Popularity Takeover

by Melissa de la Cruz

  The Ashleys never took any of this lying down, and Ashley vowed revenge on every new trick. At least the stone bench had been out-of-bounds for a while, cordoned off until the contractors hired by Miss Gamble’s to scour it clean could finish their work.

  Lauren couldn’t help but feel kind of responsible for all this animosity. If she hadn’t upset the natural order of things at Miss Gamble’s, then nobody would be destroying one another’s things with such vengeful glee. The Ashleys would still be sitting on the bench every morning, Sheridan would still be waving to them on her way into school, and Sadie would be practically invisible, not really caring whether the Ashleys liked her or not. But instead, everyone was in a state of near hysteria, planning the next evil attack. No one was safe.

  It had gone on long enough. Lauren sent out a text message at break. She sent the same message to all the Ashleys, and to Sheridan and Sadie. It read: WAR TALKS @ 12, LIBRY, NO WEAPONS!

  After honors history, she raced along the polished wooden corridors to the heavy oak doors of the library. She attached a handwritten sign to the door (CONGÉ COMMITTEE MEMBERS ONLY) and slipped into place at the head of the table. Lili was the first to arrive, of course.

  “What’s all this about?” Lili asked, sliding a pile of books onto the broad table. “Did Ashley approve this meeting?”

  “I most certainly did not.” Ashley swept in and sat down next to Lili. Lauren gulped: Ashley might be furious about this. But, actually, she didn’t seem that mad. She looked as worn out as Lauren felt, as though all this conniving was starting to take its toll.

  A. A. arrived a minute later, chomping on an apple, and then, at 12:05, Sheridan and Sadie walked in together. They were holding their heads high, looking as snooty and pained as usual, but Lauren could tell they were nervous. After all, there were only two of them. The four Ashleys might be planning to lock the door and pummel them into submission with dusty volumes, or leave them tied up with panty hose and hanging from the chandelier.

  “Thanks, everyone, for coming today,” said Lauren, when the S. Society had taken seats opposite the Ashleys. “Please listen to what I have to say. Congé is just a couple of weeks away. We all need to focus if we’re going to come up with brilliant ideas.”

  “Who says we don’t have a brilliant idea already?” sniped Sheridan.

  “Uh . . . let me think,” retorted Ashley. “The fact that you’re stupid?”

  “You’re the one to talk!” Sheridan looked outraged.

  “Please!” Lauren held up a hand. “I’ve asked you to hear me out. We’re ALL working on Congé right now. We need to make it a success—whoever wins. Because if we don’t, then the teachers might decide to create an entirely new committee next year, and none of us will be on it.”

  She paused, gazing around the five faces at the table. All of them seemed to register the horror and disgrace of being ousted from Congé insider status.

  “So what are you suggesting?” A. A. asked, licking apple juice off her fingers. “That we work together?”

  “Never!” shouted Sheridan.

  “As if!” Ashley rolled her eyes.

  “No, I’m not suggesting that,” said Lauren, trying not to raise her voice. She had to keep her head. “What I’m proposing is this. We all leave each other alone until after the successful Congé bid is announced. No more pranks. No more sabotage.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Ashley.

  “But they do,” said Lili accusingly, glaring at Sheridan and Sadie.

  “Don’t act all innocent with us!” Sadie looked outraged. “My coat’s only good for a dog blanket now!”

  “Well, as you’re a dog—” Lili began, but Lauren cut her off.

  “No more fighting!” she ordered. “Let Congé decide. Whoever wins Congé wins the bench. Simple as that.”

  “What?” Sadie didn’t seem to understand.

  “Are you saying we might have to give up our right to the bench?” A. A. asked.

  “It’s not your right,” fumed Sheridan.

  “Whatever! As if you have any right—”

  “Oh, we’re talking about rights now, are we? Since when do the Ashleys care about anyone having rights?”

  Lauren gripped the edge of the table. This wasn’t working. It was a good idea, but they were all too competi­tive and irrational. Oh well—at least she’d tried.

  “I understand,” said Ashley in a quiet voice. She gave an expert flick of her golden blond ponytail. “I think it’s a good idea. Whoever wins Congé wins the bench. Simple. Let’s do it.”

  “Really?” Lauren couldn’t believe it.

  “Sure.” Ashley crossed her arms.

  Sadie smirked. “I’ve got a better idea. Want to make it interesting? Let’s agree that whoever wins Congé wins it all. The bench. The table in the refectory that’s nearest the window. Social Club.”

  Ashley frowned. Sadie had just put more things into play. The Ashleys’ table at the ref was hallowed ground, and so was Social Club—it was the only after-school activity that included the possibility of meeting boys from Gregory Hall. The Ashleys ran it as their private domain.

  She looked like she was going to argue, but in the end, she merely shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  “You’re awfully confident about winning Congé,” Sadie said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “If Ashley thinks it’s a good idea, then so do I.” A. A. sighed, dumping her gnawed apple core on the table. “Let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” agreed Lili. “We’re going to win, so . . . why not?”

  “I think you’ll find we’re going to win,” Sheridan insisted.

  “So it’s agreed?” asked Lauren.

