The Elite (2 page)

“Where are you from, anyway?” the dark- haired girl asked, sliding her sunglasses down over her eyes.

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

“Normal, Illinois,” Casey said proudly, straightening up slightly and throwing her shoulders back. Normal might not be glamorous or sophisticated, but it was home—the only home she’d known for the past sixteen years.

“Is that really a . . . place?” the

honey-

blond girl asked

slowly, her forehead furrowed in concentration.

“Look,” Snow White said with an amused grin, pointing at her friend with the honey

locks—who looked awfully

confused. “She’s trying to think!”

“Where’s Illinois, anyway?” the honey-

girl mused,

completely unfazed by the dark- haired girl’s comment, checking the time on her black iPhone. “Isn’t it near Nebraska or something?” Without missing a beat, the dark- haired girl and the platinum blond cracked up, grabbing each other’s arms for support, wiping tears from their eyes with perfectly manicured fingertips. The honey-haired girl glared at them with her

bottle- glass green eyes, then turned back to Casey, her expression softening.

“I am
so
bad at geography,” she said apologetically, “I barely know where I am at all times.”

“You can say that again,” the platinum blond snorted, rolling her eyes and shifting her weight from one foot to another, anxious to get outside. “So,” she said, regarding Casey coolly with eyes like electric- green ice chips. “
Are
you?”

“Am I what?” Casey asked ner vous ly, acutely aware that she was sweating so hard that droplets of perspiration were likely to start rolling down her forehead at any moment.

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T H E E L I T E

“Normal,” the blond said with a tight smile. The other two girls had stopped fidgeting, and were listening to their conversation so closely that Casey thought they might be holding their breath.

“I
guess
so,” Casey answered uncertainly.

“I would imagine that being . . . I mean
living
in Normal would be awfully
pedestrian
,” the blond said with a sly smile.

Casey’s brain scrambled to keep up with the blond’s sophisticated banter—had she just been
insulted
? She couldn’t be totally sure.

“I’m Casey,” she said, holding out her hand, attempting to navigate the conversation back to safer, less shark- infested waters, remembering too late that her palms were basically an ocean of sweat.

“I’m Madison Macallister, the blond said with an air of imperiousness—as if Casey should’ve somehow known. “And this is Phoebe Reynaud.” The dark- haired girl smiled, exposing rows of brilliantly white teeth. Madison pointed one French- manicured finger at the girl with the honey- colored hair. “And that’s Sophie St. John. Welcome to The Bram,” she added—almost as an afterthought. The honey- girl waved one hand happily, then attempted to push a heavy sheaf of hair from her left eye.

“Oh my God,” Madison snapped, grabbing Sophie’s thin wrist. “STOP that!” Madison looked apologetically over at Casey. “We finally got her to grow her bangs out like Nicole Richie, you know—pre- pregnancy? But she keeps fidgeting with them. It’s so
annoying
.”

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

“I can’t
see
anything like this.” Sophie sighed exasperatedly.

“I feel like a cyclops.”

“You do have another eye, you know,” Phoebe giggled,

“and besides . . .”

“BEAUTY IS AGONY!” all three yelled out at once, laughing hysterically and slapping each other’s hands in high- fives.

“She’s just being a baby.” Madison pointed at Sophie with one slim, polished finger. “It’s not like she wasn’t
prepared
. I mean, we made her wear the cutest Christian Dior eye patch for two
weeks
before she even got her hair cut.”

“I don’t even look like Nicole Richie anyway,” Sophie mumbled.

“Not with that ass,” Madison added slyly. “From the back you look more like . . .
Beyoncé
.” Sophie blushed deeply, and Casey noticed that she was now holding her tote bag directly in front of her lower half and biting her bottom lip.

“So who’s your grandmother anyway?” Phoebe asked, pulling out a slim Bobbi Brown compact and checking her coral lip gloss in the mirror. Phoebe looked like she should be pouting on a beach somewhere in St. Tropez, waiting for some cute pool boy to bring her a frozen daiquiri with a tiny pink umbrella in it.

“Elizabeth Conway?” Casey said, wondering why the hell everything she said was coming out like a question today. “On the seventh floor.”

