Survival of the Fiercest (4 page)

C
ate leaned on the wrought iron fence outside her town house, glancing every so often at her Tiffany Crown of Hearts watch. All day, girls had been peppering her with questions, asking if there would be a talent portion of the audition, or if she preferred they change out of their uniforms and into a specific designer label. Everything was as it was supposed to be: Girls were back to looking to Cate for advice, and Chi Sigma was already on its way to beating out Beta Sigma Chi as the most popular sorority at Ashton Prep. But if she was going to make ninth grade her defining year, she was still missing one key ingredient: a boyfriend. And that's where Eli Punch came in.

Danny Plimpton dashed down Eighty-second Street. His red and blue-striped tie was blown over his shoulder, like he'd just stepped out of a wind tunnel. “It's about time,” Cate hissed, snatching the lime green folder from his hands.

“It wasn't my fault!” Danny had thick black eyebrows and a nose that turned up at the end. He reminded Cate of the Grinch
Who Stole Christmas. “Mr. Klotchske gave me detention for spitting on the sidewalk.”

“Save it.” Cate turned the folder over in her hands. The front of it had a picture of a stick figure planting a tree, the words
THE GREEN CLUB
printed right above it. Two whole days had gone by since she first met Eli, and she still hadn't had one real conversation with him, unless you counted his original “hi.” Still, she found herself sitting up straighter in class, smiling as she walked down Madison Avenue, and spending twenty extra minutes picking out her uniform shirt. She felt an imaginary set of eyes on her all the time—
Eli's
eyes. She was starting to feel like the lovesick Eponine in
Les Misérables
, always pretending Marius was beside her. She didn't just want to be Eli's girlfriend. He made her want to be a better version of herself.

She opened the folder slowly, breathing in the cool night air. Eli Punch's smiling face looked directly at her. She smiled back.

“It's everything from the last two days, just like you asked.” Danny tugged on the ends of his tie. His uniform shirt was untucked, his tiny legs sticking out underneath it.

This was it. The crucial piece of the Eli puzzle—his life at Haverford. Cate thumbed through the materials, which included Eli's schedule, napkins and receipts Danny had scribbled on (
the Eagle wiped his mouth with this at lunch; receipt from the Eagle's recent Coke purchase
), and candid photos Danny had taken on his iPhone. There was one of Eli eating turkey burgers with Braden Pennyworth, Haverford's star basketball player, and one of him in his Brooks Brothers boxers and a T-shirt that looked like it had been taken from the inside of a locker. In the last one
he was wearing the Haverford signature red and blue shorts, a basketball tucked under his arm. “Wait—he's on the Haverford varsity team?”

“Yup.” Danny glanced inside the front window. He was three inches shorter than Lola and could've easily been mistaken for a fourth-grader.

Cate pressed the photo to her chest. “And he's only a sophomore,” she said. The only thing better than having a Haverford boyfriend was having a Haverford boyfriend on the varsity basketball team. Every Ashton Prep girl was part of the Facebook group “Waiting for Braden Pennyworth to be single again” or “I don't really like basketball but those Haverford jerseys are hot.” Betsy Carmichael even had a special segment on the
Ashton News
where she named members of the team M.A.P.s (Most Adorable Players).

“Good work,” Cate said, digging through her black and white Balenciaga bag. She pulled out a picture of Lola and one of her friends on Hampstead Heath in London. Cate had plucked it from her bulletin board that afternoon. Lola was wearing shorts that came down past her knees, and her fried hair was tucked behind her huge ears. Lola was more awkward than a fart in an elevator. It was kind of amazing that someone had a crush on her. “Try not to slobber all over it. I'm also ninety-nine percent certain she does not have a date to the Haverford formal.”

Danny shoved it in his backpack. “Thanks.” He smiled, pushing his dark curls out of his eyes. “Eli should be here in five minutes. He was just leaving the locker room when I saw him.” Then he took off down the street, leaving Cate to her research.

According to the folder, Eli ate a turkey burger with Swiss every day at lunch, always kept the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, and had been spotted hanging out on the grass outside the Museum of Natural History after school. He had three basketball games in the next two weeks, he wasn't good at long division, he bought his socks at American Apparel, and he might need glasses (
the Eagle seen squinting at the blackboard
).

