Alphas Read Free

jaw. It was pulsing from chewing, not tension. She lifted a silver box out from under
     her chair.
    “Hmmmm.” Skye looked up at the track lights. Maybe the essay had been found after all? Or maybe when the Alpha Academy admissions
     committee saw her video audition, they realized she didn’t need one?
    Natasha handed her daughter the box and Skye slowly untied the white bow.
    She lifted a lavender toe shoe from the tissue paper, its worn silver satin ribbons trailing behind like smoke from a blown-out
     candle. The pair had hung over her mother’s vanity forever. Like stamps on a passport, the scuffs, scrapes, and frayed silk
     told the story of her mom’s career: from
Swan Lake
at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg,
Coppélia
at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and
Sleeping Beauty
at the Royal Opera House in London, where a grand jeté gone wrong had landed her in King’s College Hospital with a torn meniscus
     and a fractured career.
    “They’re too big for me,” Skye said, hoping for a new pair. Maybe something in a soft gold. “Besides…” She searched the box
     for the other shoe, but the tissue was empty. “There’s only one.” Skye furrowed her brow, not sure what she was supposed to
     do with one big used shoe.
    “This slipper is special,” Natasha whispered. “It will fit your hads.”
    “Huh?” Skye blinked. Her mom had been in the country for eighteen years, but every once in a while something got lost in translation.
    “It will fit your HADs,” Natasha repeated. “Your Hopes And Dreams.” She flipped open the tip of the shoe. “You write what
     you wish for for and hide it in the shoe. When the time is right, it comes true.”
    “Really?” Skye leaned in closer. “What did you wish for?”
    “Meeting your father,” Natasha mused, untucking Skye’s hair from behind her ears. Skye knew the story well. Her mom—the original
     DSL Dater—had come to America when she was seventeen to perform at Lincoln Center. After one dance onstage, she’d landed a
     marriage proposal from Skye’s dad and defected. “This dance studio,” Natasha continued. “And you.”
    Her mother’s words filled her muscles with the kind of warmth that comes after a good stretch. They softened and strengthened
     her at the same time. Who cared how her application had landed on Shira’s desk? All that mattered was that it had.
    Skye glanced around at the place she’d learned to dance, suddenly feeling too big for the small studio. The leaded windows,
     the track lighting with special bulbs that flattered blondes, the nick in the doorjamb where she’d spun and whacked the frame
     with her Tinker Bell wand when she was six. They were part of her past now, destined to shrink into wallet-size snapshots
     in her memory. Images that she’d flip through when she needed to remember where she came from.
    Weaving the shoe’s silk straps through her fingers, Skye glanced at her mom’s cheekbones. Her pale skin covered them like
     white tights over smooth stones when she smiled.
    “You will be the best dancer at Alpha Academy.” Her mother pulled her to her heart, like their hug was choreographed. The
     jingle of charms made her homesick even though she was still there. “What are you going to wish for first?
    Skye opened the secret compartment, discovering neatly folded squares of blank, lavender-scented paper. They smelled like
     home.
    “I dunno,” Skye lied. The truth was, she knew exactly what she wanted. She had hoped and dreamed for it her entire life.
    HAD No. 1 was to make her mother proud.

2
SOMEWHERE OVER THE MOJAVE DESERT
ALPHA JET
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH
9:24 A.M.
    At thirty-eight thousand feet above the desert, Allie Abbott tried to GPS her emotional state. It was somewhere between
wow
and
whoa, what have I done!?
Her emerald-colored contact lenses flitted around the womblike belly of the personal private plane. After two-plus hours
     of flying and crying, her eyes were finally dry enough