HOTEL LINDO
¡I!’S VIP CASTING CONTEST LAUNCH PARTY

Monday, June 8
10:07 P.M.

The music stopped.

VIPs gasped.

And the peacocks fluttered off in a panic.

The limestone patio was covered in thousands of crystals, which no one dared take or even touch. Instead, they stepped back, as if each glistening stone were a live grenade.

Everyone stared at the girls, their brightly shadowed lids heavy with disgust. Even Juan’s glass eyes seemed to know who was to blame.

“It was an accident,” Alicia desperately wanted to explain. But her lips felt like they were glossed with Krazy Glue, and she couldn’t utter a word.

“ADM.” Nina shook her head and sighed.

Suddenly the crowd parted and a very short, very stocky, rectangular-framed woman appeared before them, wearing a zipped-up white leather jacket, matching leather skinny pants, and canvas stilettos. Her frizzy black hair was tied loosely in a bun atop of her long head. The round, dime-shaped mole to the right of her lip was home to three wiry hairs, which she pulled and twisted while she surveyed the damage.

“¿Quién es el responsable?” She scanned the crowd with her beady dark eyes.

“¡Ella!” Nina stomped down on a yellow crystal and pointed at Alicia.

Everyone gasped again.

Alicia nodded in agreement, like she understood the conversation, which she didn’t. But ¡i! was probably watching, and if she revealed herself as a clueless American tourist now, her future as a foreign video star would be opposite of successful.

“¡Vengan a mi oficina!” Come to my office! The she-dwarf gripped Alicia’s ear and tugged. “¡Ahora!”

More than anything, Alicia wanted to threaten the little woman with a lawsuit, but she had no idea how to say that in Spanish. Instead, she gave her best Lindsay-Lohan-in-trouble-with-the-cops-again pout and silently thanked Gawd bad-girl teens were trendy.

“Adiós,” Nina snickered.

“Usted también.” The troll immediately reached for Nina’s purple ear and tugged her too.

“Soy inocente!” Nina shouted her innocence. But the she-dwarf yanked like she knew otherwise.

After a humiliating-times-ten journey through the lobby, the girls were ear-tossed into the woman’s office.

“Siéntese.” She chin-pointed to the two iridescent-blue, feather-covered wing chairs that faced her poured- concrete desk.

The office had a cold feel to it, even though it was nauseatingly humid and had the soggy-cereal smell of fish food. A gold plaque on the woman’s otherwise empty desk took care of the introductions. It said ESMERALDA BELMONTE.

Once the girls were seated, Esmeralda slammed the door behind them. “¡Esto es un desastre!” she barked. Her voice was low and scratchy, like she had been swallowing Swarovskis since birth.

Alicia turned to make sure the door was shut and they were alone. Apart from an iridescent-blue peacock that was pecking insects out of a purple-lighted aquarium, they were.

“Do you speak English?” she asked sweetly. “It’s not that I don’t understand Spanish, it’s just that—”

“She’s American.” Nina rolled her eyes.

“My mother’s Span—”

“Enough!” Esmeralda roared. Her hair bun shook like a car teetering on the edge of a cliff. “Do you realize you destroyed the statue of my great-great-great-grandpapa Juan?”

Alicia glanced at the ESMERALDA BELMONTE nameplate on her desk. Well, that explained why she was so attached to a statue.

Esmeralda pulled a scuffed wood footstool out from under her desk and stepped on it in order to hoist herself into her tall, blue feather–covered chair. A ruby red crystal was lodged in a groove in her rubber soles, which barely hung off the edge of the seat.

The discovery would have made the Pretty Committee shake with laughter, but Alicia found it impossible to squeak out even the smallest of giggles. The twins had left her for dead, and ¡i! probably had a cabana full of “real Spanish beauties” by now. Her Spalpha days were done. D-O-N-E, done.

The hot sting of tears welled up behind her eyes again. Who was she kidding? She was too pathetic to pull off the alpha thing off at home. What had made her think she could do it abroad? Suddenly, Alicia wanted to make a “Beta Blues” playlist, hide under the covers, and cry her mascara off.

Esmeralda gripped the rough edges of the concrete-slab-turned-desk and pulled herself closer. With a grunt, she leaned forward and grabbed a wafer-size gold calculator out of a gold metal caddy. The calculator was so small it looked like it had come out of a bubble gum machine, but her baby fingers power-punched it like it was NASA-tough.

“The damage in America currency”—she glared at Alicia with tiny, piglike black eyes—“is twenty-nine thousand, eight hundred dollars.”

Alicia breathed a sigh of relief. “Nina, you said it was worth millions,” she whisper-hissed.

Nina shrugged, looking just as shocked.

“Do you think I am loco enough to keep the real one here?” Esmeralda slapped the metal desk with her tiny hand. The peacock in the corner pulled his long neck out of the aquarium.

