The Ashley Project (19 page)

The boys elbowed one another, pushing and snickering. They cast sheepish glances at the rows of seated girls and moved, en masse, to the opposite wall. Ashley gave them her most welcoming smile.

The girls stared at the boys. The boys stared at the ceiling. The girls began to whisper to one another and giggle. The boys looked longingly at the buffet tables. Ashley tapped her foot impatiently. This was so not the way she'd pictured the dance happening. She noticed there wasn't even any music.

“Where's DJ Tommy?” Ashley whispered to Lili.

“He said he'd be here. I left him tons of messages this morning to remind him,” Lili said, looking worried. “His people dropped his stuff off this afternoon,” she added, gesturing to the DJ station in the middle of the stage, flanked by massive six-foot-tall speakers.

“What are we going to dance to, then?” Ashley whined.

“Told you he was a flake,” said A. A.

“Shut up,” Lili said. “You're not helping.”

Ashley watched with morbid fascination as Miss Charm made her way to the turntables.
No way.
Their etiquette teacher placed a needle on a record and the scratchy sound of a familiar Chopin waltz began to play.

The girls continued to fidget in their seats. Ashley saw some of the boys bring out handheld video games and start playing with them. How rude! This was turning out to be a total disaster. Not one boy crossed the great divide of the parquet dance floor, festively stenciled
with the letters
VIP
in the middle, while the disco balls kept turning, refracting the light.

Ashley crossed her arms. She had gotten her hair and makeup done professionally for
this
?

At last a dark-haired boy separated from the wolf pack. Tri. Thank God. Unlike the other boys, who looked like they'd just come straight from the playground, with sweaty-looking faces and messy, dirty trousers, Tri was neat, preppie, and handsome in his crested blazer, and confidently crossed the yawning expanse of the dance-floor Sahara. He stopped in front of the Ashleys.

“Hey, Tri,” the three girls chorused.

“Hey.” He nodded, smiling and sitting down next to A. A., of course. “This is some dance. Great music, too. Really . . . retro.”

“Shut up! I just called Tommy. He just got out of AP Biology and he's going to be here any minute,” Lili promised.

A. A. looked at her watch.

“You need to be somewhere?” asked Tri.

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm meeting someone.”

“That online boyfriend of hers,” Ashley said.

“At the fountain, right.” Tri nodded sagely. “Still think it's Billy Reddy?” he asked.

“No.” A. A. shook her head. “Of course not. I'm so over Billy Reddy.”

“He's LWN,” said Ashley.

“What?” he asked.

“Last week's news.”

Tri looked pleased.

“Now she thinks he's Dex Bond,” Ashley told him.

The smile faded slightly from Tri's face. “Who's Dex Bond?”

“Some dude who coaches the high school lacrosse team.” Ashley shrugged.

“He's
cuuute
,” added Lili.

“Oh.” Tri looked down at his suede bucks.

“I'll give it a few more minutes,” A. A. said. “Then I'll go.”

“Right,” said Tri, standing up. “Hey, um, wanna dance?”

“Sure,” A. A. said, getting off the bench. “Somebody's got to.”

“Uh, I meant Ashley,” Tri said.

Ashley looked up. Tri was looking at her and not A. A. What was going on? He looked at her expectantly. He was serious.

“You don't mind?” Ashley asked A. A.

“Why would I mind?” A. A. laughed, sitting back down, although her cheeks had suddenly turned bright red. “Go ahead.”

“C'mon,” Tri said, holding out his hand. Ashley gave him her most charming smile. She basked in the knowledge that she was the first girl to be asked to dance at the school's first mixer. Even if it was only Tri, who was cute, but cute the way teddy bears were cute. “Sure,” she said, standing up and taking it.

She put her hands on Tri's shoulders and he put his hands on her waist and they began to move to the waltz's box step. Tri fumbled and stepped on her left foot, crushing her toes. “Ow!” she yelped.

