acting was something she knew how to do. “I was just shopping for some candy for tonight. Everyone’s calling it the biggest party of the year. I can’t believe all the e-mails I’ve gotten.” Cate shrugged, trying to seem breezy.

  “Why are you shopping for candy?” Blythe narrowed her gray eyes at Cate. “You hate candy. Where’s Mug and Stella?” She glanced around the store. Two little boys were doped up on sugar and chasing each other through the chocolate section.

  Cate swallowed hard. When Cate was friends with the Chi Beta Phis, they knew each other’s whereabouts at all times. Priya sent a mass text when she broke her foot at gymnastic practice and had to go to the St. Vincent’s emergency room. Sophie had written regular e-mail updates from the Hamptons last summer, complaining of her grandmother’s bridge and pinochle parties. And Blythe and Cate kept in the best touch. When they weren’t physically together, they called each other three times a day to consult on Barneys purchases, or gossip about Eleanor Donner’s germaphobia, or talk about how Cate’s dad was acting like a seventh-gra
der with a bad crush. But it was different with Stella. She and Mug (correction—Myra) could have been on a British Airways flight back to London at that very moment. Cate had no idea. Sometimes it felt like Stella didn’t even need her. “There’s so much to do for tonight, we had to split up. Myra and Stella really didn’t want to, but I insisted.”

  “Well, let’s hope Myra’s up to par for the party.” Priya dug her spoon into her banana split. “Our sneak preview yesterday still left much to be desired.”

  “She will be,” Cate said. “Don’t worry.” She stood there a moment longer, trying to remind herself that Blythe had gone out on a date with Eli last night. Her Eli. She told herself, again, that Priya and Sophie were like sheep, following anyone who would lead. The three of them were not her friends anymore—they were dead weight.

  “Is that all?” Blythe asked. She glanced at Cate’s hands, which were still holding on to the back of the empty chair.

  “No,” Cate snapped, letting go. She straightened up, searching for the right words. She wasn’t going to let Blythe Finley, spray-tan addict, decide when the conversation was over. “I wanted to offer my condolences in advance. Tonight is Beta Sigma Phi’s funeral.” She watched Blythe’s face harden. Priya threw her spoon into her sundae as Sophie squeezed a fistful of her flattened brown hair. With that, Cate stalked off toward the register. There was something satisfying about threatening Blythe. She just wished she was completely convinced of it herself.

  Saturday afternoon, Stella rapped her knuckles on Cate’s door for the third time and still, no one answered. She finally pushed it open. Three Cynthia Rowley dresses were strewn over her bed, along with a Jenga-like tower of shoe boxes. But Cate wasn’t there.

  She whipped out her mobile. As she texted away, she remembered Cate’s face before she left for Bliss, feeling the slightest pang of guilt. Her blue eyes had been wide, like those of a puppy who was being abandoned at the pound.

  STELLA: JUST GOT BACK! WHERE R U? READY TO GO GET CANDY?

  She felt like a member of the CIA, sending encoded messages. The translation being: READY TO FORGIVE ME? She hoped the answer was yes.

  Stella was as excited as Cate was, she just wasn’t worried about silly details like customized M&M’s and Polaroid cameras. She and Cate already had the two ingredients every good party needed: a parentless town house and fabulous hosts. And because of Stella’s good work, there were now three of them.

  Her iPhone buzzed.

  CATE: LIVING ROOM

  Stella bounded down the stairs. As she strolled into the living room, she could hear the squeaky sound of markers on poster board. Behind the couch, Cate was finishing a Chi Sigma Mu banner, complete with the Greek letters. Tiny pink bags were piled up around her, CHI SIGMA MU printed on their fronts. She looked up at Stella, her pale face tense with worry. “Well look who decided to help out. Did you shut the door? We can’t let Margot see this.”

  Stella swallowed hard, eyeing the gift bags. Cate had obviously started the party planning without her. “I’m ready to go to Dylan’s Candy Bar…” she said in a small voice.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cate muttered. “I already went. And I picked up the cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and the Polaroid cameras and I’m making the banner. Everything is done.” Cate pressed down hard on the magenta marker, coloring in the last of the U. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at Dylan’s Candy Bar, how Blythe, Priya, and Sophie had all looked so happy without her. Even if Blythe had staged a coup last week, she never would’ve chosen some hairy Mathlete over Cate. She’d been there for every moment in Cate’s life—since forever. When Cate cried on her first day of kindergarten, Blythe gave her her Polly Pocket to play with. Blythe was Cate’s campaign manager during the eighth-grade election, and when Cate met Emma for the first time Blythe was standing right next to her, squeezing Cate’s hand twice to secretly tell her she approved. Maybe Blythe had competed with her for the Chi Beta Phi presidency and for Eli too—but when they’d been friends, they’d actually been friends.

  “Cate,” Stella continued. “I’m sorry about this morning. But I had to meet Myra. She was waiting for me.”

  Cate stood up and snatched her black and white Balenciaga bag off the couch. “You didn’t have to do anything,” she blurted out. Her deep blue eyes were wet. “I can’t hear another word about you being BFFs with Myra Granberry.” As she said the name, she made little quote signs in the air. “I have to go to Frédéric Fekkai to get my hair done, then I have to finish stuffing these gift bags, then hang that banner. That way when Blythe, Priya, and Sophie arrive, it’ll at least seem like I have friends.” Cate threw her bag over her shoulder and darted into the foyer, her Theory platform slides making a clacking sound against the marble floor.

