Priya pulled a cucumber sandwich off the three-tier silver serving tray and leaned over to Sophie. “I cannot wait to see that silk dress in Vogue. I’m going to be like—I wore that!” She took a tiny bite out of the fluffy white bread.
“I know!” Sophie squealed. “I can’t wait to see that tweed skirt I tried on.”
Stella stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her china cup and gazed up at the marshmallow clouds on the domed ceiling of the rotunda. The entire cab ride to the Pierre, Blythe, Sophia, and Priya had kept on about Marc Jacobs’ new collection. Sophie had been so distracted, she’d almost left the dress Cate bought her in the cab. Stella glanced across the table at Cate, who was stabbing at her scone with her fork dejectedly. Stella took a sip of her raspberry tea.
It had never tasted so sweet.
“Should we vote now?” Stella cooed, looking around the table at the girls.
“Yeah, let’s do it.” Sophie pulled a small black Moleskine notebook out of her quilted purse.
Blythe was smoothing some crème fraîche onto her scone but suddenly dropped her knife, her eyes fixed on something across the room. “Oh. My. God.” she squeaked.
All the girls turned. At the table by the far wall, a man with a mop of blond hair was sitting with a woman who looked like a young, pre-surgery Demi Moore. He wore a tight black sports coat and had cheekbones more defined than Webster’s dictionary. Cate straightened up in her chair. “Is that…Harley Cross?” she asked, smoothing down her dark brown hair. A young waiter with a shiny black ponytail set down Harley’s check, her face a bright pink.
“It is,” Priya cried, leaning her chin on her hand.
Sophie pinched her cheeks and pressed her lips together. “Wait—how do I look?” she asked. “Guys?” But no one took their eyes off Harley. He pushed his chair back and stood up, grabbing the woman’s hand. The two of them headed toward the door as the table of overdressed Long Island girls next to them exploded in chatter.
“He’s leaving?” Cate whined. She had been obsessed with Harley Cross since fifth grade, when she’d seen him in Reinventing Simon Worth, a romantic comedy about a first-grade teacher in England. Harley Cross was one of the most adorable actors in Hollywood and he had a British accent. British accents on funguslike stepsisters were annoying, but British accents on moppy-haired actors? Totally hot.
Harley glanced around the circular room, his eyes landing on Cate. He held up one finger to the woman with him, then turned and started walking straight toward their table. Cate pulled at the silver locket on her neck, her pulse quickening. Harley ran a hand through his blond hair and tucked one finger in the front pocket of his dark-wash jeans.
Cate took her napkin off her lap, preparing to stand up and say hello, but as he got closer Cate realized he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at Stella, who was sitting in the chair beside her. He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Hello, luv,” he cooed. “I thought that was you. I’m flying back to London in three hours, but I couldn’t walk out of here without saying hello.”
“Hi.” Stella grinned, her cheeks a rosy pink.
“So how’s mum?” Harley asked. Cate coughed, trying to draw attention to herself, but Harley was still staring at Stella intently. Cate could feel the chewed-up scone sitting in her stomach like cement.
“Quite well,” Stella replied.
Harley pulled back the bottom of his sport coat and rested a hand on his hip. “And your father…how is he keeping on?” he asked slowly, furrowing his brow in concern.
Stella looked down at the pink paisley carpeting, her eyes blurring from all the ornate swirls. “Um…fine,” she said after a beat, then let out an uncomfortable laugh.
“Right. Well, it was good seeing you, Stella. Do send everyone my love.” Harley squeezed Stella’s shoulder, then walked off.
The second he disappeared from the rotunda, Sophie started shrieking. “Omigodomigodomigod!” she cried. Blythe tucked a piece of dirty blond hair behind her ear and wiped her forehead, still glowing from her Close Encounter of the Celebrity Kind.
Cate glanced around the table at the Chi Beta Phis, who were all staring at Stella like she’d done a magic trick. She twisted her cloth napkin in her hands. For my next trick, she imagined Stella saying, I will make all your friends disappear.