“Oops, sorry.” Tri blushed. “Are you okay?” His dark cowlick fell into his bright blue eyes, and Ashley suddenly felt a flutter in her stomach. He was really very cute, she thought. How come she'd never noticed before?

They glided across the room and Ashley tingled, feeling the jealous, watchful eyes of all the girls focused hungrily on the two of them.

Then the classical music screeched to a halt. Ashley and Tri looked up at the stage, where DJ Tommy, out of breath and still wearing his St. Aloysius uniform,
was now installed at the turntables and removing Miss Charm's Chopin record. Tommy shook his head and placed a new one on. He held a pair of earphones up to his ear with one hand, and with the other put the needle on the record.

He leaned into the mic. “MISS GAMBLE'S IN THE HOWWWSSSS!” he whooped. The hard beats of the latest felon rap, “Drank Me to Death,” reverberated around the Little Theater.

Screaming girls rushed to the middle of the dance floor, tired of waiting to be asked. Ashley smiled and cheered silently for her sisters.

Who needs boys?

The dance had officially begun.

TRYING NOT TO FEEL TOO
stung that Tri had asked Ashley to dance instead of her, A. A. crept along the side of the wall, avoiding the bodies crashing into one another on the dance floor. Boys were slamming into girls, girls were bouncing off one another. It was total bedlam, and not at all like the genteel mixer that the school had in mind. It was more like a flurry. Everyone blended. She was set to meet laxjock at Huntington Park in a few minutes.

It was weird to think that after months of texting, they would finally be able to meet. What if he wasn't as cute as she imagined? Or worse, what if he didn't think she was cute? Or what if he was perfectly nice, but not at all hot
like his e-mails and text messages implied? She quickly wrapped a red Hermès scarf around her head while she dodged the flailing bodies of her classmates. She'd come up with the scarf as a way for him to recognize her. She told him she'd be wearing a printed red scarf, and laxjock had said he'd be wearing a black baseball cap.

She finally made it outside the auditorium and slipped out the school's back door and through the back alley that took her to upper Broadway. The park wasn't too far away, but she wanted to get there early to scope out the scene. She told herself that whoever laxjock turned out to be, she would stick it out and meet him. She wouldn't pull a disappearing act, even if he turned out to be a fat, homeschooled loser.
Please, don't turn out to be a fat, homeschooled loser,
she prayed.

Huntington Park was one of San Francisco's beautiful public squares, modeled after similar ones in Paris. When laxjock had suggested meeting there, A. A. had readily agreed. She'd always been fond of the Fountain of the Tortoises, a copy of the famous Roman fountain, which depicted water nymphs and cherubs prancing in the water, and had told him so. He said it was one of his favorite spots in San Francisco as well.

The park hummed with afternoon activities. There
were dog walkers holding leashes to packs of dogs, a group of little kids from a nearby day care center at the children's playground, and several elderly couples sitting on the opposite benches taking in the fresh air.

She fiddled with her scarf and pulled it tightly around her head. She had decided against her customary pigtails, fearing they would make her look too young. As the minutes ticked by, she thought of texting him again but forced herself not to. He would show up, she told herself. A. A. watched the water trickle down from a nymph's hands into the calm blue pool. She walked over and threw a quarter into the water, an investment in a wish. She was ready to meet the guy who'd made her heart beat ever since sending her that first romantic e-mail.

DO I KNOW U?
she'd texted just a few days ago.

MAY-B,
he'd replied.
I'M CLOSER THAN U THINK.

The setting sun blinded her eyes, and she blinked. When the sunspots faded away, she could see clearly. There was a boy walking toward her.

Her heart thudded so hard in her chest she was sure the punk-rock couple making out in the bushes across the way could hear it.

The boy walking toward her was Dex Bond.

And he was wearing a black baseball cap.

BACK AT MISS GAMBLE'S, LAUREN
page stood in front of the entrance to the Little Theater. She could hear the music throb from inside, so loudly that it shook the auditorium doors. It sounded like they were really tearing it up at five o'clock in the afternoon. Nobody could accuse private-school girls of not knowing how to par-tay.

