The Ashley Project (3 page)

Her mother, a former model who had walked the catwalks of Paris, Milan, and New York, had asked a famous fashion photographer to take shots of her daughter as a favor, and the resulting photograph—of A. A. in a sleek black Eres bikini—was totally
Teen Vogue
–worthy.

Although the photo was sort of a fluke, really. A. A. had always been a bit of a tomboy, and she was most comfortable in Puma sneakers and yoga pants. It always bothered her that all her life she'd been taller than everyone she knew, had filled out the earliest, had gotten her first bra
years
before her friends had.

It was embarrassing how people were always commenting on how she looked older than her real age, how she looked “more mature.” Was there ever a word more depressing than “mature”? A. A. thought “mature” meant a wheelchair, a nursing home, and sensible shoes with the crepe wedges. She'd always hated looking older than she was. Until she had turned twelve years old but looked sixteen—then suddenly the world opened up in all sorts of delicious ways, like being able to sneak into R-rated movies and all-ages teen nightclubs.

She figured she would just delay their meeting until she was sure he was so in love with her that he wouldn't care that she was only in seventh grade. Right?

“Loverboy?” Ashley asked, noticing A. A. putting her phone away.

“It's her online Romeo,” added Lili with a knowing smile.

“Yeah.” A. A. sighed, trying not to look too pleased.

“So when do we get to meet him already?” Lili asked impatiently. “We've been hearing about him for weeks. Time to give up the goods.”

“Soon,” A. A. said airily. She had yet to confess to her friends that she herself had never met him. Some things were best kept secret for a while.

“You're so mysterious about him, maybe he doesn't really exist,” Ashley teased.

A. A. shrugged, knowing they couldn't help but be just a tiny bit jealous she had boy drama in her life. For all of Ashley's sophistication, she had yet to kiss a boy. Lili swore up and down that she'd kissed a boy over the summer in Taiwan, but with no way to prove it, she got only dubious credit for the experience.

Whereas she, A. A., had already made out with not one but two boys—last year her older cousin had taken
her to a high school party and she'd made out with two Saint Aloysius freshmen during a game of Truth/Dare/Double Dare/Promise to Repeat. One of them had even stalked her for weeks, even after finding out she was only eleven. He was cute, but a little demented. She finally had to get her cousin to tell him to buzz off.

“Yeah, sure, A. A. has a boyfriend—but only she can see him!” Ashley teased. “It's like
The Sixth Sense
.”

“An imaginary boyfriend, how cute!” Lili laughed condescendingly. “They must have lots to say to each other.”

“Shut up!” A. A. said, flicking Lili on the shoulder.

“Owww.” Lili pouted. “That hurt.”

A. A. briefly wondered what her life would be like if her parents had named her Samantha, like they had originally planned. She knew Lili was still peeved about Ashley's handbag switcheroo. A. A. wasn't thrilled about it either, but she had known better than to complain about it.

Whatever. It was the first day of school. Seventh grade. Finally. Boy-girl dances. Coed parties. Free-dress Fridays. It was going to rock.

School was just a few steps away, and A. A. could sense her friends subconsciously starting to move at
slow-motion speed, and she did the same, savoring the feeling of having all eyes on them. Lili began to toss her long dark hair back over her shoulder in an exaggerated shampoo-commercial way, while Ashley pursed her lips as if preparing for a camera close-up. A. A. walked a little taller, arching her back and keeping her arm swing to a minimum.

They sat on the bench by the playground, where they could check out everyone and make judgments on new back-to-school haircuts and sock choices. There was very little room to make a fashion statement with the uniform (or as A. A. called it, the prison outfit), so every variation was scrutinized to death, from skirt hemline—rolled up to super mini length was totally out and way too much like the slutty Helena Academy girls down the street—to necklace choice: the Tiffany bean was so cliché; these days everyone wore Isabel Marant charms.

“Skiddoo,” Ashley growled at a couple of first graders who'd had the unfortunate idea to play hopscotch in front of the bench.

