The Ashley Project Read online

  “Serious?” Sheridan asked, eyes wide, lapping up every word.

  “Serious.”

  “Huge crime family,” A. A. added wisely. “Like the Sopranos? But worse.”

  “And that makeover? It’s so sad,” said Lili, deciding it was time to get in on the game. “It’s a cry for help.”

  “Why? She looks so cute! I wish I had her nose,” Sheridan said, touching her huge honker.

  “If you did, you’d be a pigface too.” Lili told her somberly. An idea was starting to form in her head. This was so wrong, but she couldn’t help herself, especially when she saw the grin beginning to spread on Ashley’s face.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sheridan, her face flushed and eager. She craned her neck to look across the room, watching Lauren walk back toward them.

  “You know how they use pig organs now in surgery?” Lili asked, as if imparting some really important information. She pulled her hair back behind her ears and looked Sheridan in the eye. “Doctors putting pig livers and pig hearts in people?”

  Sheridan nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that.”

  “Well, they do it in plastic surgery now too. Let’s just say that Lauren has a new snout,” Lili revealed. Then she pinched her nose and made an oinking noise.

  Sheridan looked from one Ashley to another. “You’re joking. She got a nose job? No way.” This was even better than when they told her about Melody Myers peeing in her pants during the sixth-grade field trip. They called Melody “Peezilla” and “The Princess and the Pee” for weeks.

  “Way.” Ashley nodded vigorously, pointing to her own slim button nose. “The tip? One hundred percent pork.”

  A. A. snorted into her teacup. Control yourself, A. A., Lili thought.

  “Omigod.” Sheridan started giggling uncontrollably. She was still laughing when she walked across the room to tell her friends what the Ashleys had just told her.

  Lili smiled at her friends. Pigface Mafia Princess. Priceless. Of course, it was so outrageous it couldn’t possibly be true. But try telling that to the gossip-mad girls at Miss Gamble’s.

  When Lauren returned, the three of them were doubled over, clutching their stomachs in laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, looking at the other girls.

  “Nothing,” said Ashley, the very picture of angelic virtue.

  Lili didn’t meet Lauren’s eye. It was one thing to make fun of someone when they were across the room, but a totally different story when they were sitting right in front of you. Looking so hopelessly eager.

  Then A. A. accidentally snorted while sipping her tea, and the three of them began laughing again.

  By the time the tea was over, Lili knew that no one would even care how rich Lauren was supposed to be, or how good she looked. Because who could be jealous of a little Miss Piggy?

  8

  A PRIVATE TEA PARTY

  ASHLEY’S HOUSE WAS ONLY A few doors down from her place, so A. A. lingered, helping clean up—which meant hanging out with Ashley and her mom at the Spencers’ kitchen counter while the kitchen staff did all the dirty work. This was A. A.’s favorite part of any party, when all the guests were gone and only a few close friends remained and everyone could relax and unwind and get down to the real business of eating. Too bad Lili couldn’t stay longer, but her mom was always ridiculously strict about her “timetable” and kept Lili on a rigid schedule. She’d marched Lili right home for violin practice.

  “Well, that was a success, don’t you think?” Matilda Spencer asked, hands on her hips as she surveyed the copious remains of the tea. “Nancy always orders too much food, and with Trudy bringing in her whole entourage, we had enough to feed an army.”

  “Yeah, Mom, you rocked it,” said Ashley, bumping her mother on the hip while opening the door to the Sub-Zero. She brought out a whole tray of gourmet tea sandwiches, a tub of chocolate pudding, and assorted cream puffs and pastries, and laid everything out on the island counter in front of them.

  “Ooh, yum,” A. A. said happily, rubbing her hands with glee at all the bounty.

  “Dibs on the éclairs,” Ashley warned, reaching for a gooey chocolate-covered treat. “Suzanne makes the best ones,” she added, referring to their cook.

