Survival of the Fiercest by Anna Carey Page B

chicken pox. At the very worst, she would only repeat it to their geometry teacher, Miss Katz, or her pet sea monkeys. She didn’t talk to anyone else—or rather, no one else talked to her. “Do you know who Cloud McClean is?”
    â€œIs she that eleventh-grader with the blue hair?” Myra asked, her brown eyes wide.
    Stella laughed, but Myra kept looking at her. She had a bleached white mustache, and her nearly invisible brows were furrowed in confusion. Stella had never met anyone who didn’t know who Cloud McClean was. It seemed like her song “Kick It” was playing on every radio station, that that silly advertisement of her eating lollipops was in every tube station, and that her line of glitter thongs was in every store, perched right next to the cash register. “No, not quite…. She’s a pop singer. They were mad I was keeping a secret from them about my dad….” Stella glanced around the room, lowering her voice so only Myra could hear. “He cheated on my mum with her.”
    Myra dropped the knife on the dissection tray, making a loud metallic clink! The entire room turned. “Oh my gosh,” Myra hissed. She looked around and leaned in close, lowering her voice. “I’m so sorry.”
    â€œRight, thanks.” Stella felt her cheeks flush. Nobody had ever apologized for her dad cheating on her mum. Pippa and Bridget hadn’t a bloody clue what to say when she told them—they mostly stared at their hands. Her mum had spent a week in her bedroom with the curtains drawn and her dad, Duke “Toddy” Childs, had apologized that “they had to go through this,” orsaid he was sorry that “this had happened.” He made it sound like an earthquake, a perfect eight on the Richter scale, had destroyed their home and there was simply nothing he could’ve done about it.
    After her parents told her about the divorce, Stella walked around their neighborhood alone, blaming the cold winter air for the tears in her eyes. She’d passed her house on Cheyne Walk three times, circling the block and wishing any other place was hers. She wanted to go back inside and have it be the summer again, when her family was celebrating Lola’s eleventh birthday in the garden. Before Cloud ever met her dad. Before things went wrong.
    â€œIt’s just—that’s really awful.” Myra’s brown eyes looked wet. She held a latex glove to her heart, like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. A tiny bit of pale pink liquid stained her shirt.
    Stella turned away, trying to avoid Myra’s gaze. “I’m fine, really.” Compared to Lola, she was. Lola hadn’t talked to their dad since last winter. Every time he called her mobile, she sent it straight to voice mail. Before they left for New York, the three of them had eaten dinner at Pasha, the Turkish restaurant Lola had always loved. Lola played the mute card and refused to speak, even after their dad gave her a Burberry cat carrier for Heath Bar. He’d finally gotten so frustrated he’d canceled their dessert order.
    â€œI kind of understand,” Myra continued. “My mom remarried a few years ago. It’s just me and my dad. He invented the underwater flashlight?”
    Myra waited for Stella to respond. She nodded as if to say, Oh yes! The underwater flashlight! Myra smiled, looking even happier than she had yesterday when Mrs. Perkins announced they were dissecting pig hearts. She was starting to make sense—the striped rainbow knee-highs she wore under her uniform skirt, her barely visible eyebrows, or the way her part was always crooked (and not in a cool, intentional way). Most mums would’ve broken out the home waxing kit before sending their daughter out of the house with a bleach blond mustache. Even if your dad did invent the underwater flashlight, or the underwater hair dryer, microwave, and popcorn maker—there were