Later that night, Cate shuffled through the “Green Club” folder, searching for clues. All day, Eli’s words had kept running through her head, like a bad song that was stuck on repeat. Does she have a boyfriend? She just seems cool. He hadn’t said Stella was pretty, put together, or had cool hair (which Cate hated to admit, but she did)—things anyone could tell by passing her in the street. They had hung out before—but when? She studied a photo of Eli and Braden Pennyworth playing Ultimate Frisbee in the North Meadow, and one of Eli standing alone on the corner of Eighty-fourth and Amsterdam. There was only one person in the background. Unless Stella had disguised herself as a homeless man in a pilot’s helmet, it wasn’t her.
Just then Cate’s iPhone buzzed.
DANNY: I LOOKED INTO YR QUERY RE: STELLA. NO NEW INTELLIGENCE 2 REPORT
Cate threw the phone down on her bed, annoyed. If she had to hire Danny to follow Stella around for a week, she would. She needed to know the truth. She hoped it was all an innocent mistake, that Stella had bumped into Eli on his stoop and simply forgotten to mention it to her. But after the incident in the garden, Eli had wandered around the party like a lost child, hoping Stella might come downstairs. Then he’d asked Cate (twice!) to let Stella know he’d been there. The more she thought about it, the less innocent it seemed.
Cate had been in the town house the entire day, and she was starting to feel a little stir crazy—or maybe just crazy. She needed to take a walk to clear her head. She took off downstairs, stopping in the den to grab the last of the trash bags.
She pushed out the front door and hurled the plastic bags on the sidewalk, slightly satisfied by the thwack! sound they made. The last evidence of the party was gone. But cleaning up the town house was the easy part. Doing damage control tomorrow at school would be harder. She’d have to field more questions about Myra’s failed makeover, and more girls asking her about “the hot Haverford guy” she was talking to. Just yesterday she’d imagined saying “that’s my boyfriend,” but now that was clearly out of the question.
Just then the front door of Eli Punch’s town house swung open. A woman in her forties jogged down the steps and a muscular man with a thick brown beard followed close behind her. “Easy, Holden,” Eli called, as a yellow Labrador retriever dragged him outside. Eli pulled the dog back, his legs whipped by its tail.
Cate smoothed back her hair, suddenly nervous. Eli’s entire family looked like they’d stepped out of Runner’s World magazine. Eli’s dad wore a Nike tank top and sleek black running sneakers, his mom’s jet-black hair was in a tight ponytail, and Eli was wearing his blue Haverford warm-up pants. “Hi,” Cate said, pulling her bathrobe tighter around her body.
“This must be your new neighbor friend.” The man combed his beard with his hand.
Cate cringed. There was that word again—friend. Even if Cate wasn’t in a place to turn down friends (her grand total was currently one, if she counted Stella), she would never be friends with Eli. She would never sit next to him without wanting to hold his hand. She would never listen to him talk about Stella without feeling like he was squeezing her heart with a wrench.
“Yeah, this is Cate.” Eli smiled. “You guys go. I’ll catch up.” His parents ran off toward Central Park, the yellow Lab in tow.
“Hey, Eli,” Cate started, scraping her slippers against the sidewalk. “I’m glad we ran into each other. There’s something I meant to ask you.” Cate searched Eli’s dark eyes. “How do you know Stella?”
Eli raised an eyebrow. “She didn’t tell you? She found a door in her closet. It goes between our two houses. She busted a hole right through my bedroom wall.” He let out a little laugh.
Cate dug her fingernails into her palm. “A door?” she squeaked.
“Yeah. That’s how we met.” He glanced toward the park. “Sorry, I have to go,” he said. Then he took off down Eighty-second Street. “See you later.”
“Right….” Cate mumbled, but Eli was already turning the corner. She’d lived in her town house her entire life. When she was little her mother had used Stella’s new room as a library, reading her Green Eggs and Ham and Goodnight Moon in the daybed up there. Just this summer, Cate had kept her entire winter wardrobe in that closet, finally moving it to some musty storage space once Stella arrived. But she’d never noticed a door—ever. It was too ridiculous to believe, like a magical beanstalk or a poison apple. It was something out of a fairy tale.
Cate ran into the house and up one flight of stairs, then the next, and the next, not stopping until she reached Stella’s room. She entered the closet, her heart beating fast, as though she were on a treasure hunt and she’d finally found the treasure. The walk-in was packed with clothes, and she had to kick stray blouses out of her way just to get through. There were baskets of Prada belts and Fendi scarves, and a whole wall of designer shoes. She spun around, pushing aside a rack of casual dresses to try and find the door. She moved a rack of J Brand jeans, and a stack of folded sweaters on a shelf. Then she noticed a long sliver of light on her leg. Sure enough, on the back wall, right between two green Diane von Furstenberg blouses, she could see the edge of something that looked like a passageway. She pushed back some tops and found the door, the mint green paint chipped around its frame.
