Birthday Vicious (The Ashleys, Book 3)

by Melissa de la Cruz

  17 THE GIRL WHO CRIED BEAR

  L ILI LAY ON THE COLD, HARD GROUND LISTENING to the rain pattering on the tent and--even worse-- listening to Jezebel and Cassandra giggling about a trick they were planning to play on the boys in the morning. She wasn't really paying attention, but apparently it involved slopping mud into their boots. Real mature. If this was camping heaven, then Lili would rather be in hell.

  Up on Mount Tarn, rain had been falling for most of the afternoon, pretty much ever since Cassandra's dad dropped them off in the public parking lot, telling them to be sure to find a dry spot to pitch their tents. Good advice!

  There was no way her father would have just dumped them there and driven off. Even though Lili's parents were strict and overprotective, at least they actually cared about their children's welfare. Whereas Cassandra's dad just seemed like he was in a hurry to get back to his pottery

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  wheel or whatever it was he did in his "crafted art" studio.

  They'd hiked for two hours to get to the campsite near the river, stumbling over rocks and surrounded by swirling mist. Max had spent more time talking to Jason and Quentin than paying attention to Lili, even when she was almost bent double under the weight of her heavy pack.

  It reminded her of the documentary her mother had made her watch about the Long March through China, though at least her feet weren't bound--just crammed into ugly boots. The only thing that cheered her up was seeing Cassandra with mascara streaked down her ghostly pale face.

  There wasn't much to feel cheerful about as darkness descended. Their remote campsite wasn't picturesque in any way. Even the river was ugly--wide and muddy, swollen with rain. It was nearly winter, hello! Whose idea was it to go camping now? She had to bunk with the two other girls in a tiny tent, after a disgusting meal of uncooked baked beans, straight from the can, and some soggy slices of bread, eaten standing up.

  "Sorry it's too wet to get a fire going," Max apologized, looking cute with his hair wet from the rain.

  "It's okay," Lili assured him, knowing Cassandra and Jezebel were more than happy to suffer if it meant Lili was suffering too. Suffering more, in fact, because she wasn't used to this. How was this supposed to be fun, exactly?

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  There were so many other bad things about camping, and as Lili lay in her sleeping bag, pretending to be asleep so she wouldn't have to join in their withering conversation about kids at Reed Prep--or Whiner Junior High, as she liked to think of it--Lili counted them in her mind.

  One, Max was too busy doing things--pitching tents, opening cans, finding wood for the damp squib of a fire-- to spend any precious alone time with her. Two, when he did draw her into the conversation, it was a disaster: He told them all about Ashley's party, and Lili was forced to invite them all or risk looking like a big snob. Ashley would kill her when she found out that some grungy pseudo-bohos were going to make her party look like a bad episode of Gossip Girl.

  Number three: She couldn't get a signal on her BlackBerry, so if her mother sent her a message about something--thinking she was safely at A.A.'s, of course, watching a Reese Witherspoon movie marathon--Lili would have no way of either knowing or responding. She was totally cut off from civilization!

  By far the very worst thing was having to pee in the bushes. In the rain. In the dark. Ew! The whole time, Lili was convinced that either a raccoon was going to leap on her, or she'd fall over with her pants around her ankles (50 undignified) and end up writhing in the mud.

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  Okay, so maybe once Max got all that he-man camping stuff out of his system, he had been kind of nice. He had led her away from the others to a small clearing where they could sit on a log and look out over the mountains to watch the sunset.

  "I'm so glad you came," he murmured, pulling her close.

  "Me too." Lili nestled into the crook of his neck. She gazed dreamily at the russet colors of the setting sun, snuggling deeper as Max put his arms around her.

  When he kissed her, it made the treacherous hike in painful, new, too-tight boots almost worth it.

  Too soon, it was time to say good night and head on to the girls' bunk, where Jezebel and Cassandra completely ignored her. Let them. Lili was too tired to care. Although when the two girls stopped their incessant whispering and finally drifted off to sleep, Lili was irritated by their loud breathing and occasional piglike snorts.