A. A. took her customary place on Ashley's right, Lili on Ashley's left, the three of them sitting cross-legged, kicking their ankles high so everyone could
take note of their matching red-soled Louboutin Mary Janes, whispering to one another as girls from their class walked by. Those in their favor stopped and said hello, while those beneath notice scurried by with their heads bowed low, hoping to escape criticism. No such luck.

“Nice jacket,” Ashley sneered, as Daria Hart, a fashion-challenged seventh grader, walked by in a metallic raincoat. “It'll come in handy when the aliens land.”

Lili giggled, while A. A. gave Daria what she hoped was a she-didn't-really-mean-it smile. Ashley could be pretty funny, and A. A. enjoyed a cutting comment as much as anyone, but A. A. was feeling less and less inclined to be mean just for meanness' sake.

Melody Myers, an SOA, stopped to trade what-I-did-last-summer stories and oohed over their matching Prada charms. As Melody hurried away when the first bell rang, a shiny silver Tesla pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the school. The girls didn't give it a second look—expensive eco-cars were a typical sight in the mornings at Miss Gamble's—but the hot guy climbing out of the front seat definitely caught their attention.

He was tall and chiseled, with a cool buzz cut, and he wore a pair of silver wraparound sunglasses. When he
opened the back door, his biceps flexed in a most heart-stopping manner. A. A. couldn't take her eyes off him.

Then a pair of tanned legs wearing last year's chunky socks and brand-new high-heeled black-and-white spectators emerged, as a girl none of them had ever seen before got out of the car. She was so pretty it almost hurt to look at her. Perfect hair. Perfect skin. Perfect nose. A Proenza bag, in the much more expensive silver snakeskin that was sold out at Neiman's, was hanging on her shoulder.

Too bad about the socks. Ashley had decreed chunky socks passé, and all of them were wearing black tights that morning.

A. A. raised an eyebrow. She looked at Ashley's and Lili's blank faces and knew what they were thinking. Here was a girl pretty enough to steal the Ashleys' thunder. Did she know what she was in for?

The girl walked by with her nose in the air, completely ignoring them, as if they didn't matter. Nobody said a word. Then Ashley stuck out her foot. A. A. gasped inwardly. It was the oldest trick in the book. But here was the thing about old tricks: They worked.

For a split second it looked like the new girl would be able to catch herself before connecting with Ashley's
outstretched ankle, but there would be no such salvation that day. She went flailing on her Chanel pumps, tumbling to the ground as the contents of her designer handbag spilled, showering books and notebooks and pencil case everywhere, and her skirt flew up to her waist, revealing baggy Carter's underwear. Not so perfect after all.

“Oops.” Ashley giggled. “I'm
so
sorry,” she said, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

The girl brushed her bangs away from her face, and A. A. suddenly recognized her, as did her friends.

“Omigod. It's Lauren Page,” said Lili in a shocked tone.

“Who?” Ashley sniffed. “Never mind.”

“You should really watch where you're going,” A. A. cautioned.

“Yeah, try not to bump into my foot next time. You almost gave me a bruise,” Ashley added.

Then, without another word, the Ashleys stood up from the bench, climbed daintily over Lauren's sprawled body, and walked into school.

“WHAT'S THAT?” LAUREN'S MOM ASKED
right before ringing the doorbell to the Spencers' grand home, pointing to a thin red scratch on Lauren's right cheek.

“It's nothing. Accident at gym.” Lauren shook her head. The fall had been completely humiliating, and she was still a little stunned at how deftly the Ashleys had been able to derail her plan before it had even begun. But it could have been worse. There could have been an audience. Luckily, it had happened after the second bell rang, and the only person who had witnessed her social disaster was the elderly school custodian, who'd been kind enough to help her up.

Lauren kept a low profile for the rest of the day. She
avoided her old friends—if you could call them that, since they had nothing in common other than the fact that they were shunned by the rest of the class: Cass Franklin, who was allergic to everything and kept an inhaler and an oxygen tank in her bag in case of emergency; and Guinevere Parker, whom everyone called Bobblehead because her head was much too large for her way-too-skinny body.

