12

THE MOJAVE DESERT

TOP OF THE PLATEAU

NOVEMBER 3RD

10:30 A.M.

The propeller sounds slowly faded away as the plane floated farther into the scorched sky. Despite the heat, the stunned silence of her fellow Jackie O’s, and her growling stomach, Charlie began to feel a jangly new energy seeping into her from where she stood on the desolate plateau. Prove to me you have what it takes. As her mind turned the text message over, it quickly became her own personal jolt of Red Bull.

Like a greyhound with a mechanical bunny, Charlie performed best when there was something to chase. And up until now, their Alphas-in-Arabia adventure didn’t have that scurrying bunny to urge them forward. Sure, they’d kept going to avoid certain death. But now, it was clear Shira was perfectly aware of the Jackie O’s whereabouts. This calmed Charlie’s fears, since she was pretty sure Shira would never let four teenagers keel over on her watch. Shira was ruthless, but she wasn’t a murderer—after all, wrongful death was a PR nightmare, and Shira was allergic to bad publicity.

Spurred by the possibility of becoming an AFL (Alpha for life), Charlie leaped up from the ground and began to look for something she could use to draw. A prickly heat rose in waves on her arms and legs. Hopefully, it was newfound motivation and not sun poisoning.

If Charlie could get the Jackie O’s back to Alpha Island, maybe her resourcefulness would prove to Shira that she deserved AFL status. Charlie smiled as a second mechanical bunny popped up in her mind: Shira couldn’t possibly object to an AFL being TF (together forever) with her son.

She broke a switch off a cottonwood tree growing out of a jagged clump of sandstone and began to think aloud, waving the thorny branch as she gesticulated.

“Okay. Time for plan B, or is it C? Whatever. We need to figure something out before it gets any hotter up here. So here’s us,” Charlie made a little star in the dust by Allie’s dirt-caked foot. “And here’s the island.” She drew a circle a few feet away, to represent the significant distance they’d traveled.

“Super helpful, Charlie,” Allie eye-rolled. “Are we going to animate ourselves back to school?”

Charlie’s brown eyes met Allie’s navy ones for a tense moment, but she decided to ignore her for now and concentrate on thinking up a plan. She could work on dismantling Allie’s negativity later. “Diagrams help me think,” she said simply. “I wonder how many miles we are from the nearest town. If we can get a radio signal again, then maybe we can get help from one of the Death Valley towns nearby…”

“And we can borrow a car and drive to an airport?” Skye interjected helpfully, taking a few steps around the map and pulling her white-blond waves back into a high bun.

Charlie nod-smiled at Skye, happy that at least one of the girls was riding the wave of her thoughts to the next logical step. “Exactly. And then maybe we can charter a plane to Alpha Island.”

“Who’s paying?” Allie groaned. “All we have are aBucks.” aBucks could be used to shop at the smoothie bar and the boutiques and spas on Alpha Island, but they were useless in the real world.

Charlie stopped pacing to wind a mahogany strand of hair around her finger. Then she remembered the string of numbers she’d committed to memory two years ago. Numbers found only on Shira’s AmEx Black card. “Shira,” she said emphatically, crossing her arms. “Trust me.”

Perfect. A real, honest-to-Alphas plan. Charlie giggled deliriously, suddenly feeling almost manic in her excitement to get going and meet Shira’s challenge head-on.

Trust you? If this is such a great plan, why did it take you so long to think of it?” Allie narrowed her navy blue eyes at Charlie and shook her head. She was still sitting hunched over Charlie’s aPod. “Maybe because none of it will work.”

Charlie felt her cheeks grow even hotter than they already were. Why did Allie insist on being so negative? Did she think the best plan they had was to sit on this hilltop until buzzards pecked out their eyeballs and their status as Betas would be forever cemented? She looked down and noticed her hands were shaking.

“Okay, Al. You have the floor,” Charlie said, her voice shaking with suppressed fury. “We’re all ears.” She was starting to feel like she might start screaming and never stop. Being stranded with Darwin was hard enough, but it was ten times worse now that he was gone. She thought back to their argument over the GPS and mentally kicked herself for being so short-tempered. At least Darwin was logical. Allie was the exact opposite of him: emotional instead of methodical, idea-negating instead of generating.

“Why should I bother telling you what I think?” Allie piped up at last, a dejected pout blooming on her chapped lips. “You didn’t want my help before. You practically laughed when I mentioned my LOST idea, and then it worked! You never give me any credit—”

“That is so not true,” Charlie interrupted, her voice strangled with frustration as she began to pace the plateau. “I thought your idea to try the GPS up here was great.” But now I think you’re just wasting my time, she didn’t add. Why was Allie being such a total brat?

Charlie thought back to a few weeks ago, when she’d bent over backward to make sure Allie and Mel would fall for each other, how hard she always worked to build Allie up when it came to her self-confidence. She shook her head bitterly when she thought of all those wasted hours. Because this—this complaining black hole of a person, the worst version of Allie—was all she got in return.

A bitter chuckle escaped Charlie’s lips, her brown hair falling into her eyes as she whirled around to face Allie again. She paused for a moment and then unleashed a barb she knew would sting. “You’re just mad because Mel didn’t wait for you before he got on the plane.”

