Sloane Sisters Read online

  She walked into her closet and pulled on her go-to outfit: dark-wash skinny J Brand jeans, black ballet flats, and a Nanette Lepore silk leopard-print tank. She threaded a gold leaf earring through each ear and took a deep breath. Whoever these girls were, and however horrifyingly bad their dental hygiene, she was living with them now. Her strategy would be to do what she did best: stay on top—no matter what.

  When she got down to the wide mahogany staircase her heart sped up. She took a few steps and peered over the banister. Emma was standing next to the hall closet, clutching Winston’s hand and smiling relentlessly, the way Ms. Elsa Kelley, Cate’s trying-way-too-hard earth science teacher did right after she got her teeth bleached. The afternoon light flooded in from the half-moon window over the door, making the white marble foyer look too bright and cheerful.

  Cate glided down the stairs, keeping her head held up high. In her leopard-print shirt she felt like a wild animal surveying its territory. This is my house, she thought, pulling her shoulders back. My turf. She stopped on the final step, a few inches above everyone else. The two blond girls were standing across from Winston and Emma, in front of the mahogany credenza. Four Louis Vuitton suitcases sat in a row beside them.

  “Hi!” Emma called loudly, letting go of Winston’s hand and hugging Cate tightly—a little too tightly for someone she’d only met a few times before. Emma had been around all summer, which meant Cate had spent the summer avoiding her.

  As Emma finally released her, Winston nodded at the two girls and then toward Cate. “This is my Cate,” he said proudly. The younger one, a gangly girl with blond hair that looked like it had been washed with pool water, stepped forward. She was holding a Burberry carrier with some sort of…creature. Cate wrinkled her nose. She hated animals. “Cate,” Emma said softly, wringing her hands together, “this is Lola.”

  Right—Lola. Cate stared at the girl. Lola—which wasn’t a much better name than Lulu—was tall and bony and awkward. She looked like a dying giraffe. A dying giraffe who was wearing tapered jeans that were an inch too short. Cate’s stomach churned miserably. The last thing she needed was another loser sister to avoid in public.

  “Hi,” Cate said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. She flicked her eyes over the girl’s lanky frame and held her gaze on her bare ankles just a few seconds too long.

  “Stella, luv,” Emma coaxed. “Come here.” Stella walked across the foyer to the staircase and stood next to Winston. He was scratching his neck, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Cate pursed her lips and coolly surveyed the girl from head to toe. Stella had loose blond curls that just hit her shoulders and huge eyes the color of martini olives. She was wearing a red sleeveless Diane von Furstenberg dress with black piping around the neckline. Over her shoulder was a gray Marc Jacobs Mercer East/West tote—the same exact one Cate had looked at in Bergdorf’s last week.

  The girls stood in silence for a moment. Winston coughed loudly and glanced at Emma, who was still wringing her hands, her lips pressed together in a straight line. Then Cate stepped down from the last step, her feet barely making a sound on the marble. She looked Stella right in the eye and slowly smiled.

  “Hey,” she said softly. If her outfit was any indication, Stella was…normal. Someone Cate could be seen in public with. She could even imagine them walking down the hall at Ashton Prep together. Shopping in Soho together. Lying out in Sheep Meadow, talking about the Marc Jacobs spring collection.

  Stella reached out and touched the thick strap of Cate’s silk tank.

  “I love your top,” Stella said in a lilting British accent. “Nanette Lepore’s brill. And those earrings. They’re smart.”

  Cate’s lips curled into a smile. “I love your bag!” she couldn’t help gushing. “It’s incredible.” She gently touched the putty-colored leather.

  “My mum got it for me. It was a present from one of her clients.” Stella eyed the bag and shrugged.

  Cate stared at Emma in disbelief. Swag? From clients? She’d never even thought of that. Maybe she could forgive Emma for dating her father, for moving to New York, for Lola, or Lulu, or whatever-her-name-was with the frizzy hair and bad tapered jeans. If this meant an unlimited supply of designer handbags, yes, she could definitely forgive her.

  Winston turned and kissed Emma on the forehead. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “Great shoes.” Cate pointed to Stella’s red espadrilles. “Juicy?”

  Stella nodded and slipped the right shoe off her foot. She nudged it forward with her tiny toes, which were painted with a French pedicure. Cate carefully slipped her foot out of her black ballet flat and into the sandal.

