Social Order (9 page)

“Really?” A. A. was interested enough to take her eyes off the field.

“A party?” asked Lauren, who had probably never been invited to a party in her life, let alone a real boy-girl one.

“That's right. It was supposed to be the Gregory Hall victory party, but now it's more like a consolation thing since they lost.”

They all looked excited at the invitation, even sulky A. A., and Ashley was satisfied. She'd made the right decision taking the high road and not acting all pissy. Stop the presses: Ashley had saved the day, as usual!

She slid out her cell phone and discreetly sent a message to Jasper's number. If he wanted conflict, action, and dramatic tension, she knew just the thing that would deliver.

BE! AGGRESSIVE! B-E AGGRESSIVE! B-E, A-GEE-GEE, ARR-EEE-ESS, ESS-EYE-VEE, EEE! What's your favorite cheer? Ours is the one that the cheerleaders can never spell quite right. Somewhere along the double g's and the double s's, their tongues get tied. Not that there were any cheering bee mishaps during the splendid performance by the Ashleys dance team at last weekend's lacrosse match!

STYLE: 9

She sat out the performance but managed to look so poised in the stands we've got to give her this week anyway. But points off for the tacky blue and gold nails.

SOCIAL PRESENCE: 10

The best way to support Gregory Hall is to date one of its hot students!

SMILE: 10

We also love how supportive she was of her friends!

SMARTS: 10

Probably a good idea to skip the performance. She doesn't need all that extra attention!

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 39

STYLE: 10

Who can watch a couple of guys chase a ball around with a stick when A. A. is doing pirouettes?

SOCIAL PRESENCE: 10

Didn't blink even when the Gregory Hall mascot practically mauled her after the dance.

SMILE: 8

Only because hers disappeared once the routine was over.

SMARTS: 9

Probably the only girl there who actually knows how the game is played.

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 37

STYLE: 10

Looks great in blue and gold, but maybe her true colors are red and black?

SOCIAL PRESENCE: 10

We loved seeing Miss Lili in the center for once!

SMILE: 10

Is it just us or is something sizzling in the air between the organization queen and the Reed Prep lax king?

SMARTS: 7

Is it wise to root for the opposing team?

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 37

AND THE REST OF THE WORLD . . .

STYLE: 9

Unlike Sheridan Riley, this one can pass as an Ashley any day.

SOCIAL PRESENCE: 9

Her dance-team debut went off without a hitch!

SMILE: 7

Finally beginning to surface!

SMARTS: 8

The only dancer who thought to wear nude tights with the skimpy costume to fend off frostbite!

CUMULATIVE SCORE: 33

A. A. HAD BEEN TO
boy-girl parties before. Ashley hadn't exaggerated, though, when she described this party as hot. First of all, the place was amazing. It was way cooler than a house: It was a three-level loft apartment in trendy downtown SoMa. The building used to be a warehouse, so the ceilings were sky-high, the walls were exposed brick, and a curling wrought-iron staircase linked each floor with the next. The apartment belonged to one of the Gregory Hall players, whose parents were on a six-week cruise on the Aegean Sea and who left the apartment and their son in the care of their practically deaf, genial butler, who was safely ensconced in his room, watching BBC America.

She loved the industrial-style kitchen on the first floor, which led into a vast sunken living room. The kitchen counter was covered with dozens of empty and half-empty soda and energy-drink cans and open bags of chips and pretzels. The only furniture in the living room was an oversize, low-slung, L-shaped couch, one side of which was as wide as a twin-size bed. The entire length of the back wall was covered with bookshelves. If she was going to have a city pad when she grew up, this was what it would look like.

Someday she hoped to live in a house by the ocean in Malibu, but this would be a perfect place to flop whenever she came home to see her family and do some shopping. The living room opened up to a multilevel terrace with a view of the entire city, the Transamerica building a bright pyramid in the sky. A. A. wandered around, taking everything in. There were a ton of kids at the party, but most of the boys seemed to have segregated onto the lower floors, playing poker, darts, or ping-pong, while the girls were huddled in groups by the staircase, talking about the boys.

