“Why aren’t you in class?” I ask, mostly to break the beat of awkward silence.
“Why aren’t you?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?” I inch closer. Why? I don’t know, but I do.
“If I can,” he admits. “I take college classes at night, so I don’t have a full six-period day. I’m free during third and fifth. But you are officially cutting, which I know is your MO.”
“Is it? How do I get away with that?” I try to make it sound like a sarcastic joke, but I’m hoping he knows the answer.
He snorts a soft laugh. “Ayla Monroe, daughter of one of the school’s biggest benefactors, darling of the faculty lounge, owner of the Can Do No Wrong title … are you asking me a serious question?”
“Are you always so sarcastic?”
When he doesn’t answer, I give his arm a little nudge. I’m that close to him now. And staying. “Question with a question.”
He laughs, and so do I, and for one crazy second, we have eye contact. Long eye contact. The kind of eye contact that sends a little baby butterfly flitting around my stomach.
“Ayla!”
I spin at the sound of my name, freezing like a criminal caught in the act when I see Jade and Bliss bounding down the stairs. As much as anyone can bound in four-inch heels.
Bliss blasts Charlie with a dirty look.
“What are you doing?” she demands, like he broke the law or something. Well, I guess he did. Invisibles don’t talk to the most popular girl in the school. Doesn’t he know the immutable laws of physics?
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” he shoots back at her, flicking his gaze at me. For a flash, we share an inside joke, answering a question with a question.
The flash is long enough for Bliss to see it. “Nice lid, cowboy,” she says, walking up to the fountain, Jade right in step with her.
“It’s not a cowboy hat,” I tell her, bracing for her to say something really mangled and mean to Charlie. I don’t know why, but I just don’t think I can stand it after he’s been nothing but nice to me.
“You like that hat?” Bliss asks me, a challenge in her tone. “ ’Cause I think it looks kind of … highness.”
“Highness?” Charlie whispers to me.
“I think she means ‘heinous.’ ”
He stifles a laugh, and that makes Bliss’s eyes flash in anger as she marches closer.
“You have a lot of nerve laughing at me,” she says to him.
“I’m not—”
She snags the hat right off his head, and he tries to grab it, but she’s too fast. In a second, she’s got it on, copping a pose while Jade hoots.
“How do I look?” Bliss asks, hand on her hip, diva-style.
“Cut it out,” I say, an old, familiar heat rising up from my chest. I’ve seen this a million times, only I’ve never had the nerve to talk back to a kid doing this.
“Give it,” Jade demands, reaching out.
Bliss flips the hat to Jade. Charlie is up, but they’re way too fast, scampering around the fountain with heels clickity-clacking, and he obviously doesn’t want to look like a fool running after them.
“Over here,” I say, enough play in my voice that I hope they’ll fall for it. Because the minute I have that hat, I’m giving it back to its rightful owner.
But the hat flips between Jade and Bliss again, high in the air.
I steal a look at Charlie, seeing his whole face and hair for the first time. Funny, he doesn’t look too much like a science geek who takes college classes in eleventh grade. Not as cute as Ryder, obviously, but kind of a young, in-need-of-a-makeover Ashton Kutcher. Only skinnier and not as tall. And not as sexy.
So, not Ashton Kutcher.
“Hey!” he says as the hat narrowly misses a fountain spray and the two of them giggle like banshees.
There’s got to be a better way to handle this. I round the fountain and get in Bliss’s face, gearing up to deliver a deadly warning and underscore it with The Look.
She hesitates under my gaze, but the hat’s sailing her way. I reach up to catch it, but I miss, instead sending it right into the fountain.
Charlie swears under his breath, and the hat bobbles in the water behind me.
“Nice one, Ayla,” Bliss says, offering a high five.
Jade scampers around the fountain, tossing long black hair over her shoulder like she has just finished a hard afternoon’s work. “You gotta quit socializing with the invisibles, Ayla,” she says, her voice low in warning.
“Why?”
They both stare at me, but Bliss’s expression shifts and softens.
