Being Sloane Jacobs (11 page)

“Ta-da,” I say, holding out jazz hands.

“Perfect.” He drags me over to the full-length mirror inside the door and yanks out my braid. He rearranges my hair into a loose side ponytail cascading down my exposed shoulder. Then he trots back to the armoire, riffles around for a second, and returns with a black sparkly headband and a pair of black open-toed kitten heels. When he’s done with me, I’ve got to admit, I look damn good. I bet Dylan would eat his nasty Phillies hat if he could see me. I think for a moment about snapping a photo and texting it to him, just for the “Look at me now!” satisfaction, but I don’t want to have to explain where I am. If he even cared to ask.

Andy slips his arm in mine. “Come on, Sloane Jacobs,” he says. “Let’s get down there before we miss all the fun.”

The dining room looks like Hogwarts mated with one of those
Masterpiece Theatre
shows, with floor-to-ceiling windows, gleaming wood paneling, and glistening chandeliers. There are even white-coated servers scurrying around filling water glasses. The little card on top of my plate lists four courses, and my stomach starts growling.

When the first course lands in front of me, I’m ready to dig in. Unfortunately, one glance at my plate and I realize
there will be no “digging in.” The salad, if you can call it that, is made up of about six leaves of romaine lettuce, two fat cucumber slices, and an almost imperceptible drizzle of something that may or may not be a vinaigrette.

I lean over to Andy. “There’s no salad on my salad.”

“And you were expecting …?” he asks. A quick glance at his face tells me that this is standard fare in the skating world—
this
skating world, anyway. Andy may be my friend, but he doesn’t know the truth. And it needs to stay that way. I have
got
to stop shooting my mouth off, or it’s going to get me in just as much trouble here as it does back home.

“Just surprised there isn’t more celery. You know, it’s like the
only
food that burns more calories to eat than it contains.” I throw in a quick giggle to make my fashion-magazine-diet-tip thing land.

“That’s a myth,” Andy replies. I exhale; at least I haven’t outed myself at the first meal. “After dinner we can hit the convenience store down the street. Only about a third of these skaters will actually survive on this food alone. The rest of us mere mortals scarf Snickers bars between meals.”

I try to make my salad last as long as possible, but within three bites it’s gone and a server whisks away the empty plate. Next up is a soup, which comes in a cup so small I wonder if they stole it from a child’s tea set. I resist the urge to toss it back like a shot. When the main course finally arrives, I’m glad to see it’s on a grown-up-sized plate, but my spirits drop when I see it’s a boneless, skinless chicken
breast, grilled and topped with a miniature pile of greens. Alongside it is a tiny scoop of what seems like no more than a dozen grains of brown rice and a heaping helping of steamed broccoli. All around me there are girls cutting their chicken into teeny, tiny pieces, every once in a while bringing one to their mouths and chewing about a thousand times before swallowing.

I want to scream. Or ask them for their leftovers.

Within minutes I’m swallowing my last bite of chicken, while some of the other skaters at my table are still on their first forkful of broccoli.

“This isn’t a refugee camp, you know.” The acid voice oozes into my ear, the accent thick and syrupy. I turn around and see Ivy, in head-to-toe pink, her dress a carbon copy of my own. When she recognizes it, she crosses her arms across the ruffle and glares at me. She turns to her friend, who looks like she’d like nothing more than to sew her lips to the ass of Ivy’s dress. “Look, Sabrina. How cute. She thinks if she dresses like the best, she can
be
the best.”

Sabrina giggles like she’s watching an episode of
Saturday Night Live
, which is appropriate, since Ivy’s act is just about as tired.

Ivy leans in close and whispers in my ear, “If you want to eat like a lumberjack, squeeze yourself into that dress, and walk around looking like a gummy bear, that’s your prerogative, but I thought I’d just give you some friendly roomie advice: pink is
my
signature color.”

I’m all for keeping a low profile, and I know I need to
keep my anger in check, but I’m not about to let this Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl push me around. I drop my fork on my plate, where it lands with a clatter.

“Listen, Steel Magnolia, you can take your Pepto-Bismol butt over there, or you’ll be icing your knee right alongside me.”

Sabrina’s eyes get wide, and she steps back slightly, as if she’s worried a fistfight might break out and she’ll be caught smack in the middle.

“Don’t mind the crip,” Ivy says to Sabrina without turning away from me. Her gaze is steely. Finally, she pivots and takes Sabrina’s arm, and the two of them stalk back to their table.

“She meant ‘cripple,’ ” Andy says.

“I know what she meant,” I reply through clenched teeth.

“Oh, so that puzzled look was—”

“Nothing,” I mutter, because I’m pretty sure admitting that I was figuring out how to remove her arm from her body and beat her with it would get me labeled as Not Classy. The server sets dessert down in front of me, a clear glass dish with a scoop of sorbet topped with a mint leaf. I push it away. I’m too pissed to eat. I need to think. I need a plan.

“She’s just trying to psych you out,” Andy says, helping himself to my discarded dessert. “I think her motto is ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t make the competition too scared to try.’ ”

“I think it’s time for a little psychological warfare of my
own,” I say. Prissy places like this are all about the pranks, and I am the
queen
of the prank at Jefferson. Just ask Libby Keegan, last season’s rookie of the year, who skated champs with Icy Hot in her sports bra.

“Color me interested,” he says. He leans in conspiratorially.

I turn and stare at him, then slowly break into a smile. “Thank you, Andy. You’ve just given me an idea.”

