Popularity Takeover Read online

  “It’s just a small, nonspeaking role,” said Jeanine quickly. “And it’s only for a few days here and there, filming right here in San Francisco. And there’s no problem getting the time off. I’ve already called what’s-her-name at Miss Gamble’s. As soon as I told her she’d be invited to the premiere, she was putty in my hands. So what do you say, doll? Isn’t it exciting?”

  “I guess.” A. A. wasn’t very enthusiastic. It was bad enough getting her photo taken for those random shoots where Jeanine had to pose as a woman who “had it all,” but having a small part in a film probably meant standing around for hours and hours, from dawn until after dark. But her mom seemed super keen on it, and A. A. didn’t want to disappoint her.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. If it makes you happy.”

  “It makes me very happy.” Jeanine beamed. “I’m going to call Marty right away. He’ll be more in love with me than he is already. Hey, do you have any idea where that brother of yours is hiding? He’s not returning my texts.”

  “Maybe he’s over at Tri’s playing a video game,” A. A. suggested. “I’ll go look for him.”

  A. A. was secretly pleased for an excuse to go over to Tri’s apartment. They hadn’t seen each other for almost a week, since they’d hung out after school riding bikes and bumped into Ashley.

  Tri’s family owned the Fairmont, so they lived in its other penthouse. Their private elevator opened into a dark lobby furnished with antiques. A beautiful orchid sat in a blue and white china pot on top of a dark, ornately carved table. A. A. pushed open the unlocked front door. She and Ned were welcome at the Fitzpatricks’ any time, and they knew the secret elevator code by heart.

  There was no sign of the boys inside the apartment­—which meant it was quiet, and there weren’t pizza boxes and game consoles strewn all over the living room floor. Although this penthouse was similar in size and shape to the Aliotos’, it couldn’t have been more different in the way it was furnished.

  Everything was rumpled and shabby-chic. A leather chesterfield, centered on a big Turkish rug, faced the stone fireplace, and the low tables next to the overstuffed armchairs were piled with books and magazines. A giant French armoire was stuffed full of platters and bowls, with Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s extensive cookbook collection jammed along one shelf. A. A. always liked coming here; it felt homey and nice and warm. Plus, it didn’t change every other month.

  “Hello!” A. A. called, wandering toward the kitchen. Soft classical music was playing, and she could smell something delicious cooking, like roast chicken.

  “In here!” called Mrs. Fitzpatrick. She was standing over their professional-range stove, stirring a bright copper pan of what looked like stock. “Hi, A. A. I’m just thinking about making some soup to have before our chicken tonight. Want to help?”

  A. A. agreed, even though she knew even less about cooking than Jeanine. It was always nice hanging out with Mrs. Fitzpatrick—or Supermom, as Ned always called her. Whenever they went over there, she was baking something or planning a family dinner. She was no Cosmo cover girl, for sure: She was at least ten years older than Jeanine, at any rate. But this apartment always felt like a home away from home for both the Alioto kids.

  Fifteen minutes into stirring together chopped carrots, diced onions, and grated ginger, A. A. heard the front door open and close with a bang.

  “Anything to eat?” a familiar voice called. “I can’t wait till dinner.”

  Tri barged into the kitchen, hot and sweaty from crew practice, his dark hair plastered against his face. His blue and gold T-shirt stuck to his chest, showing off his narrow, toned torso. He blushed when he saw A. A., but she tried to focus on stirring the vegetables with a wooden spoon and looking blasé.

  But really, her heart was flipping around like a fish out of water. Could it be . . . could it be that she really still liked Tri? That she secretly wanted to be more than just friends?

  And, unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, wasn’t he looking kind of . . . tall?

  “You’re growing so fast,” said Mrs. Fitzpatrick with a sigh, swinging open the tall doors of the full-height pantry and pulling out a Tupperware container. “And eating like it’s going out of style. There are crackers here, and you can have some cheese and fruit. And there should be some cookies left from yesterday, unless you’ve finished them off already.”

  “I have,” Tri said, his mouth already full of crackers, reaching for the jar of peanut butter.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello to A. A.?” Mrs. Fitzpatrick asked.