“You’re right, Ayla. Talk to all the losers you want, whenever you want. It’s fine.” She gives me a nudge. “We were going to hit Miracle Mile. You comin’?”
I turn to see Charlie shaking off the hat, which is drenched. He won’t even look at me, and my heart sinks a little. He thinks I knocked the hat into the water on purpose.
“Or would you rather stay with your new friend?”
Bliss’s question is swaddled in sweetness, but I know better than to trust her. Of course, if I’m caught so much as talking to an invisible, I could lose my perch on the pile of popularity, and guess who is ready to hoist herself up and fill in the vacancy?
“Let’s go,” I say quietly, without even looking at Charlie.
The fleeting connection is gone anyway, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I head off with my friends without looking back. They might not be the greatest girls in the world, but they breathe the rare air, and I still want my lungs full of that, too.
The boutique- and restaurant-lined street in the heart of the Gables is packed with tourists and shoppers, and as we navigate the crowds and sip caramel macchiatos, my friends grill me.
“Why do you suddenly find it necessary to befriend the homeless?” Bliss demands.
“Don’t you mean the hopeless?”
“No, I do not.”
Jade steps in between us, where she is metaphorically most of the time. But this time, I think she’s siding with Bliss. “Honestly, Ayla,” she says, “you could really ruin our rep by talking to people like that jerkwad Zelinsky.”
Do popular kids really think like this? I mean, I’ve been watching them from afar since whenever “popular” happens—so, what, fifth grade? I know the lessers certainly know their lives can change on a dime with even a nod from the popular kids, but is it vice versa, too?
“He’s just a nice science geek,” I say, still determined to defend him, but my voice has grown weak. Along with my conviction. Cutting class and drinking coffee with the most popular girls is by far better than flirting with nerds. “He’s going to help me in chem because I helped him in lit.”
They both stare as if my hair has changed color.
“Yeah, about that freak accident in lit,” Bliss says, accusation in her voice. “It’s been all over the school. I assume you SparkNoted that book, right?”
“Duh. Like I really read Lord of the Flies.” I sip my coffee, averting my eyes. “So I’m going to let him make sure I don’t fail chem.”
Jade shakes her head. “Nobody talks to him, Ayla. If you talk to him, one of two things is going to happen.” She holds out perfectly French-manicured fingers to count. “One, he becomes popular by week’s end.”
Bliss exhales as though the world just ended. “That is so not going to happen. But we might lose our position.”
“Then we probably don’t really have it, do we?” I say.
“What is wrong with you, Ayla? You’re acting like some kind of lunatic. Like, who are you?” Bliss asks.
Good question.
“Chill, Bliss,” Jade says quickly.
“I’m not going to chill,” she snaps. “I’m reminding little Miss Get Hot and Bothered over a Needs Scholarship Kid that she can’t drag us into the lower ranks because she’s becoming some kind of … of … philanthropologist.”
“He’s on a needs scholarship?”
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They look at each other in disbelief.
“Dude.” Bliss puts her hand on my arm, her tone softer, like she’s speaking to a child. A stupid child. “Did you forget? He lives in a cardboard box.”
“What?” Something inside my heart slips. Does she mean he really is homeless?
“Not anymore,” Jade says. “But his mother was, like, a hobo or something, for crying out loud. Then she was on the news, and he was all over the papers and Good Morning America as some boy genius living under a bridge.”
“Next thing you know,” Bliss continues, “we got Box Boy at Crap because the powers that be thought paying his ride was a ‘good PR move.’ ” She uses air quotes and a sarcastic tone. “So we’re stuck with him, even though half the school’s parents tried to fight it. Who wants a homeless kid here?”
“No one,” Jade says. “And we sure as shit don’t talk to him.”
“He doesn’t still live in a box, though,” I say with hope. Because for some reason, this idea just rips me inside.
“Might as well,” Bliss says. “It’s an apartment in Hi-a-le-ah.” She whispers and drags out the offending town’s name, syllable by syllable, as though she can’t really bring herself to let the word be spoken from her lips. “And his mother cleans offices, Ayla.”