  “How do we know you’ll keep your word?” Sadie challenged.

  Ashley rolled her eyes. “Do you really think we would welsh on a bet? Get serious.”

  “We would never do that,” Lili stated.

  “That’s, like, so low,” A. A. chimed in.

  Finally Sadie and Sheridan seemed satisfied. The bet was on. Lauren exhaled a sigh of relief.

  For now at least, she had brokered peace between the warring camps.

  19

  THEY CALL THIS THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE?

  AFTER SCHOOL, FOR THE FIRST Monday in almost two months, Lili had to go to French conversation class. Madame LeBrun was back from visiting her family in Normandy and had called the house the night before. Lili raced up the stairs of the Alliance Française, glancing up at the French flag that hung over the front door. Today the wind was strong and gusty, and the flag was whipping from side to side, slapping its post.

  Lili shivered, hurrying into the cream-colored building. Half of her was desperate to see Max; the other half hoped he wouldn’t be coming to French conversation anymore. It would be so much easier if she never saw him again. But on the other hand, it would be depressing if she never saw him again.

  The smiling receptionist nodded to her, and Lili skipped up the wide, curving staircase that led to the second-floor library. Thin, pasty Madame LeBrun was already sitting in her usual armchair, looking dusty and anemic as usual, books and newspapers overflowing from her ragged canvas bag.

  Lili’s heart thumped like a rag doll hitting the ground when she saw Max sitting across from Madame’s chair. Why did he have to look so cute? Why did his soft hair have to fall into his eyes in such an adorable fashion?

  Then she remembered he’d never even called her after she’d tried to explain and that he was blowing kisses at Lana Del Ray wannabes these days, and suddenly Max didn’t seem so cute. Fickle and superficial­—that’s what Max really was, Lili reminded herself.

  She didn’t even smile at him. She just slipped into her chair and squeaked “Bonjour,
Madame!” to the teacher.

  To make up for lost time, today was a special two-hour class. Lili was dreading spending that long in the same room as Max; she was going to have to look at him and talk to him, when all she wanted to do was stick her nose in the air and ignore him. But luckily the first hour and a half was spent watching a DVD of a cool old black-and-white film called Breathless or À bout de souffle, as Madame insisted they call it.

  Madame also insisted they pull their chairs close to the table, where she’d set up one of the Alliance Française’s PowerBooks, so they could see the screen clearly. Sitting this close to Max made Lili’s skin prickle with excitement. Stop it! she told herself. Just watch the film and forget all about him.

  It was hard, though, because the film was all about the romantic relationship between a boy and a girl. A handsome young guy races into Paris in a stolen car, looking for his American girlfriend. He shot a policeman who was chasing him, and he needs to hide out.

  His girlfriend, Patricia, is supercute, in Lili’s opinion; she has a chic pixie haircut and wears amazing clothes—capris and ballet flats, a gorgeous little striped dress. She’s studying at the Sorbonne and trying to become a journalist. Then Mr. Handsome shows up and takes over her life, trying to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. She reads about what he’s done in the newspaper and finally decides to betray him to the cops. Instead of arresting him, though, they shoot him, and he dies in the street.

  After the film ended, Madame told them they had to discuss it in French. After a few minutes of them stumbling along saying banal things like, “C’est très triste” and “C’est très tragique,” the conversation got a lot more interesting.

  “I can’t believe Patricia betrayed Michel,” Max complained in perfect French. “There was no reason for it at all.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lili demanded, swiveling in her chair to stare at him.

  “En français, s’il vous plaît!” thundered Madame.

  Lili chose her words carefully. It was hard to figure out the right thing to say in another language, but she managed. “Of course she had to report him! The detective said he’d make a lot of trouble for her—maybe deport her. She wasn’t a murderer or a thief. She couldn’t let him drag her down.”

  “All she had to do was throw him out of her apartment!” Max folded his arms and stared back at Lili. “She didn’t have to get him killed.”

  “She didn’t know he was going to get killed.”

  “He’d killed a cop—do you think the police were going to be all friendly to him?”

  “I’m just saying she did the right thing. He was a criminal, after all.” In the heat of their argument, Lili had forgotten to translate her thoughts from English to French and realized she was speaking French without noticing it.

  “But didn’t she say she loved him?” Max asked, his eyes flashing. “Or was she just pretending all along?”

  “She wasn’t pretending,” Lili told him. “They were just from two different worlds.”

  “And you think that people who come from different backgrounds can’t relate. One of them will end up betraying the other person. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “I’m not saying that,” Lili protested, though she was feeling kind of confused. What did she really think? Why was she feeling so flustered? She’d been so fluent until now.

  “That’s what it sounds like,” Max said, speaking English, since Madame had fallen asleep in her chair. “You think that because a girl goes to some fancy school that she doesn’t owe anything to the guy she’s seeing. It’s all about her.”

  “And you think that a guy can get a girl into the worst kind of trouble and she’ll still be as loyal as a puppy dog. Did Michel ever realize that maybe Patricia didn’t want to drive off to Italy? That going someplace like Italy wasn’t really her thing?”

