Birthday Vicious (11 page)

Lili gave Ashley a long look of her own, as if to say,
This is your chance.

Ashley sighed. She knew when the cards were stacked against her. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Why not?”

Lauren's face cracked into a broad smile, her eyes sparkling in triumph. “So the board agrees—no suspension?” she asked quickly.

“No suspension!” they chorused, Lili's voice the loudest of all. Supriya and Cameron giggled with relief, and even Vicky, who usually only smiled when something bad happened to someone else, looked supremely self-satisfied.

What a pack of sheep! Or was that flock of sheep?
Whatever! Ashley had outwitted them—with Lauren's help, of course. Sure she had to invite a freak show to her party, but hello: It did have a circus theme, right?

The main thing was—no suspension. Plus, now she had the perfect argument to present to her parents. Mom, Dad, I would have just loved to have a small close-friends-only event like you were planning, but . . .
Miss Gamble's won't let me!

She
had
to have her big party now. Ha! Ashley knew her mom would cave when she told her that Miss Gamble's school policy practically called for an insane blowout. Everything was working out perfectly.

Ashley beamed back at the Honor Board geeks as she followed a triumphant Lauren out of the room.

They wanted to attend a party? She was going to throw the biggest, baddest, and hands-down-no-jokes-about-it-this-one-is-for-the-record-books-
best
party anyone had ever seen.

Send in the clowns, jugglers, sword swallowers, lion tamers, acrobats, and contortionists! The tower of pink and white cupcakes, the fifty-foot tent, the celebrity guests, the razzle and the dazzle.

Ashley Spencer was turning thirteen!

ASHLEY INVITED HER FRIENDS TO
sit in on a meeting with Mona Mazur the next day. Lili and A. A. were charmed, intimidated, and appalled by Mona's grandiose plans and haughty personality. Only Lauren hadn't been able to join them, because she had some sort of hair appointment. A. A. didn't know anyone who scheduled a haircut as often as Lauren did. Not even her mother went to Étienne Étoile (née Stephen Star, hair god to the stars) every two weeks!

During the brainstorming session with Mona, A. A. noticed that Ashley didn't appear at all fazed by the fact that the Honor Board had ordered her to invite the whole seventh-grade class to the party. Ashley usually
didn't take too kindly to other people telling her what to do, but she didn't seem to mind at all this time.

As for never wanting to talk about her party before, now it seemed the party was all Ashley ever wanted to talk about. She hogged all conversations to regale them with details on how a famous French act was going to high-dive into the pool, and how they had to convince the staff to volunteer to be shot out from the cannon. News of her party had even reached the former producers of
Preteen Queen
, who were interested in taping it for their new show on the Sugar cable network,
Spoiled Rotten
.

The whole thing made A. A.'s head swim. She was glad to be home finally and away from all the hype. She found Ned and his friends hanging out in the vast open-plan living room. Ned wasn't bad at all, as brothers went. Or so A. A. thought—none of the other Ashleys had a brother. If you had to have a brother, she decided, they should be like Ned: slightly older, smart, and easygoing.

The only problem with Ned was his choice of friends.

Usually A. A. didn't care who was clustered around the giant flat-screen TV, brandishing a joystick and screeching every time an alien life form or king of the
underworld exploded and/or bit the dust. But today she minded. She minded a whole lot.

“No way!” Tri was shouting at the screen, trying to drown out the jeers of the other guys.

“He's got you, man.” Ned was laughing.

A. A. dropped onto the raspberry chenille sofa, the latest addition to the living room. Her mother was under the influence of a new designer, who insisted that fruit colors in a room were the equivalent of supplements in a smoothie, i.e., vital to your physical and mental health. Only her mother would buy an idea like that, A. A. thought—but then, her mother was always open to ideas that involved spending wads of her alimony payments on clothes, shoes, or home decor.

“Foiled again, Fitzpatrick,” cackled the guy sprawled on the floor—he had dark hair and frameless glasses and was even taller than Ned. His name was something weird, A. A. remembered—like Ziggy or something. Ned's real name was Zed Starlight, the result of having Jeanine for a mother and an aging British rock star for a father, but he'd traded that in for a more normal name years ago. Ziggy, however, seemed to revel in it.

