The Ashley Project

by Melissa de la Cruz

  She fired up her computer and checked to see if he was online. Nope. He hadn’t been online since that morning. Should she leave him a new comment? She mulled her options while her screen pinged with IMs from girls from class—everyone wanting to know more about Lauren’s porky plastic surgery—when there was a sharp knock on the door.

  “It’s open,” A. A. called.

  A boy walked into the room. It was the same boy who’d suffered a good-natured defeat at her hands a few minutes earlier. He was dark-haired and handsome, with clear blue eyes and deep dimpled cheeks. Robert Austin Fitzpatrick the Third, or Tri, was hands down the cutest boy in the seventh grade at Gregory Hall. Alas, he was also the shortest boy in the seventh grade at Gregory Hall. He barely came up to A. A.’s chin. But then, so did most boys her age.

  Tri’s family owned the Fairmont Hotel, and the two of them had known each other since they were small enough to hide in the grandfather clocks in the grand ballroom. Growing up, they had learned to ride bikes up and down the hall corridors. His older brother was a friend of Ned’s, and the two were familiar combatants during killfests.

  “We’re getting a pizza, do you want some?” he asked, taking a seat on the ornate bench in front of her bed. “Wow. Zebra stripes,” he said, admiring the rug.

  “I know. I can’t stop her,” A. A. said, sighing. Her mother’s whirlwind interior design projects were a common annoyance. One year Jeanine had hired a feng shui master to realign the furniture, and he’d placed mammoth vases near all the doorways so that she banged her knee on one every time she left the room. “What kind of pizza?”

  “Dunno. What kind do you want?” he asked. “Ned said you had the menu.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s around here somewhere,” said A. A., motioning to her messy desk.

  “How was the tea?” he asked. Tri’s older sisters were all Miss Gamble’s girls and he was familiar with the school’s social calendar.

  “Okay.” A. A. told him about the upchuck-inducing fountain and he laughed, but not in a mean way. Tri liked a good prank.

  Her phone buzzed with a text message, vibrating against the wooden surface of her rolltop desk, and she grabbed it before it could fall off the edge. “Could you excuse me?” she asked, glancing down at her phone.

  “Oh,” Tri said, looking a little confused. “You want me to—okay. Sure.”

  “No—I—you can stay,” she said, tapping her phone screen to see who had texted her. Her heart beat. She had wanted to read the message in private, but it was just Tri. They were like brother and sister. But she felt shy talking about her feelings for laxjock with him. Conversation with Tri always revolved around the discrepancies between the first and second Star Wars trilogies, whether there was life on other planets (Tri pro and A. A. con), and things you could explode in a microwave (marshmallows, bars of soap, CDs, but not the family cat).

  She hit the message icon.

  WANNA LIVE TWEET THE VOICE W ME AND LI?

  It was just Ashley. A. A. exhaled, deflated. She tapped a quick message telling Ashley she was busy and they could tweet later.

  “Waiting to hear from someone?” asked Tri, still poking around her desk and rummaging through her books and papers looking for the pizzeria menu.

  “Huh? No.” A. A. shook her head. “Don’t touch that!” she said suddenly, slapping his hand away from her pink journal. She looked at the clock. It had been three hours since she’d sent laxjock her sappy text. Ugh. She had to do something. She scrolled down the list till she found his number and began tapping out a new text.

  “Mushroom and sausage okay?” he asked, holding up the red and white menu.

  A. A. nodded, without looking up. I WZ ONLY KDING! she wrote, and pressed the send button just as Tri got up to leave, closing the door behind him. She put down her phone and sighed. Maybe he thought she was being too forward. Maybe he never wanted to hear from her again.

  But a few minutes later her phone buzzed back to life again.

  She yelped when she saw the screen.

  It was from him!

  BUT I U 2 XOXOXOX

  She pressed the phone close to her chest and smiled a small, secret smile. He was definitely amazing!

  11

  THAT H&M JACKET ISN’T THE ONLY KNOCKOFF IN THE ROOM

  “WHAT IS SHE DOING HERE?” Ashley hissed, glaring at Lauren, who had taken a seat at the round table. “This meeting is for committee members only,” she said as she removed her new H&M jacket.

