Popularity Takeover

  “I need to talk to you about something important,” Ashley whispered fiercely, so A. A. let herself be pulled into one of the paneled oak alcoves of Miss Gamble’s main corridor.

  “We can talk about it at lunch,” said A. A., leaning against the smooth ridges of the polished wall. “If they haven’t taken over our table in the refectory, that is.”

  “Who?” Ashley frowned.

  “Sheridan and what’s-her-face. You know!”

  “Oh, them.” Ashley glowered. “Those mall rats better not try a stunt like that again. If they think being alpha girls is as easy as buying a new bag, they’re so wrong.” She shook her head, her dangling Peruvian earrings brushing her Peter Pan collar. She lowered her voice. “Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to deflate their balloons. That’s not what I want to talk about now. This is about you and me.”

  A. A. tried to keep calm. This was the moment Ashley was choosing to come clean? Two minutes before class was due to start, she wanted to tell all, at long last, about her breakup with Tri Fitzpatrick? A. A. couldn’t believe it. She’d been waiting for Ashley to fess up about the whole Tri incident and admit what A. A. already knew—that Tri had dumped Ashley because of his feelings for A. A. and not the other way around, as Ashley had told everybody.

  Ashley had pulled off a cover-up more amazing than Jessica Simpson with a bottle of Proactiv, just so she didn’t have to turn up solo to the Preteen Queen premiere party. If Tri hadn’t blabbed all, A. A. would still be in the dark.

  Once upon a time, she thought she had feelings for Tri—she’d certainly felt ill every time she’d seen him with Ashley. After they had kissed at a party, A. A. was sure they would get together. Instead, due to Ashley’s shenanigans, A. A. thought Tri didn’t like her, and Tri had assumed the same, and they ended up dating other people. When Tri had finally told her the truth at Ashley’s birthday party, A. A. had been shocked. Too shocked to even figure out what she felt—if anything—about him anymore.

  More important, wasn’t Ashley supposed to be one of her best friends?

  “What is it?” A. A. asked, her voice tense. An apology from Ashley was way overdue.

  “It’s about . . . a boy,” whispered Ashley. A. A. nodded, trying to look like this was No Big Deal. And it wasn’t, really—not now, anyway. She and Tri weren’t going out, but they weren’t enemies. They were buddies who could hang out together, just like they’d been before the ruckus started. A. A. still didn’t know if she was relieved or sad.

  Ashley was darting looks up and down the emptying corridor.

  “Well, what is it?” demanded A. A., unable to hide her impatience a second longer.

  “Okay, okay!” Ashley agreed. “This isn’t easy for me, you know!”

  “I know.” A. A. almost felt bad for her. Saying she was wrong was the hardest possible thing for Ashley. But A. A. was glad her friend was finally going to tell her the truth, if only for the sake of keeping their friendship. For a while there, A. A. had seriously considered confronting Ashley with what she knew, but A. A. hated scenes of any kind.

  “You know I hate having to ask advice on boys.” Ashley flashed a coy smile. “Especially since Cooper’s my second boyfriend. So I do have tons of experience.”

  Oh.

  That was what Ashley wanted to talk about?

  She should’ve known. Ashley wasn’t going to talk about what had happened with Tri. It was just Cooper, Cooper, Cooper. Ashley could barely talk about anything else.

  “Uh-huh.” A. A. shifted from one foot to the other, annoyed.

  “It’s just . . . You know more about kissing than I do. Don’t look at me like that! You do. You’re the one who’s always making out with guys at parties.”

  A. A. shook her head, too indignant to speak.

  “We haven’t really kissed yet.” Ashley was still talking, stroking her long golden ponytail absentmindedly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—we’ve kissed. He kissed me on my birthday. But we haven’t kissed, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Ew! The last thing A. A. wanted to listen to right now was Ashley’s true romance confessions.

  “Cooper keeps telling me he’s ‘not really in a relationship mode right now.’ Do you know what he’s talking about?” Ashley asked, leaning closer. “I’m not fluent in Boy.”

  “I dunno. Maybe it means he’s not that into you,” A. A. told her. “Maybe he’s not sure about you.”

