Popularity Takeover Read Online Free PDF Page B

the baby is sleeping. It all makes sense.”
    â€œNot to me it doesn’t!” Ashley fumed. She wanted to throw herself on the floor and cry with rage. This sibling-in-the-making was already ruining her life!
    â€œAnd you know how pretty and cozy the little guest room is. The George Condo mural you mentioned will look very striking in there. I’ll send for it tomorrow, and . . .”
    Matilda was still talking, but Ashley couldn’t hear another word. She was being moved upstairs to the littleguest room? Not even the main guest room, which was reserved for the VIPs? The little guest room was little with a capital L! It was practically the attic.
    â€œ. . . it’s not that much smaller than this room, you know,” Matilda was saying. “Sure, it doesn’t have a closet, and you have to walk across the hallway to the bathroom. And the ceilings are a little lower, and there’s not room for a window seat—”
    â€œMom,” Ashley interrupted her. “You would make a terrible salesperson, okay? You’re making it worse, and it’s already bad enough.”
    â€œNow, now,” Matilda chided, smiling. “Just remember, people in Japan live in houses that are much smaller.”
    â€œGreat!” shrieked Ashley. “Why don’t you just give me a roll-up futon and a block of wood for a pillow and stick me in a cupboard!”
    Her mother was totally missing the point. It wasn’t that the guest room was really tiny, or that it was on another floor. It was that Ashley’s domain was here , where it had always been, every day of her life. And now she was being ousted by this new baby. It was like the new baby got the top of the podium and she, Ashley, was being shoved into the silver-medal position. If there was one thing Ashley hated, it was being number two.
    First the S. Society, now this. A month ago Ashley was on top of the world, soaring on a trapeze and zooming off on a Vespa with Cooper. Now she was ousted from the bench outside Miss Gamble’s and evicted from her bedroom. She was a dispossessed person. How could she maintain her top-dog status when she was basically homeless and under attack from all sides?
    Ashley felt a tear roll down her cheek. This wasn’t life as she knew it, not anymore. Did she still have what it took to be Ashley Spencer?

5
    YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT
    IT WAS THAT TIME OF year again. Usually Lauren didn’t look forward to it at all, but this year was different. She was one of the Ashleys now, and no matter how many secret societies were forming around them, trying to knock them off their perch, right now was the best time of year to be an Ashley. It was Congé time.
    Sure, she could join the S. Society—they seemed just as intent on bringing down the Ashleys as she was, except they weren’t doing it for the right reasons. Sadie and Sheridan just wanted to replace the Ashleys, whereas Lauren wanted something more life changing. She wanted not only the Ashleys, but the very idea ofthe Ashleys—that some girls were more equal than others—totally destroyed.
    Besides, better to stick with the devil you know than the devil you don’t, Lauren thought. The members of the S. Society were upstarts, and Lauren wanted to enjoy herself just a little bit longer as part of the ruling class. Just for once, couldn’t she participate in the annual Mother-Daughter Fashion Show, where the Ashleys were always the star models on the runway? Instead of sitting in the back, picking at her salad, and wishing it was over?
    And just for once, couldn’t she be on the Congé Committee?
    Congé was a French tradition adopted by Miss Gamble’s, a “free day” in the middle of the spring semester that was a secret surprise for the whole school. Ever since the fifth grade, the Ashleys had ruled the Congé Committee: They got to decide where to take the whole school for