She knew the Ashleys probably thought she had fled the city for good, or transferred over to Helena Academy, or spent the last four days in bed with the covers over her head. But none of that had happened.

Due to a happy coincidence, the day after the sleepover, her dad had been called away for a technology
conference in Washington, and the whole family was invited to have dinner at the White House the day after that. Her mom decided to pull her out of school so she could join the dinner with the president's family, and afterward they had been stuck in the capital because freakishly bad weather had grounded all flights, including private jets.

They had returned to the city just that morning, and while part of her felt like disappearing into a dark hole and never coming out, the other part—the part that had been motivated enough to pursue a life-changing makeover and invite the Ashleys for a shopping spree on Robertson Boulevard—had come up with an alternative solution.

Sure, she could return to school and suffer through another round of the Ashleys' teasing and indifference. She could go back to eating her lunches alone in the computer room and keeping her head down in the hallways. She could go back to a thousand little indignities that made every day unpleasant.

Or she could do something about it.

She heard his footsteps behind her. This was just so perfect she couldn't help pinching herself. She turned around and smiled at her date.

Billy Reddy.

She was actually going to show up at the mixer with the great Billy Reddy at her side.

So she'd had to promise she was going to get the whole upper form to watch the next Gregory Hall lacrosse game. But how hard could that be? Dex had told her the team had made the play-offs, but it was a pity that Reed Prep, their opponent, had a huge fan section since it was a coed school, while Gregory Hall was all boys.

“Cheerleaders,” Dex had said. “We need cheerleaders.”

As if the Ashleys would turn down a chance to show off their dance-team moves.

She pushed open the door, feeling her skin tingle with anticipation. It was dark inside the Little Theater, and she couldn't see very well with all the flashing strobe lights, but she could make out the forms of Ashley Spencer and Ashley Li onstage, dancing in a circle with several Gregory Hall boys.

As usual, the Ashleys had commandeered the best location, the place where everyone could see them and they could look down over everyone. They always maneuvered it so that they were on top of everything.

Well, not this time.

DEX WALKED BRISKLY TOWARD THE
fountain. He was wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a bouquet of roses. A. A. felt so elated she couldn't even speak for a moment.
It's him. I knew it.
He looked even more handsome than she remembered.

She couldn't stand it anymore. “Dex!” she called, waving.

He broke stride and looked around. Then he spotted her, and a big, goofy grin came over his face. “Hey, Ashley Alioto, right?” he asked, squinting at her.

“Dexter Bond,” she said coyly.

He sat on the bench next to her and placed the bouquet of flowers between them.

A. A. tugged on the Hermès scarf. It was a present
from the fashion house to her mother for starring in one of their ad campaigns a long time ago. She'd figured it would look nice with her dark hair. “I'm wearing
red
,” she said, thinking it was an odd way to start a conversation with laxjock—Dex—but she felt suddenly shy.

Online, she could tell laxjock anything. But now that he was actually sitting next to her, it was like she'd hit the mute button. But when he didn't respond, she tried again. “And you've got a black baseball cap on.”

“Yeah. Giants game later today,” he said, craning his neck to watch the kids down by the playground.

A. A. felt a chill in the air, even though there was no breeze. This was so not the way she'd pictured it happening. He hadn't even handed her the flowers yet. She let out a short, sharp laugh. Then she noticed that there were other guys in the park, and most of them were wearing black Giants baseball caps. The city must be filled with guys wearing them.

“You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” she asked.

“Talking about what?” Dex said. He smiled at her, but his eyes were focused on the playground.

The small seed of doubt began to sprout, take root, and flourish.

“And those aren't for me either?” she asked, pointing at the flowers.

To his credit, Dex, ever the gentleman, didn't respond in the negative right away. “Er . . .”

The hope in A. A.'s heart began to wither. “No, it's okay. I don't even know why I asked.” Only then did she notice that there was a reason Dex kept looking over to the children's playground. The kindergarten teacher was very pretty. A. A. looked over at Dex and knew the truth.