Here is what you have to know about Ashley Barnum to understand: First of all, the name. Ashley Barnum. Royalty, right? When Ashley Barnum walks down the hall at school, you know it, and not just by the hundreds of wannabe Ashleys who follow her everywhere. By her glow. For starters, she has blue eyes, surfer-girl hair, and perfect thighs—skinny, but muscular too, the kind that flex instead of jiggle. You can bet they don’t rub together when she walks.
On top of that, she is captain of the field hockey team and vice president of the eighth grade. Last year she was voted most popular girl, and everybody knows that when we get to high school she’ll be homecoming queen and prom queen and every other kind of queen. Let’s face it, Ashley Barnum is the type of girl that, if she stepped in dog doo, every guy would line up for the honor of licking her feet clean. Not that dogs would dare doo in Ashley Barnum’s path. Even they would rather die.
Ashley has three brothers, high-school age. They all look like male versions of Ashley. Craig, Jonathan, and David are their names, and they take turns driving her to school in a silver convertible, so she doesn’t have to take the bus like the rest of us. They are her bodyguards. One Barbie, three Kens.
Once, I thought I could hate Ashley Barnum on account of her being so perfect all the time, but here is the clincher, here is the real tragedy: she’s nice. At least if she were a snob I could be left in peace.
This year, we have the same English class, Advanced with Mr. Minx. Now that we’re in eighth grade, everything is split into ability levels: basic, standard, and advanced. I’m in all advanced. I’m pretty good at everything, except for math. At math I’m the pits.
In Mr. Minx’s English class, Ashley Barnum sits front and center. Dan Fosse and Peter Marsh, soccer players (drool), sit on Ashley’s right and left, only too happy to play the bread to her peanut butter. Like every other guy in the school, they spend each fifty-minute period waiting for Ashley to sneeze so they can bless her.
Brian King sits behind her. He is in love with her. Everyone knows that ol’ Bri is not exactly in Ashley Barnum’s league. He’s doughy, and there’s always dirt under his fingernails, and he wears these thick glasses that are constantly sliding halfway down his nose. But does that stop him from writing love notes and dropping them onto her desk on his way to the pencil sharpener? Nope. He’s been doing this since sixth grade. And Ashley always smiles and says thank you. She slips Brian’s notes into her backpack like she’s going to read them later. Why? Because she’s nice.
I sit in the back row, between Nola Quentin and Georgine Miner, my friends since kindergarten. I like Nola and Georgie all right, but let’s just say that they are not going to win any beauty contests. No boy would think to pass a note to either one of them. Or to me.
But Ashley Barnum? Well, she is the kind of person you wish you could be friends with, even though she doesn’t know you exist. When I was younger I even wanted to be her, so much that I used to doodle her name all over my desk. Instead of your regular doodles—rainbows (R.O.Y.G.B.I.V.), hearts (true love always), and cubes (3-D), my doodle was Ashley Barnum (bubble letters).
So when she walked into Group that day, you can imagine my shock. Here was Ashley Barnum, wearing a jean miniskirt and matching clogs. Her eyes were pink, but other than that she was her usual radiant self. Obviously she’d stumbled upon our meeting by mistake. Someone should have told her that the meeting for “People without a Care in the World” was one floor down.
Trish put her arm around Ashley’s shoulder and squeezed. She handed Ashley a three-by-five card and guided her to a chair.
“The information you share on these cards, girls,” Trish said, “is private. The first rule of Group is confidentiality. That means that anything that’s shared in this room stays in this room.”
Trish stood next to an easel draped with grainy paper. “Pretend this is your card,” she said. With red marker, Trish drew six big dots. She wanted our full name, the name we prefer to be called, age, grade in school, reason for coming to Group, and a few of our personal goals.
“This part is important,” said Trish, double-underlining “personal goals.” “What kind of person do you want to be when you leave Group today? A month from now? A year?”
Trish walked around passing out golf pencils.
“Could I possibly have something less stubby?” said Rachel, like she’d just been handed a used Kleenex.
“Certainly.” Trish smiled and handed her a Bic instead. “Anyone else prefer a pen?”
The rest of us murmured “No, thank you” and went to work on our three-by-fives.
When I finished, mine looked like this:
I leaned a little to the left and tried to sneak a peek at Mathilde’s card. All I could make out were the words fat pig, before she flipped it over. Lila was hunched over hers like it was a vocabulary quiz and we were all trying to cheat off her. Ashley Barnum was sitting directly across the room from me, bending sideways over Trish’s desk. A curtain of blonde hair fell across her face.
I imagined her card to read:
Trish collected our cards and told us how proud she was of us already.
“Have a restful week,” Trish said. “Be good to yourselves.” She reminded us to bring a blank book to next Wednesday’s Group, for journaling purposes.
Ten minutes later, we were standing outside the hospital, waiting for the moms to pick us up. Me and Ashley Barnum. Ashley Barnum and Me. She was drawing swirls in the dirt with one toe. I was doing standing butt crunches. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and . . . I was on number seventy-nine when she said, “Isabelle?”
“Yes?” I couldn’t believe it. She was speaking to me. Ashley Barnum was actually speaking to me.
“You go to John Jay, right?”
“Yes.”
“8-A homeroom?”
“Yes.”
“Minx’s English?”
“Why, yes.” Why, yes? Suddenly I’d developed a British accent? Duh!
“Well, here’s the thing,” Ashley said. “I mean . . . I know we don’t really know each other or anything, but I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t, you know . . .”
“I won’t tell,” I said.
Ashley Barnum drew another snail trail in the dirt, nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
“Anyway,” Ashley said, “it’s not a big deal or anything. I mean, my mom just flipped about this gum she found in my backpack. She thought it was, um, Ex-Lax or something? She saw this thing on TV . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “Same. I mean, my mom flipped too, ‘cause she thought I was throwing up or something.”
“Yeah?” said Ashley Barnum.
“Yeah.”
There was a pause while I tried to think of something cool to say. Do you know I’ve wanted to be you since fourth grade?
But Ashley’s mom pulled up in her shiny black car and signaled with her cigarette for Ashley to hurry up, and Ashley said, superfast, “So, thanks, Isabelle. I’ll see you in Minx’s class, third period, ‘kay?”
“’Kay,” I said. “Minx’s class.” You betcha, girlfriend. Call ya later!
As