“He doesn’t belong at our school, and he sure as hell doesn’t belong talking to you.” Jade points at me.
“He’s still …” A person. But something stops me from saying that. “Not even that bad-looking,” I finish weakly.
“Oh. My. God.” Bliss stares at me with incredulity. “You really are psychopathetic.”
I fight a laugh at this latest malapropism. “Just psychopathic, but I’m not. I just talked to the guy. I don’t understand the big deal.”
“The big deal,” Jade says, deep into her peacemaker role, “is that we”—she makes a circle with her finger that indicates the three of us—“only talk to certain people. Some of the cheerleaders, not all. Some of the jocks, and the occasional noob or invisible, yeah. That’s all fine and kind and stuff. But this guy.” Again, she shakes her head as if I just don’t get it. “Nobody even wants him at school, and talking to him? Just … no, Ayla. No.”
Inside, a war rages. It’s physical, a tearing in my chest, right down the middle. Part of me—the new, rich, popular, cool, pretty part—just wants to agree and move on.
“I guess,” I concede.
But Bliss doesn’t notice, because she has stopped walking again, this time in front of a glitzy-looking boutique called Mia Cara. She’s mesmerized by a jeweled belt in the window.
“Now, that,” she says with a sigh, “could eradiate all your sorrows.”
“I don’t have any sorrows that need to be eradiated or eradicated,” I say with a smile, giving her a friendly squeeze. “But I do have my brand-spanking-new American Express Centurion card, so let’s melt that sucker.”
Bliss freezes me with a look. “You’re not going to take all the fun out of it, are you?”
Damn. Somehow I knew she was letting me off the hook too easily. “I don’t know, Bliss,” I say coolly. “Depends on your idea of fun. I love to shop.”
She leans very close to my ear. “Well, I love to shoplift and, mia cara, it’s your turn.”
I’ve never stolen anything in my life.
“Jade and I will do the D and A.”
“D and A?”
“Distract and annoy,” Jade says as though I should know. “You get the belt. And maybe that cute little gray leather clutch next to it. Win!” She looks hard at my Fendi bag. “Open it and clear space. Remember, we’re the decoys. I’ll buy earrings or, if we have to, try something on.”
“What’s wrong?” Bliss demands, probably smelling the sweat that’s starting to make my armpits sticky.
“Nothing.” Everything. “I’m fine.” I’m sick. “Why …” Are we doing this? “Are we waiting out here?”
“So you can get your shit together,” Bliss says darkly. “If that’s even possible anymore.”
She gives me a hard nudge toward Mia Cara. “Get me the freaking belt or it’s going to be all over Crap Academy that the Queen Bee has lost more than her honey.” She looks ridiculously smug with her pun. “You lose everything. Including us.”
“Then, maybe you weren’t worth anything.”
“Ayla,” Jade whines. “Guys, stop this. Let’s go in there and make it fun. It’s always fun. You call it your favorite high, A-list.”
Dear God, I do?
I stare at the belt, the purse, and my still unfamiliar reflection in the window. So who’s going into that store … Ayla or Annie?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They’re experts. That much is obvious as we walk in and one of two salesclerks is instantly on us asking if she can help. Jade and Bliss take her full attention, getting her to help them find some tops. While the other lady rings up the only other customer, Bliss shoots me a look, surreptitiously pointing to the hanging belt display.
The one she wants is out of view of the cashier. Their salesgirl has gone to the back to find a size zero for Jade, and I casually round the display and finger the jeweled belt.
The price tag is a mere $189. A day’s allowance for this crew. Is it really some kind of incredible high to flip that thing off the hook and drop it into my bag?
No.
Unless the high is walking out the door without having a store security alarm blare and three armed guards throw you down, cuff you, and remind you that you’ll never get a driver’s license or get into college or spend another day outside of a prison cell.
