These Boots Are Made for Stalking (24 page)

On the other side of the glass, Massie’s iridescent-glossed lips were moving slowly. Sending Claire a message. Claire leaned
toward the window, glad there was a pane of glass between them and wondering if it was heel-proof. She stage-shrugged at Massie,
to show she didn’t understand.

In one smooth movement, Massie reached into her bag and produced her iPhone. Without taking her burning gaze from Claire for
a second, her fingers flew over the keys. Claire’s Motorola buzzed in her pocket.

Massie:
This. Is. War.

Claire balked at the screen, feeling like someone had just taken a blowtorch to her insides. A declaration of war? For trying
to find friends that made her happy?

Tearing her eyes from Massie’s, Claire whipped around and reached for her flat iron. Her heart was thumping almost as loud
as the beat of the music. But it wasn’t from fear, like it usually was with Massie. It was from anger.

Suddenly, the spotlight in the living room seemed brighter, the music louder. Layne’s choreographed flailing seemed ten times
more carefree, and Syd and Cara’s smiles seemed even more genuine.

No way was Claire going to let Massie tell her who she could and couldn’t be friends with. No way was she going to suffer
just to make Massie feel more in charge. More alpha. Not anymore.

The girls giggle-waved Claire over to the mic. “It’s the FINALE!”

Quickly, Claire composed a text of her own.

Claire:
Bring. It. On.

Without even looking out the window, Claire powered off her cell and joined the group. Wedging between her two new friends,
Claire felt safe. Protected. And ready to pull the curtain on Massie Block’s reign of terror.

She took a deep breath and prepared to belt out the last note of the song. But for Claire, this didn’t feel like a finale.
It felt like her grand debut.

BUBBLE TRAIN

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH

12:18
P.M.

Skye skipped down the plane’s stairwell, downgrading her smile from high beam to low so as not to blind anyone with her excitement.
Her mint, jersey-knit dance skirt ballooned up, and she shoved her hands in her skirt pockets to push it down around her long,
tan legs. Just as her ballet flats made contact with the gold carpet that cut across the Jetway, the door of the private plane
closed behind her.

A glass tower rose in the distance, and green caterpillar-shaped trees waved in the breeze. She arranged her white-blond wavelets
behind her and blinked. Where was the welcome committee? Where was her adoring public? Where was
anyone
? She wasn’t used to being alone. It was her unwritten policy to have people around her at all times. The silence made her
felt a little lost and a little grown-up all at once, like the first time she’d flown by herself to visit her grandma in Florida.

Fishing her aPod out of her purse, she kept her eyes glued on the horizon, searching for signs of life.

“Follow the gold carpet,” a honeyed Australian voice piped in.

There, on the rectangular screen of her aPod, was Shira’s face framed by her famous red waves. Heel-toeing along the carpet,
which sparkled like a thousand Swarovski crystals, Skye felt like Dorothy in Oz—only she never wanted to go home.

The carpet led her through a thicket of Joshua trees, and when she emerged on the other side of the green pine curtain, she
found herself staring at a pink sand beach and what appeared to be miles of blue water.

“Ohmuhgud,” she gasped, noticing the high-def rainbow up ahead.

WHOOOOOOO!

A translucent train that looked like a massive string of see-through pearls slithered along the sand and stopped in front
of her. Skye tried to scope out the other girls, but all she saw was the back of their blowouts as they climbed inside their
personal train cars.

Was a student body more alpha than OCD’s even possible? And if it was, what did it look like? September
Vogue
? She was gagging to know. Or was the bitter taste of chocolate in the back of her throat the jet’s mini cupcakes going AWOL
after the private plane ride?

Once inside, Skye settled into an egg-shaped Lucite chair. An identical one faced her; only it was empty. For a moment Skye
tried to imagine who she would want joining her on this dreamlike adventure, if she could pick one person to fill the seat.
She ran through her long list of friends, boyfriends, and dance friends. But no one from the past seemed good enough for the
future. Not even her perfect mother. Not when the future looked like
this
! Why wear last year’s dance shoes in next year’s recital?

A small silver wheel next to the chair turned like a mini Ferris wheel, rotating an assortment of mini snacks—tiny bags of
veggie chips, bite-size brownies, and those mini candy bars that kids get at Halloween—the kind Skye had never outgrown and
loved year round. Miniatures made her feel like she was larger than life, like the world was in the palm of her hand.

She grabbed a tray of mini beakers filled with colored water—blue, purple, pink, and yellow—and took a sip. They looked like
drinkable glow sticks and tasted like candy. Then she turned her attention to the @-shaped map that suddenly appeared before
her.

A blinking gold arrow next to the words 
Skye Hamilton is here
was flash-traveling from the opening of the circle toward the
a
inside. Skye fought the urge to press her glossed lips to the train’s window to get a better view of the miragelike oasis
that rose out of the dusty desert. Clear water and palm trees were whisking by. She was moving!

“Welcome to Alpha Academy, Skye.” Shira Brazille, dressed in a single-shouldered black Grecian dress and dark round sunglasses,
suddenly appeared in the other chair.

Skye gasped, and then giggled nervously.