  It was a copy of a much more expensive Stella McCartney jacket, but she hoped no one would notice. The other day her mother had flipped when she saw the latest bills from Saks and had taken away Ashley’s courtesy card, lecturing her that twelve-year-olds did not need to carry two-thousand-dollar handbags, blah blah blah, rampant materialism, blah blah blah, excessive consumption, blah blah and blah. This from a woman who spent a fortune on her skin-care regimen alone. She said that Ashley was abusing her signing privileges and told her she was lucky she wasn’t taking away the handbag itself. With only her allowance to spend, Ashley was forced to downgrade labels. But she refused to downgrade her trendsetting Ashley Spencer style. People looked to her for their fashion cues. Hello.

  “Relax, Ash. It’s an after-school activity, anyone can sign up, remember?” A. A. said mildly as she stretched her legs on the seat in front of her and yawned widely without covering her mouth.

  Ashley frowned. A. A. could be such a tomboy sometimes. It wasn’t good for the Ashleys’ enviable reputations if A. A. would persist in slouching down and acting like a boy. But it wasn’t so much A. A.’s posture that was bothering her as what A. A. had said.

  Technically, A. A. was right: Technically, anyone could sign up for any of the myriad after-school activities offered at Miss Gamble’s, although Ashley couldn’t imagine who’d want to waste their time at such boring activities as chorus, which was populated by off-key aspiring Voice wannabes, or theater, where you had to battle the budding drama queens who couldn’t talk without “emoting” or walk without “expressing.”

  Even worse, who wanted to hang with the nerdy worker bees who ran yearbook and The Gambler (the school newspaper: three pages stapled together and released once a semester)? Then there was the lowest of the low—School Spirit, which was populated by doughy-faced girls who organized weekly bake sales and created handmade posters for pep rallies and field hockey games, and Fashion Club, which was started by two weirdos who wore bizarre outfits on free-dress days. The Ashleys would never be caught dead in something as trite as Fashion Club.

  No. There was only one after-school activity worth signing up for, and everyone knew it. And that was Social Club, the club that ran the most important activity of all: the monthly mixers with the boys from Gregory Hall.

  School had been in session for almost two weeks, and even Ashley was tired of making piggy noises whenever she saw Lauren. She had to give the girl credit. Even when someone drew a pig on her locker, Lauren never even looked upset. She walked the hallways with her nose in the air and looked straight ahead, never giving any sign that the teasing bothered her.

  Still, the girl should know better than to crash a Social Club meeting. Everyone knew it was staffed by Ashleys and their SOAs only.

  Ashley rapped on the podium and called the meeting to order. “Okay. So you all know what we have to do. Plan the best boy-girl dance ever.” She wrote “Best Dance Ever” with four exclamation points on the whiteboard behind her.

  “Yeah, and how are we going to do that if the dance starts at four p.m.?” asked Emma Rodgers, the way-too-opinionated leader of the popular eighth graders, who were all seated on the window ledges at the far side of the room. The eighth graders were too busy plotting how to crash high school parties to care about the mixer.

  School policy dictated that all mixers and dances be held on school grounds from four to six in the afternoon. Every year the seventh and eighth graders campaigned for a later time—six to eight, seven to nine—and every year t
hey were shot down.

  Ashley reddened. “There’s nothing we can do about that. I already asked.”

  “You know this means we have to change in the locker rooms,” Montgomery Cunningham grumbled.

  “We should just wear our uniforms,” joked A. A. Ashley frowned. A. A. would probably do just that if she weren’t an Ashley. She didn’t seem to care what she wore, since everything ended up looking good on her. One time Ashley and Lili had noticed A. A. wearing odd-looking shorts to gym class, and they turned out to be her brother’s boxer shorts. They were beyond horrified, but A. A. had merely shrugged.

  “Dances are for losers,” Eva Tobin, another eighth grader, declared.

  “Shut up! The dance is going to be fun!” Ashley said, trying to restore order as the committee meeting began to degenerate into gossiping cliques. Sure, they could complain and moan forever about how an afternoon dance was strictly kid stuff. But they had to face facts. They went to an all-girls school. They had to take what they could get. Even if the dance was at a mega-lame hour, it still meant they could hang out with capital-B Boys.

