Belle of the Brawl (16 page)

“… And that’s when the bucket of worms fell from the ceiling!” Dingo was saying, and a real laugh came pouring melodically out of Trip’s glossed mouth. Skye raised her platinum brows at the two of them—maybe Trip was getting the hang of flirting after all. She turned back to glance once more at Taz in the boat cabin, but instead of Taz, her attention was hijacked by the sight of Mimi walking through the dance floor and headed their way.

Yikes!
What was Mimi doing here?

Skye squeezed Triple’s bare arm, hard.

Triple screeched, then jumped. “Chill, lady!”

Skye flashed a micro-smile at Dingo. “We have to go. Now,” she said, and began pulling Triple away.

Triple swatted at Skye, her nails grazing Skye’s arms. “Stop! I’m having fun.”

“Mimi alert! Shut up and walk!” Skye whispered, and without another word Triple followed her around the deck of the ship to the other side of the cabin. They ducked down behind a covered lifeboat and peered at Mimi through two sets of windows.

Mimi wore a tomato-red halter dress and a gardenia in her hair, and stood chatting with a muse just a few feet from where they’d been talking to Dingo.

“Why is she here?” whisper-yelled Skye. “I thought this was a cruise for us, not her.”

“She’s probably here looking for us!” Triple screeched. “She must have known we’d come.”

Skye ordered her heart to beat slower so she could come up with a plan. Mimi looked relaxed and happy as she chatted with a couple of muses. Skye and Triple were obviously far from her mind. “Look at her. She’s here to have a good time.”

“No,
you’re
here to have a good time. I cannot believe I listened to you. We should have stayed home. Now we’re trapped,” Triple hissed, winding her blow-out into a knotted bun, the default safety hairstyle for dancers under stress.

“We’re not trapped, and we’re not getting caught. I just need to think.” Skye turned back to Mimi, who had finished her sushi and now strode across the deck, heading toward them. Skye’s blond wavelets blew around in the ocean air as she searched frantically for an exit strategy.

“She’s coming. We need to split up!” Triple whisper-screamed, her eyes wide. “I’m going into the cabin.”

“We need to jump,” Skye told her. It was the only answer.

“No way. If we jump, they’ll see the splashing, and we’ll both be history. And if they don’t catch us, we’ll drown before we make it to shore. The dance floor is the best option.”

Skye shook her head. She’d listened to Triple about dance because, according to Mimi, she was the expert. So
why wouldn’t Triple listen to Skye about this? Skye had planned more parties and escaped from more teachers than anyone on Alpha Island. “Listen to me on this, Trip. I know what I’m doing. It’s a short swim, and the water is warm.” She frowned at Triple. She wasn’t going to beg.

“The only person I listen to is myself,” Triple spat, glaring at Skye and crossing her arms. Meanwhile, Mimi strode around the deck, getting closer with each mincing step of her three-inch stilettos.

“Fine. Your loss,” said Skye, struggling to keep the hurt out of her voice.

Without another word, Triple stood up and strode confidently inside toward the dance party. Skye shook her head and glanced toward Mimi, who ambled obliviously around the deck, headed toward where Skye crouched.

Skye pulled off her slouchy silver top and crawled over to the railing, peering out across the water to the shore. She took a deep breath. The Pavilion and its brise-soleil wings were just a five-minute swim away, she told herself. Five minutes of swimming through Shira’s bathwater-warm sea would be fun, maybe even refreshing. In just her leo and leggings, she was practically in a bathing suit.

Then, in one fluid motion, she vaulted over the railing, pushed off from the side of the ship, and jumped into the water far below. Surfacing after her jump, Skye paddled through the gentle silvery waves toward the shore under the
light of the full moon. She looked up at the boat just once, squinting to make sure a crowd hadn’t assembled at the railing, but the party raged on. Skye smiled. Triple would have to hide from Mimi all evening, but Skye had the ocean all to herself.

Pausing to float on her back and catch her breath, Skye stared up at the moon. Then she smiled, as if only the two of them were in on the joke. After all, what she’d said to Triple was true: She
always
made a splash at parties.

ALPHA OCEAN
MUSE CRUISE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8TH
7:59 P.M.

In the glass-walled cabin of the A-shaped ship, Allie tried to ignore the jealous stares of the other Alphas on the dance floor as she and Mel swayed to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me.” She tried to focus on Mel’s strong arms around her, on the smell of his cologne and the feeling of his blond hair grazing her forehead, but she was too busy worrying to fully enjoy it.