I slide my wet palm over my skirt and hear the footsteps of the other clerk coming from the back.
“I have a double zero. Do you want to try that?”
Jeez Louise, who wears a double zero?
I do, now. This is my life. Cool girls. Hip stores. To-die-for clothes. And … shoplifting.
How bad do I want to fit in?
If I don’t do this, am I on my way down the high school food chain again?
My hand reaches for the hook. I look around, not seeing any eyes on me, no security camera, no other customers. Jade and Bliss have the clerk’s full attention, the other salesperson is busy bagging some clothes.
I close my fingers over the belt, slide it off the hook, glance down to the opening of my handbag to aim, and … make my final decision.
I step away from the display, re-shoulder the bag, and walk over to my friends, who pull me into their conversation about jeans and tops.
“You ready to go?” I ask, an edge in my voice.
Bliss’s eyes widen enough for me to know I’ve broken some golden rule of shoplifting.
“Let me grab these earrings,” Jade says quickly, waving them at me as she heads to the cash register. “I can’t live without them.”
My heart is still clomping triple time as she pays and we head toward the door.
Bliss is quiet, Jade is texting, and as I step one foot out the door, a man appears on my right.
“Miss, open your bag.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, vaguely aware that every cell in my body has turned to liquid.
“Are you kidding me?” Bliss asks, dumbfounded.
“Open your bag here or at the Coral Gables police department.” He pulls out a leather wallet and shows me a badge. “Miracle Mile security.”
“Knock yourself out,” I say with full Ayla flair, popping open the Fendi bag. “I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
He flips my wallet and makeup bag to the side, knocks around some mints and a hairbrush, frowning.
“No contraband. Sorry,” I say as snottily as possible.
He digs deeper; then his hand slows. “You’re sure?”
Oh, shit. The joint I’d taken from Bliss is still in there. I didn’t shoplift, but I’m about to be busted for drugs.
He gives up the search and levels me with a gaze. He’s young and kind of cute, and I see his eyes travel ov
er my face. My pretty, pretty face, which can get away with anything.
“Get back to school, ladies.”
Oh, yeah, there are some serious benefits to beauty, and I just reaped some big ones. I lock arms with Jade and stroll on past the ladies watching from inside Mia Cara.
“Dude,” Jade whispers. “How the hell did you pull that off?”
“I smelled trouble.”
“You are, like, the luckiest person in the universe,” she adds, giving my arm a squeeze. “I thought we were toast.”
Bliss nestles to my other side, her look not quite as admiring as Jade’s. “Didn’t take the belt, huh? You really have changed, Ayla.”
“Back off, Bliss,” Jade insists. “She saved our ass.”
Bliss sniffs dismissively. “Not what I’d call it.”
“What would you call it?” I fire back, unable to resist. “Masturbate when you mean masterful?”
She’s not amused. In fact, she’s just pissed enough for me to remember: The only thing stopping Bliss from being me is … me. And the more I become Annie instead of Ayla, the sooner she can slide onto Ayla’s vacant throne.
When I get home, I find Mom upstairs in a huge exercise room, sweating to the sounds of Katy Perry. Well, not exactly sweating. Her back is to me, and she’s bent over a leather bench, a free weight in one hand, but it doesn’t appear to be moving.
“Hey,” I say, staying at the door, our relationship so weird and strained, I don’t even know if she wants to talk to me.
She looks up to the mirror and meets my gaze, then exhales, dropping the weight with a thud. “Oh, it’s you.” Disappointment darkens her voice.
Mom doesn’t like me very much, I’m beginning to guess. “Who were you expecting?”
“A new trainer.” She touches a remote and lowers the volume of the music. “I wanted him to think I was warming up.”
“Well, go ahead,” I say, stepping into the room. Three walls are mirrored, and there’s high-end gym equipment everywhere over a shiny oak floor. “Don’t let me stop you.”
She lifts a shoulder and places her hands on narrow hips encased in black spandex. “I haven’t exactly started. But God, I need to. Which is why I’m trying a new trainer.”