Saturday, June 13
9:07 A.M.
The light got bigger and brighter with each step Alicia took toward it. It was calling her, guiding her, blinding her—was this that famous bright light people saw before they died? She stepped closer and closer until it actually obstructed her vision, and she walked directly into—
“Looking for this?” Nina held up a mirrored room key, a proud, goofy grin on her face.
“Huh?” Alicia accidentally blurted. Her lifetime vow of Nina-silence was not going well.
“The light,” Nina snickered. “It was coming from me. I was doing it.” She tilted the reflective key back and forth in front of Alicia’s bloodshot eyes as proof. Sure enough, another beam of light flashed in front of her face.
“I found it while I was cleaning out the VIP cabana.”
“Whose is it?” Alicia asked, her tone intentionally frosty and blasé.
“Yours. Consider it a peace offering.” Nina rolled her eyes when she realized her gesture required further explanation. “It’s ¡i!’s room key. And I just heard he needs some fresh towels.” She winked.
Alicia grimaced in an I’m-not-falling-for-that-again sort of way.
“I swear.” Nina offered her pinky, something Alicia had taught her last summer. “I’ll even go with you.”
Alicia stepped aside to let a man wheeling a digital soundboard pass. They were setting up for the music-video audition, which was a mere twenty-five hours away. And the only contact Alicia had made with the pop star was with his stolen key card. “Why do you want to be friends all of a sudden?”
“What do you mean all of a sudden?” Nina asked, scratching her left boob with the rectangular mirror. “I wanted to be your friend when I got to Westchester. But you chose boys and the Pretty Committees over me. Now you come here and all you want to do is hang with my terrible sisters. You never liked me.”
“Opposite of true!” Alicia stomped her flip-flopped foot. “You came to my town and stole our crushes and our clothes and now—”
“And now I stole ¡i!’s room key.” Nina waved it in front of Alicia’s face again. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “If we can get up there and find out more about him, then maybe we have a chance. . . .”
Alicia’s heart began agree-thumping.
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
Nina reached into her deep uniform pocket. “Here.” She dropped two tubes of Glossip Girl—Red Velvet Cupcake and Glow-in-the-Dark Blackberry—in Alicia’s hand.
“ADM! These are Massie’s favorite flavors.” Alicia gasped. “They went missing right after the Valentine’s Day Dance.” She locked eyes with her slippery cousin. “How did you get these?”
“All that matters is that I am giving them to you now”—Nina closed Alicia’s fist around the half-empty tubes—“as proof that you can trust me.”
“How are these proof?”
“I love those flavors,” Nina insisted. “And if I’m lying, you can give them back to Massie.”
It was totally twisted logic, but looking into her cousin’s wide eyes, Alicia sensed her sincerity. Plus, she was holding a sweat-soaked towel and wearing a barf-yellow shirtdress. The only thing left to lose was her rightful place in the video. At this point, everything else was gone.
With an armload of fresh towels and the mirrored card between her Red Velvet Cupcake–glossed lips, Nina knuckle-knocked on the door to ¡i!’s suite. “Room service.”
When no one answered, she slid the key in the slot and popped open the door.
“ADM!” the girls said at the same time. The floor and walls were made of a single, giant LED screen. Images of Hawaiian waterfalls dissolved into lush rain forests, which dissolved into dark scenes from outer space.
“I feel like I’m in a screen saver,” Alicia gushed.
The picture changed again, this time to a giant grassy field with a massive rainbow that arced over the foot of the double king bed.
“Hurry,” Nina snapped. Like a true professional, she was already rifling through the bright-green bedside table drawer. She pulled out a chunky gold necklace with a giant diamond encrusted I. “I wonder what this is worth?”
“Leave it!” Alicia smiled, suddenly finding her cousin’s illegal habit somewhat charming.
Photos of the genetically perfect ¡i! posing with an array of different but equally stunning brunettes were displayed in mirrored frames on the marble mantel above the gas fireplace. “At least we know he doesn’t like blondes.” Alicia smiled. “That’s good.”