  “Maybe she should have told him that instead of just stringing him along and pretending she was into going to Italy.”

  “Well, maybe she might like going to Italy, if the circumstances were different, and she had more time to plan it!”

  “No, Patricia should have been more honest about how she didn’t want to go to Italy.” Max shot Lili a hurt glance.

  “EN FRANÇAIS!” interjected Madame LeBrun, suddenly sitting up and realizing that her charges were not speaking the right language. In French she told them to discuss the end of the film.

  “Patricia wants to stay with her friend in Montmartre, but Michel refuses!” Lili pointed out, staring tri­umphantly at Max. “They have to talk to his friends and go stay with some girl he knows, even though she’s totally pretentious and isn’t nice to Patricia at all!” Now that was an easy sentence to translate. Lili knew prétentieux and n’est pas sympathique.

  “Obviously, Patricia’s friends weren’t to be trusted,” Max said coolly, sitting back with his arms folded. “They would be all judgmental about Michel, probably, and persuade Patricia to call the police. Which she does anyway, because he’s, like, too different.”

  “She’s the one who’s out of place in his world,” Lili insisted. “She’s the one who doesn’t fit in. He doesn’t even care.”

  “He does care!” Max looked affronted. “It’s just that she never returns any of his calls, even though he’s been trying to reach her for weeks!”

  Huh? Lili’s mind raced. He’d been trying to reach her? But she never got any messages on her new Android. Then she realized it was a new number—when her family switched services at the beginning of January she’d gotten a new one, but of course he wouldn’t know that. And if he called at home . . . if he called at home . . . if he called her at home, her mom would just lie to him and tell him she was giving Lili the messages, when of course nothing could be further from the truth.

  Could Max really be talking about their relationship and not the one on the screen? “Maybe, if Michel understood that her mother was terribly strict and if he had her new cell phone number, they wouldn’t have these problems.”

  “Her mother? Cell phone?” Madame LeBrun looked confused. “I have no idea what the two of you are talking about.”

  Lili gave Max her sweetest smile, and Max grinned back.

  Madame might be in the dark, but Max and Lili understood each other perfectly.

  20

  THIS OLD HOUSE?

  “COOPER! COME IN!”

  Ashley answered the door herself, pushing the elderly butler out of the way in her excitement. “Oops, sorry!” she chirped, leading Cooper inside.

  It was Friday night, and—for the first time ever—Cooper was coming to her house to pick her up. Sure, he’d been to her party, but he spent the whole time in the front yard on the Vespa or hanging out on the steps.

  And when they went out on dates, they always met up somewhere else; Ashley wasn’t sure why. Cooper always had a good reason, like he was in that particular neighborhood already and it would be easier if Ashley could just get dropped off. He’d be waiting for her on some street corner or outside a restaurant or at the entrance to the museum.

  Ashley was looking forward to showing off the Spencer palace, but when Cooper stepped into their grand marble entryway, his face wrinkled with disapproval.

  Huh? Ashley followed his gaze. Everything was as beautiful and tasteful and expensive as it could be—the huge mirror, the fluted columns leading into the great room, the perfect crystal bowl on the console table holding an artful arrangement of twisted lilies. Her mother had flowers delivered every three days from In Water, one of the most chic and innovative floral designers in the city. Maybe he thought flowers were cliché?

  “My parents are waiting for you in the great room,” she told him, taking his arm and leading him down the airy hallway.

  “What’s so great about it?” he asked.

  The slightly sarcastic tone threw her off a bit. “That’s just what it’s called.�
� Ashley didn’t know what to say.

  “Why don’t you just call it a living room like everyone else would?”

  “But it’s not our living room, really.” Ashley didn’t know what Cooper was getting at. “This is our living room, I guess—isn’t it beautiful?”

  She gestured at the expansive room with its pale walls and highly polished grand piano. Cooper just shrugged.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone hangs out there,” he said, kind of dismissively.

  “Well, no,” Ashley admitted. She was puzzled: Why would they need to hang out there, when there were dozens of other rooms in the house?

  “The kitchen’s that way,” she pointed. “If you want to stay here to eat, our personal chef could make us whatever we want. As long as it’s organic, of course. She makes amazing gourmet meals.”

  “I’d rather go out,” Cooper said quickly. Ashley hung her head. Of course Cooper wouldn’t be impressed by a personal chef. He probably had a dozen of them at home.

  “Well, here we are!” she said in a loud voice, so her parents would stop lolling around on the sofa and get up. But they must be getting deaf, because they both stayed exactly where they were until Ashley and Cooper were practically standing in front of them.

  How annoying! Her mother was lying down, as usual, propped up with pillows, wrapped in an ivory pashmina and looking pale and languid. Her father was slouched on the floor, lovingly stroking Matilda’s hand and resting his head on her baby bump. Oh no! He wasn’t singing dreary old Cat Stevens songs to the baby again, was he? Just when Ashley wanted her family to make a good impression on Cooper! How humiliating!

  “Hello, Cooper!” Her father clambered to his feet and did that hearty hand-shaking thing men did. “Welcome to our home. Please excuse my wife—Ashley probably told you she’s expecting.”