  Ashley looked horrified. “Of course he’s totally into me!” she protested. “It can’t possibly be that!”

  “Well then.” A. A. sighed, already bored with this conversation. What was it her mother was always saying to justify the end of her relationships? “Maybe he’s, like, scared of intimacy.”

  “What’s scary about being intimate with me?” Ashley thundered. She clapped one hand over her mouth and shot looks up and down the corridor. Most of the other girls were already safely inside their classrooms.

  “Nothing,” said A. A., hoping she sounded sincere.

  “So what’s his deal?” Ashley asked, her high-glossed lower lip rolling into a self-pitying pout.

  “Some guys like to take things slow,” A. A. offered.

  “It’s not like I’m fast or something!”

  “Or maybe he’s nervous about getting close to a girl.”

  “He should be honored to get close to me! What else?”

  “Well,” A. A. said, racking her brain. “Maybe he’s just really inexperienced and is worried you might judge him.”

  “Hello! He knows he’s the first boy I’ve ever kissed!”

  “Or maybe he’s had a difficult relationship before.” The way you made things difficult for Tri, A. A. wanted to say. The way you wouldn’t let him break up with you.

  “This is the best relationship he’s ever going to have,” announced Ashley, shaking her head at Cooper’s foolishness. A. A. was getting tired of this. Everything she suggested Ashley shot down.

  “Look, do you want my help or not?” A. A. asked.

  “Of course! It’s just that everything you’ve come up with so far is totally out of the question. That’s why the whole thing is such a mystery to me. There’s no logical reason why Cooper is worried about getting into a relationship with me.”

  “Guys aren’t always very logical,” A. A. told her. Really, this was true. Who knew what was going on in their stupid heads?

  “Ladies!” It was Miss Moos, the dowdy school secre­tary who looked like she’d bought her hair weave at a Halloween store. A. A. hadn’t heard her approaching, maybe because Miss Moos always wore fugly fleece slippers inside the building. That way, A. A. reckoned, she could slither around like a snake and frighten people. “No dawdling in the corridors! You’re late for class.”

  Miss Moos was right: They were more than five minutes late, which meant Mr. Carroll would be practically frothing at the mouth when they arrived. But when A. A. and Ashley pushed open the heavy classroom door and hurried toward their usual leather-padded seats at the back of the classroom, A. A. barely noticed crotchety Mr. Carroll. She dimly heard his grumpy admonishments for them to take their seats at once and turn to a page in the textbook. She was too busy staring at a piece of paper she found on her desk.

  “Did you see this?” hissed Ashley next to her. She had received one too.

  A. A. nodded.

  It was a list, typed on a computer, with the mystifying heading “The S. List.” She could see at a glance that it was a list of what was in and out at Miss Gamble’s.

  In the “In” column were the usual suspects: Acne jeans, iPads, Miley Cyrus in “Wrecking Ball,” the junior varsity water polo team at Gregory Hall. The “Out” list wasn’t much of a surprise either: It included Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana, the Spelt Bread Diet, and vacations anywhere in the lower forty-eight states.

  But it was the items at the bott
om of the page that had made A. A. stop in her tracks. The last line read, “In: The S. Society,” and on the other side was the final shocking item,“Out: The Ashleys (and Lauren).”

  Her phone buzzed, and she checked it underneath the desk. It was a text from Ashley: THE ASHLEYS OUT? SINCE WHEN?

  A. A. sighed. She had a good idea who was behind the so-called S. Society. And while she usually didn’t care too much about the Ashleys’ vaunted social standing, she was miffed to find they were being openly dissed by their peers.

  Were the Ashleys as last season as gaudy colored denim? Was their glorious reign at Miss Gamble’s truly over?

  3

  MAX GOES BACK TO BLACK

  ALL THE ASHLEYS—INCLUDING LAUREN—were in an uproar. They’d talked about nothing but this mysterious S. List all through lunch, surreptitiously texting one another in afternoon classes with indignant questions about the so-called S. Society. And Lili had joined in—of course she had. She was an Ashley, first and foremost.

