THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN, Ashley thought. She did not just see Billy Reddy with Lauren Page. It was completely insane. Billy was saving himself for her. How the hell did Lauren even know the guy? She tore her eyes away from the two of them hugging and stomped into school in a black mood, heading straight for the lockers without even greeting her two friends with her usual verve. Ashley folded up her umbrella so violently that a shower of raindrops splattered on A. A., who was gathering books for their next class.
“Okay, who told you that shopping causes acne?” A. A. joked, when she saw the look on Ashley’s face.
“Ha-ha,” Ashley said mirthlessly, shoving the umbrella away. She slammed her locker door with a bang, taking satisfaction in rattling the hinges. “I just saw . . .,” she said, pausing to place an ouchless elastic between her teeth while she pulled her hair up into a high ponytail. She wasn’t even sure if she could utter the words.
“Saw what?” A. A. prompted as they walked out of the new glassed-in annex, which housed the lockers, organic local foods refectory, and state-of-the-art music center, into the main building.
“Huh? Oh, nothing, forget it.” Ashley shrugged, deciding against telling A. A. what she’d just witnessed. Before she jumped the gossip gun, there had to be some rational explanation for why the boy she loved was with the girl she loathed.
She was still annoyed when they arrived at their first class of the day: Manners & Morals, with Miss Charm. Now there was a teacher who was one slice short of a whole pizza. Miss Charm was the school’s flighty but sweet etiquette teacher, another one of Miss Gamble’s spinster alums who’d returned to serve on the faculty or administration out of the deep affection they felt for the place. Ashley had a hard time imagining the school’s staff—myopic Miss Moos, eccentric Miss Charm, effusive Miss Murphy—outside of the sheltered, cozy society of the all-girls school. It was as if they were frozen in time and place.
The class was taught in a sunny room in the front of the mansion, and when they arrived Ashley noticed that all the desks were pushed to the edges of the room in a semicircle. Lili was already waiting for them and waved them over to the two seats she was saving. “Did the mirror say you weren’t the prettiest?” she asked, upon seeing the dark expression on Ashley’s face.
God. Her friends knew her too well. She never could hide her feelings from them. Ashley dredged up a smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. Lauren Page and Billy Reddy—it just didn’t make any sense. Especially when she, Ashley Spencer, had yet to even say one word to the guy? Hello.
But she couldn’t dwell on it now, since class was starting, and etiquette was one of the few subjects she actually enjoyed and did well in. Not that being a C student bothered her in the least. She’d read in a glossy magazine she was flipping through at the salon once that the world was run by C students, and she fully expected to rule the world one day, regardless of her poor marks. As far as Ashley was concerned, they were a nonissue. After all, there was nothing average about her looks.
“Good morning, good morning,” Miss Charm sang as she walked briskly into the room, her hair piled on top of her head in a beehive. “Girls, today we’re going to go over the conduct for a very special event. Do you know what it is?” She clasped her hands in delight. Miss Charm was given to extravagant hand gestures. It was part of her, um, charm. “Your first ballroom dance!”
Ashley smirked at her friends, but she was not immune to the small, birdlike woman’s enthusiasm for the project. The afternoon mixer, or the “VIP,” as Social Club had dubbed it, was also supposed to be a ballroom dance. Not in a cheesy Dancing with the Stars fashion, of course—no way were Miss Gamble’s girls going to don purple sequins and nude panty hose—but as a quasi-formal affair wherein young gentlemen and young ladies were introduced to the ways of polite society.
At least, that was the idea.
Speaking of the dance, major preparations were in order, and like a good leader, Ashley had delegated the entire task of putting on the production to Lili and A. A. Why stress about a million little things when you could get your friends to stress for you? Ashley tapped out a text to Lili’s phone.
HOW IS MXR PLANNING GOING?
Her phone buzzed immediately with a reply.
ON IT. EVERYTHING GR8. DON’T WORRY.
Ashley looked up at Lili, who winked. Oh, well. If she said not to worry . . . and God knew Lili was an organization queen—the books in her locker were arranged in a sliding scale on the color spectrum and her binders were color-coded and indexed according to subject. Ashley slipped her phone back into the side pocket of her handbag just as Miss Charm walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m going to pretend to be a young man at the party,” the teacher said. “Ashley, why don’t you stand up, please. You will play the part of a young lady. I hope it’s not too strenuous a role.”
Ashley laughed because the rest of the class was laughing, even though she didn’t find the joke funny, and obediently stood up in front of her desk while Miss Charm walked toward her from the opposite side of the room.
“I am a young man from Gregory Hall who has just entered the dance. Now I stop and see a girl I’d like to ask to dance. I walk over to where she is seated. And I bow in front of her,” said Miss Charm, bowing like a man, bending at the waist with her right hand folded above her stomach. “Now, as the young lady who has been approached, what do you do?”