  Cate held her breath. Stella held hers. As it had for Cinderella, everything depended on the shoe’s fit.

  Cate pushed her toe to the front and gently pressed down her heel. It was perfect. She clasped Stella’s hands and rocked up and down on the balls of her feet, imagining her wardrobe doubling.

  “It fits!” Cate cried, and Stella let out a laugh, revealing her dimples.

  Stella slipped on Cate’s ballet flat and held out her foot, admiring the fit.

  “Perfect!” she exclaimed.

  You’re perfect! Cate almost cried, barely capable of containing her excitement. As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true. If there had been a Shopbop.com for stepsisters, Cate could not have picked out a better one herself.

  WISH UPON A STAR…A VERY FAMOUS STAR

  Twelve-year-old Andie Sloane walked up Fifth Avenue past the Metropolitan Museum, her cleats clicking on the concrete sidewalk. The museum’s stone steps were covered with tourists devouring foot-long hot dogs, arguing over guidebooks, and basking in the late-August afternoon sun. A crowd gathered around the long narrow fountain in front of the museum, watching in horror as a bereted street performer swallowed a whole set of Henckels knives.

  Andie stopped at the corner of Eighty-second Street and studied her reflection in the mirrored doors of the Excelsior, an apartment building that looked like a giant Tootsie Roll. She pouted her lips and put one hand on her hip, striking a quick pose. Sure, in her soccer uniform she looked more Nike than Nicole Miller, but she still had all the right moves.

  “Girlie, I told you these doors are two-way,” a doorman stuffed into an extra-small green uniform said, stepping outside. “You’re giving the lobby a show again.”

  Andie laughed and took off down the street. As of five o’clock today, she’d be sharing her town house with supermodel Emma Childs. She had to prepare.

  It was Andie’s dream to be a high-fashion model. She watched America’s Next Top Model religiously and took notes on what the judges said. Every night she practiced her poses in the full-length mirror on her closet door: She knew how to do editorial, she knew avant-garde. She pushed herself to be creative and think of outside-the-box poses.

  She couldn’t look through Teen Vogue anymore without throwing the magazine down, annoyed. She was just as good as any of those models. So what if she was four-foot eleven (fine…four-foot ten and three-quarters)? That was why she idolized Kate Moss: She wasn’t six feet tall, and yet she was one of the most famous models on earth. Andie always asked herself, WWKD (What Would Kate Do)?

  But now she could ask, WWED (What Would Emma Do)? And then she could ask Emma herself.

  Or her daughters.

  Andie stopped in front of her family’s five-story brick town house and smiled, imagining herself lying out in the garden with Emma’s fashionista daughters. The two mini Emmas would tell her which shade of tan looked best in photographs and help her decide on a go-to outfit for agent meet-and-greets. For once in her life, she wouldn’t be spending Friday nights watching TV by herself, listening to the giggles and shouts of Chi Beta Phi’s karaoke sleepover upstairs. She would have new sisters, two chances to start over with girls who wouldn’t just see her as an annoying hanger-on copykitten.

  It hadn’t always been that way between her and Cate. They used to be clos
e, when they were little. They’d dress up in their mom’s clothes and play Runway, and Cate would rate Andie’s silly outfits. Andie was always trying to make Cate laugh, and get a ten. But when their mom passed away, Cate started hanging out with the Chi Beta Phis more and more. Andie tried to be part of Cate’s group, to be someone Cate would want not just as a sister but as a friend. She secretly used her sister’s MAC makeup and stole Cate’s Luckys, buying everything flagged with a colorful yes sticker. She never once made plans on Chi Beta Phi sleepover nights, hoping that if they saw her in the living room watching The Hills, they might plop down on the couch beside her. But they never did. Cate would rather have shopped at Kmart for a year than let Andie hang out with her and her friends. Instead, she made fun of her, calling her C.C.—Copy Cate. In the Chi Beta Phis, Cate had three sisters. Apparently she didn’t need one more.

