The Ashley Project (20 page)

“How long have you been dating her?” she asked.

Dex clasped his hands behind his back. “That obvious, huh?” He smiled sheepishly. “She's twenty-five, a little old for me. So I like to keep it on the down low.” He picked up the flowers on the bench. “Do you think she'll like them?”

A. A. nodded. “She'll love them.”

“Nice seeing you, Alioto. Hey, shouldn't you be at some dance?” he said.

“I'm meeting someone,” she explained.

“Ah.” Dex nodded and took his leave. She watched him approach the kindergarten teacher shyly. The girl looked delighted at the sight of the flowers.

Then A. A. looked at her phone. No texts. No messages. It was an hour after they said they'd meet.

Whoever laxjock was, he wasn't coming.

NOTHING COULD EVER TAKE ASHLEY
spencer off guard, and if she was surprised to see Lauren Page arrive at the dance on the arm of Billy Reddy, she didn't show it. She watched the two of them make their way over to where she was standing. “You're alive,” she said flatly to Lauren.

“As far as I know, you can't die of embarrassment,” Lauren replied. “Ashley, have you met . . .”

“I'm Billy Reddy,” said Billy, extending his hand over the seafood platters in front of them at the buffet station.

“Hi.” Ashley smiled, shaking it. He was absolutely gorgeous. The tousled hair, the toothpaste-commercial smile. But somehow Billy didn't look as cute up close as he did from afar. It was like the time her parents took her
to an American Idol concert, and they'd been able to go backstage and she'd met the stud she'd been crushing on for so long her fingers would bleed from voting for him a hundred times every week on her cell phone. It was kind of anticlimactic to realize that he was just some normal guy, who looked shorter than he was on TV and had a little body odor from performing.

Billy Reddy didn't smell, but now that he was standing right in front of her with his hand out, he didn't seem to be the Cutest Boy in the World, either. He was just some good-looking guy. And there were tons of good-looking guys in the city. Besides, what high school sophomore would be caught at a dance with seventh graders? Wasn't that a bit creepy-geeky? And he was with Lauren. As her date. Gag.

“I'm Lili,” Lili said, coming between them.

Billy and Lili began to talk, and Ashley moved down the buffet line. She had assumed correctly, there was nothing she could eat on the menu. She was glad she'd bullied Lili into ordering the special cupcakes. At least she would be able to eat those. She felt a nudge on her arm and turned around to see Lauren standing next to her.

“So you've finally met Billy,” Lauren said.

“Yeah.” Ashley shrugged.

Lauren looked physically deflated. “Listen—I'm really
sorry about what happened the other day. I know I overreacted. I didn't mean what I said.”

“That's fine,” said Ashley. “But it doesn't change anything.”

“Why not?” Lauren cried, her voice inching up another octave. The girl really needed to chill out.

“It just doesn't. Oh, there's Tri,” Ashley said, as Tri walked up carrying a plate of mini cupcakes. Just what she was looking for.

“Want one?” he asked. He was so thoughtful. The perfect gentleman.

“Sure,” she said, picking up one of the delicious-looking treats and taking a bite.

Lauren was still standing next to her, looking lost and uncertain.

“Shoo,” Ashley told her. “Leave me and my friends alone, Zero.”

“What was that?” Tri asked, looking curiously from Ashley to Lauren.

“Nothing,” Ashley dismissed. She took another bite of the cupcake. “I was just saying . . .” Then she realized that she couldn't breathe. And that her mouth was on fire. There was something horribly, horribly wrong. But before she could think of what it was, she blacked out.

SOMEONE WAS SCREAMING. LILI TORE
herself away from Billy's side and ran over to where Lauren was standing over Ashley's prone body. Ashley was just lying there, clutching a cupcake in one hand.

“What did you do to her?” Lili accused.

“I didn't do anything!” cried Lauren. “She just fell!”

“Nobody just falls!” Lili screamed. “Ashley? Ashley? Can you hear me?” She knelt down by Ashley's body. It was still warm. She shook her. Hard.

“What the hell happened?” Lili demanded.