  “Oh yeah. Hi.” Tri didn’t even look up at her. A. A. tried not to feel hurt. He just stood there, stuffing his face, ignoring her as though she’d been sent by the caterer to help prepare the meal. Last week they’d had so much fun. Today he was cold and dismissive. What was up with that?

  “Would you like something to eat, A. A.?” Mrs. Fitzpatrick asked. “I think I’ve got some more cookies hidden away.”

  “It’s okay. I should be getting back,” A. A. blurted. Her face felt red, either from steam or embarrassment. “I was supposed to be looking for Ned, really.”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Tri announced, and bounded out of the room without saying good-bye. Mrs. Fitzpatrick shot A. A. a sympathetic smile.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?” she asked, and A. A. shook her head. A cookie wasn’t going to fix her problems, or make her feel better, even though Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s cookies were so good they put Mrs. Fields’ to shame.

  14

  THEY’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

  THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY ARRIVED, cold and gray, but inside the Little Theater at Miss Gamble’s, it was springtime in Paris. The Mothers’ Committee, which always organized the Mother-Daughter Fashion Show, had done a pretty good job—not that Lili was surprised. Her mother was chair this year of course, as she was every year, and everything her mother accomplished was done to perfection. Nancy “Genghis” Khan used to be a super-lawyer; now she was a super SAHM (socialite-at-home mom). She was used to having everything her way.

  Instead of the usual bleachers, clusters of folding chairs and café tables surrounded the temporary catwalk. The stage, banked with long aluminum tubs of yellow roses, was shrouded with pale yellow linen curtains, onto which a silhouette image of the Eiffel Tower was projected. A black wrought-iron pergola in the center of the stage marked the entry point for all the models. The full-length windows along the back wall were draped in back-lit ivory linen, so the room felt like it was flooded with spring light.

  On every tabletop a tiny vase held roses of the most delicate yellow; propped against the vases were hand-lettered menus. Audience members could order glasses of champagne or freshly squeezed white peach juice, and waiters in white aprons would bring frosted berries, buttery mini-croissants, and Nutella crepes. Soft accordion music played in the background. The only odd touch was the banner over the main door with the garish YourTV logo plastered all over it—Lauren’s father must have sponsored the event. Lili was kind of surprised that Lauren hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe she was embarrassed about how tacky it would look. At least nobody would see it until they were leaving.

  “It’s so beautiful, Mommy!” Lili enthused, clapping her hands with delight. “Everyone’s going to love it!” They had arrived there early with the caterers to supervise setup.

  “I’m glad you approve,” said Nancy, smiling. They’d declared a truce this week: Lili had promised to focus on her schoolwork and other activities, and Nancy had promised not to freak out if Lili was five minutes late getting to the car or the dinner table.

  Lili suspected her mother secretly approved of her new vintage look—not because Nancy approved of buying secondhand clothes, but because she always liked it when Lili emerged a little from the shadow of Ashley Spencer.

  “Models! Backstage, please!” Vicky Cameron’s mother, a member of the Mothers’ Committee, rushed
at them, waving her clipboard and gesturing to the door alongside the stage. “The audience will be arriving soon!”

  “Of course,” said Nancy, steering Lili toward the stage door. “I hope all the clothes have been arranged as I instructed. One rack per each mother-daughter team, each clearly labeled!”

  The racks were labeled, just as Nancy had arranged, but backstage was still a scene of total chaos. The place was packed with mothers and daughters, along with their personal hairstylists and makeup artists, plus photographers they’d engaged to document every loving family moment.

  Some unscrupulous mothers were raiding other racks, grabbing cuter outfits and pilfering accessories. Yikes! Lili hoped no fights would break out. Last year, when the theme was Pastel Parade, two of the mothers got into a major slapdown over a mauve, pearl-fringed cashmere wrap with matching Jimmy Choos. This being San Francisco society, no physical harm had been inflicted, of course, but there were a lot of frosty glares and hard feelings.

  “Lili!” Ashley was waving frantically from a relatively peaceful corner. She and her mother, Matilda, were already dressed in their first outfits, elegant Diane von Furstenberg tie-front dresses, their golden hair loose and shining. “We’ve roped this area off.”