Next to lanky Ned, long-legged Ziggy (real name Sigmund), and model-tall A. A., Tri was pretty much a
midget. A. A. felt wickedly glad of this. She wanted him to feel small in every way today. She was in no mood for his snide jibes.

“I'll play,” she announced, reaching for the spare controller that was now kept in a woven banana-skin basket by the fireplace and wriggling to the edge of the sofa. “That is, if you're out, Tri.”

“Oh, he's out all right!” shouted Ziggy. He propped himself up on bony elbows, not even bothering to look around at A. A.—Ned's friends were used to her hanging out. The only time they got annoyed with her was when she nabbed the last slice of pizza.

Tri scowled at her, climbing up off the Tibetan rug and stomping over to the other end of the raspberry sofa. A. A. decided to tune him out. He was probably going to try and throw her off her game.

“Go!” Ziggy called to her, and A. A. focused on the screen. Her character, Kandace Kick-Butt, had to leap over a ravine, scale a cliff, and do a backflip over a slobbering tiger in order to make it to the next level. Leaning and twisting her way across the dangerous landscape, it was all A. A. could do to stay upright on the sofa.

“Watch your back!” Ned shouted, throwing a cushion
at her, and for a second A. A. was confused, thinking he meant
her
back rather than Kandace's. She swung her head around and saw nothing, of course, but the high nubbly rim of the sofa and the window where Ned had drawn the raw-silk curtains to keep light from reflecting off the screen.

“What the . . . !” Ziggy was back in the game now, his character, Adam Avarice, springing back into action onscreen. “I saved you this time, dude, but I can't do this alone.”

“Sorry!” A. A. fixed her gaze on the screen again, but not before glimpsing a smirk on Tri's face. She was determined to show him how much better she was at this game than he was—how much better she was at
everything
than he was. Together with Zig/Adam, she made it to the next canyon, and on to the next round of adversaries. But while her male counterpart was busy leapfrogging a knife-edged cactus, A. A. couldn't help glancing at Tri again.

“What are you looking at?” he snapped, as she looked at the face that she used to think was cute once upon a time. “No wonder you keep messing up.”

“Are you serious?” A. A. turned her eyes to the screen. Kandace had a tricky splits-over-a-crevasse
maneuver to perform if Adam was going to escape the piranha-infested river with his lycra trousers intact. There! She'd nailed it. “You're the one who's so vain. Thinking everything is about you!”

“Why don't you go find some girls to hang out with?” he sneered, poking her in the back with one foot.

“Don't touch me!” she hissed, twisting away.

“Coming at you, A. A.!” Ned warned her, his mouth half-full of cookies. Jeanine would kill him if she found chocolate chip pieces on the cream-colored armchair, but he was probably counting on Jeanine being distracted right now: She had a new boyfriend in Santa Barbara, some film director who owned a winery, and spent most of her time zipping up and down the Pacific coast in his private jet, trying to persuade him to redecorate its interior in blueberry and melon (“colors soothing to the sky”).

“Oh crap!” Onscreen, Kandace took a hard blow from a tumbling boulder, leaving Adam to clamber on alone. “Look what you made me do!”

Tri said nothing. Ned had stuffed the rest of the cookies in his mouth and grabbed a joystick: He and Ziggy/Adam were soon soaring up the side of a cliff. A. A. tossed her controller onto the floor and sat back
on the sofa, turning her head to glower at Tri. He was such a pill. She didn't understand why Ned let him hang out so often. Who needed a grumpy dwarf spoiling everything? They may as well just buy a garden gnome and stand it in front of the fireplace. At least it wouldn't talk. It certainly wouldn't eat all the pizza.

“Where's Hunter tonight?” Tri glared straight back at her. “Don't tell me he's sick of you already?”

“None of your business,” she retorted. It was weak, but she was too mad to think of anything smart to say. Actually, she didn't know what Hunter was up to right now, and she didn't really care. They were still going out, officially, but he didn't text her fifty times a day anymore, and when he did try to reach her, she often just blew him off.

