The Elite

ELITE

jennifer banash

THE ELITE

the

ELITE

jennifer banash

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third- party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Banash.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Banash, Jennifer.

The elite / Jennifer Banash.—Berkley JAM trade paperback ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When Casey McCloy moves into her grandmother’s exclusive New York City apartment building for a year, she must decide if she is willing to give up herself to be part of the most popular clique at the prestigious high school where she will be a junior.

ISBN: 1-4362-2318-0

[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Wealth—Fiction. 3. Identity—Fiction. 4. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y. )—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.B2176Eli 2008

[Fic]—dc22

2007052060

welcome

to the

big apple

Casey McCloy pushed through the revolving glass doors of The Bramford—an exclusive high- rise apartment building in the Carnegie Hill district of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and stepped inside the cool, gray marble lobby. Casey stood in the middle of the enormous space and looked around slowly, her yellow hair twisting down her back in corkscrew curls that, as usual, went every which way with a life of their own that bordered on psychotic.
Shitshitshit.
Casey sighed in exasperation, dropping the battered blue Samsonite suitcase she held in one hand, a black, beat- up violin case in the other, and pushed her hair out of her face, wishing for the millionth time that she’d remembered to wear a hair tie on her wrist—

where she clearly needed it—not packed away in her stupid J E N N I F E R B A N A S H

suitcase. She craned her neck, mouth open, taking in the elaborate colored glass atrium above her head that sparkled in the afternoon sunlight, and streaked the gray, marble floors with splashes of green and gold.

The Bramford’s stately marble-and-glass lobby was as hushed and silent as a church, the quiet broken only by the high- pitched, slightly musical pinging sound the elevator made as the gleaming steel doors at the far end of the room opened, and the clicking of stilettos on the marble floor as well- dressed women in clothes that probably cost more than every article of clothing Casey had ever owned in her life combined passed by, leaving an intoxicating spicy scent in their wake. To Casey it smelled like the blooms of rare, hot house flowers mixed with the buttery-soft smell of leather, and the crisp, green scent of new hundred-dollar bills. Not only was the interior posh and sophisticated, but Casey knew from her relentless Googling, that The Bramford practically defined Upper East Side excess, with amenities that included a twenty- four- hour doorman and concierge—just in case you needed someone to make your dinner reservations at Per Se, or pick up your dry cleaning—a state-of-the-art fitness center with rows of the latest gleaming machines, an Entertainment Lounge on the first floor, featuring an adjacent, heavily landscaped outdoor garden, and, last, but not least, a children’s playroom, where Prada- and Gucci-clad mothers could drop their children off before heading off to their weekly appointments at The Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon for manicures, pedicures, hot stone massages, and salty seaweed wraps.

2

T H E E L I T E

“Can I help you, miss?” Casey jumped as an older man in a red- and- black uniform approached, his blue eyes kind and crinkled. Casey smiled ner vous ly and smoothed down the white mini she’d bought at the mall specifically for the trip. Her thin, light pink American Apparel tank that had seemed so sophisticated back home in Normal, Illinois, now stuck to her damp flesh and resembled a rag her mother might use to dust the furniture.

“I’m here to see Nanna—” Casey felt her cheeks turning bright red at the mention of the pet name she’d had for her grandmother since she was old enough to talk. And, speaking of talking, was that actually her
voice
reverberating off the crisp, white walls of the lobby? She sounded so totally . . . Midwestern. Not that being from Normal was so terrible—it just wasn’t particularly glamorous. “—I mean,
Mrs
. Conway,” she said more assertively this time, trying her best to pretend that she’d lived in Manhattan all of her life. Casey wiped a hand across her brow, trying her best to sound like she actually knew where she was going, which, of course, she didn’t. “She’s my grandmother.

I think she’s on the seventh floor?”
Ugh
, she thought, pushing her hair back with one hand,
why am I so ner vous? And, more important, why do I have to sweat so much?
She’d always hated the summer—especially August. Even her
feet
were sweating in her new baby- pink Old Navy ballet flats. The doorman nodded, his lips turning up into an amused grin under a bushy gray mous-tache. He placed a large, wrinkled hand on her shoulder, and pointed toward a bank of shining silver elevators at the far end of the lobby.

3

J E N N I F E R B A N A S H

“Just take the elevator up to 7. She’s in apartment 7C. I’ll buzz her and let her know you’ve arrived.”

“Thanks.” Casey sighed gratefully, dragging her suitcase and violin across the floor, hoping that the delicate instrument hadn’t been reduced to kindling during the long, bumpy trip.

She felt totally rumpled and gross, her shirt sticking to her back in the humid, late August heat. Just once it would’ve been nice to show up somewhere looking cool and put- together.

On the plane she’d sipped a glass of orange juice, her white Isaac Mizrahi sunglasses from Target covering her eyes, imagining her new life in Manhattan, where surely she’d be as pop -

u lar and sophisticated as Molly Ringwald in
The Breakfast Club
, her favorite movie of all time.