Cate sat down, her back pressing into Stella’s shoe collection. Eli was right. This whole time, while Cate was going to his basketball games and planning their first kiss, Stella was sneaking in and out of his room via secret passage. No wonder he liked her so much. She probably talked to him about Catcher in the Rye, or how she’d heard the beaches in Westport were calmer than the ones in the Hamptons, just because they were on the Long Island Sound. She probably used every single piece of intel Cate had collected to convince Eli she loved yellow Labs, that she played girls’ basketball in London, that she would be a perfect girlfriend.
Cate felt the tears welling in her eyes. Forget Chi Sigma—nothing had changed. Stella was still lying to her face, still scheming behind her back. Maybe she hadn’t been able to win Blythe, Priya, and Sophie away from her, but now she’d gone after Eli. Cate turned her diamond earring between her fingers. It was times like these she missed her mom the most. Everything was different now. Winston had Emma, Andie had Lola, Stella had Eli, and Cate had no one.
Blythe’s words repeated on loop in Cate’s ears. It’s for the best, she’d said. Come back to us. Cate stared at the door. She’d spent so much time worrying about Blythe, making up those lies about her kicking puppies in the head and planning that silly party so Chi Sigma could be more popular than Beta Sigma Phi. It seemed a little…wrong now. She and Blythe had always been better as a team. They’d stayed close through Blythe’s parents’ divorce, through Cate losing her mom, through Blythe spending every summer traveling with her dad. Their friendship had never been a problem—until Stella moved to New York.
Cate reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her iPhone, her hands trembling as she dialed the number. Pick up, she thought, listening to it ring. Please pick up.
“Hello?” Blythe asked. She sounded formal, like the receptionist at Winston’s bank.
“Blythe?” Cate choked out, the tears streaming down her face. She twisted the string of her pajama pants around her hand, so tight her fingers turned pink. There was silence on the end of the line. “I need to talk to you.”
“Are you crying?” Blythe asked, her voice softening. Cate tried to say yes, but she just mumbled, the tears wetting the phone.
“I’m sorry about Eli—about everything.” Cate wiped her cheek with back of her hands. “I want to be friends again.”
“Cate, I told you you could come back,” Blythe continued. Her voice was steady, calm, reassuring. Like maybe she’d had her cell phone in her lap all day, just waiting for the call. “This whole thing has gotten completely out of control.”
Cate let out a deep breath. “I know. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” Blythe said. Cate could practically hear her nodding over the phone.
“Then why did you do it?” Cate squeezed the phone tightly. Maybe Blythe really hadn’t meant to tell Myra about the challenge. Maybe they’d both gotten carried away with the competition for Eli. But there was one thing Cate couldn’t understand. Blythe knew how much Chi Beta Phi meant to her, and yet she’d stolen the presidency out from under her. “Why did you turn Sophie and Priya against me?”
“I wasn’t trying to turn them against you!” Blythe cried. “You said it yourself—I was ‘in your shadow.’ I just wanted to show you I could do something on my own. Without you. How was I supposed to know you’d start a new sorority with Stella and Myra Granberry?”
Cate smiled despite herself. Her supposed friendship with Myra wasn’t something anyone could have predicted. Still, she’d always thought Blythe was fine being her second in command—when they danced at the annual talent show she always insisted Cate be in the front, because she was uncomfortable on stage. She nominated Cate every year for class president, and she was the one who’d suggested Cate lead Chi Beta Phi in the first place. “You should’ve said something if you were unhappy.”
“Maybe I should have.” There was a long pause. Cate could only hear Blythe’s breath on the other end of the line. “Look,” she said finally, “I’m tired of fighting with you. It just seems…wrong.”
Cate dug her toes into the Juicy blouse on Stella’s floor. “I know. I hate it too.” Even if she burned every memento she and Blythe had ever made, she couldn’t erase the last nine years of their friendship. Blythe came over every Mother’s Day and brought her a present, just so she wouldn’t feel so alone. And it was Blythe who called her from her vacation in South Africa last year, when Sophie and Priya had forgotten her birthday. She’d never find a friend as good as her…and definitely not in Stella. She glanced at the door, feeling a little queasy. “And you’re not going to believe this….” Cate lowered her voice to a whisper. “Eli Punch likes Stella.”
“Stella?” Blythe said. “How does he even know her?”
Cate moved the dresses back in front of the passageway and sighed. Out of sight—out of mind. At least for now. “It’s a long story. Are you home?”
“Yeah—come over.”
Cate hung up the phone, feeling more like herself than she had all week. There were only a few things she could rely on: the sun rising every morning, Barneys’ annual warehouse sale, and the Chi Beta Phis. Without them, she felt like someone had surgically removed her heart. She ran down the stairs and out the front door, not bothering to look back.