The Elite by Jennifer Banash Page B

hard she studied. Of course, this was in sharp contrast to her mother, who, despite a childhood spent mainly in New Haven, Connecticut, spoke fluent French—along with Italian, Spanish, and German.
    “What in the world is wrong with you?” Madeline Reynaud 9 6

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    was fond of yelling, usually before she stepped out of the room in a huff, shaking her perfectly coifed satin hair from side to side. “If I had any sense at all, I’d pull you out of Meadlowlark and enroll you in the Lycée Francąis, where you belong!” The Lycée Francąis was an exclusive private school on East Seventy- fifth Street, where the students were forced to wear stupid, itchy uniforms, and all classes were taught exclusively in French. Phoebe thought it sounded like a French-fried nightmare.
    Phoebe wasn’t sure how or why it happened, but when she turned thirteen, and people began to notice that she was sort of pretty, her mother started acting like Phoebe was the biggest disappointment of her life—and when she was being honest with herself, Phoebe suspected that it just might be true. Her mother just couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight—
    she needed male attention the way alcoholics needed vodka—
    and she’d mastered the art of throwing a star- fit whenever anyone dared compliment Phoebe on how lovely she was.
    Phoebe had begun to dread those moments, watching as her mother’s surgically tightened skin froze like a mask, her eyes glazing over with annoyance.
    Madeline Ashbrook had arrived on the Manhattan debu-tante circuit a fresh, rosy girl of eigh teen with jet- black hair and flashing Ca
    rib
    be
    an-
    blue eyes that bewitched any man
    within fifty yards, including Phoebe’s father, Etienne Reynaud, who’d moved to the United State at seventeen to attend Harvard. But now, with forty rapidly approaching, and her father’s attention decidedly waning, Phoebe often found her 9 7

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    mother staring into mirrors for hours at a time, pulling back the skin of her jaw or eyelids while muttering under her breath.
    She was still earth- shatteringly gorgeous—for a woman of a certain age. But the cosmetic procedures she was forever subjecting herself to weren’t helping any. All the Botox and laser resurfacing she spent thousands on only made her look more like an alien, and not a particularly youthful alien either.
    Phoebe heard the tinny, contagious sound of giggling coming from her sister’s room across the hall, and she got up and cautiously opened her bedroom door. The sound of breaking glass against the imported Italian tiles in her parents’
    bathroom drowned out her sister’s laughter, and made Phoebe jump out of her room and out onto the slick, polished floors of the hallway. Phoebe knocked lightly on the large pink metallic star Bijoux had pasted to her bedroom door. “Beebs?
    You in there?” She swung it open.
    Bijoux sat behind a reproduction of a Chippendale desk—
    perfect in every detail—except that it was scaled to the size of a six- year- old’s body. Even though the maid had probably picked her up hours ago, Bijoux was still wearing the pink tutu and dirty white leotard she’d worn to ballet class earlier that afternoon, and a pair of their mother’s black Chanel reading glasses sat on the bridge of her tiny nose, magnifying her blue eyes, making them look gigantic. Her room was painted a shiny, candy pink, and an Austrian- crystal chandelier hung over her flouncy, pink- and- white ruffled bed. Her best friend, Jeremy Alexander, sat across from the desk wearing jeans and a red Abercrombie T-shirt with pictures of monster trucks on it.
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    They were both sucking on Bomb Pops, their mouths stained with the red and blue dye.
    “Now,” Bijoux said, peering over the glasses and trying to sit up straight in her chair, “you did sign a pre- nup, didn’t you?’
    Jeremy giggled, squirming around on his miniature Chippendale chair, and when he opened