Nervous energy shot through her limbs as she mentally walked through her plan again and again. She was so anxious that a moment ago she’d hallucinated a blond girl in a black leotard and leggings jumping over the ship’s railing. She rubbed her eyes and shook her ponytail, blinking at the spot she thought she’d seen the jumper. Taking a deep breath of Mel’s woodsy scent, she pulled away from him and looked into his broad face.

Channeling confidence she wasn’t feeling and projecting
calmness she desperately wanted, she winked at Mel and cocked her head playfully to one side. “I have to run to the little Alphas’ room,” she purred.

“Okay,” he said, and grinned. “I’ll grab us another plate of sushi.”

“I might be a little while,” Allie added hastily, rolling her eyes and chuckling weakly, hoping she sounded believable. “Girl talk. It’s like a gossip convention in that bathroom.” She turned away from Mel and walked through the dancing crowd, stopping only to swipe her tote bag from the back of a chair.

Luckily, the bathroom convention she’d made up was nowhere in sight. Allie breathed a sigh of relief at finding the huge bathroom empty, then quickly darted into a stall. The walls of the bathroom stall were covered with ancient-looking pirate maps, complete with
X
’s marking the spot for buried treasure, and the door featured a holographic map of the ship’s course around the island, with a blinking blue
A
showing where the party was right now.

Telling herself not to waste time checking out the décor, Allie yanked her silver minidress up over her head. With any luck, AJ’s album would soon be buried like pirate’s treasure, along with her reputation. Shivering in her bra and underwear, Allie tried not to breathe as she carefully slipped AJ’s vintage white dress over her head. When Allie finally took a breath, she smelled lavender
and the thrift-store reek of dead people.
Perfect—AJ’s signature scent.

Next, Allie found AJ’s crocheted green tam and shoved it over her honey-blond hair, stuffing her ponytail inside and pulling it down low on her forehead. Hiding her shoes behind the toilet, Allie unlocked the stall door and ran toward a row of gilt-framed mirrors above the long row of sinks. Opening her bag again, she took out sunglasses and an eyeliner pencil. She expertly drew AJ’s mole onto her upper lip. The one good thing about sneaking into the Academy by posing as AJ was that she could reclaim her fake identity in her sleep. Adding sunglasses made her transformation complete. Nobody would know the eyes underneath the glasses were blue, not green. Examining the AJ facsimile staring back at her in the mirror, Allie slouched the way AJ always did. She smiled and tried out AJ’s high, breathy voice on her reflection. “Welcome back.”

Hurrying out of the bathroom just as a couple of Alphas came in, Allie ditched her tote in the wings of the cabin’s small stage and grabbed AJ’s guitar. She slouched over to Thalia, pulling her tam lower on her forehead in a fit of hair-anoia.

“AJ!” Thalia smiled, reaching up to pat a couple of the silver rosebuds in her giant faux-hawk. Allie felt bad lying to
Thalia, but she had no choice: Thalia was MC’ing tonight. “Are you ready to go on?”

Allie nodded and smiled at Thalia with her mouth closed, a knife of guilt stabbing her chest.

Allie-as-AJ followed the train of Thalia’s Eiffel Tower dress and waited while Thalia turned the music off and took the mic. While Thalia welcomed everyone to the first annual Muse Cruise and started talking about how inspiring it was to be with so many extraordinary girls, Allie tuned out. Spotting the soundboard, she quickly plugged her aPod into one of the output cords. Everything in place, she darted out from the wings and pasted on her best AJ-about-to-sing smile.

Allie had thought through her plan carefully, but there was one thing she wasn’t prepped for. Being up onstage felt ah-mazing! She let the adoration wash over her, using the ego boost to fuel her courage to go through with the plan. But when she looked at the crowd more carefully, she noticed that almost everyone—everyone but Charlie, Darwin, Mel, and Triple—was making the official Identity Theft symbol, first raising their index fingers to create the I, then crossing it with their other hand to form the T. The crowd was in total solidarity with AJ—and totally anti-Allie, the identity thief who inspired the lyrics.