“I know her,” Madison said, looking over Casey’s shoulder and out onto the sun- baked streets. “She’s been here, like,
forever
. So, what’s that?” she asked, pointing one slim finger at 1 0

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Casey’s battered violin case like a cockroach had just crawled in the front door.

“Umm,” Casey stammered, her face flushing furiously the way it always did when she was anxious or embarrassed—and right now she was definitely both. “It’s just my violin.”

“Are you, like, some kind of child prodigy or something?”

Sophie asked excitedly.

“Does she
look
like a child to you, Sophs?” Phoebe quipped, rolling her eyes heavenward in obvious exasperation.

“Don’t answer that,” Madison said quickly, holding out a hand in Sophie’s direction.

“I’m
definitely
no prodigy,” Casey answered, looking down at her violin case for moral support. “I’ve been playing since I was six—but I’m really not that good. I don’t even take lessons anymore.” Casey was aware that she sounded vaguely desperate—

like she was making excuses. She wasn’t exactly embarrassed about her musical abilities, but she also knew that violinists weren’t usually included in the upper echelons of cool. It was bad enough that she came from a town that was clearly geo -

graph i cally undesirable—she didn’t want the first people she met in her building to think she was a clueless band geek on top of it.

And besides, she wasn’t sure how seriously she even took music anymore, anyway. For the last few months, she’d been contemplating quitting altogether.

“Since you were six?” Sophie said with amazement, her green eyes wide as saucers. “That’s like, practically forever!”

Just then Madison’s cell phone stared to ring with a series of hyper- annoying beeps and chirps. She pulled a limited- edition 1 1

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

cranberry Razr covered with sparkling Swarovski crystals from her Coach monogramed tote, and rolled her eyes. “Ugh. It’s Drew.
Again
.” She pressed a button on the side of her cell, and the beeping magically stopped. “I’m sorry.” She turned to Casey apologetically. “I’m all blown up today.” Madison shoved her phone back into her bag.

“Blown up?” Casey asked, her brow wrinkled with confusion. She felt like she’d landed on some foreign planet where everyone spoke a different language.

Sophie rolled her eyes and smiled. “She just means that her cell’s been ringing off the hook.”

“Is Drew your boyfriend or something?” Casey asked, fidgeting with her stainless steel Fossil watch. She liked oversized watches. They made her feel comparatively tiny and delicate, which was a plus, considering that most of the time she felt like a big galoot—totally uncoordinated in every way possible.

“Ha!” Madison snorted. “He wishes.”

“I don’t know
why
you won’t go out with him again,”

Phoebe whined. “He’s an adorababe.”

“Yeah,” Sophie giggled while surreptitiously swiping the hair away from her left eye, “he’s totally the hotness. He just got back from spending the whole summer in Amsterdam. So, I’m sure he’s fried what’s left of his brain drinking beers and smoking way too much weed in gross bars with weird Euros in black turtlenecks and high- concept glasses.”

“I’ve got it,” Phoebe exclaimed, the corners of her cherry-red lips turning up into another smile. “He’s AMSTERDAM-AGED!” Phoebe and Sophie burst into another giggling fit, 1 2

T H E E L I T E

wiping the wetness from their eyes with their manicured fingers while Madison tried her best to look completely annoyed.

“Oh my God, you guys, STOP,” Madison said, finally giving in and laughing along, her relentlessly white teeth shining in her lightly tanned face. She pulled an elastic band off of her wrist, pulling her shoulder- length hair back into a smooth ponytail that fell down her back like a waterfall of silky blond strands. “So,” she said coolly, turning to Casey. “Do you know where you’re going to school yet?”

“Umm . . .” Casey mumbled, watching as both Phoebe and Sophie glanced at her battered suitcase, then looked away. “I think it’s called Meadow something . . . Meadow View maybe?”

Her voice trailed off into nothingness. Oh, crap. Why couldn’t she remember the name? It’s not like her mother hadn’t told her at least fifty times over the last month.

“You mean Meadowlark,” Madison said knowingly, nodding her sleek blond head approvingly. “That’s where we go.

We’ll be ju niors this year.”

“Thank
God
,” Phoebe moaned.

“Me, too” Casey said shyly, scuffing her flats against the smooth marble floor. Phoebe and Sophie started whispering to one another, jabbing each other in the sides with their thin, pointy elbows. “Well, I should probably go and get settled in.”

