The Ashley Project

by Melissa de la Cruz

  But Dex wouldn’t quit. “Your mom said—”

  “I know what my mom said. Can we just—”

  “Okay. Fine. I’ll drop it. But riddle me this, Batgirl. Why do girls from your school keep asking me if I’m from New Jersey and then giggling and running off?” he asked as he backed out of the steep driveway, zigzagging expertly so that the car didn’t brush up against the newly installed solar-powered entry lights.

  “Just drive,” Lauren ordered. It had been a few days since Ashley Li—the cute Chinese one who always looked so tiny and perfect—had offered her that unsolicited advice about dealing with Ashley Spencer, and Lauren still didn’t know what to make of it. All night Lauren had tossed and turned, wondering what she could offer the Queen of the Mean. She couldn’t think of anything.

  Ashley Spencer was a golden girl. She had everything a twelve-year-old girl could ever possibly want. Looks. Clothes. Money. Cool friends. What could Lauren offer her that she didn’t have already? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was so frustrating. What was the point of looking like an Ashley from the outside if she was still dorky Lauren on the inside? She had to become one of the Ashleys somehow. She had to infiltrate that tight-knit group in order to destroy it. Corruption always started from within. Just like the fall of the Roman Empire. And history was her favorite subject.

  As Lauren brooded on her predicament, a song by her favorite new hot-girl band, the StripHall Queens, came on the radio. Dex turned up the music, which she appreciated, since he’d told her more than once that he didn’t know how she could stand to listen to that “hooker anthem.”

  She should treat him better, she thought. Dex was a good guy. She’d known him since she was little, and over the summer, she and Dex had really gotten close. Her parents were always too busy with the business, and her older sister had moved to L.A. for college, so Dex was practically the only family she had.

  “Hey, so what’s going on with you and your new girl?” she asked. Dex always had a new girlfriend; it was like a revolving door every week. She could never keep up with all their names. He’d gone through a cheerleader phase, a rich-bitch phase, then a number of flighty New Age types who were always offering to forecast her horoscope.

  “Who said I had a new girl?” He laughed, turning the wheel and zooming ahead of a Porsche that had cut him off at the last corner.

  “Don’t you always?” Lauren teased.

  “Maybe,” said Dex, rolling down the car window and letting some fresh air inside. Lauren noticed a blush creeping up his ears.

  “Why so mysterious?” she asked. Dex always opened up about his retinue of chicks. She’d learned to be skeptical of boys since knowing Dex. He was always giving her dating advice, which was especially sweet since he never seemed to notice that Lauren didn’t date. She appreciated his interest, however. It made her feel better that Dex believed that someday soon her phone would start ringing off the hook, with boys lined up to take her out. So far, though, it hadn’t happened.

  “Why so curious?” he shot back.

  Lauren shrugged. She was just making small talk to take the heat off her own problems. Although she did like to hear about Dex’s love life since it was far more interesting than her own. She knew her mom quizzed Dex on her life behind her back. Was Lauren happy? Did she have any friends? Her mother had allowed her to get the makeover only to stop the teasing. Her parents threatened to pull her out of school entirely if things didn’t change, but Lauren couldn’t let that happen.

  Miss Gamble’s was the best primary school in the city. If she didn’t graduate from Miss Gamble’s, she’d never get into Exeter, her dream prep school, and if she didn’t go to Exeter, she’d never get into Harvard, her dream college, and if she didn’t go to Harvard, she’d never be able to launch a career as the next Oprah. Lauren had big dreams for her future. It was the only thing that kept her present tolerable.

  “Shallow dating pool?” she teased Dex.

  “Nah, I got a lady friend, but I’m taking it slow this time, you know?” Dex shrugged.

  Lauren nodded. She settled back into the seat. Outside it began to rain. Big fat droplets drummed on the roof of the car, and she was glad she had brought her bright red slicker that day. Dex drove the car slowly, then pulled to the curb without warning and threw the passenger-side door open.

  “Hey, Billy! Get in,” he called, waving to a tall, drenched youth making his way up the hilly sidewalk.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lauren, a little alarmed.