  This was the complete opposite of an Ashleys sleepover. She missed her friends more than anything. If she was there with the Ashleys, they would have sent up SOS signals by now, a rescue helicopter would be on its way, and Ashley's father would be suing the National Park Service.

  Lili was too wired to sleep. What was that rustling outside the tent? Maybe it was Max, venturing out in the rain to give

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  her another good-night kiss. How sweet! Lili wriggled out of her sleeping bag and crawled to the zip-fastened opening, taking care not to wake the Scissor Sisters. Slowly, trying to be quiet, she unzipped the entry flap, raindrops pelting her face. She hoped her hair looked okay and stuck her head out.

  But it wasn't Max out there in the rainy gloom.

  It was a bear.

  A huge grizzly that looked just as spooked as Lili.

  "AHHHHHHHHHHH!" Lili's scream ripped through camp, waking everyone up. The girls screamed at her to be quiet, while the boys came stumbling out of their tent, boots unlaced, swinging flashlights and cursing under their breath.

  "A BEAR! THERE WAS A BEAR!" she yelled.

  "You crazy b--," Cassandra was shrieking. "What are you doing sticking your head out of the tent in the middle of the night?"

  "Oh my God! You scared us all to death!" cried Jezebel, punching Lili in the shoulder. "Just go back to sleep, loser! There's no bear."

  "Lili, it's kind of late in the year for bears," Max told her, crouching down by the tent flap, his fair hair dripping with rain, his voice kind and gentle. "And they don't come down this low, usually. Maybe it was just the shadow of a branch or something."

  "Nothing," shouted Jason, who was pacing around the

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  camp with Quentin, both boys shining their flashlights at the bushes. Both of them looked extremely annoyed to be out in the rain in the middle of the night. "No tracks, either."

  "They've probably washed away by now." Lili wanted to cry. She wanted Max to believe her. She knew what she saw!

  "Just try and go back to sleep, okay?" He smiled, giving her a quick arm squeeze, and turned off his flashlight. There was nothing Lili could do except climb back into her sleeping bag and try to dismiss the snickering from the other girls. If the bear came back, Lili would make sure it ate those two first.

  When she woke up in the morning, after what felt like about two hours of sleep, things were even worse. Lili was bursting to pee, so she pulled on her boots and jacket and upzipped the tent flap.

  Oh no!

  They must have camped too near the river. She stepped out of the tent and into two inches of muddy water, nearly slipping onto her butt. As far as she could see was a shallow, muddy sea. She sloshed through it to the nearest bushes, wishing she was a million miles from here. Somewhere like a desert. Even the North Pole! Anywhere where it wasn't raining, flooded, and miserable.

  Before she made it back to the tent, the boys were up--but they seemed to think the whole thing was really funny. They were skidding through the water, kicking up arcs of muddy

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  slush with their boots and chasing one another around the tents. When Jezebel and Cassandra emerged, rubbing their eyes and talking in loud, sarcastic voices about going bear hunting, they didn't seem unhappy at all.

  "Cool--the river's rising!" said Cassandra, scratching at her dyed-red bangs. "Maybe we'll get stranded here--we'll have to miss school tomorrow!"

  Lili started to panic.

  "We won't get stranded, will we?" she asked Max. "I really need to get back to the city by noon, like you agreed. My mother's coming to the Fairm
ont to pick me up."

  "What's the big hurry?" asked Jezebel, stretching, apparently unconcerned by the drizzle or the huge splotches of mud kicked onto her p.j. bottoms.

  "Don't worry," Max reassured her. "If we set off soon, we can make it down to the parking lot in under two hours. Jezebel's father will be waiting for us, and when we're back in the city we'll drop you off first."

  "Say what?" yawned Jezebel.

  "Your father's picking us up, right?"

  "I thought Quentin's father was coming."

  "No way," protested Quentin. "We agreed, remember? You were going to ask your dad to come get us."

  "Yeah," said Cassandra, giggling, as though something was really funny. "Remember, Jez?"

