The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth Page 19

  “That’ll make it a better story in the end, won’t it?” Gillian asked, and Kaz nodded.

  “Oh.” Great. I’d just attacked a person he admired. Whereas Gillian knew just the right thing to say. Had she even read the book? Had she seen it when its very first sketches were only a dream on paper, like I had? Had she listened to Kaz’s ambitions and hopes during long late-night conversations, like I had?

  Did it matter? Kaz was moving in the present, not the past. And there I was, fading in his rear-view mirror. The girl he used to like. His childhood friend.

  My phone gave its “you have a message” signal, and I pulled it out to see the list of award winners from Ms. Curzon. I pushed my plate away and took a fast gulp of ice water. “That’s my cue, guys. Wish me luck.”

  “Luck,” Kaz said.

  “Warm up the crowd for me.” Shani gave me a quick hug.

  “This is your show.” Carly blew me a kiss, Brett’s arm around her shoulders. “Knock ’em dead.”

  Music began to play as I slipped up the stairs and into the anteroom to collect the first of the two trays of statuettes. Twelve little—

  Wait a second.

  Eleven? That wasn’t right.

  I counted again. There had been twelve boxes sitting here an hour ago. My glance flicked from the list on my phone to the printing on each box as I did a quick comparison.

  Uh-oh. Service to the School was to have gone to Vanessa Talbot. But the box containing the statuette was missing.

  There were only four people who knew the contents of the winners’ list. Shani had been with me all through dinner. Ms. Curzon had been entertaining the Board of Regents at their table to our left.

  That left Ashley Polk.

  The one who had fired Vanessa from the senior consultant job because her pregnancy would reflect badly on the school. The one who obviously had not changed her opinion about seeing the PeeGee Princess on stage, no matter how well deserved the award.

  I hit autodial. “Ashley!”

  “Right here. Comm and Media crews are ready to roll tape.”

  “Where’s the Service statue? I’m backstage and there are supposed to be twelve awards. There are only eleven here.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Ashley. This is no time for dramatic statements. Only four people have this list, and I’ve kept my eye on two of them all night.”

  “Are you insinuating that I took one of them?” Ashley’s voice sounded dangerously cold.

  Wait. Close mouth. Think carefully.

  The Media and Communications students might be ready to roll tape, but they could pack it up and go dancing instead, at the drop of a hint. And then where would Shani’s, Vanessa’s and my grade and our project be? Not only that, I’d seen how Ashley could flip from friend to foe in moments. I’d far rather close out the year with a friend.

  “Of course not,” I said at last. “I just wondered if you or any of your crew saw anyone come in here since we set up, that’s all.”

  “No, we haven’t.” Her voice had returned to its usual cool professionalism. “What are you going to do?”

  There was only one thing to do. “I’ll deal with it. Thanks, Ashley.”

  I disconnected. How weird. My hand shook and my stomach felt cold, as though an entire glass of ice water had sloshed into it.

  The show must go on. Even if I wasn’t part of it.

  Father, I prayed as I walked out onto the stage, help me get through this. Help me be strong enough to make one last sacrifice—to do the right thing once and for all in front of practically everyone I know.

  The spotlight hit me dead center and the music came up, swelling and fading as I walked to the floating glass podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, Regents, honored guests, and fellow students—hi and welcome to the Senior Cotillion of the graduating class of 2010!” Shrieks, cheers, and clapping as I punched the air. “My name is Lissa Mansfield, and as senior consultant for this event, the first thing I’d like to do is thank the hardworking team of juniors who put this together for you.” More shrieks and cheers as behind me on the huge flat screen, the names of the people on my teams came up.

  “I know we all want to get to the important part—the party!” Screams and cheering. “But it’s our tradition to give a few awards before we get there. So without any more stalling, I’d like to announce the winner of the Debate Club’s Student of the Year: Darcy Daniels!”

