The Ashleys

The Ashleys rule Miss Gamble's Preparatory School for Girls. They are gorgeous, rich, impeccably fashion forward, and, yes, all named Ashley. Lauren Page has gone to the same school with them her whole life, and the Ashleys, if forced to remember, might recall only a faint memory of shoving mud in the poor girl's mouth in kindergarten.

But Lauren Page is no longer the mud-eating loser she once was. And though she has completely changed her exterior from bargain-basement cast-offs to more >>

The Ashleys rule Miss Gamble's Preparatory School for Girls. They are gorgeous, rich, impeccably fashion forward, and, yes, all named Ashley. Lauren Page has gone to the same school with them her whole life, and the Ashleys, if forced to remember, might recall only a faint memory of shoving mud in the poor girl's mouth in kindergarten.

But Lauren Page is no longer the mud-eating loser she once was. And though she has completely changed her exterior from bargain-basement cast-offs to off-the-runway couture (props, of course, to her new personal shopper) she is still the same person on the inside. And that person has had enough of the current regime.

Look out, Ashleys. There's a new name in school.

1

THE NOT-SO-NEW GIRL

Lauren page smoothed down the folds of her short plaid skirt and crossed her legs so that she could admire the shiny new black-and-white Chanel spectator oxfords on her feet a little better. They looked so cute with her thick cashmere socks scrunched down just above the ankle, she thought. She'd been wearing the same green plaid uniform to Miss Gamble's all her life, but she was in the upper form now -- seventh grade -- which meant saying good-bye to her boring old Buster Browns and hello to the first boy-girl dance with the hotties from Gregory Hall, which was only three weeks away. And as far as she was concerned, upper form meant a whole new Lauren.

She leaned back on the plush, baby-soft leather seat in her dad's sparkling new Bentley Continental and pressed a button that flipped a mirror on the console in front of her.

Sometimes she couldn't believe it herself. The girl who smiled back from the mirror looked nothing like the old Lauren. This one had pin-straight chestnut brown hair that fell softly on her shoulders and shone with reddish and caramel gold highlights, a killer Mystic spray tan, and cheekbones so sharp they could cut ice. Lauren felt a little like those young starlets who lost so much weight and started looking so hot that people whispered they'd had major plastic surgery. Lauren turned her head sideways to try and get a good look at her profile. Her nose certainly looked different now that her baby fat had melted away.

"Nervous?" a voice asked from the driver's seat.

Lauren stopped preening and raised a carefully plucked-by-Anastasia eyebrow at the speaker via the rearview mirror. "Should I be?" she asked Dex, her father's seventeen-year-old intern and personal pet project who, when he wasn't dreaming up online schemes for her father as part of his "regular" job, was part brother, part bodyguard, and full-time chauffeur.

"Maybe, because you're still ugly." Dex laughed.

"Takes one to know one," Lauren said, sticking her tongue out at him and feeling suddenly anxious. What if Dex was right? She checked the mirror again. A smoldering, gray-eyed brunette beauty glared back at her. No, there was no way. He was just being a smart-ass as usual.

"You shouldn't care so much what people think. Seriously, it's not attractive," he said, as he took a sharp turn down a curve and Lauren had to clutch at the hand rest to keep from sliding down the length of the backseat.

"Um, did Dr. Phil die or something? Because 'Dr. Dex' has a slightly stupid ring to it," Lauren retorted. Easy for him to say, she thought. Dex had always been popular and was criminally good-looking, even after he shaved off his pretty-boy curls to sport a Justin Timberlake buzz cut. He was smart, too -- graduating early from prep school, where he had been captain of the lacrosse, crew, and soccer teams, and taking the year off before enrolling in Stanford's accelerated computer program. Whereas Lauren had been going to Miss Gamble's all her life, and no one ever talked to her unless it was to ask for answers to the social studies quiz.

But all that was going to change this year.

She looked out the dark-tinted car window at the familiar roller-coaster streets of San Francisco << less