Cate smoothed down the skirt of her Diane von Furstenberg chiffon dress. Stella had helped her pick it out after dinner, saying she'd worn something similar when she went to the movies with her sixth-grade boyfriend. Whenever Stella brought up boys, Cate tried her best to keep up, offering the occasional
I so know what you mean
, or
totally!
But the truth was, she so
didn't
know what Stella meant. Cate had spent every second of middle school with the Chi Beta Phis, planning brunches at L'Absinthe and picnics by the Turtle Pond. Every Valentine's Day Cate exchanged gifts with Blythe, Priya, and Sophie, making them cheesy doily paper cards. She hadn't even gotten her first kiss until this past summer. Now she was fourteen, Chi Beta Phi-less, and playing a serious game of catch-up. While everyone else was sprinting toward second dates, serious boyfriends, and hookups, Cate was still at the starting line, trying to figure out when the gun went off.

Across the street, Mrs. Ashford watered her window boxes, singing to her mums like they were small children. Cate let out a deep breath as a boy turned down Eighty-second Street. It was Eli—she recognized him immediately. He was still in his Haverford warm-ups, his blue pants making a swishing sound as he walked.

She'd had this conversation in her head a thousand times in the last two days, when she was brushing her teeth, blow-drying her hair, and in the last moments before she fell asleep. She imagined bumping into Eli on the crosstown bus, or catching him peering over the roof deck wall at her, as she lay out in her Theory bikini.
You live next door—right?
she'd casually say, shooting him her most flirtatious,
I haven't been stalking you
smile. But now that he was actually here, walking toward her—in real life—her mouth felt dry, like she'd just eaten an entire box of saltines.

Eli pushed his thick black hair off his forehead and looked up at Cate's town house. “What's up…
neighbor?
” He let out a little laugh.

“Hey.” Cate held on to the wrought iron fence, steadying herself. “Yeah, I meant to introduce myself the other day. I'm Cate—Cate Sloane.”

“I'm Eli. I would shake hands, but I'm a little sweaty.” Cate studied him as he ran his thumbs along the straps of his backpack. His dark eyes were surrounded by a thick curtain of black lashes, and he was the three T's that Ashton girls always used when classifying the Haverford basketball team: tall, tan, and toned. “I just moved this weekend, from Connecticut.”

I know
, Cate thought. After Danny gave her the first batch of intel, she'd Googled Westport and found out Eli had run a 5K there, finishing in an impressive 20:34. She discovered an old camp photo of him on a sailboat and an article on deer he'd written for the school paper. Even if he'd only spoken twenty-two words to her, she was starting to feel like she knew him better than anyone else. “How do you like New York so far?”

Eli smirked, his lips twisting like he'd just licked a lemon. “Well…I still don't instinctively know which way is uptown and which way is downtown like everyone else seems to, and this morning some cabbie tried to make me roadkill.” He rested his foot on the fence, his leg just inches away from Cate's.

Mrs. Ashford turned away from her mums and raised an eyebrow at Cate. She had been friends with Cate's mother and felt that entitled her to eavesdrop on all Cate's conversations. Cate shot her an evil glare and turned back to Eli.

“Well, if you need any help, I'm right next door.” She imagined taking the 6 train downtown with Eli, pressed close together in the crowded subway car. They'd walk arm in arm around the über-modern Whitney Museum and giggle as they tried to figure out how a plain red canvas made “art.” Cate couldn't wait for Blythe, Priya, and Sophie to spot them holding hands on Madison Avenue, or sharing a kiss in Bergdorf 's. It would be official proof that Cate was over the Chi Beta Phis. She could finally stop thinking about how Sophie's birthday was coming up in October, or how Priya's parents were taking her to India in December, and move onto bigger and better—not to mention cuter and cuddlier—things.

“I could use a personal tour guide…” Eli said, emphasizing the word
personal
. Cate twisted her dark brown hair into a ponytail and smiled. She would do anything to have five hours alone with Eli, even if it meant walking Manhattan from the Hudson to the East River. “I'll take you up on that.” Then he started up his stoop.

Cate watched him go, her hand gripping the fence. She
couldn't hold a stake out every night, hoping he'd walk by. She needed a goal, a plan, so she could stop
imagining
hanging out with him and start
actually
hanging out with him. “Maybe I'll check out one of your basketball games sometime?” she called after him. She'd already looked at the schedule.

Eli paused on the top step and put his key in the door. “Yeah, there's one tomorrow. You should come,” He smiled, then disappeared inside.

