Two Cool

04/30/2004 at 09:25 AM EDT

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are mad as heck and they're not going to take it anymore. In February, photos of the pair partying at a friend's house surfaced in print, and the twins' golly-gee wholesomeness took a hit. But you won't find them apologizing. "Yeah, I do go to parties," says Mary-Kate, who was shown surrounded by beer bottles – though she herself was holding a water bottle. "That was our Winter Formal afterparty. We are [almost] 18 years old. We do hang around people who do drink." Ashley takes a similar stance: "Listen, we're not perfect. I'm not saying that we drink. I'm not saying that we don't drink. All I'm saying is we're making the right decisions for us." Even if those decisions occasionally end up splashed in print. Sums up Mary-Kate: "It's a bleep-bleep world out there."

Older, wiser, but still sanitized to a fault – "bleep bleep" is about the extent of the girls' trash talking – the minimoguls who have spent the last 17 years known as the Olsen Twins are officially growing up. Their full-length, $40 million action-comedy New York Minute opens in theaters May 7; on June 7 they'll graduate from high school; and on June 13 they'll turn 18, making them copresidents of Dualstar Entertainment, the company behind their $1 billion business empire. (Each teen boasts an estimated net worth of $150 million.) They both have boyfriends, dig designer clothes and – sorry, moms – they do party. This fall they'll make their biggest leap yet, moving into a downtown four-bedroom Manhattan pad to begin their freshman year at New York University. "We're going to school next year, and that will be our time to figure [everything] out," says Mary-Kate, who is known to her pals as MK. "I mean, we're not doing twins movies for the rest of our lives, you know?"

Yet independence and impending adulthood also have made the girls fair game for the rumor mill: "Being in the public eye, you're labeled that you have an eating disorder," says Ashley. "You have a drug addiction," says Mary-Kate. So do they? "We don't have problems!" says Ashley. "There's nothing to worry about." Adds Mary-Kate: "If I had a drug addiction, I would be in a thingy – like Promises, the Malibu [rehab] place. You don't see me there. So, like, come on. It's crazy."