“But the sexual politics are completely outdated!” her mother would shout whenever Casey put on the DVD for the trillionth time. Barbara McCloy was a professor of Women’s Studies at Illinois State and she couldn’t understand how her womb had produced Casey, who would’ve loved to have been teleported out of her own curly- haired unglamorous world, and into the body of someone a lot more exciting. Not that her mother understood—her mother truly believed that making a fashion statement amounted to wearing long hippie skirts in hideous batik prints, and was always trying to get Casey to buy her jeans at Wal- Mart instead of the department stores at the mall—or the exclusive boutiques that lined Normal’s small downtown area.

And when Barbara won a grant to do research at some fancypants university in London for her first book, Casey jumped at 4

T H E E L I T E

the chance to move in with Nanna for a while. Staying with her dad was out of the question—since the divorce three years ago, he’d moved to Seattle to take a position at an up- and- coming dot- com that had recently folded, leaving her dad out of a job.

“More like dot
gone
,” her mother had snorted after he called and broke the news a month ago after dinner.

Casey sighed, feeling the sweat coating her limbs. If she were suddenly catapulted into the body of someone truly glamorous, she’d be wearing a tight, sparkling dress, her hair shining in the New York sunlight, men following her down the street like dogs, tails wagging. Instead, she had a juice stain on her skirt, and her hair was full of snarls and sticking out every which way from her sweaty head. Even her bare legs felt grimy—like she’d been rolling around in the street instead of walking on it.

The elevator arrived with the chiming of bells, and the doors opened to the sound of high- pitched giggles. Three girls stood in the elevator clutching towels and tote bags looking cool, sophisticated, and decidedly bored with it all—the three most beautiful girls Casey had ever seen.

“I mean, she looked totally fug. What was she thinking wearing that tutu? I mean,
hello
, its Bungalow 8, not a ballet recital!”

“Totally!” The girl with the black hair giggled, and with that the three grabbed each other’s bare arms and stepped out of the elevator, which closed with a loud ding behind them, announc-ing their arrival to everyone in the vicinity. If nothing else, it was clear to Casey that these girls positively needed an audience.

5

J E N N I F E R B A N A S H

A platinum blond wearing a white bikini top, a short, pink mini, and hot-pink Tory Burch Reva ballet flats stood in the middle, flanked by two girls—one with jet- black hair, the other a sandy, honeyed blond. The girl with the dark locks wore a pair of cutoff True Religion jeans with her metallic blue bikini, and when Casey looked down, she saw perfectly pedicured toes peeking out from the silver Coach flip- flops she’d been molesting for
ages
at the Coach factory outlet on her uber- rare trips to Chicago. With her gleaming hair and peaches- and-cream complexion, she reminded Casey of the drawings of Snow White in the storybooks of her childhood—the hair dark without being alternative or gothic, and lips as red as cherries in the snow. As a finishing touch, huge chrome sunglasses covered her fine- boned face.

The other girl had hair as honeyed as her skin—which shone against the bright yellow bikini top she wore. Her hair, streaked with golden highlights, was cut to the shoulders, bangs sweeping across one pale blue eye, obscuring it completely. A thin, white sarong was draped across her waist, and a gold anklet shone on the burnished skin of her ankle. Her arms and legs gleamed from a liberal application of the Nars gardenia- scented bronzing oil Casey always slathered on herself liberally at Sephora, but never bought—considering it was almost fifty dollars a bottle.

The platinum blond in the middle was, quite simply, the most beautiful girl Casey had ever seen outside of the pages of magazines like
Vogue
or
Elle
. As shocking as her hair color was, it somehow looked natural, with no roots, and none of the 6

T H E E L I T E

brassiness that usually went along with a severe bleach job. Her face was a perfect long oval, and her green eyes glittered like hard pieces of jade over cheekbones that were sharp enough to cut glass. She looked a little like Carolyn Bessette, Casey thought, taking in her long legs, and flawless golden tan—if Carolyn Bessette were still alive and walking the streets of the Upper East Side . . .

“She’s a walking fashion violation.” The dark- haired girl giggled, rummaging in her white patent leather Kate Spade tote distractedly, her voice high and sweet. “She shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house—much less go to Bungalow.”

“Its absoludacris,” the honey- haired girl quipped, swiping a MAC lip gloss wand across her already pink, sticky lips. “The doorman must be smoking crack again or something.”

Casey cleared her throat and looked at the floor, trying to be as invisible as possible—as if that was ever going to happen considering she was standing right in front of them. She swallowed hard, conscious of the sweat running down her back.

The platinum blond fixed her green eyes on Casey and looked her slowly up and down, her gaze catlike.

“Visiting?” she asked coolly, taking in everything from Casey’s flushed face, to her stained white mini, and cheap pink ballet flats. “Because you definitely don’t
live
here.”

“Actually, I do . . . now,” Casey blurted out, placing her bags down on the floor and pulling the straps of her tank up on her shoulders. “I’m staying with my grandmother for a while.”