The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

  Copyright © 2010 by Shelley Adina

  All rights reserved.

  FaithWords

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/faithwords

  The FaithWords name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group.

  First eBook Edition: January 2010

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56490-8

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  It’s All About Us!

  The Fruit of My Lipstick

  Be Strong & Curvaceous

  Who Made You a Princess?

  Tidings of Great Boys

  For my readers, with love and thanks

  Acknowledgments

  Over the course of this series, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the most professional people in the business. My agent, Jennifer Jackson, who is the voice of reason no matter how chaotic things get. My editor, Anne Goldsmith Horch, whose cheery notes and incisive editing are a constant encouragement. The art department at FaithWords—have I said lately how fabulous the All About Us covers are? I have? Then let me say it again—you guys rock! Preston Cannon and Echo Music, who run the series site at allaboutusbooks.net; Shanon Stowe, who keeps on top of publicity; Miriam Parker, who whips blog tours out of a hat and is a friendly presence on Facebook; Katie Schaber, who always has the answer, no matter how weird the question… It has been an honor and a really good time working with you all. Thank you.

  Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,

  and the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel.

  —Proverbs 27:9 (NIV)

  Chapter 1

  LET ME PUT IT right out there: I’m no sports fan—unless you count surfing, which is more of an attitude to life than a sport. I used to think that there were some things you just knew. But if God were a major league pitcher, He’d be the kind of guy who threw curveballs just to keep you on your toes. To catch you off guard. To prove you wrong about everything you thought.

  Which is essentially what happened to us all during the last term of our senior year at Spencer Academy.

  My name is Lissa Evelyn Mansfield—yes, I’m back again. Did you miss me? Because, seriously, this last term of high school before my friends and I graduated was so crazed, so unpredictable, that I had to write it all down to try and make sense of it.

  But, hey, let’s take a moment here. The words last term of senior year need some respect, not to mention celebration. They need to be paused over and savored. Excuse me.

  Okay, I’m back.

  The term began in April, and by the time our first set of midterms (or thirdterms, as my roommate Gillian Chang calls them, since we get three sets of exams every term) rolled around at the beginning of May, it was just beginning to sink in that there were only seven weeks of high school left. Seven weeks until freedom. Adulthood. Summer vacation. Adulthood. Home.

  Adulthood.

  Eek.

  “Sarah Lawrence is stalking me,” Gillian moaned from where she sat on her bed in our dorm room. “Here’s another letter.” She fished an envelope out of the pile of mail in her lap and waved it.

  I looked up from my MacBook Air, where I was checking e-mail. “Don’t let Emily Overton hear you. She got turned down and her roommate has had to keep her away from open windows for the last month.”

  “But I already told them no twice. What’s it going to take?”

  “You could fail some exams.” I’m always willing to offer a helpful suggestion. “They can’t help it if they covet your fearsome brain.”

  “So does Harvard. And Princeton. Not to mention Stanford and Columbia and Juilliard.” She threw her hands in the air so that the letter flew over her shoulder and bounced off the headboard. “How am I supposed to pick just one? Can I spend a year at each school? I could be a career transfer student.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have your decisions to make,” I told her with absolute honesty. “If all those schools were after me, I’d run away and hide.”

  “I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing with my life.” She glanced at me. “Or maybe I should say, what God wants me to do with my life.”

  “There’s the kicker.” I nodded sagely. “I understand about waiting on the Lord, but… He knows about registration deadlines, doesn’t He?”

  “Oh, yeah. He knows. I keep asking Him, and He keeps thinking about it. Maybe He wants me to figure out what I want, first. But that’s the impossible part.”

  Poor Gillian. She has the kind of brain schools fight over for their research programs. But she’s also a music prodigy—hence the acceptance from Juilliard. Then, to complicate things even more, she also has quite the talent for drawing, and ever since she met my friend Kaz Griffin, her dream has been to create a graphic novel starring a kick-butt Asian girl with a secret identity. Kaz, in case you haven’t met him, is my best friend from my old high school in Santa Barbara. He’s been trying to get his graphic novel published for, like, years, with no success. But I have to hand it to him. He never gives up.

  Anyway. Gillian.

  “You could always do pre-med at Harvard and minor in art or music,” I suggested. “You know you’re going to need a release valve from all that scientific pressure. It would be good to have the right-brain kind of classes to turn to.”

  Gillian pushed the stack of mail off her lap and leaned back against the mound of colorful silk pillows. The letter from Sarah Lawrence crumpled somewhere underneath. “But then how will I know if I’m any good?”

  “Um, your grades? Not to mention, if you got an acceptance from Juilliard, you’re good. Full stop, as Mac would say.”

