Birthday Vicious (The Ashleys, Book 3) Read online

  Sadie was so obstinate: She wouldn't get her ears pierced, or even consider a push-up bra. Lauren was in despair. What Ashley always said was so true: You can lead

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  a clotheshorse to prêt-a-porter, but you can't make her shrink. Something like that, anyway. Lauren's brain was fried.

  Her plan was never going to work. She should have picked someone else to infiltrate the Ashleys with--maybe Sheridan or Melody. Sadie was way too much work.

  It was just as well that the Ashleys were so caught up in their own lives that they hardly noticed Lauren spent more time with Sadie than with them. She was even beginning to miss them a little. The other day Ashley had the group over to meet the StripHall Queens and learn some hot new dance moves. Lauren had dearly wanted to go, but that was the same time as their meeting with the fashion stylist she'd hired to help Sadie transform from a "Don't" into a "Do." So instead of learning how to do a kick-turn-shake-shake-shake, she'd been stuck listening to Sadie complain that necklaces, stockings, and lace underwear made her itch, and that spaghetti straps dug into her bony shoulders.

  Lauren wished she would just make up her mind. Why was it that when she was with the Ashleys, the girls she purported to hate, she had a lot of fun, and whenever she was with Sadie, it was like pulling teeth?

  She followed Sadie into the eyeglass shop, just as a boy was stepping out.

  "Christian!"

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  "Oh, hey!" Christian's face broke into a wide grin.

  "I didn't know you wore glasses!" Lauren said.

  "It's a big secret. I'm like Clark Kent," Christian admitted. He put his new spectacles on his nose, and Lauren thought he looked even cuter than ever. Then he chucked Lauren on the chin and gave her a quick kiss.

  Lauren sighed happily, looking up at Christian. It wasn't until she felt a nudge on her elbow that she remembered she wasn't alone. "Right. Sorry. This is Sadie. Sadie, this is Christian."

  "I'm confused. I thought your boyfriend's name was Alex," Sadie said, a little too innocently.

  "Alex? Your boyfriend?" Christian looked from Lauren to Sadie and back to Lauren again.

  Lauren didn't know what to do. She was trapped. She wished that she could melt into the sidewalk and disappear.

  "No, she's confused ... ," she began weakly.

  "No, it's all right," said Christian quickly. "The guy who was at your house the other day, right? Alex is cool. He's a good guy. I didn't know you guys were dating, but that's okay."

  Lauren felt like her tongue was stuck in her throat. Christian was being way too nice about this.

  "Um, I better go. Nice meeting you, Sadie." Christian hurried away so quickly he was across the street before Lauren could speak.

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  "Why did you say that about Alex?" Lauren demanded. "It's not true."

  It was only partially true. Alex was her boyfriend. But then so was Christian. She wondered what Christian was thinking. She felt awful that he had to find out this way. She didn't even get a chance to explain anything.

  "What's the deal, then? Are you with Christian or Alex, or what?" Sadie demanded.

  "Why are you being so judgmental?" Lauren huffed. None of the Ashleys ever spoke to her this way. They knew she was having a hard time of it and didn't press her or make her feel like a heel the way Sadie was doing right now.

  Sadie shrugged and went to get fitted for her new contacts. "I think Alex is cuter, by the way." But Lauren wasn't listening. She decided she had to text Christian so they could really talk. But when she pulled out her phone, there was already a text from him.

  L, I LIKE YOU, BUT THIS IS TOO WEIRD, he wrote. I CAN'T DEAL.

  Lauren swallowed hard. She couldn't let herself cry in front of Sadie.

  "What do you think of these? They're colored lenses," asked Sadie impatiently, blinking her eyes rapidly. She didn't approve of text messaging, Lauren knew. She'd told Lauren it would lead to arthritis of the thumbs. Another text message popped up.

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  I KNOW I NEVER ASKED U TO GO STEADY. BUT I THOUGHT I DIDN'T HAVE TO. I'M OUT. OK?

  Lauren wasn't sure what Christian meant, though she had an idea. A very bleak, gray, bad idea. Like he was out of the relationship game. Like he was out of her life.