  A. A. waved her off. Ashley could keep the éclairs. They weren’t even made of real chocolate, and they tasted like cardboard—everything at the Spencers’ was carob this and yogurt that. Instead she grabbed one of the golden brown scones nestled underneath a folded linen napkin in a silver bowl. “You can have them. These are my favorite. Mmm. They’re still warm!”

  “Can you believe they flew him all the way out to bake those just for the tea?” Ashley asked as she wiped dark brown icing from her lips with a monogrammed napkin. “Someone’s insecure.”

  “Hey, if they want to throw their money around, that’s fine with me,” said A. A., spreading clotted cream on her scone and putting the entire thing into her mouth.

  “Girls, be nice,” Matilda warned, picking up a cherry tomato from a crudités platter. “They just wanted to make an effort. I’m sure she was just embarrassed about last year.”

  “What happened last year?” Ashley asked, looking up from her second éclair, a chocolate mustache on her lip. “I don’t remember anything.”

  A. A. devoured three scones in short order while Ashley’s mom told them about Lauren’s mom’s sad turkey sandwiches.

  “We had to give them to the homeless. I didn’t want them to go to waste.” Matilda sighed.

  Ashley shot her a look, and A. A. snickered. Okay, so it was totally mean to laugh at someone’s social faux pas, but seriously. Picnic sandwiches? Even her mom, who was in Barbados with some senator during last year’s tea, had managed to send their maid over with a box of Italian cookies.

  “Pass that cheese plate,” she requested, pointing to an oval platter stacked with five different kinds of artisanal cheese. A. A. wasn’t a secret eater like Ashley was, but she did relax knowing her mom wasn’t around to tell her to eat like a lady. Meanwhile, Ashley, who was on, like, a tissue diet in public, was a total hog in private. The girl had such a complex she never even let Lili see her eat. Those two were way too competitive.

  A. A. counted herself lucky. She lived on ice cream and hamburgers every day and never gained any weight.

  “Did you see her face when Sheridan’s mom announced that there was something wrong with the chocolate in the fountain?” Ashley asked, piling her plate high with totally tasteless gluten-free potato salad and organic crème fraîche squares.

  A. A. nodded. It had been pretty funny. Trudy Page had been totally offended and had eaten a huge dollop of melted chocolate on a slice of pound cake. A few minutes later, she was clutching her stomach and hurrying Lauren out the door. The other mothers had quickly pronounced the fountain off-limits. Sometimes you had to hand it to Ashley. She knew how to make things exciting.

  “Yes, wasn’t that odd?” Ashley’s mom mused, playing with her pearls and picking up a stick of celery. “I never trust those things.” She shuddered. “All that chocolate just melting there . . . it’s a haven for bacteria. I can never understand why people get so excited about them. They’re so tacky.”

  Ashley smirked, and A. A. coughed into her hand.

  “Well, I’m full,” Ashley’s mom announced, after having eaten, from what A. A. could tell, two pieces of vegetables. “I can’t possibly eat dinner.”

  A. A. bet that Ashley’s mom was just like her mom, subsisting on tidbits and vitamin supplements instead of real food. Her mom always told her that one day she wouldn’t be able to eat the way she did, and A. A. hoped for her own sake that that day would never come. “Scone?” she asked, offering Ashley the silver bowl.

  Ashley looked longingly at the buttery biscuit. Her mother paused, looking back at her daughter. Then Ashley quickly shook her head. “Carbs? Uh-uh.”

  “More for me.” A. A. shrugged as she finished off the last of the golden brown pastries. She could never und
erstand why anyone would deprive themselves of the good things in life.

  9

  FACEBOOK ISN’T THE ONLY ONE WITH PARENTAL CONTROL

  LILI WISHED HER MOM WOULD have let them stay longer, but there was no arguing with her mother’s wishes. Her parents were convinced that if she tried hard enough, she would be another Sarah Chang—the Korean-American child prodigy who was one of the top violinists in the world before she turned eighteen. Violin was the least of it—Lili was signed up for a ton of after-school activities that were tailored to fit her mother’s idea of a well-rounded Ivy League–bound profile, even though college was light-years away.