  Andie was resigned to life in Cate’s shadow—she’d even perfected the art of pretending it didn’t bother her. But then one day, she and Cate had been eating ice cream on the steps of the Met when a woman in a pantsuit approached and asked Andie if she’d ever thought of modeling. Not Cate—Andie. After the woman left, giving Andie her card, Cate had laughed it off. It was just a ploy to hook naïve girls, she said. They’d get you to pay for head shots and totally rip you off. Andie? A model?

  But if there was anything Andie hated, it was being told what she could and couldn’t do. She knew then and there that modeling was her destiny. Forget being like Cate. She’d be better than Cate.

  Andie opened the front door. The crystal chandelier in the foyer made a tinkling noise. In the kitchen someone laughed. Emma. Andie looked at her stopwatch—it was four forty-five, which meant they were early and she was a sweaty, mud-stained mess. Andie couldn’t meet Emma’s daughters looking like the motocross champion of Nevada.

  She gently set her soccer bag by the door and kicked off her dirt-caked cleats. She crept over to the marble staircase, trying to get upstairs to shower before anyone realized she was home.

  “Look who’s here!” Cate leaned out of the arched kitchen doorway. “Now, don’t you look nice?” She smiled tauntingly at Andie’s stained soccer uniform.

  “Cate…no,” Andie whispered, pointing to her dirty knees and the pit stains that were soaking her gray T-shirt. She had the perfect outfit laid out on her desk chair upstairs—she just had to get to it.

  Emma stepped out from behind Cate and smiled her famous Vogue-cover grin. “Andie!” She smoothed Andie’s side-swept bangs from her sweaty forehead, then kissed her on each cheek. Even though she’d met Emma more than a few times now, Andie still hadn’t gotten over the shock that Emma Childs was her dad’s girlfriend—that Emma Childs looked happy to see her. If she needed a sign that modeling was her destiny, it was that her dad had met Emma in the first place. “Come, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Andie reluctantly followed Emma, her fingers tugging at the blond highlight in her bangs. Her dad said she was too young to dye her hair, so she’d dipped a strand in hydrogen peroxide before their trip to Hawaii this summer, then blamed it on the sun.

  “Andie Sloane,” Emma urged gently, “this is my oldest daughter, Stella Childs. You’ll meet Lola in a second—she just ran off to the loo.”

  Andie looked past her dad to the center island. Stella—blond, curly-haired, tall, Diane von Furstenberg–clad Stella—was leaning on the granite island, popping green grapes into her mouth. The same Stella Childs Andie had read about in an Allure article last year, the one who’d said she was considering starting her own clothing line, and mentioned how Paulina Porizkova was like an aunt to her.

  “We’ll leave you girls to get acquainted,” Winston said with a conspiratorial grin, as if it wasn’t painfully obvious he assumed that the mere act of him leaving the room would create some sort of love bubble with all the girls. He and Emma walked into the living room and sat down at the round cherry table. He opened two royal blue folders with the Ashton Prep crest on the front and started shuffling through paperwork.

  “Hey, Stella.” Andie pulled her shoulders back to make herself seem taller and extended her hand.

  Stella leveled her eyes at Andie and smiled slightly. “Hey, C.C. Cate’s told me all about you.” She barely touched Andie’s hand as she shook it, her eyes resting on the hole in the toe of Andie’s right sock.

  Andie felt the blood rush to her face. Cate had told Stella all about her? She knew what that meant. That she was a loser. A wannabe. That one time Cate had advised Andie to buy slouch socks in every color, swearing eighties fashion was coming back—and she’d done it.

  Cate flicked her eyes back to Stella and continued on, as if Andie wasn’t there. “The skirt is mandatory, but they’re not that strict about how you wear it. I usually roll mine at least three times—they say to the knee, but Catherine McCafferty is the only one who wears it like that, and she also wears white Reeboks.” The two girls giggled, their laughter tinkling like silverware on crystal.

  Andie studied Stella, searching for any sign that she might still have a chance at being friends with her. But Stella’s face was hardened in concentration, as though she were creating a mental spreadsheet of every word Cate said. Andie’s stomach folded like a paper crane. Forget tanning with her new sisters in the garden—she’d be lucky if Stella didn’t try to turn her room into a walk-in closet. Andie stood frozen, gripping the cold granite counter.

  “Well, West London’s brilliant,” Stella told Cate, fingering one of her butter blond curls.

  “Is that where Jude Law lives?” Cate rested her elbows on the counter, mesmerized.