  WHAT? she texted back, just to make sure, even though she didn't want to know.

  SORRY. STAY FRENZ?

  BFF, Lauren replied, but her hands were shaking. Now she wouldn't have to decide between Christian and Alex, because Christian had decided for her.

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  22 LILI IS PUT UNDER MOUSE ARREST

  L ILI REALLY WANTED TO MEET THE ASHLEYS FOR their usual preparty powwow. But of course, she wasn't allowed to go anywhere. Not even to Starbucks before school! The others were sympathetic, but she could tell that Ashley was annoyed with her. Lili's decision to go camping with Max had jeopardized Ashley's happiness, because it meant all the Ashleys might not be present, lording it over the rest of the seventh grade, at her birthday party extravaganza. Luckily, Ashley was too busy obsessing over some mystery guy to be really mad with Lili.

  Nancy had picked her up, as usual, and brought her home to the big mock-Tudor mansion in Presidio Heights. Lili's usual Tuesday after-class, helping a genetic researcher at Stanford in his lab, had been canceled because he had to

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  fly to Sweden for dinner with the Nobel selection committee. So Lili had some unscheduled free time. Perfect for figuring out which outfits would be worn in what order at the party.

  Instead she finished up her homework, flipped through her deck of flash cards for the ISEE's (prep-school entrance exams), and spun a few times on her Aeron office chair, wondering how she should reorganize her bedroom. It was a big room, with a huge, carved, dark-wood Chinese bed in the center, the bed piled high with red embroidered cushions. Whenever Lili was bored, she rearranged these cushions by shade and shape, and sometimes by the pattern of their embroidery. But she didn't have much enthusiasm for that today.

  Her phone rang, and she snatched it up.

  "Hey, Lili." It was Max. Yay! She might not be able to see him, but at least they could still talk on the phone.

  "I'm so glad you called," she told him, spinning with glee in her chair. Luckily, she was safely out of the car and shut in her room. Lili didn't want her mother to find out that she and Max were still an item. No boyfriend until she was fifteen? As if! That was years away. That was almost college!

  "I'm really sorry about this weekend," he said. She liked the way his voice sounded--sort of husky and slow. "Those doofus girls were supposed to sort out the ride home, but I should have known they'd mess up. They're both kind of flaky--not like you."

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  Lili smiled at the compliment. She was anything but flaky.

  "You looked like you were in big trouble," said Max. "Sorry you got busted."

  "That's okay," said Lili, trying to sound breezy. She didn't want Max to know she was virtually a prisoner in her own house.

  "And we're still on for the party on Saturday, right? The guys are really looking forward to it. The Ashleys are pretty famous at our school, you know."

  "Of course we're on for the party!" Lili promised. No way was she telling him her parents were still undecided about letting her go. Her father had said that if it were up to him, she'd be sent to Taiwan for the rest of the school year, to live in a boarding school run by Buddhist nuns, where girls weren't allowed any material possessions except for a gray tunic and a tin food bowl. Eeeeuch!

  "LILI!" Yikes--it was her mother, calling her at top volume.

  "Better go," she told Max. "Speak to you later, okay?"

  "But ... there was something I--"

  "What?" Lili was curious, but her mother was roaring for her again. Not a good sign. She'd better hurry up.

  "Nothing," said Max. "I mean, you'll see. Bye!"

  She slipped her phone into the top drawer of her antique writing desk and rushed out to see what her mother wanted. />
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  "You'd better get downstairs right away, Miss Lili," said one of the maids, padding along the Turkish carpet of the hallway, her arms stacked with fluffy yellow towels. "Your mother is going crazy down there."

  Lili pelted down the broad staircase, past the stained-glass window on the landing, almost tripping on one of the brass carpet rods. Her mother was standing by the front door, dressed in her usual daytime-casual look of Chanel pencil skirt, TSE cashmere sweater, black pearls, and black-and-cream Chanel slingbacks.

  Next to her, on the carved Korean hope chest, was a small but exquisite display of flowers. No wonder her mother was mad. Not only was the display really small-- much too small for their grand dining table--but some of the flowers were white, which her mother hated. She said white flowers were for funerals. Personally, Lili thought the white snowdrops were pretty, but she knew her mother had a strict design aesthetic. Maybe she was using a new florist who didn't know her tastes?