“The one you destroyed is a copy.” Esmeralda slid off her chair and stood. For a second, all they could see was her sloppy bun making its way around the desk. She finally appeared and faced them. “But you will still have to pay me back.”

Esmeralda scuttled over to the tall stainless-steel file cabinet against the wall, opened the drawer, and pulled out two dresses, folded into stiff squares. They looked like giant dinner napkins. She tossed them on the girls’ laps. “You start tomorrow.”

“GR Girls?” Alicia squealed. She couldn’t unfold her gown fast enough.

“Doncellas,” Nina said flatly, holding up her black, boxy, knee-length polyester dress with the white M above the left boob. “Maids,” she translated.

“More like towel girls.” Esmeralda grinned, showing off a row of tiny gray teeth. “You will wash them, fold them, and fluff them. You will place them on the chairs by the pool and replace them when they are soiled.”

Ew!

Suddenly, Alicia was very motivated to delete her Beta Blues playlist and become a Spalpha again. It was her only hope of escaping this Cinderella story.

Unless . . .

“Um, is there somewhere private I can go to use the phone?” Alicia smiled politely. “I think I can get this whole thing taken care of immediatamente.”

“Make your call from here.” Esmeralda placed her small hand on the cast-iron door handle. “Don’t bother escaping. I charge roaming fees.” She snort-laughed at her threat-joke, then left.

“Why is that thing staring at us?” Nina stuck out her red lollipop–stained tongue and wagged it at the peacock. Alicia ignored her as she dialed America.

“Is everything okay?” Nadia answered after the first ring.

The bing-bong of the Riveras’ OnStar played in the background, and Alicia knew her mom was in the Lexus.

“Totally,” Alicia said with a fake smile. “It’s just that, well, Nina and I—but mostly Nina—kind of knocked over some stupid fake statue at a hotel and now the ew-ner want us to be maids to pay for it. But if you wire a check for, like, twenty-nine thousand dollars, we can all get on with our lives and—”

“What?” Nadia shrieked, and lowered the volume on her Jordin Sparks CD. “How much?”

Alicia cleavage started to itch. Why was her mother making such a big deal about this?

“It’s twenty-nine thousand eight hundred dollars,” Nina shouted in the background. “Not twenty-nine thousand even.”

Alicia covered the mouthpiece. “Can’t you even contribute a little?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Nina insisted.

“Ugh!” Alicia turned her back on her infuriating cousin and refocused her attention on the distress call. “So if you could just wire the—”

“Was it your fault?” Nadia interrupted. Alicia heard the GPS navigator instruct her mom to take the next left.

“Just a little bit, but—”

“Didn’t you tell us you were responsible enough to travel on your own this summer?”

“Yeah.” Alicia scoffed in a what-does-that-have-to-do-with-anything sort of way.

“Then you should be re-spon-si-ble for getting yourself out of trouble.”

The peacock plodded across the room, vilifying Alicia with his condescending bird-glare.

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Is Dad there?”

“He’s still at the office,” Nadia sighed. “This lipo case is sucking the life out of him.”

Pun intended?

“I’ll call—”

“Don’t bother,” Nadia grumbled. “He hasn’t picked up his phone in days.”

“Can’t you just overnight a check and we’ll talk about it when I get home?” Alicia pleaded, her hands sweating as if they already knew the answer.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. But you’re going to have to handle this on your own. Like an adult.”

“But I’m going to have to do laundry and wipe off oily chairs and—”

“I love youuu,” Nadia cooed.

“Well, you have a funny way of showing it.” Alicia stabbed the END button with her sharp thumbnail.

Faster than Alicia could utter, “She’s dead to me,” Esmeralda reentered the room.

“So?” She held out her palm. “Do you have the money?”

“Um, yeah, it’s on the way.” She stood. “I’ll drop it off as soon as it arrives.”

“Nice lie, America.” She popped the stiff collar of her white leather jacket.

How did she know?

“Both of you will report for work—in your uniforms—tomorrow morning at six a.m. Your debt goes up ten dollars every minute you are late. Failure to comply means I call the police and have you arrested for vandalism.” She held the door open for her newest staff members, snickering as they passed.

“How am I going to get cast in ‘The Rain in Spain’ now? I’m an SLBR minus fifty,” Alicia whined aloud as she clicked down the marble hall in her open-toe boots. She balled up her uniform in case ¡i! happened to be strolling through the lobby.

“Who knows?” Nina put her and on Alicia’s rounded shoulder. “Maybe his next remix will be ‘It’s a Hard-Knock Life’ from Annie. You’d be perfect for that.”

Alicia rolled her eyes. She didn’t feel like her poo- covered suitcase anymore. Now she felt like the Juan Belmonte statue—a broken, shattered fake.