MOUNT OLYMPUS
CHAIRLIFT
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2ND
12:26 P.M.
“Are we there yet?” Skye asked miserably. Her stomach lurched as the A-shaped air-chair she shared with Charlie and Allie swayed in high-altitude wind, hoisting the three Jackie O’s up Mount Olympus, the tallest landmass on Alpha Island. Fifty feet below the chairlift she could see the tops of pine trees shivering, mirroring her own trembling nerves. If today’s assault on Syd’s senses didn’t work, she might have to join Allie in the infirmary for fear of a nervous collapse.
“Smell that mountain freshness,” Allie shouted into the wind, taking a big gulp of pine-scented, snow-cooled air. “Reminds me of the ski slopes in Tahoe!”
“Reminds me of an out-of-control roller coaster run by drunk carnies,” mumbled Skye, unzipping her gunmetal gray parka halfway. The breeze-battered chairlift was just like her life right now—out of her control. But looking across the air-chair at her fellow O’s, the same could be said about them, too. Charlie had been nervous, jumpy, and clumsy all morning, and Allie was weirdly chipper for no discernable reason—almost manically so. In her gold belted puffer and matching gold fleece headband wrapped around her honeyed hair, Allie reminded Skye of an Austrian ski champion. Charlie looked cute, too, in an optic white parka that offset her mahogany hair, but she had chewed her nails down to the quick. Her forehead was creased with worry.
Skye clutched the safety bar on the chairlift and leaned forward, scanning the ground for Alpha girls. The competition to land the Brazille brothers was so fierce among the eighty-eight Alphas that Charlie had decided to leak fake locations for their picnic to throw girls off the scent. Down by the beach, Skye spotted fifteen girls in glittery bikinis, standing around sniffing the air for testosterone.
“I can almost see the burn lines from here,” Skye said, pointing at the beach and wondering which Brazille bro they were waiting for.
“I hope they don’t find out Darwin was with us today,” Charlie sigh-nodded. Down at the foot of Mount Olympus, at the Academy’s riding stables, three girls dressed in breeches and boots were hitting one another angrily with riding crops. “And it looks like Shelly Yip, Britney Saperstein, and Nuala Lapore realized Mel isn’t showing up for that trail ride. Oops.”
All week, Alphas had been driven to desperate acts in the hope of impressing a Brazille Boy. It was like an episode of The Bachelor and 24 combined. So far, Skye had heard about a broken ankle (Jeanette Hollis, trampled by a pack of girls running after Dingo near the Arts Building) and more sabotage than on an episode of America’s Next Top Model. Tales were circulating of bleach in shampoo bottles, Sharpie ink in toothpaste, garlic oil in perfume bottles.
But nobody had been sabotaged as much as Skye had sabotaged herself. In her quest to gross Syd out, she’d gone from a toned ten to a grungy, greasy, ill-tempered two. Still, Syd clung to her like toilet paper on a shoe. But that was all about to change, hopefully, and maybe she would get another chance at… ohmuhgud.
Skye craned her neck to get a better view of the Joan of Arc, Shira’s yacht in the middle of Lake Alpha. Standing on the deck was a tiny, ant-sized Taz, squeezing sunscreen onto his hands, surrounded by a pack of bathing suit–clad Alphas.
“Sorry, babe.” Charlie flashed Skye a sympathetic smile. “Taz could never resist a party. But someday soon, you two will put Syd behind you. I think Taz liked you more than he’s ever liked any one girl before.”
“Until I ruined it!” Skye moaned, reaching a dirt-encrusted fingernail inside the greasy tangle of hair. “My life is hell. My only hope is that today, Syd will realize that if he sticks with me, his life will be hell, too.”
“I thought your life was smell,” joked Allie.
Skye nodded, chewing her lip. Allie was right—Skye had finally achieved maximum nastiness. To be any grosser, she would have to contract a case of scabies along with gingivitis, both of which were too icky to contemplate. “Yeah, today is as gross as I get. Which reminds me,” Skye dug through the picnic basket at the girls’ feet. “I packed a snack.”
Skye fished out a yellow onion and began to peel off the skin, her stomach recoiling at the thought of what she was about to do.
Allie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Skye, you are not going to eat that.”
“I have to!” Skye snapped. “This is my last hope! If Syd leans in for a kiss and smells this, maybe he’ll reconsider our undying love.” She pinched her nostrils shut with two fingers and bit into the onion as if it were an apple, chewing it miserably as tears streamed down her face. Her gag reflex kicked in and she fought through it to swallow a mouthful of raw onion.
“Nice touch,” Charlie giggle-grimaced, gesturing toward Skye’s jaw line, where an eruption of chin-zits now dotted her otherwise flawless complexion.
“Lip liner,” Skye gag-grinned, shrugging as she tossed the half-eaten onion overboard into the pine forest. “Triple’s idea.”
As the air-chair skidded toward the clearing at the top of the mountain, the girls zipped up their parkas, applied Purell (Allie), chewed her cuticles inscrutably (Charlie), and dusted faux dandruff made of cornstarch and cookie crumbs across her shoulders (Skye).
“What’s my motivation again?” Allie sat up straighter and adjusted her ski headband, channeling her new budding-actress persona as she grilled Charlie.
Charlie let out a tiny sigh and shot a quick look at Skye before launching into a pep talk. Evidently, Allie was about to set into motion the performance of a lifetime. “You’re pretending you’re over Darwin, and into Mel. Act confident, cool, and totally in control. That way, Darwin will see what he’s missing and Mel will fall for you, which, with any luck, might make Darwin want you that much more.”
Skye swallowed a bitter laugh. If there was one thing she’d learned while trying to shake Syd, it was that people never responded how you hoped they would.
Charlie paused, taking a breath and leaning over to scan the clearing for signs of the guys. “Best-case scenario,” she continued, “you’ll have two Brazille brothers fighting over you.”
Allie nodded and chewed her lip in concentration as she whispered “cool, calm, confident” to herself as if preparing to walk onstage for Hollywood week on American Idol.
“Good luck, Al,” Skye said. “May one of us make a love connection today, and may it not be me.”
Skye narrowed her aquamarine eyes at the group of boys waiting for them. Syd stood next to the lift clutching a huge bunch of yellow and pink-flecked branches. Behind the flowers, his smile was as all-consuming as a black hole.
But as the air-chair slid in for a landing, Skye found Charlie’s optimism infectious. After all, if Allie could act her way into Mel’s heart, why couldn’t Skye act her way out of Syd’s? With any luck, Skye would be single by dinner, and she could wash that man—and a week of filth—right out of her hair.