The Ashley Project (11 page)

A gray-haired pilot emerged from the cockpit. “Morning, ma'am.” He nodded, tipping his hat to Trudy. “It's a beautiful day for a flight; we'll be in Los Angeles in no time. Hello, girls. Welcome aboard YourJet.”

“
Our
jet?” asked Ashley, turning to the other girls and raising an eyebrow.

“It's a joke,” Lauren explained. “Dad's company is
YourTV, so he named the plane YourJet. He also calls our house YourHouse. Dad's a little corny.”

“Oh. Can I have YourGucci, then?” A. A. asked with a smile, looking like she was thoroughly enjoying herself.

“You're funny,” Lili deadpanned. “Get it? YourFunny?” The others looked blank. Lili shook her head. “Forget it.”

They climbed aboard what looked like the most tricked-out airplane in existence. The main cabin was designed like a proper living room, with fluffy white couches that Lili could swear were made from the same beast that provided the fur for Trudy Page's coat, several glass coffee tables, a mammoth flat-screen television, and an entertainment console with DVD and satellite receivers.

“Wow,” A. A. said simply.

Lili nodded, glad that she didn't have to say it.

“When we rode our plane to Tokyo, they had all the magazines and snacks we'd requested beforehand on board already.” Ashley sniffed, still trying to look as if the jet was no big deal while she looked around for the remote control to the TV.

Funny how Ashley said “our plane,” even though Lili knew from her parents that technically, the Spencers
only had a membership in a private jet club and didn't own their own set of wings.

“What would you like?” Lauren asked graciously. “We've got everything on hand.” She showed them the well-stocked pantry in the galley kitchen. It was like an upscale newsstand in there, complete with the latest issues of all the fashion and style bibles as well as the celebrity newsweeklies, including the international editions of
OK!
,
Hello!
, and
Paris Match
.

Lili hesitated at first, noticing that Ashley had taken a seat on the couch and was looking around disdainfully with her arms crossed. But then she caught A. A.'s eye. The tall girl smiled gleefully and Lili grinned back, and soon the two of them began grabbing magazines, potato chips, candy, and sodas with abandon, losing all their cool in their rush to accumulate as much stuff as possible.

“I'm not hungry,” Ashley said with a pout.

Lili shrugged and joined A. A. on the couch with their bounty—every kind of candy imaginable, including gourmet chocolate bars from Switzerland and Belgium, a mouth-watering assortment of potato, tortilla, and soy chips in every flavor, and a dizzying variety of popcorn and puffed corn snacks. Lili thought she'd died and gone
to snack heaven. As if that wasn't enough, Lauren asked the flight attendant to make them a round of strawberry smoothies.

“Omigod. Did we already take off?” asked Lili, looking out the window and noticing that they were already above the clouds. She hadn't felt a rumble or heard anything to mark their ascent.

“Five minutes ago,” Lauren replied with a smile, opening a small, exquisite-looking brown cardboard box tied with an orange ribbon and showing them the row of creamy truffles inside. “They're Michel Richart. The best chocolates on the planet. My dad gets them flown in from France every week.”

“Are you guys really going to eat all that?” Ashley asked accusingly, as A. A. tore open several different bags and canisters of chips and candy at once.

Lili would have answered, but she was too busy stuffing fistfuls of delicious imported cheesy puffs into her mouth and chasing them down with hazelnut truffles. So what if Ashley thought she was a pig?

This was way too much fun to pass up.

LIKE ASHLEY, A. A. HAD
been on a private jet before. Her mother always seemed to be able to hitch rides with her richer friends on their planes when they went on vacation. But she'd never seen one as nice as this, and she wasn't afraid to say so. When Lauren had first invited them on the trip, she'd almost backed out because she was supposed to finally meet laxjock that weekend, but she was glad to have postponed it.

She planned to meet him next Friday instead. It was the same afternoon as the Miss Gamble's dance, but she didn't want to put him off any longer. She figured she could slip out once it got started, and on the off chance things didn't work out, she could always go
back to the dance and . . . dance her heartache away, she supposed.