“
You should come
,” Cate whispered to herself. She held the folder to her chest, her heart pounding like she'd just run ten blocks. Tomorrow Eli would scan the stands and see her sitting there, her hair straightened, lips glossed, cheering him on. By Friday they'd be sitting in the Rose Planetarium in the dark, huddled together under a fake sky of stars. And next week she'd be lying out on the Great Lawn after school, using his chest as a pillow. Forget the fitted vest—Eli Punch was the hottest new fall accessory.

S
tella winced as Myra Granberry plunged the scalpel into the pig's heart, half expecting to get squirted in the eye with formaldehyde. She'd been stuck with Myra as a lab partner ever since her first day at Ashton Prep, when Cate banned her from the Chi Beta Phis. Myra was brilliant at biology and genuinely nice, but standing next to her made Stella a nerd by association. Myra had a clunky mobile that she clipped to her uniform skirt, was the star of the Mathletes, and fancied using words like
golly
and
gosh
.

“The first cut should be vertically down the center.” Mrs. Perkins, their just-out-of-grad-school biology teacher, drew a line over the diagram of the heart taped to the board. Whenever she raised her arms too high, her Ann Taylor cardigan rode up, exposing her Celtic lower-back tattoo. Around the room, girls hovered over their dissection trays. Analeigh Price, the girl who'd declared herself an “animal lover” before class, choked back tears as she made the first cut.

Just then Priya strolled in, whispering an apology to Mrs. Perkins. Her curly black hair was pulled back in a loose bun, and the collar of her pink Ben Sherman button-down was popped up. She made a beeline to Stella's lab table, clutching a lavender flyer in her hand. Stella recognized it immediately.

“Just when I thought this couldn't get any more ridiculous. Now you're
advertising
for friends?” Priya shook her head as she set the flyer down in front of Stella. Her black eyes were lined with silver shadow, making them sparkle.

Stella scraped her nails along the wooden stool. She'd never had to advertise for friends before—ever. In London she, Pippa, and Bridget were invited to every party and every cricket match, cheering as their mate Robin Lawrence ran between wickets. After they started having tea at the Ritz on Saturday afternoons, the entire school showed up, ordering the same carrot cake Stella loved. Last fall a fifth-year had even started a blog, showing girls which shops carried the designer samples Stella inherited from her mum. But in Manhattan—at Ashton—she was a bloody pariah.

Stella was tired of waiting for classes with Cate to have a decent conversation with someone, tired of getting points off her English papers for spelling color
colour
or center
centre
, and most important, she was tired of the Beta Sigma Phis treating her like some poor, desperate loner.

She glanced at Myra, who was now cutting at the heart sideways, licking her lips in concentration like it was a juicy slab of Kobe beef. Stella grabbed the tray from her and shoved it into Priya's arms, knocking her in the ribs. “Here—I know how much you love dissecting things.”

Priya backed away. “No, I'll leave that to you and your”—she smirked, eyeing Myra—
“friend.”
She retreated to a table on the other side of the classroom, where Sophie was watching everything. As Priya put on her latex gloves, Sophie snuck a small wave.

Stella couldn't help but smile. Sometimes she felt like Sophie was the real victim in all of this. Just yesterday, she'd ambushed Stella in the gym loo.
I'm sorry!
she'd whispered under the stall.
I just want us all to be friends again!

“What did she mean—
advertise?
” Myra asked. Her gloves were covered with pink fluid, so she was trying to scratch her nose with her arm.

“It's just…Cate and I got into a huge fight with Blythe, Priya, and Sophie.” Stella put on her latex gloves and held the tray steady. “Now we're forming our own sorority, and we're looking for a third member. It's a long story. Basically they were mad that I lied about some things.” Even now, Stella couldn't believe how angry they'd gotten. What was she supposed to do, say
Hi, nice to meet you, my dad cheated on my mum with Cloud McClean? You know, that British pop singing twit with the new line of glitter thongs?
Before last week, she'd only told two people outside of her family about Cloud: Pippa and Bridget. It wasn't the type of thing you sent a mass e-mail about.

“What kinds of things?” Myra pressed. As she leaned over the tray, strands of white blond hair fell in her eyes. She wore a short-sleeved cotton turtleneck, the Ashton Prep crest pinned to the collar.

Myra Granberry was, quite possibly, the only person in the
world Stella could tell about Cloud without worrying the rumors would spread like chicken pox. At the very worst, she would only repeat it to their geometry teacher, Miss Katz, or her pet sea monkeys. She didn't talk to anyone else—or rather, no one else talked to her. “Do you know who Cloud McClean is?”

“Is she that eleventh-grader with the blue hair?” Myra asked, her brown eyes wide.