He was nice and all, and he still liked her, as far as she knew. But it was hardly the romance of the century. Maybe love and stuff just wasn't going to work out for her. After she kissed Tri at the Seven party, all it did was drive him back into the arms of Ashley anyhow.

“I did warn you about him. Maybe he's just playing you,” Tri suggested, his voice low. A. A. could barely speak. How could she ever have liked Tri? She really
hated his guts now. His new girlfriend was welcome to him. Actually, A. A. felt sorry for her—she probably had no idea what a dweeb she was dating.

“You total jackass,” she hissed back. “
You're
the player! You totally played me.”

Tri looked floored. “What are you talking about?”

“As if you don't know!” She folded her arms, pretending to be interested in the video game still going on, but her eyes couldn't focus. “You say you're about to break up with Ashley, but that was just one big lie. Next thing I know, you're Velcro'd to her side. That's the last time I believe a
word
you say.”

“Look, I . . . you have to know what really happened.” Tri sat forward, his face crumpling and his voice suddenly hoarse. “It's not what you think.”

“I don't
think
anything,” A. A. shot back. Her phone, slung onto the coffee table when she sat down, started trilling and vibrating at the same time. “I
know
. End of discussion.”

“Man, your phone's loud,” complained Ziggy, writhing on the floor.

“Okay, okay.” A. A. grabbed it and peered at the screen. It was Ashley. Another person she didn't really feel like speaking to right now. The phone stopped
ringing, and then almost immediately started trilling again. Whatever Ashley had to say, it was obviously urgent.

Without a backward glance at Tri, A. A. marched off to her bedroom to answer the phone and find out what was so earth-shatteringly important.

“IS THIS REALLY NECESSARY?” SADIE
looked up at Lauren from underneath several layers of tinfoil. The smell of hair dye permeated Lauren's bathroom, which had been turned for the day into a full-scale replica of a beauty salon.

Lauren had prescribed major high- and lowlights all over. Platinum on top, honey blond on the bottom, and fat, juicy, buttery streaks everywhere. But for now, Sadie looked like nothing more than a tinsel Christmas tree.

After the showdown at MODs the other day, it had taken all of Lauren's charm to win Sadie's trust back. Still, even though she was still a little peeved, Sadie was
a realist. Without Lauren, she had nobody. Plus, she seemed to accept the fact that Lauren was one of the Ashleys now, as long as Lauren made time for her as well.

Once they'd patched things up over a tedious game of Sorry!, Lauren had gently suggested that Sadie might want to change the way she looked and acted if she wanted to have a better life at Miss Gamble's, and offered all the resources at her disposal, including her hairstylist, personal shopper, and life coach.

If only Sadie would be more appreciative! It had been hell trying to book an at-home visit with Étienne, who was based in New York. Her mother had told her he'd had to bump Emma Stone and “Shai” Woodley to squeeze Lauren in. What Trudy hadn't known was that the appointment was really for Sadie.

“Trust me,” Lauren said, leaning on the marble counter. “Or really, trust Étienne.”

Sadie sighed so forcefully she rattled several of the tinfoil squares. “Tsk tsk!” Étienne scolded, continuing to brush, wrap, and fold.

Lauren was glad when her phone began to buzz, offering some relief from Sadie's constant agonizing over what Étienne was doing to her hair. You'd think she was
getting a root canal instead of a beauty treatment.

Lauren left the room and pulled out her phone. It was a text from Christian. Of her two boyfriends, Christian was probably her favorite. He was so funny and goofy, his dark blond hair always adorably disheveled, his green eyes sparkling at her. She read his message.

R U HOME?

JUST
, she texted back.

COOL. ON MY WAY.

What? Lauren was startled. They hadn't arranged to meet up today. She thought Christian had crew practice on Wednesday afternoons. In fact, she
knew
he had practice, because her other boyfriend—dark, brooding Alex—was on the crew team at Saint Aloysius and had practice on Thursdays, and Lauren had to be very careful about scheduling her dates with them accordingly. Practice must have been canceled.

SURE, C U SOON
, she texted, but there was no reply. She dropped her phone onto the glass-topped vanity.