She waved hello to the other Miss Gamble's girls, surprised that so many had been invited. Usually only the Ashleys and their SOAs were at events like this, but it looked like word had trickled down to everybody. Was
that really Guinevere “Lollipop Head” Parker by the stereo? A. A. was also a bit surprised to notice that a crew of sixth graders had been able to crash the party as well.

There was an intense game of Truth or Dare going down in the back room, and A. A. steered clear of that scene. She liked kissing boys—sort of. That is, she'd like to kiss a boy she liked, if that made sense. For one blissful month this summer, she'd been looking forward to meeting (and kissing) laxjock, her online sweetheart.

But he'd turned out to be a mirage. Or possibly—probably—Tri. If only she'd been able to talk to him about it, but she never had a chance. Ever since the dance, Tri was all over Ashley like a rash. The real reason A. A. was constantly on the move, climbing over people to get up the stairs, dawdling out on the terrace and wandering into rooms where she didn't know anyone, was this: She wanted to avoid Ashley and Tri.

The sight of those two lovebirds turned her stomach. A. A. leaned over the edge of the third-floor terrace, gazing out at the lights of the city. Despite her outbursts of evil, Ashley had her moments, and she was one of A. A.'s best friends. And so was Tri. She should be happy they liked each other and wanted to spend time together. Right? Wrong.

Sometimes A. A. wished they'd never met. What was up with her? Sure, she missed Tri—the two of them used to spend hours just hanging out, playing video games, or just . . . doing a lot of nothing. That was it, right? She was just a little jealous that he didn't have as much time to hang out with her as before. So why did Ashley's comment about needing so much ChapStick gross her out? One thing she knew for sure—she certainly didn't want to witness the two of them play tonsil hockey all night.

“You must be A. A.” A tall guy with his foot in a brace hobbled over to stand near her, resting his back against the steel railings and swigging from a plastic cup. “Tri told me all about you. I'm Hunter Mason.”

“Hey.” Ashley mustered a smile. So this was the phenomenal goalie Tri had told her about. But what did he mean, Tri had told him all about her? What was there to tell? Mean stories about making out with Saint A's boys, probably. Or maybe about how he'd posed as laxjock and led her on for a month before standing her up. She was probably the butt of every joke at Gregory Hall. “What did Tri say exactly? That I beat him in every video game he owns?”

“Pretty much, and that you were a cool chick.” Hunter smiled.

A. A. relaxed a little. Okay, so maybe Tri wasn't bad-mouthing her. And maybe Hunter wasn't a sleazy guy trying to hit on an easy target. He was tall for his age–unlike Tri–and if his hair hadn't been bright orange, he'd be pretty good-looking. They chatted together for a while, and she found out that Hunter was an only child, and like her, lived with his divorced mom.

When it started to get windy and wet out on the terrace, they stepped into the high-tech office, A. A. sitting on the metal-gray Aeron office chair and Hunter perching on the edge of the desk. But just as she was starting to relax, out of the corner of her eye A. A. spotted Ashley out in the hallway. She had Tri by the hand, as if she couldn't bear to be parted from him for even one second. Ashley was even wearing a sweatshirt that had “Free City” embroidered on it. Ugh.

She could hear Ashley telling someone they wanted to look at the telescope in the office. A. A. froze. They'd probably come in, see A. A. and Hunter, and then all four of them would soon be hanging out, like some kind of instant double date. A. A. felt her chest constrict. She had to get away. But where?

The rain was heavy now, and the terrace was uncovered. No escape there. But if she walked out of the room,
she'd bump smack into Tri and Ashley. There was no place to hide, except for a storage closet in the corner. A. A. watched, fascinated, as the closet door suddenly opened and a boy and a girl stumbled out of it, giggling. She'd heard a bunch of people were playing some game called Seven Minutes in Heaven, where you had to spend seven minutes with a boy in a closet. The whole point of the game was to kiss each other. But when the seven minutes was over, so was your relationship.

She heard footsteps outside the door. Tri and Ashley, her so-called best friends, would be there at any second. She had to hide.

