Belle of the Brawl by Lisi Harrison Read Free Book Online Page B

puffer and matching gold fleece headband wrapped around her honeyed hair, Allie reminded Skye of an Austrian ski champion. Charlie looked cute, too, in an optic white parka that offset her mahogany hair, but she had chewed her nails down to the quick. Her forehead was creased with worry.
    Skye clutched the safety bar on the chairlift and leaned forward, scanning the ground for Alpha girls. The competition to land the Brazille brothers was so fierce among the eighty-eight Alphas that Charlie had decided to leak fake locations for their picnic to throw girls off the scent. Down by the beach, Skye spotted fifteen girls in glittery bikinis, standing around sniffing the air for testosterone.
    “I can almost see the burn lines from here,” Skye said, pointing at the beach and wondering which Brazille bro they were waiting for.
    “I hope they don’t find out Darwin was with us today,” Charlie sigh-nodded. Down at the foot of Mount Olympus, at the Academy’s riding stables, three girls dressed in breeches and boots were hitting one another angrily with riding crops. “And it looks like Shelly Yip, Britney Saperstein, and Nuala Lapore realized Mel isn’t showing up for that trail ride. Oops.”
    All week, Alphas had been driven to desperate acts inthe hope of impressing a Brazille Boy. It was like an episode of
The Bachelor
and
24
combined. So far, Skye had heard about a broken ankle (Jeanette Hollis, trampled by a pack of girls running after Dingo near the Arts Building) and more sabotage than on an episode of
America’s Next Top Model
. Tales were circulating of bleach in shampoo bottles, Sharpie ink in toothpaste, garlic oil in perfume bottles.
    But nobody had been sabotaged as much as Skye had sabotaged herself. In her quest to gross Syd out, she’d gone from a toned ten to a grungy, greasy, ill-tempered two. Still, Syd clung to her like toilet paper on a shoe. But that was all about to change, hopefully, and maybe she would get another chance at…
ohmuhgud.
    Skye craned her neck to get a better view of the
Joan of Arc
, Shira’s yacht in the middle of Lake Alpha. Standing on the deck was a tiny, ant-sized Taz, squeezing sunscreen onto his hands, surrounded by a pack of bathing suit–clad Alphas.
    “Sorry, babe.” Charlie flashed Skye a sympathetic smile. “Taz could never resist a party. But someday soon, you two will put Syd behind you. I think Taz liked you more than he’s ever liked any one girl before.”
    “Until I ruined it!” Skye moaned, reaching a dirt-encrusted fingernail inside the greasy tangle of hair. “My life is hell. My only hope is that today, Syd will realize that if he sticks with me, his life will be hell, too.”
    “I thought your life was
smell
,” joked Allie.
    Skye nodded, chewing her lip. Allie was right—Skye had finally achieved maximum nastiness. To be any grosser, she would have to contract a case of scabies along with gingivitis, both of which were too icky to contemplate. “Yeah, today is as gross as I get. Which reminds me,” Skye dug through the picnic basket at the girls’ feet. “I packed a snack.”
    Skye fished out a yellow onion and began to peel off the skin, her stomach recoiling at the thought of what she was about to do.
    Allie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Skye, you are
not
going to eat that.”
    “I have to!” Skye snapped. “This is my last hope! If Syd leans in for a kiss and smells this, maybe he’ll reconsider our undying love.” She pinched her nostrils shut with two fingers and bit into the onion as if it were an apple, chewing it miserably as tears streamed down her face. Her gag reflex kicked in and she fought through it to swallow a mouthful of raw onion.
    “Nice touch,” Charlie giggle-grimaced, gesturing toward Skye’s jaw line, where an eruption of chin-zits now dotted her otherwise flawless complexion.
    “Lip liner,” Skye gag-grinned, shrugging as she tossed the half-eaten onion overboard into the pine forest. “Triple’s