  Darcy Daniels, a girl from my bio class with glasses and mouse-brown hair who could really have used a color rinse, lifted her tulle skirts and climbed the steps, where I presented her with her statuette. She was crying so hard her glasses fogged up, so I guided her to the side, where one of the band’s roadies took her arm and made sure she didn’t fall on her way back down.

  Two more awards. Three. And then it was time.

  With a gulp, I picked up the Board of Regents Honors statuette engraved with my name. “And now, I’m delighted to present Spencer Academy’s highest honor for Service to the School to a girl who truly deserves it. Vanessa Talbot, come on up here!”

  Silence, heavy with uncertainty.

  Down at my table, bless their sweet hearts, everyone began to clap. The tables where the teachers and staff sat picked it up, and, holding the little gold statue, I began to clap, too.

  From the back of the room, Vanessa made her way to the stage, and by the time she was halfway there, discretion had become the better part of valor and nearly everyone was clapping. After all, if the most popular girls in school were going to recognize her, it was smart not to buck the tide, right?

  I met Vanessa in the spotlight and gave her my best Hollywood smile as I handed her the statuette. She turned it over, blinked, and shot me a puzzled glance.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, smiling even wider, and hugged her for good measure. “Thank you, everyone!” I said. “Now I’d like to welcome the band to the stage, and we’ll have more awards to give at the break. Ladies and gentlemen, San Francisco’s own Neckties!”

  The band ran onstage to ecstatic shrieks and applause, and crashed into their first number as I tottered, half blinded from the spotlights, back to my table. I lost Vanessa and my statuette in the crowd as people surged onto the dance floor. Instead, Shani caught my elbow as I sank into a chair I hoped was mine.

  “Lissa.”

  “I know,” I said. “I think Ashley stole Vanessa’s award to keep her off the stage. What else was I going to do?”

  “You could have skipped her,” Shani hissed, leaning close to me. “We could have sent someone to find it and given it to her in my batch at the break.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe. But it’s done now.”

  She dropped her voice even further. “But, Lissa. You deserve your moment, too. You deserve for people to know you won Regents’ Honors. What did you do—give her the one with your name on it?”

  “I hope she plans to get it back to me.”

  “If she doesn’t, I’m going to hunt her down and rip it out of her hands.”

  “Just leave it, Shani. I know I won. That’s good enough for me.”

  “It’s not good enough for me.” Her eyes narrowed to slits and her tone sounded dangerous as she scanned the crowd. “That’s twice you’ve been done out of an award you deserved.”

  “Aren’t you going to dance?” Time to change the subject. “Everyone else is.”

  Gillian and Kaz are.

  You-know-where would freeze over and the inhabitants would play hockey before I’d say that out loud. Before I’d let anyone know that, under the rose-petal bodice of my dress, my heart felt bruised. And under my sparkly blue eye makeup, it was all I could do not to cry.

  This was supposed to be the biggest, happiest night of my life.

  And all I wanted to do was fold up and bawl until it was time to leave for college. Maybe even longer.

  TRUE TO HEr WORD, Shani hunted Vanessa down and retrieved the little statue. But she didn’t give it to me. Oh, no. The little plotte
r waited until the band took its break.

  “Are we having a good time?” she yelled into the microphone like a combination of Fergie and Tyra. When the crowd screamed, she applauded them and said, “I’m Shani Hanna, and it’s my pleasure to announce the rest of the award winners for tonight. Let’s have a big round of applause for our first winner, tonight’s hostess Lissa Mansfield, who’s taking home the Board of Regents’ Honors award and its ten thousand dollar scholarship!”

  So there I was onstage again, hefting the little gold statuette in my hand for the second time and waving at the cheering crowd. I gave Shani a hug and ran offstage into the embrace of my parents.

  “I’m so proud of you!” Mom said as she hugged me.

  “Ten grand?” Dad asked. “That’ll buy you your back-to-school clothes, I guess.”

  “Very funny, Gabe,” Mom chided him. “It’ll go for tuition and textbooks, and that’s that.”