Then she felt a regret-jolt behind her abs. “Sorry,” she said to Nina’s white-blond hair. “I didn’t mean—”
“Por fah-vor.” Nina butt-slammed the drawer shut. “Do you seriously think I like this?” She hate-tugged her bangs.
The life-size screen saver suddenly transitioned from a sunny day to a raging thunderstorm. Alicia shrugged.
“My evil twin sisters made me do this.”
“Why?” Alicia asked with wide brown eyes. “How?”
“Because the cute waiter at our favorite café smiled at me and not them. So they made me chop off my long dark hair. The color was task number one hundred seventeen, and the cut was number one hundred eighteen.”
“ADM,” Alicia sighed, feeling an odd tug of sympathy for her cousin. “Maybe if we dye it back, you’ll have a better chance of getting in the video.”
“I have to keep it like this until it grows out. That was task number one hundred nineteen.” Nina pouted as she yanked open the cinnamon heart–covered closet door. “Dios, who decorated this place?”
Ay-ahhhhhh, ay-ahhhhhh, ay-ahhhhhh!
A peacock dressed in an “¡i! ♥ ¡i!” concert tee bolted out of the closet and let out a high-pitched scream. He ran in tight circles around the room and began opening and closing his feathers at high speed, like a sugar-filled kid playing with a paper fan.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” Nina and Alicia jumped onto the massive bed and giggle-hugged each other for protection.
Nina picked a creepy hand-shaped rubber jewelry holder off one of the bed’s pillows and whipped it at the frenzied bird. She nailed it on the side of its tiny blue teardrop-shaped face and knocked it straight into a video puddle. Its feathers twitched one last time, and then it was still.
It was sad, but not quite as sad as Nina’s hair.
“I cannawt believe they made you do that,” Alicia said, picking the conversation back up where they’d left it, before the peacock invasion. She jumped off the bed, leaving black Havaiana footprints all over the orange ¡i!-patterned special-edition silk spread.
“You thought I did this by choice?”
A genuine smile appeared on Alicia’s face, and they both burst out laughing.
“They knew about this video audition months before it was announced.” Nina pulled the silk spread off the bed and draped it over the fallen peacock. “They just didn’t want me to get the part.”
“Well, I say if you can’t get it, they can’t get it, either,” Alicia said, suddenly feeling very aligned with her misunderstood, mis-dyed cousin. “And tomorrow, I will wear my gold Ralph Lauren mini, and you can wear my favorite Ralph headscarf!”
“I like your style—”
“AMERICA!” Esmeralda kicked open the door and raced over to the limp, silk-covered peacock. Tears rolled down her wrinkled, leathery cheeks, trickling in and out of the crevices like streams rolling over cracked rocks.
“You will pay for this,” Esmeralda whimpered, checking the bird’s neck for a pulse.
“Given,” Alicia moaned under her breath.
Nina snickered.
Esmeralda tossed the rubber hand aside and stroked the lifeless bird’s feathers. “Meet me at the peacock pen tomorrow morning at ten.” She grasped his little orange claw in her hand.
Ay-ahhhhhh, ay-ahhhhhh, ay-ahhhhhh!
All of a sudden, the peacock sprang back to life, screeching as loudly as his injured head could bear.
Esmeralda held him close until he stopped.
“How about noon instead?” Alicia pressed, now that the creature was safe.
“Why?” Esmeralda examined the stained bedspread and began punching numbers into her gold calculator. “Did you actually think I’d allow you to audition after the trouble you have caused?”
“But—”
“Failure to be at the peacock pen by ten a.m. will result in prompt dismissal, and I doubt you can pay your tab without this job.”
She marched out, carrying the weak peacock in her tiny arms.
The image on the LED screen changed to a live shot of the hotel entrance, where a long line of beautiful girls was already starting to form for tomorrow’s audition. And one of them would be taking her place.
Now Alicia felt like ¡i!’s bedspread—a thing of beauty that had been walked all over and left for dead.