  Ashley put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat. “Okay. So what’s our theme?”

  “What about the sixties?” chirped Melody Myers, who could always be counted on to contribute, since she was a perennial hand-raiser. “I just saw Grease, and it was so cute. We could all wear poodle skirts and bobby socks—whatever those are.”

  “Cute! But isn’t that the fifties?” A. A. asked, looking up from her phone.

  “Fifties, sixties, what’s the difference?” Melody asked.

  “What about a Hawaiian theme?” Melody’s friend Olivia DeBartolo suggested. “That could be cute, right? We could all dress in cute beachy clothes.”

  “Pass,” Ashley said, crinkling her nose. “Do you guys really want to wear grass skirts and coconut boobs?”

  “We could do an eighties theme,” Lili suggested, sitting up straight in her chair. “Play a lot of Madonna, Prince, Billy Joel. Leggings are in now, and my mom said they were huge in the eighties, too. We could wear headbands and fingerless gloves and leg warmers! Ooh, leg warmers!”

  “Eh,” Ashley sniffed. She looked around the room to gauge interest level. A. A. was madly texting on her phone as usual, the eighth graders were completely ignoring her, and she knew the rest of the club would be happy to just let her decide.

  “And we could rent, like, Pac-Man video games and Donkey Kong for the guys,” said Lili, getting more and more enthusiastic.

  “Sure, so they can totally ignore us at the dance,” A. A. piped up, finally putting her phone away.

  “Yeah, Lil, be serious. I’m so tired of eighties nostalgia, it’s so cliché,” Ashley finally declared.

  “Well, what are your ideas, then?” Lili asked, looking hurt and annoyed.

  Ashley listened as the club discussed the merits of a winter wonderland theme. But the whole idea was nixed when A. A. pointed out that it was still autumn. There was a long, semiheated debate on whether or not to serve food (would anyone actually eat in front of the boys?), and it looked like the meeting would accomplish exactly nothing, until a clear voice spoke from the back of the room.

  “What about doing it like a celebrity event? We could do a red carpet—or a green one for Miss Gamble’s. And the yearbook people can pose as paparazzi. And we could all get really, really dressed up,” Lauren said, blushing deeply when all eyes turned to her.

  Ashley raised an eyebrow. Okay, so it was not such a bad idea, but she couldn’t very well acknowledge that.

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” Lili chimed in. “Don’t you think, Ash?”

  In response, Ashley flipped her hair over her shoulders and pointedly ignored Lili’s comment. “I know,” she announced, snapping her fingers. “We’ll throw a VIP. A Very Important Party. We’ll call it Miss Gamble’s Goes Hollywood and have a velvet rope and lists and we could dress up in really cool clothes and get our pictures taken for the school newspaper.”

  Ashley watched as Lauren’s color deepened. It was so obvious Ashley had just stolen her idea, but nobody seemed to care or notice. Lauren put her head down, her cheeks aflame. But she didn’t say anything.

  Just the way Ashley knew it would happen.

  12

  THE ENEMY OF YOUR ENEMY IS YOUR . . . FRENEMY?

  AFTER THE MEETING ENDED, LILI watched as Lauren collected her things slowly so it wouldn’t be so obvious that she had to walk out of the room by herself while everyone else was bunched into chattering groups. Why had she spoken up in favor of Lauren’s idea? Especially since Ashley had declared Lauren a no-friend zone? If Lili stepped out of line . . . Well. What would happen? An idea began to form in her head.

  Lili checked to see if Ashley had left the room, and when she was sure Ashley wouldn’t see her, she ran up to Lauren. “Hey, wait up.”

  Lauren turned around. Her face was still bright red, from anger or embarrassment, Lili didn’t know. She gave Lauren the once-over. Lauren was wearing her hair back in a long, dark ponytail, and she’d lost the thick socks for a pair of cable-knit burgundy tights. Her uniform, Lili couldn’t help but notice, was custom-tailored so it fit her perfectly. She made the green plaid kilt look almost chic. No wonder Ashley hated her.

  “What?” asked Lauren, when Lili didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “Gum?” Lili offered, holding out a Trident pack, not knowing quite how to start or what to say. The room where the meeting was held was one of the Gamble mansion’s old bedrooms, with floral wallpaper and a brass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. An eighth grader stuck her head in the room looking for a forgotten binder and gave the two girls a curious look.