  On the schedule: community service—and not mere candy-striping, but assisting a genetic researcher at Stanford; foreign language fluency in French, German, and Mandarin; art appreciation—black-and-white still photography lessons with a renowned artist, as well as becoming the youngest-ever docent at the de Young museum.

  Any other kid might have buckled under the weight of so much expectation, so much parental pressure. Luckily enough, Lili was good at everything. It all came easily to her—too easily, maybe. She had a talent for being “talented.” And since it came easily, Lili could care less about any of her accomplishments. Her mother wanted her to grow up to be a combination of Miss America, Wonder Woman, and Hillary Clinton. But Lili had bigger dreams.

  When she grew up, she wanted to move to New York and run a nightclub.

  Not that she’d ever been to one, but it sure sounded like a lot of fun. Lili liked having fun, especially since fun was not something you could “schedule.”

  It sucked that she had to leave the tea, since it meant she would miss out on something important as usual, because Lili guessed that when she wasn’t there, A. A. and Ashley talked about her, just as when Ashley didn’t join them for tennis on Saturdays, she and A. A. spent the day gossiping about her, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays when A. A. had a different lunch period, she and Ashley spent the hour picking her apart.

  She sat quietly in the back of her mother’s black hybrid SUV as their driver drove them back to their house in Presidio Heights, just a few blocks away. Like Pacific Heights, it was an exclusive, affluent neighborhood filled with beautiful homes and immaculate gardens.

  “That was nice, wasn’t it?” asked her mother.

  “Uh-huh,” Lili replied softly, tracing a finger on the windowpane and making smiley faces in the mist.

  “Was that Lauren Page I saw you girls with earlier?” her mother continued, removing a Chanel compact from her bag and powdering her nose.

  Lili nodded, feeling a small twinge of guilt at making up that ridiculous story about Lauren. Already people were oinking whenever they saw the poor girl running to and from the bathroom after Ashley’s second dare.

  But whatever, the girl should be old enough to take care of herself, right? It wasn’t Lili’s fault—it was just a joke.

  “It’s nice that you guys are making new friends,” Nancy said, snapping the case shut as they arrived at the gates of their palatial Tudor mansion.

  “Mmm,” replied Lili, wondering if her mother had any idea of what had really happened at the tea. Winston, their chauffeur, opened the back door for them, and she got out of the car quickly before her mother could ask her any more about it.

  When they walked in, their chef was already making dinner, and a delicious smell was emanating from the oven. Lili’s twin three-year-old sisters, Josephine and Brennan, were running around like banshees, wet blue paint on their hands, their nannies running after them with towels. Her mother’s two personal assistants were buzzing around with wireless receivers strapped to their ears. One was going through a thick stack of invitations, while the other was faxing replies.

  Her two older sisters were away, one at college and the other at boarding school. Lili missed them more than she thought she would. Her older sisters had teased and tormented her mercilessly, but now she wished more than anything that they still lived at home.

  Her mother had quit her job to be with her family, but it seemed she was busier than ever. There was always so much activity in the house. Sometimes Lili felt it was more of an office than a home, and she was merely a junior associate in her mother’s old law firm. Someone who was expected to execute deliverables.

  “What’s this?” Nancy asked, noticing a yellow slip sticking out of one of Lili’s books on the counter. It was the late notice from this morning. “You were late? But I dropped you off at the corner at seven thirty.”

  “I met Ashley at Starbucks first. I blame the baristas. It took them so long to make our lattes,” Lili joked, steeling herself for a lecture as her mother read the note and frowned.

  Sure enough, Nancy put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and crouched down so she could look her in the eye. She folded up the note, and it was obvious from her brisk demeanor that she knew what had happened. Lili was never late unless Ashley was involved somehow. “Sweetie, you know I adore Ashley, but she has too much of an influence on you,” her mother said.

  Ever since Lili had brought home a “warning” from the headmistress’s office after the SOA sticker caper, Nancy had gotten it into her head that the Ashleys were nothing but trouble, and the late notice didn’t help any.