  Although lately, Lili really couldn’t care less about the Ashleys’ golden reputation. Sure, the usurping of the bench that morning by pretenders Sheridan Riley and Sadie Graham was obnoxious. And the “anonymous” in/out list was irritating. But she had way more important things on her mind right now—like really missing Max.

  Usually Lili enjoyed school: She aced all her classes and was reigning queen of the Honor Board. Today, however, dragged by. The second the final bell rang, she bid a quick good-bye to her friends, grabbed her Saint Laurent bag, slipped her brand-new Android into her blazer pocket, and rushed out the front door of Miss Gamble’s.

  Her heart was jittering the way it always was when she left school for the day. Because even though she knew things were all over with Max—her first real boyfriend—Lili still hoped, deep down, that when she emerged onto the elegant stone steps of Miss Gamble’s, he’d be waiting outside.

  The kids from Reed Prep got out way early, and a long time ago, when they were still dating, Max used to meet Lili after school whenever it was possible. That is, whenever her mother—the ferocious Nancy Khan (who insisted on a boyfriend ban after finding out about Lili’s coed camping trip) wasn’t picking her up from school for one of Lili’s dozen after-school enrichment activities. Back then, Max would be hanging out across the street, flipping his skateboard with one foot, looking adorably scruffy and handsome.

  The kids at Reed Prep didn’t have to wear uniforms, so Max was usually wearing a cool pair of faded jeans and a khaki army jacket, the red emblem on his Chrome messenger bag glinting in the sun. According to Ashley, he looked homeless—which he totally wasn’t—and according to A. A., he looked like kind of a doofus, showing off with his skateboard, which he so wasn’t. What did they know?

  Of course they preferred preppie Gregory Hall boys, who were obsessed with sports. In Pacific Heights, everyone had to fit into the same little box: They all dressed the same, they looked the same, their families belonged to all the same country clubs. Just like those social climbers had said that morning: The Ashleys always had to match. Well, maybe Lili was tired of being the same as everyone else.

  She stood on the front steps, peering across the street, hoping against hope, even though it had been months since Max had waited for her, while girls pushed past her, everyone hurrying down to the parade of BMWs and Porsche SUVs waiting to pick them up. No Max—of course. He hadn’t been there since forever. She’d been furious when her cousin (a huge gossip) told her those skanky friends of his had told him a whole lot of bad things about her, including that she was seeing some Gregory Hall guy on the side. It had practically ruined her winter break—she’d felt none of the joy she usually did when she saw the piles of presents under the tree at Christmas.

  How could he think that she was cheating on him? That totally explained why he’d been so aloof at Ashley’s party. He hadn’t even believed her when she said she’d been grounded all week.

  She lingered on the steps, forlorn and almost tearful. Usually on a Monday, Lili was driven to the Alliance Française for an hour of Advanced French Conversation, where she could be sure of seeing Max—he was the only other pupil in Madame LeBrun’s tutorial. But Madame LeBrun had canceled all sessions for two weeks while she returned to France for her niece’s wedding. Suddenly there was a gaping hole in Lili’s Monday afternoon schedule—no French and, much worse, no Max.

  Her mother had to take Lili’s small twin sisters, Josephine and Brennan, to the pediatric psychologist this afternoon for preschool IQ testing, so Lili had a rare window of freedom. Nancy was going to collect her outside the Fillmore Starbucks in half an hour. Lili had considered asking one of the Ashleys to hang out there with her, but for now all she wanted was to be alone. All this chatter about the S. Society was just so much hot air. Her personal life was falling apart, and nobody seemed to care!

  Lili marched off down the tree-lined hill, past the elegant row of renovated Victorian mansions. Maybe she would go to Starbucks and do some online research for her biology project. Or maybe she’d read another chapter of their honors English novel. Or maybe she’d just enjoy a café mocha, something she couldn’t do with the Ashleys, since they all had to get Ashley’s favorite drink: the soy latte, which tasted like extra hot crap, in her humble opinion.

  She pondered her options and decided that what she really wanted to do was take a casual stroll . . . one that might take her past the divey diner off Fillmore where Max and his friends liked to hang out. Really, she could use some fresh air after too many stuffy hours locked inside Miss Gamble’s.