Allie’s navy blue eyes narrowed to slits, and she finally got up from her seat on the ground. “You’re right, I am. How lame of me to have feelings! I should be a robot like you and make things easier on everyone.”

“Guys. Enough!” Skye neatly inserted herself between Charlie and Allie, waving her arms in horizontal, air-traffic-controller motions to try to get them to take it down a notch. “Everyone’s tired. And hungry. And thirsty. And filthy. Allie, you had a great idea, and so did Charlie. There’s room in this giant kitty litter box for both of you to be right.”

“I can’t listen to this anymore,” Allie cried. She whirled around and flounced off like Demi Lovato fleeing from rumors of rehab.

“Me either, actually,” Charlie sighed. She took a closer look at Skye. With her platinum hair falling out of its bun and flowing wild down her shoulders and her gold flight suit knotted at the sleeves, Skye looked like a backup dancer in an ancient Paula Abdul video. Why had she waited so long to defend Charlie against Allie’s accusations? Maybe all the Jackie O’s were showing their true colors. Skye hadn’t contributed a thing today besides throwing herself at Taz.

“I wouldn’t get involved, Skye,” Charlie said. “I mean, you haven’t been involved all day… why start now?”

Skye looked more wounded than Saving Private Ryan as she whirled from Charlie to Allie. “You two are being so, so… lame. Why all this petty fighting? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be Alphas?”

I am,” Charlie muttered, an unfamiliar viciousness flowing through her veins. “But I’m not sure about the rest of you.”

Skye’s teal eyes widened, then narrowed in fury. “Wow, Charlie. Tell me how you really feel.”

And then Charlie lost track of who was yelling at whom. What had started as a two-way spat quickly spiraled into a three-person hate-a-palooza. The fight was like quicksand: Once a few harsh words were uttered, it was hard not to get sucked in deep.

“Okay, you all need to take about five chamomile-melatonin supplements, STAT!” AJ might be small, but as a singer, she knew how to project. She was only five foot one, but now she towered over the three O’s on a nearby boulder, the fingers of one of her tiny hands poised to pluck the spines off a saguaro cactus.

Charlie, Skye, and Allie all went quiet, gaping at AJ like she had just beamed down from outer space. The diminutive hippie had been keeping such a low profile, it was easy to forget about her.

Now that she had their attention, AJ apparently had a few things to get off her A-cup chest. “Life cannot be planned,” she sighed serenely.

Charlie put a hand to her exasperated face and wished for shade, wondering how AJ didn’t collapse under the heat of her green crocheted hat. Did AJ’s vitamin supplements cool her from the inside?

“In this crazy universe, you can’t get bogged down by rules and restrictions, by what should and should not be,” AJ sermonized like she was Ashton Kutcher talking about Kabbalah. “You have to take life as it comes and challenge yourself in new ways. Which is exactly why I put veggie oil in the fuel tank.”

Hold up a second, Taylor not-so-Swift.

“What?” Charlie shouted, her voice echoing. Her hands flew up to her ears, cupping them as if she couldn’t possibly have heard correctly. Everything in the bright desert suddenly grew shadowy and quiet, and for a moment all she could hear was the sound of her own blood boiling.

“I said we don’t know what the universe—” AJ offered lightly, oblivious to her weighty admission.

“Not that, you green goblin!” Allie cried, her hands in fists on her flight-suited hips and the color drained entirely from her face. “She meant the part about putting french-fry grease in our fuel tank.”

“Oh, that?” AJ giggled. “I was trying to reduce our carbon emissions. It was kind of stinky but it was free of carcinogens and—”

Stinky?” Skye snapped. “We all could have died.”

“We still might!” Allie snapped.

Charlie swallowed hard, tuning everyone out. If she stayed in this conversation another minute, she might hurl. She couldn’t even look at AJ right now. In fact, she couldn’t look at any of them. As Allie and Skye talked over one another in a competition for who could yell at AJ louder, Charlie rode a tsunami-sized wave of anger. Her heart racing with anger, self-pity, and an urgent need to be alone. “I can’t think with all of you screaming!” Surprising even herself, she whirled around on her gladiator heel and took off down the side of the mountain.

“You’re leaving?” Allie called.

Charlie just nodded and kept going.

“I’m out, too!” Skye shouted.

“Same!” Allie yelled.

“You’ll all thank me in twenty years when this place isn’t three degrees hotter than it is now,” AJ announced.

Seconds later, their words stopped echoing. The only sounds now were distant squawks and the shuffling of Charlie’s throbbing feet. She turned to sneak a peek at the plateau and discovered all three Jackie O’s were gone. At least she wouldn’t have to babysit anymore. Finally, she could focus on getting back to Alpha Island. It was for the best.

She pictured herself walking on the pink sand of Alpha Beach hand in hand with Darwin, telling him about this moment. Pictured herself saying Best decision I ever made and shaking her head at the uselessness of her former friends.

Placing a dusty hand above her forehead and scanning the empty vista below for signs of life, Charlie felt a stubborn surge of hope kicking in her chest. The sooner she got away from the dead weight dragging her down, the faster she would figure out how to fly home.