Sloane Sisters by Anna Carey Page A

said to Cindy. “I’ll explain later.”
    She pushed through the small crowd that had formed on the sidewalk. When she got to her, Lola was still struggling with her books.
    â€œHey…” Andie said slowly.
    â€œI’m fine,” Lola mumbled, but even as she said it she dropped her leather-bound Ashton Prep’s Code of Ethics on the ground. She picked it up, but the back of her skirt was standing up straight, stiff with starch. Hannah Marcus, a seventh-grader who refused to play sports because she “didn’t like to sweat,” pointed at Lola and cackled.
    â€œHere,” Andie said, smoothing the skirt back down. “I’ll walk you to homeroom.” She took a few books from Lola’s hands.
    â€œThanks,” Lola said, standing up a little straighter.
    Andie pushed past Hannah and shot her a dirty look. Maybe she and Lola weren’t going to be best friends, but as of next Sunday they were family. And Andie wasn’t going to let anyone—Cate or otherwise—treat her family like that.

BANISHED TO LOSERVILLE
    S tella took a bite of her turkey burger and glanced around Ashton Prep’s crowded cafeteria. Its long oak tables were filled with uniform-clad girls, gossiping over plates of grilled chicken and brown rice sushi. In the corner two bony freshman girls were eating nothing but vanilla frozen yogurt. Everyone was sitting with someone else—everyone except Stella.
    Stella looked down the end of her table, where the Ashton field hockey team was discussing their “sweeper.” All day, she’d overheard girls talking about Shelley DeWitt’s house in the Hamptons, some people called Dean and DeLuca, or the brunch Eleanor Donner threw every year at her grandmother’s Upper West Side town house. Ashton Prep girls spoke a different language, some sort of elite code their mothers must have taught them when they were babies. Stella wished the headmistress had given her a pocket translator, instead of that useless handbook with five whole pages dedicated to the proper way to outfit the school uniform—as if anyone actually paid attention to those rules.
    No matter where Stella was—Kensington Gardens, the Nanette Lepore store, or the French Riviera—people always flocked to her. But so far at Ashton Prep she’d only talked to three teachers and the cafeteria lady who’d asked her, “Fries or salad?” But she wasn’t about to give up that easily. Stella straightened up and leaned toward the field hockey girls. She glanced at the least sporty-looking girl at the table, who had glossy long brown hair.
    Just then Cate waltzed in, her chin held high, flanked by the Chi Beta Phis. Every head in the lunchroom turned as they sat down at a table by the window.
    â€œDo you think they’re letting anyone else in this year?” a girl with dyed blue bangs asked the rest of the team.
    â€œIf they do, it would probably be Kirsten Phillips,” a girl with splotchy red cheeks answered definitively. “Last year they invited her to have dinner with them at Ono.”
    Stella sat back in her seat, wishing she had Bose sound-canceling headphones. In gym, two girls had spent the entire volleyball game discussing a rumor that Cate had chartered a yacht to Miami this summer by herself, hosting a port-to-port party. She was starting to think Cate was right: If you weren’t one of the Chi Beta Phis, you were a nobody.
    A short blond girl with a faint white mustache walked toward the table and sat down across from Stella. She pulled all the contents from her pockets and set them down on her tray. “Ahh, that feels better,” she said, to no one in particular. There was a tube of ChapStick, some tissues, and a key chain that said, don’t drink and derive. Her monogrammed L.L. Bean backpacksaid M.U.G. Stella glanced over at Cate’s table, where all the girls were now huddled close together, as though they