  Lili had to hand it to Ashley: She was a mistress of crowd control. She and Matilda had brought the red velvet rope last seen at Ashley’s birthday party and had used it to cordon off a little insanity-free zone in one corner. A. A.’s rack was there as well, but there was no sign of A. A. or her mom yet. Lauren’s rack, Lili noticed, was pulled alongside the rope—but not inside the inner sanctum. Interesting.

  “How are you feeling?” Nancy asked Matilda Spencer, resting a sympathetic hand on her arm. “Are you over the first-trimester nausea?”

  “Not yet, unfortunately.” Matilda shook her head.

  “She’s already puked twice this morning,” Ashley whispered to Lili. “If she pukes on the runway, I’ll have to leave the state.”

  “Hello, hello! May we join you?” Uh-oh. That piercing voice. That overpowering smell of Poison by Christian Dior. That eye-crossing excess of zebra print from her tacky floor-length coat. The blinding flash of yellow gold jewelry. It had to be Lauren’s mother.

  “Of course!” said Matilda, though Lili could swear she saw Ashley’s mom exchange a quick smile with Nancy. “They’ve asked us to try on all our dresses before the show begins, just to make sure everything fits.”

  “But, Trudy, I thought you didn’t approve of fashion shows,” Nancy remarked.

  “Oh no! It’s beauty pageants I don’t like,” Trudy shouted, unwinding what looked like a six-foot-long python from her neck. Lili was relieved to see it was only a scarf with a snakeskin pattern. “Fashion is different. And of course I couldn’t disappoint Lauren. She’s been looking forward to this for weeks!”

  Lauren didn’t look like she was looking forward to anything. Lili thought she looked pretty upset when she noticed that their rack hadn’t been placed inside the Ashleys’ sanctum, and she kept glancing around the crowded room, not paying attention while her mother jangled her bracelets and gabbed on about the cute Michael Kors silk halters Lili and her mom were going to wear as their first look.

  While Lili slipped out of her shoes, hanging on to the rack to keep steady, she glanced around the room as well. When the announcements had been made, the Ashleys had been irritated, but not too surprised, to hear that the odious girls from the S. Society had been chosen to model too. The weeks leading up to the fashion show had been frosty between the two camps.

  Sheridan Riley’s spindly legged, redheaded mother looked terrified to be there, almost shivering in her strapless Nicole Miller number. Sheridan, however, was beaming around the room, her pointy nose stuck high in the air. Ugh.

  Even more annoying, that worm Sadie Graham and her mother had set up camp right by the Ashleys’ enclosure. Every five seconds Sadie was looking over at the Ashleys’ clothing racks, as though she had her eye on something. Watch your step! Lili wanted to tell her. There was no way she was getting her hands on any of their stuff. Where were all her signature items now, huh?

  Lili stood up, pulling the Michael Kors dress over her silk camisole and boy-short pants, making sure it was a perfect fit. Not bad at all! This fashion show was going to be amazing, even if the losers from the S. Society had managed to wriggle their way in. At least the audience would be able to do a quick compare and contrast: Ashleys versus Pretenders. Who would come out on top? Lili thought there would be no contest whatsoever.

  Plus, how three of the nerdiest loser girls in school had been chosen to model at the Mother-Daughter Fashion Show, the school’s prime beautiful-people-only event, Lili had no idea. The news had been downright shocking when it was announced at MODs last week. Maybe Ashley was right: All this anticlique lobbying done by the S. Society—in order to grab Congé off its rightful owners, the Ashleys—was ruining the school. If just anyone could model in the fashion show, what was the point of taking part?

  There they were now: Droopy little Daria Hart. Guinevere “Bobblehead” Parker, whose knobbly knees were bigger than her bustline. Cass Franklin, with her oxygen tent, mouth-breathing at the sight of her clothes rack.

  Hang on, was Lauren actually sneaking over there to talk to them?