A. A. was curious about Lauren—she couldn't quite figure the girl out. Why was she so keen on becoming their friend? Sure, everyone in class would kill to be one of them. But had Lauren truly forgotten how Ashley had treated her over the years? A. A. still remembered how in the third grade Ashley had made Lauren keep a “report card,” where Ashley would give her “grades” and dole out punishments (lunch money embezzlement, hard pinches) if Lauren fell behind.

Of course, looking at the two of them now, sitting side by side, you'd think nothing like that had ever happened. They were leafing through a European fashion magazine together, while Lili ate cheesy puffs like there was no tomorrow. Sure, Ashley was pulling her usual seen-it-all-before act, but A. A. could tell she was pretty awed by the whole shebang. It was hard not to be.

“So glad to see you've made yourselves at home,” Lauren's mom said, walking in wearing an Hermès towel around her shoulders. Her hair was wet and clipped back from her forehead. “Don't mind me, I'm just here for a glass of champagne. Can't keep Didier waiting!” she added gaily.

“Your mom travels with her own stylist?” Lili asked incredulously, taking a break from her no-trans-fats snackathon.

Lauren looked up from her magazine. “Sometimes.”

A. A. watched her friends process this information, and she wondered when Ashley would casually mention that her mom never left San Francisco without her own entourage either.

“It's very convenient. When we went to Tokyo, we brought our chef with us,” Ashley said.

“How big
is
this thing?” A. A. had to ask. “Don't tell me there's a salon and spa back there.”

“I guess it is a pretty big plane,” Lauren said almost apologetically. “No spa, but there is a Jacuzzi tub in one of the bathrooms. Dad has another smaller plane that he uses more. This one is the SUV.”

“You guys have
two
jets?” exclaimed Lili.

“Three, actually,” Trudy said merrily, as the flight attendant capped off her bubbling glass. “The G5 for cross-country, this one for European and Asia-Pacific flights, and a little one just for short trips. We were going to take the Citation, but it's being maintained.”

There was nothing even Ashley could say to top that, and the room was silent until A. A. got up. “Where's the
bathroom?” she asked, crumpling an empty bag of the tastiest Japanese rice crackers she'd ever eaten. She'd have to ask Lauren where to get more of them.

“There's one up front and two aft,” Lauren answered.

“Thanks,” she said, walking to the back of the plane. There were a bunch of closed doors in the back and she pushed one open, hoping it was the lavatory. Instead she'd stumbled into some sort of command-control room, with a bank of television screens, several computers, and an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked, and Dex rolled into view, seated in one of those fancy ergonomic office chairs and wearing huge Bose headphones. He took off the headphones, and his face broke into one of those piercing smiles that belonged in a poster on the wall of every girl's bedroom.

A. A. had wondered where he'd disappeared to once they were in the air. “Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to bother you. I was just looking for the bathroom. I guess this isn't it,” she said with a smile.

“It's the second door on the left,” he told her.

“Thanks.” A. A. nodded. She lingered by the doorway, wanting to hang out just a little more. “What is all
this?” she asked, looking at what appeared to be dozens of television screens.

“The most popular videos on our site,” he explained, pointing to the nearest screen. “We get thousands a day, and most of it is just junk. I'm trying to come up with a better way to filter it. There's a continuous stream of uploads. If something catches my eye, I move it to the recommended list.”

“You can keep track of all this?” A. A. asked.

“Nah, I'm just doing a little bit of development for Lauren's dad,” said Dex, looking modest. “Hey, wanna see something cool?”

“Sure.” A. A. nodded, walking closer. “Another card trick?” she teased.

“Better,” Dex promised. He opened a drawer and removed a pair of dark sunglasses. “Put these on,” he urged, handing them over carefully. Their fingers brushed as A. A. accepted them, and an electric current zipped up her spine. He was so cute, looking at her so intently as she tried them on.

“Okay. So now what?” she asked. They seemed like a pair of ordinary sunglasses to her. Did they give her Superman's X-ray vision? Not as far as she could tell.

“Look around. Look at me,” Dex directed. “That
should be enough.” He removed them from her face gently. Then he took a wire that led from the computer and slid the jack into a hidden slot on the hinge of the frame.