“That was amazing.” Priya turned her chair toward Stella. “How do you know Harley Cross?” A woman in an unflattering mauve frock sat down near the entrance to the rotunda and began to play a gold harp, moving her graying head in slow figure eights.
“We’re old family friends.” Stella shrugged, as if to say, There are more celebrities where that came from. She smoothed down the front of her tan skirt, then looked around the table. Priya, Sophie, and Blythe were seriously impressed. This was better than bringing the basketball team to Jackson Hole, better than getting them into the Marc Jacobs designer showroom. She knew Harley Cross. And this was what they’d think about when they scribbled her name across their ballots. “Should we vote now?” Stella prompted again, smiling sweetly at Cate.
Cate balled up her white napkin in her hand and threw it down on the table. She couldn’t let this vote slip away from her. She was the head of the Chi Beta Phis—she always had been, and she always would be.
Cate cleared her throat. “First we should voice any concerns we have about potential candidates,” Cate said carefully, leveling her eyes at Stella. “Sure, Harley Cross knows Stella, but how much do we really know about her?” At the table next to them, a balding waiter leaned over and poured a scalding cup of tea, nearly searing off his eyebrows. Cate breathed in the minty smell, her whole body tingling with excitement.
“What do you mean?” Blythe asked, confused.
“Stella’s father cheated on her mother with Cloud McClean—the same Cloud McClean that sings ‘Kick It’ and wears metallic unitards. She didn’t leave London because it was ‘so over,’ and her parents aren’t ‘best mates.’” Cate made quotes with her fingers to remind everyone of Stella’s exact words. “She lied about that, and I’m sure she’s lied about plenty of other things,” Cate finished. Across the table, Stella stared into her lap.
“Is that true?” Priya asked.
“So your father didn’t get a job in Australia?” Sophie asked.
“No,” Cate answered the question for her. “He didn’t.”
“And you said my dad ‘had issues’?” Blythe asked, digging her fingernail into the egg sandwich on her plate. “That was so…”
“Mean,” Cate cut in.
“Not cool,” Priya continued. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”
“I—” Stella began.
“If you’d just told us, nobody would have cared. But you’ve been lying to us since we first met you.” Priya crossed her arms over her chest.
“My point exactly,” Cate said coolly. “Chi Beta Phis don’t keep secrets from one another.” She appraised her stepsister. Stella’s chin was quivering, and she still hadn’t looked up. Whatever—it was time to vote, and Cate couldn’t get all remorseful now. She grabbed Sophie’s notebook and yanked out five pieces of paper, handing one out to each girl.
Finally Stella lifted her head. “Wait a second. I think it’s my turn to voice concerns,” she said icily, staring up at Cate’s purplish blue eyes. She’d make sure Cate regretted mentioning anything about her mum and dad. “Because frankly, I’m concerned Cate isn’t able to keep things…confidential.” If Cate wanted to fight with secrets, Stella had a whole arsenal of them. “What’s that you said about Blythe? That she’s a spray tan addict? That she’s never even been to Mexico?”
Blythe emitted a sound like a squeak toy.
“I—I didn’t say that,” Cate stammered, sitting back down at the table. Her whole body was shaking.
“Oh, yes, you did.” Stella pressed on. “And then you kept on about how Sophie still plays with Barbies—how she keeps them under her bathroom sink.”
Priya covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. “You do?”
“I’m a collector!” Sophie yelled, pushing up the sleeves of her blue silk dress defensively.
“I’m not addicted,” Blythe said through gritted teeth. “And I was in Cabo just last spring.”
Priya was still giggling with her hand over her mouth, looking back and forth between her friends.
“And Priya doesn’t go to sleepaway camp in the Adirondacks,” Stella continued. “She goes to science camp. Isn’t she obsessed with dissecting things?”
Priya fell silent.