I lie in bed for what feels like hours, waiting until Ivy is snoring and I can be sure she won’t wake up. I creep out of my room and down the hall, past the staircase and the sign directing me to the gentlemen’s quarters. I get to room 22, Andy’s room, turn the knob, and ease the door open in silence. Andy’s in the bed closer to the door. Apparently his enthusiasm didn’t keep him awake: he’s sound asleep, and I have to shake him lightly to wake him. He rolls over and glares at me.

“You are
so
disturbing my beauty sleep,” he whispers.

“It’s game time,” I tell him. His roommate is snoring like a buzz saw in the other bed, so I don’t worry too much about waking him.

“You were serious?”

I nod. “I need your help. Scissors—you got ’em?”

We creep back down the hall and into my room, where Ivy is still dead to the world. I wave Andy into the bathroom and take the lid off the back of the toilet, where I
stashed my supplies in a Ziploc bag. A pair of Sloane Emily’s nude tights, a rubber band, and an envelope of raspberry Kool-Aid I picked up post-dinner at the convenience store down the street, while Andy loaded up on pints of ice cream and Snickers bars.

“Make sure she’s still asleep,” I whisper, and he nods.

I set to work cutting one of the feet out of the tights, then filling it with the Kool-Aid. Then I fit the tights over the showerhead and secure it with the rubber band. I wave Andy back in.

“I need you to spot me while I do this part.” Andy stands behind me while I climb up on the ledge of the bathtub and unscrew the lightbulb from the fixture overhead. I wrap the bulb in paper towels and discard it in the trash can.

“You are so crazy,” Andy whispers. I feel a sudden sense of unease. I’m not supposed to be the old Sloane here. I’m supposed to be pretty, poised, perfect Sloane Jacobs, not scrappy, scary Sloane Jacobs. I hesitate. I could disassemble the whole thing in seconds and just ignore Ivy for the next four weeks. That’s what Sloane Emily would probably do.

Then I spot Ivy’s mountain of makeup, lined up in perfect rows on the counter. She’s kindly taken my toiletry bag (the pink floral fabric one on loan from Sloane Emily, full of tubes and pots I don’t even know how to use) and dropped it on the floor. Next to the toilet.

“Remind me not to mess with you,” Andy says, shaking his head.

“You won’t forget,” I reply with an evil grin.

I’m woken by the loudest, longest, most shrill scream I’ve heard this side of a B-movie murder victim.

“Who? What? OH MY GOD!” Ivy’s voice slices through the closed bathroom door, through the feather pillow over my head, and drives into my eardrum like a spike. Despite the pain from the decibel-shattering yelling, all I can do is smile.

I hear the bathroom door swing open, and I take a quick moment to compose myself and wipe the smile off my face. I peek out from underneath my pillow and see Ivy tearing out of the bathroom. Her rainbow of blond highlights is now varying shades of fuchsia—a color also running down her face, neck, and shoulders. She’s clutching one of the fluffy white bath towels around her. I should say, one of the fluffy, previously white towels. Now it is streaked and stained in various hues of rose and blush.

“YOU! You did this!” she screeches, shaking a salmon-colored finger in my direction.

“Gosh, you were right, Ivy,” I reply, all mock innocence. “Pink really
is
your signature color.”

CHAPTER 9

SLOANE EMILY

My phone rings underneath my pillow, which has become my hiding place of choice. Sloane Devon’s number flashes across the display. I tap the Answer button after seeing the time: 7:13 a.m. Two minutes before my alarm is set to go off.

“How’s life among the rhinestone band?”

“No rhinestones yet,” Sloane Devon says. I barely know her, but hearing her voice is oddly comforting. “But your roommate, Ivy Loughner, is a real peach.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of her. She’s apparently the General Patton of psychological warfare.”

“Well, I’m waging my own battle. You’ll never believe what I just did.” She launches into the details of some prank that resulted in dyeing Ivy pink. I snort into my pillow. I saw Ivy once at an invitational about four years back. She was a tiny sprite of a twelve-year-old clad in a hot-pink unitard
with a tulle flounce around her butt. She was giving her coach, a man of at least forty, a full-on dressing-down over the volume of her music. I can only imagine what living with her must be like.

I think again about how lucky I am: being a terrible hockey player is a hell of a lot better than killing myself to be an elite figure skater this summer. The Mack truck that’s usually sitting right on top of my chest is gone.

“Your roommate is no treat either,” I say. “She barely had to look at me to decide she hated me.”

“She’s probably just tough,” Sloane Devon says. “A lot of hockey players I know are so crazy competitive that they come off as bitches. She’s probably all about the game. If you really want respect you’re going to have to show your stuff on the ice.”

“You mean
your
stuff,” I mutter.

“Hey, this was
your
idea, princess. You’ve gotta sleep in your bed, or whatever that saying is.”

“Done and done.” I yawn. I never knew pretending to be someone else could be so exhausting. Yesterday was all check-ins and training assignments, which are basically broken down by age. I’m with all the rest of the juniors and seniors, which means Melody.

Today will be our first day on the ice, and I’m dreading it.

This was already going to be tough without some competitive rage monster as a roommate trying to kill me on the ice. “How are you handling it? Showing my stuff, I mean?”

“Not that it’s easy to follow in your tiny twinkle footsteps, but I can handle it,” Sloane Devon says smoothly. Of course, I’m pretty sure she hasn’t started training yet either. I make a mental note to call her tomorrow and see how confident she is then.

“ ‘Tiny twinkle footsteps’? We have the same shoe size,” I counter.