  "I thought this was the dining-room centerpiece," her mother said, looking angrily at Lili.

  Whoa! It wasn't as though Lili had made it from stuff she found in the garden. Why was her mother so annoyed with her? "But instead I discover that these flowers are for you."

  "For me?" Lili exclaimed. How cool! She'd never

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  received flowers before. Her mother looked less than delighted. She held up a small white envelope.

  "And do you know what the card says?" Nancy's voice was icy cold. "I'll read it to you, shall I? 'To Lili--Sorry you got busted. See you Saturday--Max.'"

  Uh-oh. Lili wasn't sure where to look. Part of her wanted to smile: Max had sent her flowers! Her boyfriend had sent her flowers! She couldn't wait to tell the other Ashleys!

  But the rest of her knew better than to smile. After the big no-boyfriends speech on Sunday, her parents were not going to take kindly to a boy sending her flowers and talking about getting together that weekend. If she'd been in big trouble before, she was in a gigantic vat of crap now.

  "It appears that even though I expressly told you not to have any contact with this boy, you defied me. We clearly can't trust you. Where is your phone?"

  "In my desk drawer," Lili mumbled, shifting from one foot to the other and feeling unjustly punished. Max sent the flowers--she had nothing to do with it!

  "Quintilla!" Nancy called to a young uniformed maid, who was trying to scuttle by unnoticed. "Please go up to Miss Lili's room and bring me her phone, her BlackBerry, and her laptop. You are forbidden to call or contact this boy in any way. I'm taking your phone and asking all the staff to make sure you don't use any of the house phones or

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  computers. Until you earn our trust again, you're cut off."

  E-grounded! This was the worst thing imaginable. It couldn't possibly get worse. Gould it?

  "And don't even think about going to school tomorrow to use your friends' phones to send messages. I'm taking you out of school for the rest of the week. I'll ask the principal to send work home for you. You are not leaving this house until we say so, understand?" Her mother had never looked so ferocious. Her Genghis side was totally showing.

  Lili nodded mutely, trying to control her quivering lower lip. This was it. She had no way of getting in touch with Max. And she almost certainly wasn't going to be allowed to attend Ashley's Super-Sweet Thirteen.

  There was absolutely nothing to live for. She might as well be stuck in Siberia.

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  23 THERE ARE SOME THINGS EVEN MONEY CAN'T BUY

  A SHLEY DIDN'T FEEL LIKE GOING STRAIGHT home after school on Wednesday, and when V Ashley didn't want to do something, she wasn't doing it. She called her mother and told her not to bother coming to Miss Gamble's at three: the Ashleys were having an after-school summit at Mel's Diner, the 1950s-style soda fountain just down the street from school.

  The big house overlooking the bay was too crazy at the moment. This afternoon, the first of Mona Mazur's trucks was scheduled to pull in, so Mona could begin her total transformation of the mansion's ground floor into a circus big top.

  Normally, this was the kind of thing Ashley would want to oversee and control in some way, but she had complete faith

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  in Mona. She also didn't want to be around in case her mother, who was still suffering from morning sickness pretty much all day long, suddenly changed her mind and decided to cancel everything.

  Matilda would only pull a stunt like that if Ashley were around, because she was a little afraid of Mona Mazur. So was Ashley, for that matter. So Ashley would rather steer clear until Mona had supervised the raising of the tent roof and the installation of the trapeze, by which time it would all be too complicated and too expensive to rip out.

  The other reason Ashley wanted some quality time away from Chez Spencer was to discuss the Cooper situation with the other Ashleys. There were not enough hours in the day at school right now, especially with the stupid mock prep-school exams everyone was forced to study for this week. As if Ashley needed to ace a test to get into the best prep schools in the country, when one call from her dad would get the job done more efficiently.

  Everyone's personal dramas were so inconvenient. Why was it all the Ashleys were moaning about boys instead of doing what they did best--helping Ashley get her way? A.A. was awash with guilt over how Hunter took their breakup, Lili'd been snatched out of school because of that stupid camping adventure, and Lauren was moping because one of her two boyfriends had dropped her. As if she didn't have another!