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  Jezebel slapped a hand to her forehead. "I guess I forgot to ask him. Oh well! We can just call him and tell him to come. Unless he's doing something else."

  "But we can't get phone signals up here," Lili pointed out. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. If they couldn't get a signal until they were down in the parking lot, then that would mean waiting for more than an hour to get picked up.

  "Lili's right," said Jason, looking from Quentin to Max. "And I don't even know they'll work there. We'll have to walk down to the lower parking lot, which is much farther. We can probably get there by noon."

  "I can call my dad." Max glanced anxiously at Lili. "He'll come right away."

  But noon was too late! Lili wanted to scream with frustration. By then, her mother would be waiting for her outside the Fairmont--and, more to the point, discovering that she was not upstairs in A.A.'s penthouse apartment.

  By the time they got there, Nancy was sure to be in some furious, tight-lipped rage. Thinking about it made Lili shiver even more in her wet clothes. When Max's father dropped her off, Nancy would see Lili in her muddy, bedraggled outdoor gear, dragging out her pack and sleeping bag and saying good-bye to a group of kids her parents had never met before.

  Nancy was a very intelligent woman; she would work

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  everything out in a flash about the overnight camping trip. She'd know that Lili had lied to her. She'd see the boys in the car. Lili's life would be over.

  No doubt about it. If her mother was Genghis Khan, Lili was about to be sent back to China in a body bag.

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  18 IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A MODEL MOM?

  A A. HAD SPENT HALF OF SUNDAY MORNING in a state of near panic, wondering when Lili was getting back and obsessing over why she hadn't been in touch. She knew this stupid camping trip was a bad idea. Maybe all the rain last night had missed Mount Tarn, but somehow A.A. doubted it.

  It didn't take long to realize that the whole brilliant plan was in ashes. At noon Lili's mother had arrived at the apartment and been sent away--grim-faced and furious--by a bemused, apologetic Jeanine.

  Finally Lili sent a text with the bad news: The trip had been a disaster, she'd missed her ride back to the city, and she'd gotten in touch with her mom, who was about to pick her up at Max's house in St. Francis Wood. Poor Lili!

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  Ashley's party was less than a week away. What if she wasn't allowed to come? Ashley would never forgive her, and that was a fate worse than death. Worse even than the rage of Lili's parents, maybe. To make things worse, Jeanine was now mad at A.A., as if she were the one who'd lied and snuck off to go camping with boys!

  "Don't even think of pulling a stunt like that," her mother told her, pausing mid-dial; she wanted the hotel kitchen to send up a vat of natural yogurt for an at-home spa treatment she was planning that afternoon. "Or I'll send you to live with your miserable father. And you'll never see me or Ned or a video game ever again, because your father is so cheap he's practically free. I swear, you girls! You're barely in your teens, and you're already running away from home."

  "Ashley's almost a teenager, and Lili's thirteen already," A.A. couldn't help pointing out. She was standing at the kitchen counter slicing cucumbers for her mother's face mask, trying to make herself useful and prove she was a good, obedient girl, unlike Lili. "It's her party next week, remember?"

  "Yeah, well, after the lies you and Lili have been telling us, I don't know if you should go," Jeanine said, screwing up her beautiful face--she could never get the room service number right. Half the time she dialed the gym or the gift store by mistake, and once she even dialed a guest in the hotel.

  It wouldn't have been so bad, but she started flirting with

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  him, and he ended up asking her out to dinner. They dated for a few months. After that, Ned usually did the food ordering. He told A.A. that if they didn't want another stepfather any time soon, they needed to keep Jeanine away from the hotel guests.

  "Mom! Don't even joke! You have to let me go!" A.A. nearly sliced off the end of a fingernail. "Ashley's counting on us!" A.A. couldn't imagine missing the big party. After hearing all about it for weeks, it would be a huge letdown not to be able to see it all happen. Were there really going to be tigers leaping through flaming hoops to the tune of "Happy Birthday"?

  Jeanine tugged at the kimono robe she'd been lounging in all day. "I'll be glad when all this nonsense over a birthday party is over and done with. It's all you talk about. Boring!"