“It's a camera,” he explained. “A video camera. We're hoping to do this thing on YourTV where people can videotape their whole lives. Every person you've ever met. Everywhere you've ever been. It's called lifelogging.” He typed in some keystrokes and called up a video on the screen in front of him. It showed the room as A. A. had seen it, and Dex's smiling face, as well as a date in the corner. “They're not available to the public yet. Some kind of issue with the battery. But one day . . .”

“That is so ace,” A. A. said.

“Thanks. I built it,” said Dex modestly. He pushed up his sleeve, and A. A. noticed a
Speed Racer
tattoo on his forearm.

A. A. hitched herself up on the desk, crossing her long legs and feeling more and more comfortable in his presence. “Lauren said she's known you since she was little.”

“That's 'cause I've been working with her dad since I was eleven,” Dex told her, swiveling back to the row of screens. “Back when he was still just getting his PhD.”

“So you're a computer geek,” teased A. A.

“Hey—I coach the Gregory Hall lacrosse team! I wasn't too bad myself when I was there,” Dex protested. “Not bad for an old guy.”

“You're not old. You can't be more than what—twenty?” A. A. guessed.

“I was kidding. I'm actually only seventeen,” said Dex. “I just graduated in the spring.”

He didn't seem to mind her hanging out, but A. A. didn't want to impose any longer. Besides, she really did need to pee.

When she returned to the main cabin, the lights were dark and the girls were watching a new movie that hadn't even been released yet. Another YourTV perk, she guessed correctly.

“Where did you disappear to?” Ashley whispered.

A. A. shrugged. She was still thinking about what Dex had told her. He was seventeen years old, not twenty as she'd thought. He coached the lacrosse team. He had a
Speed Racer
tattoo on his forearm. He was super computer-savvy. Okay, so maybe fixing a virus on her home page wasn't the same thing as inventing the world's coolest video camera. And tons of guys liked
Speed Racer
. And played lacrosse.

But when she'd told laxjock she had to postpone
because she was going out of town, he'd admitted he was relieved because he would be away that weekend too. But if he was laxjock, how come he didn't recognize her from her online photo? Maybe because it was in black-and-white and she wasn't wearing a ton of makeup right now? Or maybe he didn't expect to meet “hollabackgirl” among a group of preteens.

A. A. thought of how hot Dex looked with his sharp white button-down shirt tucked into his straight-leg jeans. He was exactly what she pictured laxjock would look like. But it was ridiculous. Dex couldn't be laxjock, could he?

Could he?

SO THIS WAS WHAT HAVING
friends was like. Lauren felt warm and cozy as she sat wedged in between Lili and Ashley, not quite believing she was finally in their company at last. They were sharing a tub of buttery, salty-sweet kettle corn, eyes glued to the screen where the dazzling hero of next summer's huge blockbuster was saving a screaming girl from several monstrous beasts. A. A. finally returned from the bathroom. Lauren was glad. A. A. had been gone for so long she was worried that she'd fallen out of the plane or something.

“Doesn't he look just like Billy Reddy?” Ashley asked, during a lull in the movie.

“Totally,” agreed Lili, her cheeks full of popcorn.
That girl was small but she could eat, Lauren thought.

“A bit,” A. A. said, a faraway look in her eye. “Or maybe Dex. Don't you think he kind of looks like Dex?” Which was an odd thing to say, since the star onscreen was dark-haired and dark-eyed and looked nothing at all like Dex. But Lauren could spot a Dexaholic a mile away. The girl was definitely smitten. Too bad Dex already had a girlfriend and didn't mess around with jailbait.

“A. A., you're delusional as usual,” Ashley snapped. “We should call Billy,” she suggested. “Tell him what he's missing. You guys are such good friends, right, Lauren? You should have invited him to join us today.”

Lauren froze. “We can't use our cell phones up here,” she said quickly. “And Daddy doesn't like us to use the air phone. I could get in trouble. Besides, Billy doesn't like to shop.” Lauren had no idea if that was true, but she figured most boys hated shopping, so it was a safe assumption.