“Oh, hi, Ms. Brazille.” She choked back the bitter taste of chocolate once again. “It’s a total honor to meet you!” Right
hand out like a true professional, Skye leaned forward to shake Shira’s hand, but her fingertips went straight through the
Australian mogul and she fell to the floor.

“You cannot interface with this hologram,” a stern British accent warned.

Skye straightened back up, concealing her blushing cheeks behind a wall of blond hair.

Shira cackled. “Nothing is ever what it seems, is it?” She kept laughing, like this was some practical joke they’d been pulling
on each other for years.

Skye faced the window, urging her cheeks to transition from fuchsia back to rosy glow.

“My campus is inspired by the Acropolis,” Shira’s hologram explained as they zipped past palm leaves that turned to cherry
blossoms like someone had hit “replace all.” Seconds later the heavy pink blooms turned to flowering cacti.

“What is this place?” Skye marveled. She had been to the actual Acropolis and seen the ruins with her parents, but there was
nothing Greek looking about the super-futuristic architecture springing up around her like pages in a pop-up book. Instead
of marble structures crumbling, glass towers soared. The scenery reminded her of dancing—fluid and ever-evolving.

“Behold the Pavilion,” Shira bellowed as they passed an oblong structure with white steel wings stretching out from its center,
like a phoenix rising.

“It has bris soleil—sunshades that open and close depending on the amount of sunlight.”

As if on cue, the building’s wings began to flap, creating breezy shade.

“Ohmuhgud.” Skye blinked her eyelids sharply, trying to snap a mental picture for her friends and family back home. No matter
how many international dance tours her mother had been on, she had definitely never seen anything like this.

“The Pavilion is the central gathering place. Inside are the health food court, shops, lounges, the spa, and a salon. You
won’t need money to buy anything. Just good grades, which have a monetary value and will be immediately deposited in your
personal account—you access it through your aPod. You can eat for a week off an A. But an F will leave you skinnier than salmonella.
It’s just like life, m’dear. You fail, you starve.”

Skye giggled on the off chance that Shira was joking.

“You’ll notice that all the structures here are curved.” Hologram Shira pointed out the Zen Center (a giant building shaped
like a cross-legged Buddha), the harp-shaped Music Hall, and the ark-shaped zoo full of endangered animals. “There are no
angles at Alphas—in the architecture, anyway.” Shira threw her head back and laughed. She didn’t have a single filling in
her entire mouth.

The train looped into the ultramodern Tokyo Times Square-esque area, located to the north of the Pavilion. W
ELCOME
S
KYE
! scrolled across each electronic billboard. Then the digital letters morphed into different images of her dancing. Skye’s
performance at Juilliard last summer, showcases at Body Alive, home movies of her and her mother performing a pas de deux.
A cell phone video of her and the DSL Daters freestyling. Were the girls in the other bubbles seeing this, or did they have
their own greatest-hits reels?

Shira’s hologram gestured out the window to a vertical farm, with each floor housing a different crop, from super fruits like
açaí berries to staples like green beans or those adorable little grape tomatoes. “Alphas is one hundred percent green. Solar
panels power the island, and every building is smart and energy efficient.”

“Just like you,” Skye joked. But the hologram didn’t get it. Instead, it stared straight at her with a
let me know when you’re done doing amateur stand-up so I can continue
glare. “Sorry.” Skye bit her bottom lip.

As the bubble train rounded another corner, rows of empty snow globe–shaped domes emerged. The train pulled closer, and Skye
realized that there were no defining house numbers or street names to identify the residences, just the glittery autographs
of the alpha females the houses were named for radiating off the glass.

Skye clapped her hands together. Where else would Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Beyoncé, Mother Theresa, and Virginia Woolf be neighbors?

“Welcome to your new home.” Shira’s image began to fade. “It may look yabbo on the outside, but trust me—it’s quite different
once you get in.”

The doors opened with
boop
, releasing Skye and a carload of chilled air in front of a house marked J
ACKIE O
. Waves of heat threatened to melt her like Pinkberry, but the glass door of her new home sensed her presence and slid open.

Inside, the house was divided into three floors, connected by a sweeping glass staircase that ran along the side of the circular
walls. Skye raced through, squealing for joy with each new discovery. The collection of the original Jackie O’s glasses encased
in glass, the smart kitchen with a giant touch screen full of snack options, the home theater complete with stage and lighting
board, the Vichy shower bathroom, the study lounge with massage chairs, the walk-in uniform closet filled with an array of
metallic-colored separates, the lap pool!

“Hello?” Skye called, hoping to share the excitement with a real person.

Next, she headed up a seemingly floating glass staircase anchored by transparent glass to the bedroom upstairs. The space
was wide open and loftlike, with a giant dome skylight that filled the room with light. Five canopied beds were arranged in
a horseshoe, each dressed up in a fluffy white comforter.

“Phew,” she muttered, relieved. Five beds meant five girls. She wouldn’t be alone forever.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing,” said an uplifting female voice.

“Hullo?” Heart thumping, Skye scanned the room. “Who said that?”

“Helen Keller,” said the voice. “I was quoting her.” An extremely tall woman in a pale yellow tunic appeared before her. Her
face was surprisingly delicate, with small features framed by long, wavy blond locks. She looked like she was carved from
butter.