  A.A. sighed, staring down at the chopping board. She wanted to get the cucumber slices as even as possible, just to show her mother what a dutiful daughter she was, even though she'd never used a knife and a chopping board in her life. The only people who ever touched kitchen utensils in their apartment were the maids, and Jeanine thought cooking was heating an aromatherapy neck-massage pad in the microwave.

  Her mother was in a bad mood about parties today because the one she'd been to last night in a warehouse-turned-Moroccan casbah went all wrong: Another former

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  supermodel, Jeanine's archrival, had turned up and hogged the paparazzi, showing off her new lips, cheeks, and extensions.

  Jeanine couldn't stand it and came home early. That meant she was up and about all day, rather than lying in bed recovering. If she hadn't been up when Nancy Khan arrived at noon, A.A. could have come up with a quick lie to cover Lili's butt--maybe that she and Ned had gone for a jog in the park, and that they'd call as soon as they got back. Although Lili's mother might not have believed her, given that it was pouring rain outside. Oops!

  "Anyway, I know why you really want to go to this party," Jeanine said, inching off her fluffy mules and stretching out on the sofa. "It's all about a boy, isn't it?"

  "What boy?" A.A. was startled. Who was her mother talking about?

  "That so-called boyfriend of yours." Jeanine snapped her fingers. "What's his name again?"

  "Hunter." A.A. sighed; for a second she thought Jeanine might have been talking about Tri. And Tri was definitely not A.A.'s boyfriend. Never had been, never would be. No way. However often he called her--and he'd called her a lot this weekend, probably to apologize for his incredible rudeness, not that she'd answered or returned any of his calls--Tri was persona non grata as far as A.A. was concerned.

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  "I don't know if I like you dating boys so young," Jeanine complained. A.A. rolled her eyes and hoped her mother didn't see. She knew what was going on--every so often Jeanine had a fit of conscience and decided she had to be a Good Mom.

  This meant pretending to lay down a new set of rules, like telling A.A. she should pick her school uniform up off the floor and not wait for the maid to do it, insisting that Ned eat green vegetables at least once a week, and giving them both long lectures on Studying Hard and Not Getting Too Serious Too Young.

  Sometimes, when she got really carried away, Jeanine would announce she was going to buy a minivan so they could take family trips to the Grand Canyon or farmers' markets in Oregon. Ned and A.A. would have to go hide in their rooms until she came to her senses and drifted off for an Ecuadorian colonic irrigation. Usually this phase didn't last more than a day or two, so A.A. wasn't too worried this time. />
  "Actually, I'm probably breaking up with Hunter," she told her mother, and then almost dropped the knife with surprise. Where had that come from? She wasn't lying to Jeanine. But it wasn't as though she was thinking about breaking up with Hunter, or planning anything.

  The words had just popped out of her mouth, and as soon as she said them, A.A. knew they were true. She liked

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  Hunter, but she didn't like him that way. A wave of relief crashed through her--she had to break up with him, sooner rather than later. It wasn't fair to him to pretend she liked him more than she did. And A.A. didn't mind going to Ashley's party without a date. Even Ashley herself was boyfriend free.

  "I'm glad to hear it," Jeanine said, tucking a leather-trimmed cushion behind her head. "You have more important things to worry about right now. I mean, more important things to do. Like a little favor for your old mother."

  "What?" A.A. finished slicing the final cucumber and pushed all the slices off the chopping board and into an oval, cream-colored Nigella Lawson bowl.

  Jeanine's "little favors" often ended up being big pains in the neck. The last little favor was spending a whole weekend being a "fit model" for one of Jeanine's designer friends who was trying to break into teen fashion.

  A.A. had to stand in a cold, drafty studio for two whole days, while people tried half-finished clothes on her, drew on her with chalk, and stuck her with pins. Ashley and Lili would have loved it, but A.A. was bored out of her mind.

  "What is it?" asked A.A.

  "I know how much you and Ned don't like to meet my, um, boyfriends. But I'd like you to make an exception this time," Jeanine said. "I really think Sven is the one. And I'd