Allie held AJ’s guitar in front of her like a shield and blinked away the tears of terror that had sprung into her
eyes. Her heartbeat moved from a trot to a gallop, and the adoring crowd in front of her suddenly seemed dangerously close to an angry mob. But just as she started to consider running offstage, her aPod cued up “Identity Theft.” Now she had no choice but to go ahead with her plan, which, she now saw, had seemed a lot easier from the safety of the bathroom stall.

You can do this, Al
. She took a deep breath and began fake-strumming AJ’s guitar in time with the music, her eyes glued to Mel’s face. She could do this, for him. For herself. Instead of letting the audience’s hatred wound her like poison darts, she would use it as fuel. She would channel it into revenge on AJ.

Allie played along with the song, her fingers expertly faking each chord, her fingers strumming the guitar in ways she didn’t know they could. When AJ’s recorded voice started to sing, Allie grabbed the mic and lip-synched along, not missing a syllable. After a few lines, Allie unleashed her first attack. While recorded-AJ sang, onstage-AJ coughed into the mic. Coughing just once, she returned to lip-synching, shaking her head slightly and twisting her face into a mortified expression. But when Allie scanned the crowd during a guitar solo, everyone was still dancing and clapping along to the song, yelling “Stop Thief! Identity Theft!”

Nobody even noticed Allie’s lip-synch giveaway!

When the chorus of the song began again, Allie
coughed louder. Harder. This time, she was determined to make people see that “AJ” wasn’t really singing. She doubled over, clutching the mic to her stomach for a second as recorded-AJ kept right on singing. Then she straightened back up and continued to lip-synch as if nothing had happened.

A tide of anger rippled through the crowd. “She’s lip-synching!” shouted Hannah Hesse in the front row. Allie continued to lip-synch and strum the guitar, but now she did it out of time with the music. She made herself blush and concentrated on appearing flustered.

“Sorry!” she yelled into the mic in her high AJ voice.

Soon, the entire audience erupted in booing. The crowd stopped dancing. Now everyone stood there shooting hate-daggers at Allie. Only this time, Allie thought gleefully, they were glaring at AJ. Someone yelled, “Who’s the fake now?”

Allie ducked as a sandal flew threw the air and nearly hit her in the head. Her plan was officially a success! AJ’s rep was destroyed, and soon people might not walk around the Academy humming “Identity Theft.” It wasn’t so cool anymore, now that the singer was a fake herself.

As the song ended and the crowd’s booing and hissing drowned out the song’s final notes, Allie-as-AJ burst into fake tears and ran offstage.
Yet another thing I know how to do from experience!
Allie giggled at the irony—her past
unmasking, the most humiliating half-hour of her life, had prepared her for the role of a lifetime.

Allie ran into the wings and dove for her tote bag. Before the angry mob stormed the stage and attacked AJ, she had to get rid of her disguise. She licked her hand and wiped it across her faux-mole, then ripped off AJ’s dress and hat like they were on fire. She pulled her silver minidress over her head and tugged it down, then bolted to the bathroom to grab her shoes.

A few minutes later, Allie sauntered casually across the dance floor, past clusters of indignant Alpha girls—all of them dishing about how lame AJ’s performance was—to where Charlie stood with Darwin and Mel.

“What’s going on?” she asked, blinking her eyes. Hopefully, her face looked as innocent and confused as an amnesiac’s.

“Babe, you missed it! AJ got booed off the stage. It was actually kind of funny.” Mel was so cute and so sweet, Allie nearly swooned. Those words, out of Mel’s gorgeous mouth, were almost
too
perfect.

Allie brought her navy blue eyes to his violet ones. “Really? How weird. I went outside to get some air, and when I came back, her concert had ended. I was wondering why.” She shrug-smiled as if to say,
oh well,
life goes on.

Inside, her heart buzzed like a hive of honeybees. Had
she really pulled off an AJ takedown
and
started hanging out with the cutest guy on the island? If this were a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.

“She must be freaking out right now,” Darwin said, shaking his head. “I mean, I knew she was kind of fake, but I didn’t think she was the type to lip-synch a live show.”

“Poor AJ. She probably had her reasons.” Allie shook her head as if she sympathized with her roommate, remembering Darwin had always been a huge fan of AJ’s music. Looking at him now, Allie couldn’t believe she’d had such a huge crush on him only a week ago. He was just a bridge boy for her, Allie realized. A boy to get her from one serious relationship (Fletcher) to another (Mel). Allie turned to Charlie, noticing her bestie was standing very close to Darwin—and they were holding hands.