  Lauren waited until she left before shaking her head. “No, thanks.”

  Lili shrugged and popped her gum. You weren’t supposed to chew gum at Miss Gamble’s. You also weren’t supposed to slouch when you stood, sit with your legs spread, or talk loudly. But Lili was getting tired of playing by everyone else’s rules.

  “Listen . . . I know I’m probably not one of your favorite people right now,” Lili said cautiously. “But I’d really like to talk to you.”

  Lauren snorted. “Why? So you can take credit for something I came up with, like your friend just did back there?” she asked, a cold edge to her voice.

  “Look, I know what you’re trying to do,” Lili said softly. Why was she doing this? She looked at the swinging door. Her friends would be waiting for her, hiding behind a bus stop that had a perfect view of Gregory Hall across the street. They would be wondering where she was. Why was she wasting her time with Lauren? But something was compelling her to do it.

  “What? What am I trying to do?” asked Lauren, blushing and twirling a lock of hair between her fingers.

  “Get in with us,” Lili said evenly.

  Lauren gave her an eye roll and a dismissive snort. “Please.”

  “Fine.” Lili slapped her notebook closed with a bang, as if considering the matter closed. “I thought I would try to help, but I guess you don’t need any.”

  She’d approached Lauren on impulse, because she was mad at Ashley for being so rude to her at the meeting. But maybe it had been a mistake, after all. Lili began to walk away briskly. Maybe if she hurried, Ashley and A. A. wouldn’t even notice that she had lagged behind.

  “Wait.”

  Lili turned around slowly.

  “I want to know what you wanted to say to me,” Lauren said, biting her lip but looking Lili straight in the eye.

  Lili took the gum out of her mouth and spit it gracefully into a Kleenex. “Well, I was going to tell you that Ashley doesn’t like to make new friends. . . .”

  “I don’t need you to tell me that,” said Lauren.

  “Will you listen?” Lili asked. She couldn’t tell who was more annoying, Ashley or Lauren—they kind of reminded her of each other.

  “Go on,” Lauren said stubbornly.

  “Ashley doesn’t like new people, but if you
can give her something that she wants, then she’d be okay with having you around.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Lauren asked.

  Lili sighed. It was a question she was asking herself as well. Why rock the boat? Why befriend Lauren? She thought about how Ashley always got the red bag, the best seat, the ability to use her own name.

  Ashley always got what she wanted, and she wanted Lauren “out.” But maybe things would be more fun if Lauren was “in.” Her mother’s words rang in her ear. You have to be your own person. Get out of Ashley’s shadow.

  “I don’t know,” Lili said finally. “Maybe I’m just bored.”

  13

  SOMETIMES IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT THE BOY, BUT THE COMPANY

  “WHERE’S LI?” ASHLEY ASKED, KEEPING her voice low even though there was no one around to hear.

  “Dunno,” A. A. whispered back. The two of them were being as quiet as possible, and every few seconds one of them would peek out from their hiding spot behind the bus shelter, eyes trained on the massive oak doors of Gregory Hall across the street.

  The boys’ school was located just a few blocks away from Miss Gamble’s, housed in four interconnected ivy-covered brick buildings. Ashley watched several cars idling by the sidewalk as moms and drivers awaited their passengers. A crossing guard (a parent in an orange tech vest) stood at the corner, ready to marshal little ones to safety. The girls had been standing there for what seemed like hours, although in reality it was only a few minutes.

  “Here I am,” Lili said, materializing suddenly and squeezing in next to them. “I was in the bathroom,” she explained. “Had to change my tampon,” she added smugly. Lili always had to rub it in that she and A. A. had gotten theirs while Ashley was still waiting for hers.

  “TMI!” Ashley gagged. Let A. A. and Lili bond over getting their “little friend,” as her mom called it. Gross! She could wait forever if she had to. Who wanted to walk around with all those icky things between your legs? Ashley noticed that Lili had also put on an extra coat of lip gloss so that her lips were pink and shiny, and she’d gone a little heavy on the perfume. Ashley immediately checked her reflection in the glass and noticed A. A. was doing the same.