  Lady Lindsay MacPhail, aka Mac, was a student here at Spencer for two terms, and she’s one of our little group of friends. She’s gone back to live in London until the end of term, when she’ll return to her family’s castle in Scotland, and she has none of these questions about her life. She knows exactly what degree she’s going to get, when she’ll get it, and what she’ll be doing after that: making the Strathcairn Hotel and Corporate Retreat Center the go-to place for world-class events in the UK.

  I envy people who have their future in a laser sight. I’m still trying to figure out what to wear tomorrow.

  �
��What do teachers know?” Gillian asked. I don’t think she was looking for the answer to that one. “If I’m going to find out whether I’m really any good, I have to try to get into an art program and give it everything I’ve got. Try to get an exhibition. Or a publisher. Live in a garret and try to make it as an artist.”

  “That sounds scary.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Medical school is the easy path, grasshopper.”

  Only Gillian Chang would say something like that.

  I turned back to my notebook and saw that while we’d been talking, a message from Kaz had popped up in my inbox.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Date: May 4, 2010

  Re: Ow

  I am so regretting pushing off physics until senior year. My brain hurts. What was I thinking? Instead of grabbing my board and heading for the beach, I’m stuck down here in my room writing equations I don’t know the answers to.

  Does the Jumping Loon tutor over the phone? Can you ask her? I’ll give her anything she wants, including full use of my studly body, if she’ll just say the magic words that will unveil the meaning of x and y, not to mention z.

  Life, I’ve got a handle on. X is a mystery.

  Kaz

  I looked over my shoulder. “Kaz wants to know if you do physics tutoring over the phone. He says you can do what you want with his body if you help him.” I paused when she didn’t look up from a Neiman Marcus catalog. “I didn’t know you were interested in his body. Does Jeremy know about this?”

  “That sounds like a jealous remark.” She flipped a page. “Ooh, nice dress. Chloé does summer so well. Which reminds me, if we’re going on a Senior Cotillion dress safari, we’d better start soon.”

  I was not to be sidetracked, no matter how tempting the bait. “Is something going on with you and Kaz?”

  She put the catalog down and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Yes. Yes, there is.”

  I sat there as stunned as if someone had upended a bucket of seawater over me.

  Kaz and Gillian? What? How is that possible? When did—

  What is the matter with you? Kaz is your friend. You aren’t… like that. If he’s interested in Gillian, it’s none of your business.

  Poor Jeremy.

  “Lissa. Lissa, come back to me.” I blinked at her. My face felt frozen. “For crying out loud, get a grip.” She was trying not to laugh and not succeeding very well. “He’s teasing you. He’s helping me with a plaster mold of his hand for my art project, okay? That’s all.”

  “A mold. Of his hand. And you don’t have guys’ hands any closer than Santa Barbara?”

  “He has interesting hands, which you’d know if you ever paid any attention.”

  Of course he did. And of course I did. Pay attention to him, I mean. He was my best friend. We e-mailed each other, like, twenty times a week.

  “And Jeremy’s hands aren’t interesting?”

  She picked up the catalog and flipped another page. “Write him back and tell him of course I’ll tutor him. We can start tonight if he’s desperate.”

  Hm. Poor Jeremy, indeed. What was going on here? “He wants to know the meaning of x.”

  “Don’t we all. Some of us wait for the universe to reveal it to us. And some of us wouldn’t know it if the universe dropped it on our heads.”

  “What’s your point?”

  But my friend, who usually has all the answers, didn’t reply.

  Chapter 2

  HAVING A BOYFRIEND can be like having a root canal—once you’ve had one, you want everyone else to go through the same experience so they know what you’re talking about.

  I’m not down on boyfriends, honest. I’ve had a few. And if I had half a clue about how to get a nice guy’s attention and keep it, I’d be the first one to jump on the bandwagon with Gillian and with Carly, who is joined at the lip with Brett Loyola, the captain of the rowing team. They’ve been together almost exactly a year now, to the continuing astonishment of Vanessa Talbot and her glossy posse.

  Personally, I think most of Vanessa’s catty gossip about Carly is a case of sour grapes. Brett’s period of mourning after V. dumped him last year lasted, like, a nanosecond before Carly got his attention. That’s gotta sting.

  Carly’s roommate, Shani Hanna, is in a long-distance relationship with Danyel Johnstone, one of my friends from Santa Barbara. She doesn’t date guys from school, mostly because she’s taken, but even if she wasn’t, she turned down a prince during fall term and now all the guys here are scared to ask her out. I heard two seniors talking behind the stacks in the library only last week: “He had a nine-figure net worth and a private security detail and she broke up with him. What are my chances?”

  I didn’t step out from behind the English Novelists of the Nineteenth Century to tell them, “Zero, babe.” Danyel is adorable—think Corbin Bleu with a surfboard—and she’d rather get one e-mail from him than spend a whole evening clubbing with anybody else. Danyel is Kaz’s best friend, which is why Shani doesn’t mind sharing stuff like that with me. I’ve known Danyel my whole life, and if she could do a mind-meld with me and suck everything I know about him out of my cortex, she would.

