Wanting Sheila Dead(38)

But the real problem was that her name was not Andra Gayle and she had lied to Sheila Dunham, and before this morning it hadn’t occurred to her what a terrible problem that could be.





2


Coraline Mays knew the way this show was supposed to work. The easiest challenges were supposed to come first, so that the people with the least potential to succeed could be sent home early. Being sent home early was the thing she worried about the most. How incredibly embarrassing would it be, to have just unpacked her things and to be filmed packing them up again? And then there were the things people would say at home, about how stupid you had been even to try. You could say anything you want about how hard it was just to make it into the group of fourteen who got to live in the house. The fact was that nobody at home really counted any of the girls who didn’t make it to the house. There were the fourteen. That was your competition.

Coraline had been half sure that there would be no filming at all today, after that fuss about Grace. She’d been even more sure that Grace would be sent home before the competition even began, but that hadn’t happened, either. Coraline could remember one season, cycle seven, where a girl who had been chosen to be part of the fourteen hadn’t been able to participate, and one of the other girls from the competition had been brought in. Then that girl had ended up being eliminated early, so maybe it just went to show. Coraline wasn’t sure what it was supposed to show. It was just the kind of thought that came to her. She thought about her family, too, and the people at her church, who all said they were praying for her.

Coraline’s roommate was a girl named Deanna Brackett, who had come as something of a relief. Deanna was a lot more like the people Coraline was used to. She was even from the South—well, from Atlanta—which meant she had an accent that was at least a little soothing to Coraline’s ears. Ivy Demari ought to have had a Southern accent, too, being from Texas, but she was too much of a punk. Or whatever you called girls who had tattoos and green hair. She was too much of a something. She sounded wrong.

The little house bell had gone off, and now all the girls in the living room were looking around as if they expected somebody to come in and tell them something. Even the black girl was doing that, and mostly she just looked angry and tough.

“What do you think is going to happen now?” Coraline asked Deanna.

Deanna got down close to Coraline’s ear. “Remember, it’s all about inside the house and outside the house. Any time you have to go outside the house, you have to be perfect. Even if it’s just on the patio or in the yard.”

“I don’t think they call it a patio here,” Coraline said. “I think they call it a terrace.”

“Don’t you love it, though?” Deanna said. “I don’t care what they call it. I like those little pillar things that come just up to my knees with the lions on them. It must have cost the Earth for somebody to have built a house like this.”

Coraline made a little, noncommittal noise. She wasn’t going to say anything again about how whoever had built the house was some kind of criminal. She had said that the first time, and then it turned out that “robber baron” didn’t mean that somebody was actually a robber. It was a term for people in the nineteenth century who had made huge fortunes from the railroads and from oil—legitimate things, businesses, that everybody was supposed to do.

Grace had stared right down the bridge of her nose at Coraline. “Don’t they make you go to school back in Podunk, Arkansas?” she’d said.

And Coraline had had to cross her hands behind her back just to keep herself from slapping the girl. She hadn’t been upset at all that Sheila Dunham had decided to go after Grace first, and it didn’t matter to her what Grace’s real last name was. It served her right. It was just like everybody at home said. They were all stuck up, all those people from the east, and especially the ones from New York.

There was a sound in the foyer, and one of the girls—the black one with the odd name—went to the doorway of the living room to see what was happening. A second later, she stepped back, and Mark Borodine and Johnny Rell walked through the doors. Coraline thought of the two of them as something like Siamese twins. They went together in her head. Mark was the gay guy you almost couldn’t tell about. Johnny was the gay guy there was no mistaking. It all came down to the same thing in Coraline’s mind. There were boys like this at home, but they didn’t stick around long after high school.

Mark clapped his hands and smiled. He had a fake tan that looked sort of painted on, rather than actually part of his skin. “Well now,” he said. “The weather outside is awful, as you can probably tell. It’s been raining for hours. But you know what? When you’re a superstar, the weather doesn’t change to accommodate you. Your first job is always going to be, being camera ready under any and all circumstances. So. We’re going to take you into the town of Bryn Mawr for lunch, but you’ve got to get yourself there without giving the paparazzi a photograph that will embarrass you all over the tabloids. You’ve got exactly three minutes to get upstairs, get into hair and makeup, and make it out to the limo in a state fit to be photographed in. There will be photographers in places you won’t even notice when you’re going out to the car, and there will be more when you get to the restaurant. This is your first challenge. The girl who does the best will get two hours tomorrow afternoon with one of the biggest and most successful makeup artists in the business. Are you ready?”