  15

  SHE’S NOT FAT, SHE’S MY MOTHER

  ASHLEY SIGHED LOUDLY WHILE SHE tied her dress around her waist. It was bad enough that she had a mother running to the bathroom every ten minutes to throw up her organic oatmeal and prenatal-vitamin-supplemented juice smoothie, but it was even worse to congratulate yourself on being part of a supposedly elite group only to realize that the inmates had taken over the asylum.

  Ashley knew they were going to be there, but she hadn’t realized the extent of the fashion-tragedy-in-the-making until she saw them in the flesh.

  What was the model selection committee on when they let in Guinevere Parker and her matching mousy mom? Or Daria Hart and her drowned rat of a mother? And Cass Franklin—really! Whose idea of a joke was that?

  And now, just to make everything even more insufferable, Sadie Graham was leaning against the red velvet rope (designed to keep plebes out of the Ashleys’ enclosure). Even the jaunty Alice + Olivia dress and that cute pair of Missoni sandals she was wearing couldn’t disguise the fact that Sadie would never, ever be welcomed into the Ashleys’ fold.

  And look at her now—she was actually reaching out and touching something. On. Ashley’s. Rack. OMG! Ashley was going to have her arrested, then expelled, and then banned from the entire Pacific time zone.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, pouncing out from behind A. A.’s untouched rack of clothes. (Where was that girl, by the way?)

  The unbearable Sadie didn’t even have the grace to look startled, let alone guilty.

  “The Mothers’ Committee has informed me that we,” she said, gesturing at her simpering mother, “will be wearing the white tea dresses this year.”

  “As if!” Ashley snorted. Matilda was in one of the dressing rooms at this very moment, trying on her white dress.

  “I can only see one dress,” Sadie persisted. “And it should be on our rack, not yours.”

  “You’re totally misinformed.” Ashley grabbed the rack and wrenched it away from Sadie’s sweaty-palmed grip. “We’re the ones wearing the white dresses, as usual!”

  “Really?” One of Sadie’s perfectly arched eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”

  Ashley heaved the most melodramatic sigh she could muster without hyperventilating. Of course she and her mother, as the most beautiful mother-daughter team, would once again be modeling the final look of the show.

  “Just go back to your . . .” Ashley fluttered a dismissive hand in the direction of Sadie’s section. “Your little side of the room, okay?”

  “Sweetie, what do you think?” Matilda had
emerged from her dressing room, draped in the bias-cut ivory J. Mendel gown. Her beautiful face looked wan and worried, and she had pulled her long hair back with one hand.

  Yikes! The dress was way too clingy, and Matilda’s baby bump was totally showing.

  “Your mother is too fat for that dress,” Sadie hissed, so only Ashley could hear.

  “She’s not fat,” Ashley spat back. “She’s pregnant, you moron!”

  “Matilda, you look lovely,” Sadie’s mother cooed sweetly. “Like a shotgun bride.” Her smile was acid as she looked her up and down.

  “You know,” Matilda said, tugging at the dress, “I don’t think the fit is very good.”

  “That bias cut is very unforgiving,” Sadie’s mother agreed. “It shows everything, doesn’t it?”

  “And I have a little too much to show right now.” Matilda sounded rueful, but not too upset. “Oh well! Someone else should wear the white dresses this year.”

  “Mom!” Ashley was outraged. Her mother was giving in way too easily. She could carry a bouquet of flowers or a basket of something. Then nobody in the audience would notice a little bump. After all, her mother was pregnant in the way celebrities were pregnant—with stick-figure arms and toned legs and just a teeny basket­ball where her waist used to be. Thankfully Matilda hadn’t puffed out like a pregnant piñata. Ashley was spared at least that shame.

  “Ashley, I’m kind of tired.” Matilda was already pulling at the dress, getting ready to slip it over her head. “I think three changes of clothes is plenty for me right now. Let someone else wear the dresses. I think Sadie and her mother would make a beautiful finale.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Spencer!” Sadie practically shrieked. Ashley felt her face burning. If she and Matilda couldn’t wear the white dresses, then at least the honor should go to one of the other Ashleys. But Sadie had already grabbed Ashley’s dress off the rack, and Matilda was passing her dress across the red velvet rope to Sadie’s mother. All was lost!