  Lili scooted past the door of Starbucks and kept walking, trying to tell herself she was just going for an innocent walk, rather than desperately trying to track Max down, like some psycho stalker. There wasn’t any harm in walking for a few more blocks, was there?

  Although the diner was less than ten minutes’ walk from Starbucks, Lili felt like it was a different world. She remembered the last time she was there—more than two months ago, which felt like an eternity. All she’d wanted to do then was hang out with Max and (if she was honest with herself) impress him. Lili sighed, scuffing her Mary Janes along the sidewalk. Well, that certainly hadn’t worked out.

  She’d agreed to go on a camping trip that had turned into a nightmare, from the near attack by a bear—which no one else saw—to the flooding of the campsite, to the supergrounding she got when her parents found out about the trip. Not to mention having to spend time with his loser goth friends and their bitchy girlfriends, Cassandra and Jezebel.

  Speaking of whom . . . rounding the corner, Lili caught a horrifying glimpse of what looked suspiciously like the dyed-red hair of Cassandra Allison. She was sashaying into the diner, laughing her horrible horsey laugh. Lili shuddered and instinctively ducked into another store doorway. Weedy, whiny Cassandra was one person Lili never wanted to see again.

  Why did Max have such atrocious friends? He didn’t seem to have anything in common with them. Max was friendly and sweet and smart, while his friends were a bunch of irritating posers. Was it just because they all liked the same kind of music? What kind of friendship was that? Then she wondered if she was friends with the Ashleys because they all liked the same kind of clothes.

  Lili edged along the street, pretending to look in store windows. Not that she wanted to buy anything for sale on this block, which mainly seemed to consist of tattoo parlors, incense-scented boutiques that featured marijuana-leaf-design T-shirts, and costume shops that sold cheap, brightly colored wigs that probably made your head itch after five minutes.

  With every step, she drew nearer to the diner, with its dirty windows and cracked awning, and her heart started thudding and skipping like a maniac. She tried to act oh-so-casual as she crept up to the window—obscured, she hoped, by the chipped letters spelling out the diner’s name across the glass (appropriately enough, it was called Garage)—and paused to peek through the gap between the final
G and the E.

  Max was there.

  He was sitting in one of the diner’s vinyl booths with his buddies Jason and Quentin. Though he had his back to Lili, she could tell it was him—she’d know those cowlicks in his platinum blond hair anywhere. Just seeing the back of his head made her feel stupidly weak in the knees.

  Cassandra was standing at the end of the table, telling some (no doubt) boring story and running a hand through her stringy hair. Her BFF Jezebel was snuggled up to Jason, picking at her pierced nostril. Quentin, Cassandra’s boyfriend, sat on the other side of Jezebel, gazing up at Cass-ualty with his usual dense, slack-jawed expression. Lili pressed her button nose against the glass. But who was sitting next to Max, wriggling out of her seat to join Cassandra? It was hard to see, but it kind of looked like . . . it looked like . . .

  A girl.

  Someone with long, super-straight hair dyed inky black. Someone tall and thin, wearing striped leggings and a sexy sweater dress, a studded black belt slung around her nonexistent waist, climbing out of the booth and standing hip to hip with Cassandra. Someone blowing a kiss at Max and tinkling her fingers at him. Lili’s heart dropped to her stomach.

  Max turned to look at Lana Del Rey lite. Lili knew that look too well. It was the look Max used to give her when they were together. What was he doing? Blowing a kiss back at Lana? No!

  Lili was outraged. They’d only broken up yesterday (okay, a month ago, but still!) and Max had already found himself a new girlfriend. Not only that, he’d chosen the complete anti-Lili. She had thought the whole drama between them was just a horrible misunderstanding, something that could be fixed with a good heart-to-heart, once she was able to tell him her side of the story when she got back from Aspen. But now she realized the truth. Max wanted the breakup, because he already had Miss Artsy Chick waiting in the wings.

  A tear dripped down her cheek. She’d been wasting her time, wishing for a reconciliation with Max. He was with his own kind now, having a great time. He didn’t need Lili. He obviously didn’t miss her. It was all over.