She had been so sure that her new look would get her immediately seated at the Ashleys' table at lunch, but since it was glaringly apparent that that was not going to happen anytime soon, she'd decided to skip it entirely and hid in the library eating her cheese panini until it was over. She'd heard a few whispers about her transformation but had ignored the friendly overtures from some of the other girls in class. Sheridan Riley was particularly effusive—fawning over Lauren's shiny hair and new bag when she had hardly paid any attention to her before. But Lauren had been at Miss Gamble's long enough to know that the only opinion that mattered was the Ashleys'. She didn't want to settle for anything less.

Trudy Page looked at her daughter keenly, licking her finger and rubbing the wound. “Are you sure that's all it was?”

“Mom, stop. Okay?” Lauren pleaded, flinching away. “I promise you, it was nothing.”

Trudy sighed. She adjusted the thick braided Gucci belt around her silk tunic and wild paisley-print palazzo pants. Lauren couldn't help but notice that ever since the company had gone public, her mother had begun to dress very loudly. Money talks, and apparently, so does Cavalli.

Lauren had changed out of her uniform and was wearing a bib-front Chloé minidress and ankle-strap wedges. Her new personal shopper assured her it was the hottest new look of the season, and even though the shoes pinched her feet, Lauren didn't complain. When she was one of the Ashleys, it would all be worth it. Especially when she stomped all over them.

After that morning's incident, she decided to change tactics. She'd been such a dummy. Of course her Extreme Makeover wouldn't be enough to entice the Ashleys to become her friend. And she had to befriend them first, otherwise how would she ever learn how to take them down? So it was time for a more direct approach: Operation Kiss-Up.

Trudy rang the bell again just as the Spencers' butler, a white-haired gentleman in a crisp morning suit, opened the door with a polite nod.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted them. “May I take your coats and contribution?”

Lauren took off her brand-new fur-trimmed Chloé windbreaker, while Trudy handed over her hot pink Burberry trench. The mother-daughter welcome back tea had been instituted just last year at Miss Gamble's, and some well-meaning souls on the Mothers Committee had decided that it would be potluck. The idea was to make the tea more democratic, since it was more than obvious that any of the Miss Gamble's parents could easily have provided a four-course spread on their own, complete with cater-waiters and valet parking.

As it was, whoever hosted the tea provided the catered spread anyway, and the potluck aspect merely served to highlight the vast chasm between the scholarship students and the legacy kids.

Last year Trudy had brought homemade picnic sandwiches to the tea at Ashley Li's house and, to their supreme embarrassment, discovered that a Miss Gamble's potluck meant that everyone had brought miniature French pastries and tea sandwiches from chic Nob Hill gourmet shops. Lauren had been utterly devastated upon encountering the tiny squares of smoked salmon and minute cucumber wedges. They never did
find out what happened to those four sad turkey sandwiches, and the two of them had never discussed it.

This time, instead of handing over a sagging brown bag, Trudy proudly gestured to a portly Englishman wearing chef's whites who followed behind them. “This is Graham,” she said. “Can you show him and his staff the kitchen, please?”

The chef and his crew lugged overstuffed grocery bags bearing the logo of the city's premier gourmet grocery, as well as a towering structure that was a scale-size replica of the school's main building. To compensate for last year's faux pas, Trudy had flown in a private chef from one of London's best restaurants to concoct authentic and delicious English treats. And just in case that wasn't impressive enough, she'd thrown in a massive chocolate fountain based on the school's architecture as well.

To Lauren's mother's disappointment, the Spencers' butler didn't look at all surprised and ushered the Pages into the sunroom and Graham and his workers to the kitchen without comment.

Lauren had never been in Ashley Spencer's house before, and she looked around eagerly, as if the sun-dappled walls would provide a clue as to how to make
Ashley like her more. They walked past the marble entryway into the light-filled great room with a CinemaScope view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the blue waters of San Francisco Bay.

Last year the two of them had been intimidated by the Li family's lavish home, but this time they hardly blinked at seeing the Picasso hanging above the grand piano. After all, they now owned two of the great master's works themselves. However, Lauren couldn't help but notice that the Spencers' view of the bridge was just a little nicer than theirs.