“We’re going over to the park to lay out.” Phoebe waved her hands as she spoke, a set of gold bangles tinkling on one wrist. “You should come by later. We’ve got mojitos- to- go,”

she trilled, pointing to an expensive- looking aluminum thermos poking out from her baby blue Tod’s tote.

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

“The park?” Casey asked, wondering if there was more than one in the neighborhood, and how to ask without looking completely clueless—which, of course she totally was.

“Uh,
hello
?” Madison snapped, looking at Casey like she was a moron straight from the planet Don’t-Talk- To- Me. “
Central
Park? Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s right across the
street
.”

“Oh,” Casey said, flushing bright red. “Central Park. Yeah, I know where that is.”

“I should hope so,” Madison said dryly, “considering that if you go out the front door of this building and walk straight ahead, you can’t miss it.”

As the trio walked off with brightly colored beach towels bulging out of their bags, Casey couldn’t help but feel a little sad as she dragged her suitcases into the elevator. She felt really . . . alone all of a sudden. Her ears popped as the elevator climbed skyward, and she couldn’t help thinking about Marissa and Brandy, her two best friends back home. On her last Saturday in Normal, they had wandered around the mall, trying on the eve ning gowns and lingerie in Saks Fifth Avenue—just for fun, until they collapsed in a pile of giggles in a booth at Starbucks, ordering caramel lattes and gossiping over the latest issues of
In Touch
and
Us Weekly
. Casey felt a lump rise in her throat and her eyes were hot and wet at the corners. Back home in Normal, they were probably driving downtown like they always did on hot, lazy summer afternoons, stopping for ice cream at The Brain Freeze and checking out all the cute guys wearing wifebeaters and board shorts.

Casey felt the tears that were welling up in her gray eyes 1 4

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threaten to spill over onto her lightly freckled cheeks, and she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, smudging the black eyeliner she’d tried to apply so perfectly that morning back in the Midwest. But before she could really start to cry, she stopped herself.
Ugh. Stop being such a baby
. Casey sighed, snif-fling just a little now.
You’re in New York City
—
a place where anything can happen
.
And anything just might! And besides
, she thought with a smile as the elevator stopped at the seventh floor,
I’ve already made new friends here
.

Well, sort of.

1 5

cruel

summer

Madison Macallis ter lay back on her turq uoise and

lemon–striped Frette beach towel and scowled into the sun. It was a perfect August afternoon in Manhattan, the kind she liked best. The cloudless sky overhead mirrored the exact color of her new baby- blue Jimmy Choo alligator sandals, the heat blazed through her white Eres bikini, turning her skin an even darker shade of caramel, the humidity hung in the air like the promise of something sticky. Even though most people thought New York in the summertime was the definition of hell on earth, the hotter it got, the happier Madison usually was. But in spite of the flawless weather, the cute guys playing Frisbee in their board shorts, the mouthwatering scent of grilled T H E E L I T E

burgers and french fries wafting through the air, she was in a bad mood and everyone was going to pay.

“Ugh.” Madison pushed her D&G shades on top of her blond head, and stared at Sophie and Phoebe—who were busy sipping mojitos from crystal tumblers Sophie had swiped from her parents’ well- stocked bar. “Did you
see
her clothes?” Madison shivered with revulsion, her perfect ski- slope nose (courtesy of Dr. Stone, the Park Avenue plastic surgeon her mother positively swore by), wrinkling adorably. “And don’t even get me started on that
hair
.”

“Her hair wasn’t
that
bad,” Sophie offered meekly, her eyes hidden by an enormous pair of white Pucci sunglasses.

“Maybe we should rethink your look after all,” Madison said with a dismissive snort, lying back on her towel and pulling her shades over her green eyes. “You’re obviously going blind.”

“Oh, come on, Madison,” Phoebe said, removing a bottle of OPI’s I’m Not Really a Waitress from her baby-blue Tod’s tote, the fuchsia shade winking in the sunlight. “She’s not
that
bad. I mean, the clothes are kind of a disaster, but it’s nothing a little retail therapy can’t fix.” Phoebe leaned over and began touching up her pedicure with the bright polish.