Free The Elite by Jennifer Banash

“calm down, will you? It was just sushi .”
    “ My sushi,” Sophie yelled, pointing at her chest with an index finger. “Why are you always stealing my food?”
    “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” Jared asked irritably. “Hater tots? And why are you so hung up on labels? Mine, yours?” Jared’s face was plastered with that holier- than- thou expression that drove her absolutely nuts.
    “We are a family, you know,” he said, looking her up and down, taking in her blond hair and burnished skin, courtesy of Mystic Tan. “Even if you are the only living proof that Mom’s had an affair.” Jared arched one dark brow, reaching out to pinch his sister’s leg. Hard.
    “Ow!” Sophie yelled as his fingers made contact and twisted her slightly sunburned thigh.
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    T H E E L I T E
    “Payback’s a bitch,” Jared said airily, standing up and stretching his arms overhead, then he shuffled out of the room and down the hall to his bedroom, humming the new Fallout Boy song under his breath, just to annoy her. She hated Fallout Boy.
    Sophie opened the fridge and looked inside again, then slammed the door, leaning against the cold fridge, crossing her arms over her chest. As she stood there, thinking that she should just order Chinese, Sophie wondered why she always felt like an outsider, even in her own home. With her honey-blond hair, skin that positively screamed for self- tanner, and light green eyes, Sophie couldn’t have looked less like an alien from space next to her tall, dark- haired family. Her parents, Alistair and Phyllis St. John, were both blessed with olive skin that tanned easily—just like Jared—while Sophie was small and resolutely, blandly blond, and, as a result, totally dependent on spray tans and level- 50 sunblock.
    Sophie knew that every teenager probably felt like an im-poster around their family, but people had literally been stopping Phyllis on the street since Sophie was born and asking if she was adopted. “Oh, what a cute baby,” some Upper East Side robot would coo, waggling her jeweled fingers in Sophie’s carriage. “Is she yours ?” Over the years, it had become something of a family joke—especially to Jared, who never tired of pointing out the fact that Sophie resembled Madison more than her own family. After a while, Sophie gave up and started tanning zealously—just so there wouldn’t be so many annoying questions. She’s even thought about dying her hair, 6 7

    J E N N I F E R B A N A S H
    but Madison told her she’d look totally washed-out as a brunette, and Sophie, after a few nights staring into the mirror with a black T-shirt over her head to simulate hair, had to admit that, as usual, Madison was probably right.
    Sophie walked over to the pantry, grabbed an almost-empty box of Jared’s Cap’n Crunch and sat down at the kitchen table, digging her hand in the box and shoving a handful of the sugary cereal into her mouth. Payback was a bitch.
    As she chewed, she turned over her wrist, examining the faint white scars that streaked across her skin, running her fingers across the raised flesh. When she felt really bad or over
    -
    whelmed, it helped to cut herself—just a little. Sometimes she used a kitchen knife, sometimes a blade she pulled from her father’s razor. Sophie knew that it was wrong, and she always stopped when she saw the blood running over her wrist, stain-ing her skin crimson. The shock of red was like waking out of a bad dream, and afterward, as she ban daged the wound, cleaning the cut out with hydrogen peroxide, the sting of the antiseptic, the clutch of the white ban dage was always
    strangely, calmly reassuring.
    When Phoebe and Madison finally noticed the scratches one day last fall during a nostalgic- for- their- youth moment at Serendipity 3 over frozen hot chocolate, Sophie had to think fast. “It’s Snowball,” she had said, blushing and stuttering as usual, “she gets so excited when we play.” Just then Snowball, a