  “No, no, he’s in Primrose. But I saw Kylie Minogue every other day. My mum will have to take us on her next trip back. There’s even a street called Sloane Street. How perfect? It has all the shops you’d love—Gucci, Tiffany, Chloé, Louis Vuitton.”

  Cate shrieked and held Stella’s dainty, manicured hands in her own. “I want to go now!”

  “I want to go too,” Andie mumbled, but Cate and Stella ignored her, as though she were only visible to people wearing loser goggles.

  “Ow!” a voice behind her cried. Andie turned to see a girl rubbing her shoulder with her hand, staring at the doorway like it had just bumped into her. She had wavy, dirty blond hair, and her pale face was dusted with freckles. She was tall—almost a foot taller than Andie—and bony. Her shoulders were hunched forward, like she belonged in a bell tower. Even worse, she was clutching a twenty-pound orange tabby, who licked at a spot of what Andie hoped was food on her fur-covered shirt.

  Stella and Cate looked at the girl and rolled their eyes, retreating quickly to the garden like she might be contaminated.

  “I’m Lola.” The tall girl let out a sigh. “And this is my baby, Heathy.” She singsonged the word Heathy, rocking the giant cat back and forth in her arms.

  Andie watched as Lola kissed Heathy on the top of his head four times. She tried hard to smile but her face felt stiff, like she’d left a Bliss masque on for three days. Clearly, she and Lola would not be shopping at Barneys together or brunching with Lola’s tween model friends. Lola was more cat lady than catwalker.

  “I’m Andie,” she muttered, staring longingly out the window at Cate and Stella, who had splayed out on the chaise lounge outside.

  Lola chewed on her bottom lip and followed Andie’s gaze. “I guess you’re stuck with the geeky sister,” she said, laughing nervously.

  Andie let out a small laugh, but she couldn’t stop picturing Cate and Stella playing Rock Band in the den together, closing the French doors when she walked past. She saw them storming the roof in matching bandeau bikinis, kicking her off the deck so they could sunbathe. She saw them doing yoga in the garden together, or eating brunch on the terrace together. She saw herself…with Lola…sewing Heathy a pair of striped pajamas.

  She watched as Lola pulled a clump of cat hair off her sleeve and it drifted slowly to the floor. Yeah, she thought. I guess I am.

  “Andie
, would you mind giving Lola a proper tour?” Emma asked, reappearing in the kitchen doorway. She looked back and forth between the two younger girls hopefully. “Maybe you can show her to her bedroom?”

  Andie smiled thinly as Lola clapped her hands fast in front of her face, like she was suffering from a severe muscle spasm.

  “That’d be brill!” Lola exclaimed. “So far I’ve only seen the loo!” She laughed at her own not-funny joke.

  Of course I mind, Andie thought. But she wasn’t about to tell Emma Childs, the new face of Ralph Lauren, that her younger daughter was a pocket protector away from being High Queen of the Dorks.

  “Sounds…great.” Andie gave Emma an awkward thumbs-up.

  She walked into the foyer and up the mahogany staircase, Lola trailing behind her like an overactive puppy.

  THE DEVIL WEARS BURBERRY

  “This is the formal dining room,” Andie offered at the top of the first flight.

  Lola clutched Heath Bar to her chest and stared at the long wooden table. In the center of it sat a cut crystal vase overflowing with white peonies.

  “Just be careful—these are from the eighteenth century,” Andie said, looking from Heath Bar to the antique-looking wood chairs, all upholstered in ornate brick red damask. “The house was my grandfather’s, and my dad kept a lot of his antiques.”

  Lola took a step back, trying to keep an arm’s distance between herself and anything irreplaceable. She had a habit of breaking things, which was why her mum had loved the mod furniture phase that took over London a few years back—lots of plastics and indestructible materials.

  Lola glanced in the gilded mirror on the wall, making sure her thick wavy hair concealed the tops of her Dumbo ears, as Stella had dubbed them. She didn’t need Stella to reminder her she was an awkward mess, of course. She was quite aware already. But now, it seemed, Cate would be reminding her as well.

  Lola eyed Andie’s greasy hair, a little relieved. At least she didn’t seem like she’d go barmy over a new pair of Christian Lou-bou-whatevers.