“Nothing, she was just standing there, and then she hit the ground,” said Lauren.

“Well, something must have happened!”

Lili looked at Lauren. “What are you doing back at school, anyway? I thought you were dead.”

“I'm not dead,” Lauren retorted. “Is that what you guys told everyone about me? I was wondering why everyone was looking at me funny.”

Lili didn't respond. She picked up Ashley's hand and tried to feel a pulse, but she was so panicked she couldn't figure out if she could feel anything. A rising tide of emotion swept over her. Ashley Spencer was dead. So why did she feel . . . happy?

“What's happened?”

A voice brought her back to her senses. Lili turned around. A. A. stood there, her cheeks flushed. She had on a red scarf that she hadn't been wearing earlier.

“Thank God you're here,” said Lili, pushing away all thoughts of how she would be the most popular girl in the class now that Ashley had met her demise. “It's Ashley!”

“Hey—should we call 911 or something?” said Billy Reddy, walking over. A few more people began to surround them, to see what the commotion was all about.

“What's wrong with her?” A. A. asked, dropping down on Ashley's other side.

“I told you, we were just talking and then she fell. No, wait.” Lauren shook her head. “She took a bite of the cupcake
and then she fell. What was in those cupcakes, Lili?”

“Nothing. They're just cupcakes. Plain vanilla cupcakes.”

“When she took a bite, she had some sort of spasm before she passed out. It could be an allergic reaction. Is she allergic to anything?” asked Lauren.

“No. Not as far as I know,” Lili said, shaking her head. What was Ashley allergic to? Nerds? Zits? Bad fashion?

“Peanuts! She's allergic to peanuts,” A. A. said suddenly. “She told me last month after the tea when I asked her why she wouldn't eat any of the scones when they were so yummy. And she asked the waiter at the Ivy if there were nuts in her salad. She always does that. Remember at the sleepover she said she didn't know what peanut butter tasted like?”

“But there aren't any peanuts in the cupcakes,” Lili said. “I told you, they're just plain vanilla!”

“But peanuts could be anywhere. In the batter. In the frosting. Lots of things are made with nuts. Ashley said almost anything can have trace amount of nuts, which is why she only eats food prepared by their chef,” said A. A.

“Omigod!” Lili wailed. So that's why Ashley wanted the cupcakes made from a special recipe. Except she had told the bakery to go ahead and make their usual batch.

“I've killed my best friend!” Lili screamed.
This is the worst and best day of my life.

I'VE KILLED ASHLEY SPENCER
, LAUREN
thought.
This is the best and worst day of my life.
She was the one who had convinced Lili to forget about the special recipe and just order the regular cupcakes.
What she doesn't know won't hurt her.
She'd just assumed Ashley was being precious and diva-like. She didn't know Ashley was allergic. Did they have jail sentences for twelve-year-olds? But it was an accident!

“Somebody do something!” A. A. screamed.

Then Lauren remembered something she'd read in
Teen Vogue
during her makeover madness, when she was boning up on how to be an Ashley. There'd been an article on a girl with a peanut allergy, and the article
had talked about what to do in case of an emergency. Lauren knelt down and lifted the hem on Ashley's skirt, stopping to admire the dress. It was really cute. Kate Bosworth for Topshop? It had to be.

“Stop that! What are you doing?” Lili demanded.

“Saving her life,” said Lauren. “She has to have it somewhere on her body. That's the only way. Yes. Here it is.” Lauren pushed the skirt aside and showed them.

Ashley was wearing some kind of garter on her thigh, and tucked into the garter was a slim silver pen. But Lauren knew that instead of a ballpoint it held a needle. The article said that all people who suffered from a nut allergy had to carry it on their person. The girl in the article carried it on her thigh, and knowing how much of a slave Ashley was to
Teen Vogue
, it was no surprise that she did the same thing.

“It's an antidote. I have to give it to her now, if she's going to make it,” Lauren said, taking the needle—an EpiPen, the article had called it.

“Do it!” yelled A. A.

“One, two, three,” Lauren said. Then she poked Ashley in the arm with the needle.