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  And if Lauren thought Ashley hadn't noticed she was secretly hanging out with Sadie Graham, Lauren had seriously underestimated the gossip grapevine. Not that Ashley was going to bring any of that up; she'd decided to keep it to herself for now and act on the information later, if needed. In the meantime, Lauren was still in the Ashleys. But Ashley relished knowing that that could change on her whim at any moment.

  At Mel's Diner, her friends--minus Lili, because even a soy mocha milkshake with her gal pals was strictly verboten this week--took over the corner booth, squeezing along its red-glitter vinyl seats and drumming their French-polished nails on the silver-swirled Formica tabletop.

  "This is such a cute place," said Lauren, gazing around at the individual jukeboxes on each table and the central lighting fixture, a dangling mobile made from old vinyl records. "Alex is meeting us here. He said he might bring Tri along, since they'll both be coming back from some boys' Academic Decathlon together. Is that okay?"

  "Sure." Ashley shrugged, scanning her menu for nut-free organic options. Normally she would be outraged if an Ashleys summit was infiltrated, but today she thought a little male advice might come in handy. Maybe Alex and Tri knew Cooper.

  "Don't the guys have some crew meet later?" A.A.

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  scowled. She viciously twisted one of her pigtails and stuck the end in her mouth.

  "Senior team only," said Lauren, who was the expert, apparently.

  "Shame," mumbled A.A. through a mouthful of hair.

  Ashley stared down at her laminated menu with its polka-dot ribbon trim, making sure she didn't catch A.A.'s eye. She still felt a twinge of guilt whenever A.A. mentioned Tri.

  By the time Ashley and Lauren had ordered their soy milkshakes, and A.A.--who never cared about calories--had decided on a double-chocolate malt, the boys were slouching in, both in their uniforms--shirts hanging out, ties loosened, and shoes scuffed.

  Ugh! Why were boys so lazy? Before the guys arrived, the Ashleys had been checking themselves out in compact mirrors, making sure their lip gloss was fresh and their teeth were stain and food free.

  Tri and Alex both ordered towering ice-cream sundaes, which was just as well--eating gave the boys something to do. Neither Lauren nor A.A. were acting very friendly toward them. A.A. was sucking down her malt and glaring at Tri, as though she was offended by his presence.

  Lauren, who was supposed to be going out with Alex, seemed u
ncomfortable around him, as though she wished he wasn't there, though she was, at least, asking him a few bored

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  questions about what had happened at school that day. Ashley decided to get the conversation back on track. She kicked Tri under the table, which made him spit out a chunk of banana.

  "I have something to ask you," she told him, ignoring the fact that he was picking the soggy banana slice off the table and putting it back in his mouth. Ew. How could she ever have liked him? "Do you know a guy at Gregory Hall named Cooper?"

  Tri thought for a moment and then shook his head.

  "Nope," he said. "What grade is he in?"

  "Eighth, maybe?"

  "Nope. There's no one named Cooper in seventh or eighth grade. Maybe he goes to Saint A's?"

  Ashley didn't think Cooper was a Saint Aloysius boy-- everyone there had to keep their hair short, above their collars, and Cooper's dark hair was longish and curled beneath his ears. "Alex, do you know anyone named Cooper at Saint A's?"

  Alex, his mouth full of ice cream, screwed up his face and rolled out his white-streaked bottom lip.

  "I think that means no." Lauren sighed, tapping her cheek with a long spoon.

  This was weird. Why wouldn't they know him? Ashley described what he looked like in detail--maybe too much detail--and both Tri and Alex smirked. They couldn't

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  think of anyone at all who looked like that and was known as Cooper.

  "Maybe he goes to Reed?" A.A. asked. She pulled out her voluminous handbag and shook some quarters onto the table for the jukebox.

  Ashley shook her head. There was no way her perfect guy went to that stupid Arthur Reed Prep School for the Arts, like Lili's banned boyfriend, Max. He wasn't goth or alterno enough for that place!