  I’m really lucky when it comes to friends. With a bud like Kaz, and with my girlfriends’ boyfriends around all the time, I’m not hurting for male company. It’s just that sometimes when Carly looks at Brett and they drift off into this personal universe that doesn’t have anyone in it but themselves… it’s hard not to want it, too. Hard not to go bug the Lord to send me someone like that. Yes, I do know He has more important things to manage. But still.

  Truth? The simple fact is that after what happened with Callum McCloud last year, I’m not sure I’m girlfriend material. He called me needy and clingy, yet we’d hardly had one date and he was trying to get my clothes off. I’m not needy. I am responsible and popular… okay, was popular, if you’re a stickler about tenses… and I have a great family and friends to love. Needy. Pffft. I’m disproving that one as we speak, since there is no one in my life at present to need.

  Case closed, Callum McCloud, you jerk.

  I gave up on e-mail and snapped my notebook shut. Gillian had separated her mail into neat piles: do, read, and toss. The letter from Sarah Lawrence went into the recycle bin next to the door, along with the rest of the “toss” stack. One down, half a dozen eager colleges to go. Lucky thing we were getting lots of practice in deadlines and decisions. For Gillian, the first were getting close, and the second had to be made soon.

  Me, I was already set: UC Santa Barbara, with a major in literature. (And a minor in surfing, as Gillian would point out.) After hitting the short list for the Hearst Medal in writing, the scouts for all the California universities had come knocking at my door. It felt good, but my mind was already made up. There was only one place where I wanted to kick off this business of being an adult: the place where I’d grown up.

  Now that my parents were dating again (long story) and my dad’s big adventure epic, The Middle Window, was in global release and on its way to theaters in Japan and Australia, he’d moved from Marin back to Santa Barbara to wait for Hollywood to send him a script he couldn’t turn down. So that was where I’d be heading right after graduation.

  Home.

  Gillian glanced at the clock. “Almost seven. You ready?”

  “Just gotta brush my hair.”

  Five minutes later we were on our way to prayer circle, which has happened every Tuesday night since Gillian’s and my first term here. Not that I deserve any credit. She’s the one who organizes it, and the rest of us follow along, being thankful that she does.

  I could hear Shani’s and Carly’s voices on the marble staircase above us, and a few seconds later they clattered into view.

  “Nice sandals, girlfriend,” I said to Shani with an admiring glance at her perfectly pedicured feet. “Don’t tell me. Prada?”

  “Not even close. Those days are gone.” Remember t
he prince? When Shani refused to go through with an arranged marriage to him, her parents disowned her. They cleaned out her room and sent all her stuff to charity, leaving only what she had in her closet here at Spencer. She hasn’t really heard from them since. Harsh or what? Needless to say, we’ve become the closest thing to sisters to her, trying to make up a family for her right here.

  “No,” she went on, “these are Miu Miu, and I snapped them up on eBay for next to nothing.”

  Carly nodded with approval. “I like the gold. It goes great with your skin tone.”

  “Black and gold, my favorite combination.” Shani gave us all a smug smile at her superior bargain-hunting skills. You’d never know she owned a dress Karl Lagerfeld had designed for her personally. Like she said, those days were gone forever.

  In Room 216, we dragged the chairs into a circle and people slowly trickled in. Gillian sat at the spinet in the corner and proceeded to turn a worship tune into a work of art. When Jeremy came in, she didn’t even look at the keyboard as she smiled at him, and her fingers just kept finding all those handfuls of rapid notes. Brett came in shortly afterward, trailed by a couple of the guys from the rowing team. Don’t get excited—I think they follow him into the bathroom, too, not to mention lunch and half his classes. They’d probably carry his backpack if he let them. With the school’s sportsman’s trophy 99 percent locked up and the unofficial title of Hottest Guy in Pacific Heights, I suppose it’s inevitable that Brett would have a posse. As it is, he’s as nice to them as he is to everyone—and ditches them whenever he can, so he can hang out with Carly. The guy does have his limits.

  Two juniors and one very brave freshman filled up the circle, and Gillian wound up with a flourish. “Thanks for coming, everyone. Who wants to start?”

  “I will,” I said. She slid into her seat between me and Jeremy, and I closed my eyes. “Father, thanks for these prayer circles. Some days, knowing that I get to sit down with You and my friends here is what keeps me going. Thanks for Gillian, and for putting the idea of a prayer circle in her heart in the first place.” I took a breath. “Father, Gillian’s the one I want to pray for tonight. She’s got a lot of decisions to make, and she wants to do the right thing and wait on You to tell her what You want for her. Please let her hear Your voice clearly. In Jesus’ name.”