Lauren thought Ashley would immediately sit up and spring back to life. But instead, nothing happened.
Ashley still looked dead. Her eyes were closed. Her face was blue. She wasn't breathing.

It was too late.

Lauren sighed. She was definitely going to jail. She would never get into Exeter now. She imagined her future. On the one hand, it would be a lot better now that Ashley Spencer wasn't around to tell all the kids in class that she was a loser. But on the other hand, she would be in jail. Did they have Advanced Placement classes in Juvenile Hall? Sure, she had wanted Ashley taken down. Destroyed. But not in the literal sense. She wasn't a psycho.

Then Ashley blinked and opened her eyes. She looked around. She saw the EpiPen in Lauren's hand, the surrounding crowd of onlookers, and her skirt bunched around her waist.

“Omigod!” Ashley gasped. “Did all these boys see my underwear?”

ASHLEY WAS ALIVE. THANK GOD
for Lauren's quick thinking. She'd saved her life. A. A. gave a huge sigh of relief. Knowing that her best friend would live took the sting out of being stood up by laxjock. So it wasn't Dex after all. But who could it be? She had no idea.

Ashley was still on the ground, complaining about how her privacy had been invaded, and Lili and Lauren were fighting to get her a glass of water. Billy Reddy was standing around, looking completely flabbergasted by the turn of events. She bet none of the high school parties he'd ever been to were as action-packed as this.

Then she noticed Tri standing to the side, frozen, a plate of cupcakes in his hand.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay? You look weird.”

“I almost killed her,” Tri whispered. “I gave her that cupcake.”

“Hey, don't worry about it. You didn't know she was allergic.”

“I almost killed her,” he repeated.

A. A. shook her head. It wasn't like Tri to be so dramatic. Then she noticed something. A black baseball cap folded into the pocket of his blazer. A black San Francisco Giants baseball cap. Tri's favorite team. His favorite baseball cap. He always wore that cap. She remembered something else, too—at the dance, he'd asked her if she was getting ready to go to the fountain. How did he know about meeting laxjock at the fountain? She'd never told him.

She looked at Tri. He was her best friend. The only person she could tell everything to. The only person who would know what to say to all her problems. He'd given her a perfect score on the rank call.

Tri Fitzpatrick was laxjock.

But he hadn't shown up to meet her at the park. Because she'd told him she'd suspected the love of her life was Dex Bond. Some random guy who didn't even know her at all. She felt her heart clench. Tri . . .

“Tri,” she gulped.

But Tri wasn't listening. He was completely ignoring her. He put down the plate of cupcakes and ran over to Ashley's side. There was a strange new light in his eyes. As if he were seeing Ashley Spencer for the first time.

Then he was helping Ashley to her feet, and he was looking at her in the same way A. A. now realized he'd been looking at A. A. herself for months.

With total, complete adoration.

Dear Diary,

We're supposed to keep a diary for English class now. To write about what's happening in our life so we can understand it better. Or something like that. Anyway, here goes.

So the beast still lives. Yes, Ashley Spencer survived to mock for another day. She's fully recovered from her adverse reaction to eating a trace amount of nuts in the vanilla cupcake at the dance. Except for a tiny rash that went away all too quickly.

I didn't get to join the Ashleys and I didn't get to destroy them either. But Nut Day, as I'm calling the dance, did score a small victory for those of us on the bottom of the seventh-grade social pyramid.

Since Ashley Spencer had to come clean about her nut allergy, poor Cass Franklin doesn't have to sit in a quarantined place in the refectory anymore. Thanks to Ashley, the whole refectory is a quarantine. Her parents threatened to sue the school because of the incident, and now all they serve in the ref is spelt bread and yogurt. Yum. Not.

Plus, you'd think that having a spasm in public would mean the end of Ashley's ironclad reign. But no. Instead, because of the EpiPen in her garter, garters are now the latest accessory at Miss Gamble's. The latest thing is to wear them like Ashley's, underneath the uniform skirt, so when you sit down they peek out.

This just proves that the entire seventh grade is just nuts. So then wouldn't Ashley be allergic to everyone?