Stella leaned back in her chair and smiled. She had just dropped a gossip bomb on Cate’s perfect little world, blowing it to pieces.
Cate pressed her palms down on the table, leaning toward the girls. “I didn’t say that—I swear,” she lied.
“You were the only one I told!” Priya cried.
Cate just shrugged, looking at the girls like she was just as surprised as they were. For now, she would use the strategy she always used when she was caught in a lie: deny, deny, deny.
“Forget it, Priya,” Blythe growled. “Let’s vote.” She pulled a pen from the pile on the table and eyed Stella and Cate. Then she scribbled something on her makeshift ballot and folded it up.
“Yeah,” Sophie agreed, grabbing two pens and passing one to Priya. As the girls scribbled on their ballots, Cate was suddenly nervous. That hadn’t gone quite the way she had planned. Yes, she had said those things about the girls, but they had all known she was never good at keeping secrets. In seventh grade she’d accidentally told her entire health class that Blythe shaved her toes. They wouldn’t hold it against her, would they? She picked up a pen and wrote her name slowly in perfect script, crossing the t so hard she nearly ripped through the paper.
Blythe collected the votes from each girl, read them silently, and placed them facedown on the table so nobody could see. She looked at Stella, then at Cate, her face as expressionless as a world champion poker player’s.
Cate smoothed down the hem of her dress and held her breath.
“Stella…” Blythe said slowly, looking across the table. Priya held her hands in a tight ball in front of her mouth. “You did not win the vote.” Stella’s face fell, and she stared glumly at the serving dish of scones.
Cate exhaled and her arms sprang up in excitement. She was sorry for ever doubting her friends, for thinking they would vote for some British newbie over her. They were behind her, always, no matter what. Cate rested her hands on the table and stood up slowly, looking at Priya, Blythe, and Sophie. “Thank you,” she said. “And I’m so, so sorry for telling Stella all your secrets.”
“I’m a collector,” Sophie whispered again, to no one in particular.
“And I promise you,” Cate said, grabbing Blythe’s orange arm, “this is going to be our best year at Ashton yet. You guys are the best friends anyone could ask for.”
Blythe smirked. “Thanks for the touching speech. But actually, Cate, you didn’t win either—I did.”
Cate stared down at Blythe—the same Blythe who’d practically lived at her house last summer. The same Blythe who had insisted her mother escort both Cate and Blythe to Ashton Prep’s mother-daughter tea. Cate grabbed the stack of votes from Blythe’s lap and shuffled through them. Sophie had written Blythe’s name in bubble letters, the same way she doodled on her notebooks. Cate recognized Priya’s handwriting, then Blythe’s. There were two other sheets of paper: one that said Stella, and one in her own handwriting that said Cate, a tiny crown drawn over the C. She crumpled the votes up in her hand.
“You were right…” Blythe continued. “I am tired of being so ‘behind the scenes’…‘in your shadow.’” Cate cringed when she heard her own words fired back at her. Blythe took a bite of a chocolate éclair and closed her eyes. “Mmmm…delish,” she hummed. Cate thought back to when she’d cornered Blythe in the Jackson Hole bathroom like some small, frightened animal. While she and Stella were battling it out at Marc Jacobs, stupidly caught up in their sister war, Blythe had swept in and stolen the Chi Beta Phis out from under her.
Blythe glanced at Priya and Sophie. “Well, we should get going.” She stood up and dropped her napkin on the table, then leveled her eyes at Cate. “You’ll get the check, right? I have a fake tan habit to support.”
“Yeah,” Priya said, “and I have to go hack up some squirrels.”
Blythe strode out of the rotunda, Priya and Sophie on either side of her. They were swinging their slick black Marc Jacobs shopping bags—with the dresses and shoes Cate had bought for them.
Cate stood there frozen, wondering if this was the last time she’d ever have lunch with her friends. After all, they weren’t really her friends anymore—they were Blythe’s.