  “You really have to learn to be your own person,” her mother said firmly. “Get out of her shadow.”

  Lili tried not to show her annoyance, since it would land her in more hot water. But how exactly did you become your own person when you shared the same name with the two most popular girls in your class?

  10

  JUST ONE OF THE GUYS?

  A. A. LIVED IN A penthouse apartment on top of the Fairmont Hotel in the middle of Nob Hill (also known in more resentful quarters as “Snob Hill”). She had lived there all her life. Her mother had fled New York and repaired to a two-bedroom suite when she was getting a divorce from her second ex-husband, a British rock star, and had never checked out. Instead she had upgraded, taking over the entire floor with money from the settlement. Upon arriving in San Francisco, she quickly met and married A. A.’s dad, the former mayor of the city, but divorced him a few years ago. Her mother still traveled constantly, and A. A. was never quite sure where she was or if she would be there when she got home.

  The only constant in her life was her older half brother Zed Starlight, whose father was the ex-rocker her mother had left upon finding out he had not one but four love children with assorted groupies all over the globe. Zed had changed his name to Ned Alioto after A. A.’s dad pretty much adopted him when he married their mom. Ned never saw his real dad except on VH1 nostalgia shows, and he told A. A. he was tired of being the kid with the funny name.

  Ned was hanging out in the suite’s plush living room with a couple of his friends from school when she got home. They were nice enough boys, although completely obsessed with video games. Ned and his posse were on all the important sports teams at Gregory Hall, but A. A. never heard them talk about anything except what games they owned, what games they planned to buy, what games had secret shortcut codes that allowed you to get to the final levels, and whether it was time to order pizza.

  Two of the guys were battling it out onscreen, brandishing Wii sticks like automatic weapons while the rest watched intently.

  “Get him! Over there! Turn the corner and—”

  “I’m—aaah . . .!”

  “Take that!” Slaps and tapped fists all around as an alien’s head exploded in a burst of green goo.

  “Can I have next game?” A. A. asked, squinting at the screen and sitting on the nearest empty chaise. Might as well join in the fun.

  “Sure,” one of the boys agreed, tossing one of the four controllers her way. A. A. lined up her shots and racked up a huge score in seconds. “You suck, Fitzpatrick,” she taunted, tossing the joystick back into the pile.

  “Suck this, Alioto,” responded the boy who’d lost to her, flipping her off with a grin.

  A. A. pulled a face. Boys were such doofuses
. Sometimes she wondered what girls ever saw in them. From what she could see from her brother and his friends, all they wanted to do was play video games until their brains turned to mush.

  Of course, laxjock wasn’t like that at all. He was a real gentleman. Yesterday he even removed a virus on her profile page that was turning all her icons upside down—without her asking. Although it was beginning to bother her that he never texted her back after her goofy I LOVE U dare.

  “Wanna order dinner?” she asked, nudging Ned with her foot and picking up a phone so they could order from the hotel’s room service menu.

  “Huh?” said Ned, never taking his eyes off the eighty-inch projector screen that dominated the room. Like A. A., Ned was tall and slim, but with a mess of curly blond hair inherited from his English dad.

  “Forget it.” A. A. shrugged. She knew better than to bother him when Call of Duty: Ghosts was on. “I’m not hungry, anyway. I’m still full from that tea.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her brother nodded, cramming a hand into an enormous tub of popcorn on the couch and scattering kernels everywhere.

  A. A. walked into her room. It was the smallest one in the suite—probably the former maid’s closet—but she liked its coziness. Her mother had recently redecorated again, and instead of her princess bed with the canopies, she had a loft platform bed with a fluffy rug. She kind of missed the tufted headboard where she used to line up all her stuffed animals. Her mother’s decorator had banished her collection into an opaque white lacquered trunk.

  She threw her bag down on the bed, and only when she had closed the door firmly behind her did she check her phone for messages.

  Sure, she had acted like texting laxjock that she loved him didn’t mean anything, but she had to admit, she was worried. What if he thought she was serious? But then again, what if he thought she wasn’t?