Stella laughed, but Myra kept looking at her. She had a bleached white mustache, and her nearly invisible brows were furrowed in confusion. Stella had never met anyone who didn't know who Cloud McClean was. It seemed like her song “Kick It” was playing on every radio station, that that silly advertisement of her eating lollipops was in every tube station, and that her line of glitter thongs was in every store, perched right next to the cash register. “No, not quite…. She's a pop singer. They were mad I was keeping a secret from them about my dad….” Stella glanced around the room, lowering her voice so only Myra could hear. “He cheated on my mum with her.”

Myra dropped the knife on the dissection tray, making a loud metallic
clink!
The entire room turned. “Oh my gosh,” Myra hissed. She looked around and leaned in close, lowering her voice. “I'm so sorry.”

“Right, thanks.” Stella felt her cheeks flush. Nobody had ever apologized for her dad cheating on her mum. Pippa and Bridget hadn't a bloody clue what to say when she told them—they mostly stared at their hands. Her mum had spent a week in her bedroom with the curtains drawn and her dad, Duke “Toddy” Childs, had apologized that “they had to go through this,” or
said he was sorry that “this had happened.” He made it sound like an earthquake, a perfect eight on the Richter scale, had destroyed their home and there was simply nothing he could've done about it.

After her parents told her about the divorce, Stella walked around their neighborhood alone, blaming the cold winter air for the tears in her eyes. She'd passed her house on Cheyne Walk three times, circling the block and wishing any other place was hers. She wanted to go back inside and have it be the summer again, when her family was celebrating Lola's eleventh birthday in the garden. Before Cloud ever met her dad. Before things went wrong.

“It's just—that's really awful.” Myra's brown eyes looked wet. She held a latex glove to her heart, like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. A tiny bit of pale pink liquid stained her shirt.

Stella turned away, trying to avoid Myra's gaze. “I'm fine, really.” Compared to Lola, she was. Lola hadn't talked to their dad since last winter. Every time he called her mobile, she sent it straight to voice mail. Before they left for New York, the three of them had eaten dinner at Pasha, the Turkish restaurant Lola had always loved. Lola played the mute card and refused to speak, even after their dad gave her a Burberry cat carrier for Heath Bar. He'd finally gotten so frustrated he'd canceled their dessert order.

“I kind of understand,” Myra continued. “My mom remarried a few years ago. It's just me and my dad. He invented the underwater flashlight?”

Myra waited for Stella to respond. She nodded as if to say,
Oh yes! The underwater flashlight!
Myra smiled, looking even happier than she had yesterday when Mrs. Perkins announced they were dissecting pig hearts. She was starting to make sense—the striped rainbow knee-highs she wore under her uniform skirt, her barely visible eyebrows, or the way her part was always crooked (and not in a cool, intentional way). Most mums would've broken out the home waxing kit before sending their daughter out of the house with a bleach blond mustache. Even if your dad
did
invent the underwater flashlight, or the underwater hair dryer, microwave, and popcorn maker—there were some things men just couldn't do.

“Anyway,” Myra continued, cutting back into the pig heart. “What do you think my chances are?”

Stella glanced around the room, which smelled of formaldehyde and bleach. Analeigh Price watched in horror as her lab partner picked the heart up, making it “dance.” Mrs. Perkins was sitting cross-legged on the corner of her desk, reapplying her lipstick. “Chances of what?” Stella asked, confused.

“Of making it into your sorority?” Myra pulled off her gloves. The heart was pinned open on the wax tray.

Stella tried to smile, but her skin felt as hard as plastic. Statistically speaking, Myra's chances were not even point one percent of point one percent. Cate would rather let Heath Bar use her Balenciaga bag as a litter box than let Myra Granberry, Mathlete president and proud owner of a ferret named Pythagoras, into Chi Sigma.

Stella looked down at the heart. She imagined a depressed
Myra eating a frozen dinner at her kitchen table, lit up by a single exposed lightbulb. Her father would keep on about the inner workings of his newest invention, pausing every so often to drop some crumbs to Pythagoras. “You have as good a chance as everyone else,” she offered.

“Gosh,” Myra said, clasping her hands together. “Thanks!” She enveloped Stella in a hug, squeezing her tightly.

Stella closed her eyes and hoped Cate would never find out she'd extended the invite. But more than that, Stella hoped Myra would have a last-minute Mathlete meeting, a sudden cold, or a cousin in on a surprise visit from Albuquerque—anything that would keep her from actually showing up.