  “Cate!” Stella called, just as she heard the door slam. “You do have friends.” But she knew the truth. She’d ignored Cate’s text yesterday about Myra’s makeover, and while she was at Bliss, watching Myra squirm in her chair as the woman tickled her feet with a pumice stone, Cate was stuffing five boxes of cupcakes into a cab. Tonight was Cate’s chance to show the Beta Sigma Phis her brilliant new friends, but Stella and Myra had formed a two-person faction without her.

  Stella climbed onto the credenza, clutching the banner in her hand. Maybe she had been MIA for the last twenty-four hours. Maybe she hadn’t helped Cate decide if they should get pink M&M’s or purple. But it didn’t matter. When the new Myra showed up in her Diane von Furstenberg dress, the three of them would have a dance party in the living room, or sit around the kitchen table laughing about the five-page petition Paige Mortimer e-mailed to Cate explaining, again, why she should be the third member. Betsy Carmichael would snap a million pictures of them for the Ashton News website, and by the end of the party Cate would find Myra’s “goshes” and “gollies” so endearing she’d want to buy a pair of rainbow knee-highs of her own. By the end of the night everyone—including Cate—would finally see Chi Sigma Mu for what it was: the best sorority at Ashton Prep.

  GUNTHER GUNTA: MAN. MYTH. COMPLETE MANIAC.

  Lola poured the last drop of oil onto her head, watching as it disappeared into her scalp. She’d run around the house all morning, trying to find something, anything, that would help her look “one with the guttaaa.” She finally settled on a bottle of olive oil, working it into her roots.

  “What do you think, Heathy?” The giant tabby cat was curled up on the polka-dotted bath mat in the corner. He opened his eyes. “I know,” Lola answered, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I’m still not dirty enough.” Her hair had taken on a greenish tint and the roots were so greasy they stuck up an inch off her scalp. But her skin still looked freshly washed, and she didn’t have the same gutter stink she had yesterday. The shoot was in an hour. She needed to figure something out—immediately.

  She darted up the stairs to her mum’s room. Emma had a whole drawer of cosmetics, mostly complimentary gift baskets from MAC, Bobbi Brown, and Dior. With some bronzer under her eyes and a little gray eye shadow “dirt” here or there, Gunther would think she’d spent the last two days in a petting zoo.

  Lola paused in the doorway of the loo, watching as her grandmother contorted her body like a circus performer, trying to cover the liver spots on her back with foundation. “Lola!” she hooted, jumping in surprise. She adjusted the straps of her red halter dress. “You gave me quite a fright! Be a dear and cover that spot on my back for me? I want Walter to think ‘sixty-eight and sexy,’ not ‘sixty-eight and spotted.’”

  Lola took the makeup sponge from her hand. “Grandmum,” she said, blotting the foundation over a dark brown spot that was shaped a little like Africa. Margot smiled at her reflection in the mirror, tousling her stiff blond hair. “I took a shower….”

  “Oh, luv! I knew something was different. There isn’t that rubbish stench lingering in the air.” Margot kept her eyes on her reflection, pushing her pea-size hearing aid farther into the cave of her ear.r />
  Lola pulled open her mom’s makeup drawer, rifling through a pile of eye shadows in fifteen different shades of purple. “But Grandmum.” She opened another drawer, searching for the bronzer. “Gunther is going to be gutted. I’m supposed to go to the shoot soon.”

  “Nonsense,” Margot said, spinning around. She turned the bottle of MAC foundation onto the sponge wedge. “I can make you gutter chic.” With that, Margot worked at Lola’s face, pressing the walnut colored foundation into the hollows of her cheeks. She dabbed it below her eyes, making it look like Lola hadn’t slept in days. “I met Gunther back in ’88 in Belgium,” she hummed, as Lola watched her reflection transform into a greasy, dirty mess. “His glasses are so thick he’ll never know the difference.”

  An hour later, Lola stood outside a warehouse on Canal Street, staring at her reflection in her Hello Kitty compact. After dabbing foundation all over her face, her grandmum had put bronzer on her cheeks and over her nails, completing her dirty, urban look. Then, on her way downtown Lola splashed in a few sewer puddles to get back the gutter stench she had yesterday. She even wore her Gap hoodie from dinner, which still smelled faintly of curdled milk. She was as “one with the guttaaa” as a subway rat.

  She smoothed back her oily blond hair. When she entered the shoot Gunther would circle her, pulling his thick glasses down to the end of his nose. Yes, you aaahhh my guttaaa and my light! He’d smile, delighted as he took in Lola’s greasy hair and brown caked fingernails. She’d pose in his couture evening gown while he snapped photos of her clutching a loaf of stale bread. Purfaction! he’d scream, as she turned sideways to show off her ears. Puuurfaction!

  Inside, a forest green garbage truck was parked in the center of the warehouse. It was surrounded by mounds of black bags and a tattered stuffed bear was strapped to its grill. Men in sweaty black T-shirts ran back and forth, setting crushed Coke cans and crumpled newspapers down on the floor, or adjusting the lighting. Lola clapped her hands together, small and fast. She’d been to a million photo shoots before with her mum, but none this exciting. Because this time, she was the model.