This was why Ashley loved Manners & Morals. If she had her way, all social interaction would entail people bowing to her. “I curtsy,” she replied, making a small dip with her knees and holding her uniform skirt up.
“Good. A little less neck on the curtsy. Your whole body must go down, not just a tilt of the head. Try it again, dear.”
Ashley tried it again with more knee and less neck.
“Very good. Excellent.” Miss Charm beamed. Ashley beamed back. Who wanted to learn new math when old-fashioned etiquette was so much more fun?
Miss Charm regarded the class. “So now the boy turns to the girl and asks, ‘May I have this dance?’ And if you would like to dance with the young man, how do you respond?”
“Certainly, thank you,” Ashley replied as they’d been taught. She smiled, picturing Billy Reddy crossing the room like Robert Pattinson to Kristen Stewart in the first Twilight movie, before she cheated on him.
Miss Charm began to lead her in the box steps of the waltz, but Ashley had a question she wanted answered first. “But what if I don’t want to dance with the boy?” she asked, her imagination conjuring up Jonathan Tessin, he of the sweat problem, who’d been obsessed with her since prekindergarten.
The class tittered, and Ashley glowed. She absolutely adored being the center of attention.
“You must respond, ‘Not right now, but thank you for asking,’ ” Miss Charm directed. “Etiquette is all about kindness, girls. That’s why it’s called polite society. One must never hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“But aren’t you just leading him on, then?” asked A. A., without raising her hand.
“Yeah, can’t you just say, ‘Get lost, loser’?” Lili called with a grin.
“Heavens, no!” Miss Charm laughed. “You’ll scare the poor boys away. I do hope that you girls agree to dance with every boy who is courageous enough to cross the room and ask for your hand.”
Yeah, that was likely, Ashley thought as the twenty girls in class groaned, and there was grumbling and merriment all around.
“Now we shall practice,” Miss Charm said, releasing her hold on Ashley and turning on the iPod player by the whiteboard. The soft sounds of Chopin’s Waltz in C Sharp Minor filled the room.
Ashley ended up being partnered with A. A., while Lili had the unfortunate luck to dance with Sheridan Riley, who was sure to talk her ear off and ask a million questions about something inane like her socks and where she could get the same exact ones and exactly how far up the calf they should be pulled up, or in last year’s case, scrunched down. Being the subject of Sheridan’s obsession was flattering, but ultimately exhausting in its quest for detail. Especially on the days when your socks were just . . . socks.
As they glided around the room, Ashley noticed Lauren dancing with Katie Tanaka, another of the class’s bigmouth girls. Katie was sure to know the latest news. “Let’s go over there,” she said, pulling A. A. to that side of the room so she could overhear their conversation without appearing too obvious about it.
A. A. was doing her space-cadet bit, looking over Ashley’s shoulder and going through the motions of the waltz’s box steps, and didn’t object to being directed. Ashley edged a little closer to where Katie and Lauren were pirouetting. Miss Charm was seated by the window bench, going over the syllabus for her next class, and didn’t pay attention as most of the girls stopped waltzing and started talking instead. Ashley chided herself on having to stoop so low—gossip usually originated from her and the other Ashleys, not the other way around—but this was the matter of Billy Reddy. The love of her life. She inched forward a little more. They were so close to Lauren and Katie that she could have reached over and pulled Lauren’s hair if she wanted to.
Jackpot. Katie was just saying his name. . . .
“So I heard Billy Reddy dropped you off at school this morning,” Katie was saying. “What’s the deal? Is he your boyfriend or something?”
Ashley almost tripped over A. A.’s high-heeled saddle shoes in an effort to hear Lauren’s reply. Billy had a new girlfriend—it couldn’t be Lauren, could it? God wouldn’t be that mean! Maybe God was pissed that she hadn’t come through on her promise to be nicer to her parents. But then, God hadn’t been able to get her mom to raise her allowance, so maybe they were even.
“Nah, we’re just really good friends,” she heard Lauren say. “He’s an awesome guy. But I’m not his girlfriend. Is that what people are saying? How funny!”
Ashley breathed a sigh of relief. She jerked A. A. back toward the other end of the room with a smile.
“What the eff?” A. A. complained, coming out of her daze. “And why do you look so happy all of a sudden?”
“I just realized I have a gift card I still haven’t spent at Saks,” Ashley lied. “Now dip me.” There was absolutely no chance in hell any of them would ever make use of anything they learned in class today at the dance. Unless you could waltz to gangsta rap. But it was still fun to practice.
Maybe Lili was right after all. Lili often was. Maybe Lauren wasn’t such a zero as she had originally thought. Especially not if she was friends with Billy Reddy. Maybe she should give her a chance. After all, like Miss Charm said, etiquette was all about kindness. Ashley saw herself as a kind soul. She would let Lauren be her friend. Really, it was the least she could do for the poor girl.