The Elite by Jennifer Banash Page B

bright yellow dining room, placing them down on the long cherrywood table where the Van Allens ate nightly—when they all happened to be home, which wasn’t very often.
    “I don’t know.” Drew sighed, swallowing hard and running a hand through his hair.
    “You don’t know, huh?” Drew’s dad said, wiping bits of yellow- tinged coconut milk off his hands with a dishtowel. “I know what it’s like to not know, Drew. It’s tough not knowing, but if there’s anything that can help you out, it’s the advice of a guy like me who knows what it’s like to not know .”
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    T H E E L I T E
    Great , Drew thought. Here we go again . Drew could feel his mother’s eyes lock on him the instant his dad began to speak and he knew that if he were to look over, she would be sipping at her drink intently, trying to hide her laughter behind the glass.
    “Now, before I met your mother, Drew, when I first came to New York I knew this girl named . . .”
    “Marissa?” Drew half- coughed, half- laughed.
    “Her name was Marissa,” his dad said with surprise, sitting down at the dining table and picking up his fork. “How did you know that?”
    “Because you’ve told us this story a million times, maybe?”
    His mother burst out laughing, stabbing her chicken with a fork and releasing a cloud of curry- scented steam in the air.
    “Ah, the infamous Marissa . . .”
    Drew’s dad placed his fork at the side of his plate and surveyed his son calmly. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re bored of my stories?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you,” Drew said, walking toward his room and shutting the door behind the sound of his parents’ laughter, and then the unmistakable sound of two pairs of lips meeting and retracting. He shook his head, smiling. He was probably the only kid in Manhattan to have two still- happily married parents—and things could definitely be a lot worse than having a dad who told the same stupid story over and over. Drew kicked a pile of dirty laundry out of the way, maneuvered around his still-unpacked suitcase, and sat down on the bed, grabbing his laptop. He couldn’t 5 5

    J E N N I F E R B A N A S H
    help but wonder if Madison would someday be one of those stories, if someday he’d be the one standing in the kitchen telling his own son about the one who got away.
    And as he stretched out on the bed and checked his e-mail, he realized that not only wasn’t he ready to become his father, he also wasn’t ready to let Madison go just yet.
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    better late
    than
    never . . .
    Madison flopped down on her w hite Siber ian goose-down comforter and exhaled loudly. Drew had only been back for a nanosecond and already everything was even worse than before he’d left. Maybe now that she was home, she’d be able to calm down—though just thinking about the way Drew had flirted with that horrible Casey girl right in front of her, she seriously doubted it. Was he just trying to piss her off? Make her jealous? Had he suddenly developed a brain tumor? There had to be some reason to explain his decidedly dumbass be-havior. Even though Madison didn’t know if she even wanted to be with Drew anymore, she wasn’t sure she was ready to give him up either—especially not to some terminally uncool, J E N N I F E R B A N A S H
    frizzy- haired loser. After all, she was Madison Macallister: She had a reputation to uphold and a legend to create.
    Madison stared up at the sky- blue ceiling above her head, the only slice of color in her otherwise monochromatic bedroom lair. Her room was the only place in their overstuffed, overdecorated pent house apartment where she felt comfortable anymore. Her mother, Edith Spencer Macallister, was going through a truly unfortunate Baroque period, and two months ago had ordered the apartment completely redone, and the Danish ultramodern furniture burned. Now, the massive, sunken living room was covered in muted frescos starring demented round- faced