  “Giving my boy a ride,” Dex told her, as a very good-looking blond boy, his hair wet and plastered to his face, clambered into the front seat. “You don’t mind, do you?” added Dex. “We got a big game against Saint A’s this weekend, can’t have my star forward coming down with the flu.”

  Lauren shook her head. Especially when she saw who the hitchhiker was. It was the same boy she’d seen the Ashleys tailing the other afternoon. She had spotted the trio walking slowly behind him the other day and had watched with amusement as the wicked threesome dove into some bushes when he turned around.

  “Hey, I’m Billy Reddy,” the boy said, turning around and flashing Lauren a heart-melting smile.

  “I know,” Lauren answered. It was charming how he acted like he was just a normal kid walking to school and not some sort of celebrity. The Reddys were the most talked-about family in San Francisco. There were whole websites devoted to their genealogy and scandals. Lauren knew all about his older brother, a Hollywood movie star who had a baby with a former prostitute; his sister, the heroin junkie, who’d just been packed off to rehab; and his other sister, whose five-star million-dollar wedding to an Arabian sheik was in the pages of all the society magazines.

  “Really? I don’t think we’ve met,” Billy said, a dimple winking on each cheek.

  “That’s Lauren,” said Dex, fiddling with the radio and trying to find a better station. Lauren figured he didn’t want to be caught by Billy listening to sluttybop.

  “Oh, yeah. Dex told me about you. Your dad’s Sergei Page, right?”

  Lauren nodded. Dex talked to Billy Reddy about her? Billy Reddy knew who she was?

  “I love YourTV. I put up stuff all the time,” said Billy, still turned around so that he could talk to her directly. “Hey, Dex, did you get someone to work the camera for the game this weekend?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re all set.” Dex nodded.

  “You should come watch a game sometime,” Billy told her. “We never have enough of a crowd. And Dex is a great coach. Kicks our asses most of the time, but I guess we deserve it. This weekend’s an away game, but maybe next week you could come down.”

  “Sure,” Lauren said casually. Had Billy Reddy just invited her to watch his lacrosse game? She had to pinch herself to make sure she was awake. He was probably just being friendly, trying to get one more body into the stands. You’d think the lacrosse games would be packed. But now that she thought about it, they played down at the marina, where the winds were brutal, and Dex had told her that almost no one came to watch the games except for the players’ parents.

  “Cool.” Billy winked.

  The car pulled up to the school, and Lauren noticed that Ashley Spencer was climbing out of a tan Range Rover right behind them. She suddenly remembered Ashley Li’s words. If you can give her something she wants, she’d be okay with having you around. Lauren looked at the front seat of her car and knew the answer.

  “Dex—I can’t seem to get this door open,” she complained, keeping an eye on Ashley, who was kissing her dad good-bye.

  “Huh?”

  Lauren pretended to fumble with the handle. “Yeah, Daddy said there was something wrong with it the other day.”

  “There’s something wrong with my baby?” Dex asked, stricken. He treated the Tesla like a favored child. When he wasn’t driving it, Lauren saw him waxing the finish or lovingly detailing the wheels.

  “I’ll get it,” offered Billy, getting out of his seat just as Lauren had hoped
he would.

  Lauren also hoped that Ashley would notice as Billy held the door open for her patiently, but Ashley was fumbling in her bag for her cell phone. Lauren would have to make the moment last just a little longer. “Could you hold this?” she asked, handing him her dad’s golf umbrella, which she’d found in the backseat. “I hate getting my hair wet.”

  “Sure,” Billy said, taking the umbrella and dutifully holding it open for her. Lauren peered from the corner of her eye. Ashley was now chatting on the phone, probably to her two other stuck-up friends, so Lauren took her time climbing out of the car, locking her knees together, then sliding out of the seat gracefully. She took the umbrella from Billy and gave him a quick hug, pressing her smooth cheek against his damp one.

  “Grazie.”

  “Anytime,” he said amiably.

  Lauren chanced a look in Ashley’s direction, but the arctic blonde had already disappeared through the school doors. Had Ashley seen them together? She could only hope.

  16

  A CHANGE OF HEART OR MERELY A CHANGE OF TUNE?

  THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN, Ashley thought. She did not just see Billy Reddy with Lauren Page. It was completely insane. Billy was saving himself for her. How the hell did Lauren even know the guy? She tore her eyes away from the two of them hugging and stomped into school in a black mood, heading straight for the lockers without even greeting her two friends with her usual verve. Ashley folded up her umbrella so violently that a shower of raindrops splattered on A. A., who was gathering books for their next class.

  “Okay, who told you that shopping causes acne?” A. A. joked, when she saw the look on Ashley’s face.

  “Ha-ha,” Ashley said mirthlessly, shoving the umbrella away. She slammed her locker door with a bang, taking satisfaction in rattling the hinges. “I just saw . . .,” she said, pausing to place an ouchless elastic between her teeth while she pulled her hair up into a high ponytail. She wasn’t even sure if she could utter the words.

  “Saw what?” A. A. prompted as they walked out of the new glassed-in annex, which housed the lockers, organic local foods refectory, and state-of-the-art music center, into the main building.

  “Huh? Oh, nothing, forget it.” Ashley shrugged, deciding against telling A. A. what she’d just witnessed. Before she jumped the gossip gun, there had to be some rational explanation for why the boy she loved was with the girl she loathed.

  She was still annoyed when they arrived at their first class of the day: Manners & Morals, with Miss Charm. Now there was a teacher who was one slice short of a whole pizza. Miss Charm was the school’s flighty but sweet etiquette teacher, another one of Miss Gamble’s spinster alums who’d returned to serve on the faculty or administration out of the deep affection they felt for the place. Ashley had a hard time imagining the school’s staff—myopic Miss Moos, eccentric Miss Charm, effusive Miss Murphy—outside of the sheltered, cozy society of the all-girls school. It was as if they were frozen in time and place.

  The class was taught in a sunny room in the front of the mansion, and when they arrived Ashley noticed that all the desks were pushed to the edges of the room in a semicircle. Lili was already waiting for them and waved them over to the two seats she was saving. “Did the mirror say you weren’t the prettiest?” she asked, upon seeing the dark expression on Ashley’s face.

  God. Her friends knew her too well. She never could hide her feelings from them. Ashley dredged up a smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. Lauren Page and Billy Reddy—it just didn’t make any sense. Especially when she, Ashley Spencer, had yet to even say one word to the guy? Hello.

  But she couldn’t dwell on it now, since class was starting, and etiquette was one of the few subjects she actually enjoyed and did well in. Not that being a C student bothered her in the least. She’d read in a glossy magazine she was flipping through at the salon once that the world was run by C students, and she fully expected to rule the world one day, regardless of her poor marks. As far as Ashley was concerned, they were a nonissue. After all, there was nothing average about her looks.

  “Good morning, good morning,” Miss Charm sang as she walked briskly into the room, her hair piled on top of her head in a beehive. “Girls, today we’re going to go over the conduct for a very special event. Do you know what it is?” She clasped her hands in delight. Miss Charm was given to extravagant hand gestures. It was part of her, um, charm. “Your first ballroom dance!”

  Ashley smirked at her friends, but she was not immune to the small, birdlike woman’s enthusiasm for the project. The afternoon mixer, or the “VIP,” as Social Club had dubbed it, was also supposed to be a ballroom dance. Not in a cheesy Dancing with the Stars fashion, of course—no way were Miss Gamble’s girls going to don purple sequins and nude panty hose—but as a quasi-formal affair wherein young gentlemen and young ladies were introduced to the ways of polite society.

  At least, that was the idea.

  Speaking of the dance, major preparations were in order, and like a good leader, Ashley had delegated the entire task of putting on the production to Lili and A. A. Why stress about a million little things when you could get your friends to stress for you? Ashley tapped out a text to Lili’s phone.

  HOW IS MXR PLANNING GOING?

  Her phone buzzed immediately with a reply.

  ON IT. EVERYTHING GR8. DON’T WORRY.