Hunter must have noticed the desperate, urgent way she was looking at the closet door, because he suddenly spoke up. “Hey, you wanna play?” he asked, touching her sleeve. “Seven minutes?” he teased.

“Um . . .” A. A. stalled. Hunter seemed like a nice enough guy, but there was no way
that
was going to happen. She wasn't about to make out with him. She'd only met him ten minutes ago. But before she could say anything, Hunter was across the room in a flash, opening the closet door and stepping in and beckoning her with a raise of his eyebrow.

A. A. took a deep breath and followed him. Ashley's
voice was getting louder and closer, with Tri right behind her. There wasn't a moment to lose. She had to get out of the room and away from them. But if Hunter thought she was going to kiss him, he had another thought coming.

Three strides and she was across the room. She stepped into the closet, tripping on a box of copy paper while a coat hanger knocked against the side of her head. Hunter was pulling the door closed, but before he could close it all the way, A. A. put a hand on his arm.

“Look, it's a long story, but I just need a place to hang out for a few minutes. There's someone I don't particularly want to see right now. And I don't want to play that game or whatever. Is that cool?”

To her surprise, Hunter looked more relieved than anything else.

“ 'Course it's cool,” he said, nodding.

She was so thankful she gave him a friendly hug as she reached back to clutch the door handle. But if she thought she'd escaped an awkward scene, she was wrong.

Because the last thing she saw before she closed the door was Tri's face, surprised and disapproving, staring straight into her eyes.

LAUREN WOUND HER WAY UP
the stairs to the second floor of the loft apartment, stepping over the gossiping girls hanging over the banisters, trying to keep Lili in her sights. Lauren was used to lofts—her own bedroom in the huge new mansion her parents had bought at the Marina had a sleep-and-play second floor—but she
definitely
wasn't used to boy-girl parties.

Dex had gone a little overboard in preparing her for the event. He told her to make sure she poured her own drinks, preferably from a sealed bottle or unopened can, so she could be sure nobody had added anything weird before she got to it. She didn't think any of the boys would try anything like that, since most of them didn't
even try to talk to a girl, let alone take advantage of one. But Dex was Dex. Overprotective. Still, maybe he had a point. Lauren cracked the seal on a liter bottle of Sprite and poured it into a clean cup. So far so good.

“And whatever you do,” Dex had told her, “don't get dragged into any activity that involves kissing in closets for seven minutes. If a boy really likes you, he'll ask you out. You're a really pretty girl, Lauren. You don't need to make out with a stranger in the dark to get a boyfriend.”

Dex had never said anything so blush-inducing to Lauren before. Most of the time all they did was tease each other and call each other “ugly.”

She noticed that Lili was moving quickly through the crowd, climbing the next flight of stairs to the loft's top floor. By the time Lauren squeezed past a burly guy trying to balance a lampshade on his head, she had disappeared. Music pumped on every floor of the loft, and each room was crowded with good-looking kids hanging out. She tightened her grip on her plastic cup of Sprite, trying not to spill anything as she made awkward progress up the winding stairs. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself.

Part of her wanted to sit in a corner sipping her drink and simply watch everyone else have a good time.
But that was the old Lauren, she chided herself, the one with frizzy hair, baby fat, and bad clothes. The new Lauren was a star on a reality show, had her hair cut by Christophe twice a month in Beverly Hills, and had her clothes bought with the help of an army of personal shoppers.

So this was what being one of the Ashleys was all about—high kicks at the lacrosse game and now high jinks at a boy-girl party. Last year all she did was watch
Heroes
reruns on Friday nights, crushing on the cute one who could absorb other people's power.

If she could just absorb enough of the Ashleys' popularity to become popular herself, then maybe she could make a difference. So far, they seemed to be content with letting her be part of the group as long as the television cameras were on, but what would happen when the show was over?

Lauren looked around. She was glad to see a bunch of girls from class looking thrilled to be there as well. She'd casually mentioned the party in an e-mail to Guinevere Parker, suggesting it might be a good event to cover for her “Page Seven” social column in the school paper and adding that anyone and everyone from the seventh-grade class would be welcome to attend.