  Ashley looked up at Lili, who winked. Oh, well. If she said not to worry . . . and God knew Lili was an organization queen—the books in her locker were arranged in a sliding scale on the color spectrum and her binders were color-coded and indexed according to subject. Ashley slipped her phone back into the side pocket of her handbag just as Miss Charm walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m going to pretend to be a young man at the party,” the teacher said. “Ashley, why don’t you stand up, please. You will play the part of a young lady. I hope it’s not too strenuous a role.”

  Ashley laughed because the rest of the class was laughing, even though she didn’t find the joke funny, and obediently stood up in front of her desk while Miss Charm walked toward her from the opposite side of the room.

  “I am a young man from Gregory Hall who has just entered the dance. Now I stop and see a girl I’d like to ask to dance. I walk over to where she is seated. And I bow in front of her,” said Miss Charm, bowing like a man, bending at the waist with her right hand folded above her stomach. “Now, as the young lady who has been approached, what do you do?”

  This was why Ashley loved Manners & Morals. If she had her way, all social interaction would entail people bowing to her. “I curtsy,” she replied, making a small dip with her knees and holding her uniform skirt up.

  “Good. A little less neck on the curtsy. Your whole body must go down, not just a tilt of the head. Try it again, dear.”

  Ashley tried it again with more knee and less neck.

  “Very good. Excellent.” Miss Charm beamed. Ashley beamed back. Who wanted to learn new math when old-fashioned etiquette was so much more fun?

  Miss Charm regarded the class. “So now the boy turns to the girl and asks, ‘May I have this dance?’ And if you would like to dance with the young man, how do you respond?”

  “Certainly, thank you,” Ashley replied as they’d been taught. She smiled, picturing Billy Reddy crossing the room like Robert Pattinson to Kristen Stewart in the first Twilight movie, before she cheated on him.

  Miss Charm began to lead her in the box steps of the waltz, but Ashley had a question she wanted answered first. “But what if I don’t want to dance with the boy?” she asked, her imagination conjuring up Jonathan Tessin, he of the sweat problem, who’d been obsessed with her since prekindergarten.

  The class tittered, and Ashley glowed. She absolutely adored being the center of attention.

  “You must respond, ‘Not right now, but thank you for asking,’ ” Miss Charm directed. “Etiquette is all about kindness, girls. That’s why it’s called polite society. One must never hurt
anyone’s feelings.”

  “But aren’t you just leading him on, then?” asked A. A., without raising her hand.

  “Yeah, can’t you just say, ‘Get lost, loser’?” Lili called with a grin.

  “Heavens, no!” Miss Charm laughed. “You’ll scare the poor boys away. I do hope that you girls agree to dance with every boy who is courageous enough to cross the room and ask for your hand.”

  Yeah, that was likely, Ashley thought as the twenty girls in class groaned, and there was grumbling and merriment all around.

  “Now we shall practice,” Miss Charm said, releasing her hold on Ashley and turning on the iPod player by the whiteboard. The soft sounds of Chopin’s Waltz in C Sharp Minor filled the room.

  Ashley ended up being partnered with A. A., while Lili had the unfortunate luck to dance with Sheridan Riley, who was sure to talk her ear off and ask a million questions about something inane like her socks and where she could get the same exact ones and exactly how far up the calf they should be pulled up, or in last year’s case, scrunched down. Being the subject of Sheridan’s obsession was flattering, but ultimately exhausting in its quest for detail. Especially on the days when your socks were just . . . socks.

  As they glided around the room, Ashley noticed Lauren dancing with Katie Tanaka, another of the class’s bigmouth girls. Katie was sure to know the latest news. “Let’s go over there,” she said, pulling A. A. to that side of the room so she could overhear their conversation without appearing too obvious about it.

  A. A. was doing her space-cadet bit, looking over Ashley’s shoulder and going through the motions of the waltz’s box steps, and didn’t object to being directed. Ashley edged a little closer to where Katie and Lauren were pirouetting. Miss Charm was seated by the window bench, going over the syllabus for her next class, and didn’t pay attention as most of the girls stopped waltzing and started talking instead. Ashley chided herself on having to stoop so low—gossip usually originated from her and the other Ashleys, not the other way around—but this was the matter of Billy Reddy. The love of her life. She inched forward a little more. They were so close to Lauren and Katie that she could have reached over and pulled Lauren’s hair if she wanted to.