  “Come on, Winner’s Mom.” He grabbed her hand. “Let’s dance. I can actually understand the words to this one.”

  Laughing, she followed him out onto the dance floor. I put the statuette next to my plate as if its placement mattered enormously, and arranged my evening bag next to it.

  Sigh. Everyone was having such a good time out there.

  “Want to dance, Lissa?” Derrik Vaughan held out his hand.

  “Sure.” It beat sitting like a wallflower in my pretty dress, and if Ashley had let him off the leash for one dance, who was I to turn him down?

  He seemed happy enough, though, and talked about Ashley as though he really liked her. When he took me back to my table, Jeremy was there, and after him, Brett and I did a fast technopop number that lifted my spirits in spite of the fact that I could see Kaz and Gillian twisting and bumping a few feet away.

  And then the band segued into a slow, romantic ballad. I smiled at Brett and said, “Guess you’d better find your lady for this one, huh? I want to live to see the sun come up.”

  He laughed and we joined Carly, who whirled out onto the floor in his arms. So romantic, those two. Just like Shani and Danyel, locked together on the edge of the crowd, Shani’s eyes blissfully closed as she danced with her cheek on Danyel’s shoulder.

  Well, at least I’d had a few dances. Never let it be said that the most popular girl in school was a complete wallfl—

  “Would you like to dance, Lissa?” His voice made my stomach jump.

  “It’s a slow one.” Stupid! What made you say that?

  “I’m willing to take the risk if you are.”

  Okay, that sounded normal. I rose and let Kaz lead me out onto the floor, where I stepped into a waltz hold the way I’d done in five hundred dance classes with him as my partner.

  “Whoa. You want the band to start throwing drumsticks at us? Relax.” He changed the hold, sliding his arm around my waist and holding my right hand in his left, close to his heart.

  Ohmigosh, he smelled good. As soon as I got back to the privacy of my own room in Santa Barbara, I was seriously buying a whole bottle of whatever he was wearing and dousing a pillow with it.

  “Are you and Gillian having a good time?” I’d say anything at this point. Anything to distract myself from the fact that I could feel the warmth of his body right through his tux and my dress. Or maybe that was me, heating up ten degrees at a time just from being this close to the boy I wanted.

  “As good a time as a person can have when each one wants to be with someone else.”

  “Huh?” Had someone spiked my ice water? Because that was the last thing I’d expected to hear.

  “Gillian’s a lot of fun and I really like her,” he went on, his voice low and soft by my ear. “But I said ‘Look at the pretties’ when we came in, and she just looked at me funny.”

  “She wouldn’t know that line was from the ‘Shindig’ episode because she doesn’t watch Firefly,” I reminded him. “If you’d said something about the fiber content in her dress being consistent with something found at a crime scene, then you’d have gotten her attention.”

  “You’d have understood.”

  “There’s a lot I haven’t understood lately,” I said. “I’ve been completely stupid about some things.”

  “You? The Regents’ Whatever winner? I’d say you’d have to have some smarts going on.”

  “Not when it comes to you.” Bone-scraping honesty time. “I screwed up, Kaz, and I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You told me what you wanted and I ran away like a little girl. I know it’s too late, but I wanted you to know that I’ve grown up over the last couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah?”

  I waited for a moment, in case he wanted to add something to that. “Is that all you can say? Yeah?”

  “I’m trying to have me a dance, here, Lissa. A nice slow dance.”

  “That you should be having with your girlfriend.”

  “Mm. I’m working on that.”

  Which meant I spent the rest of the night trying to figure out all the ways he could possibly mean what I hoped he meant.

  Chapter 23

  THE BOYS KIDNAPPED US at a quarter past midnight.

  With Brett and Carly, Shani and Danyel in Brett’s rumbling vintage Camaro, and Kaz, Jeremy, Gillian, and me in Danyel’s truck, we took the highway over the hills past the San Andreas Fault zone, heading for the beach.

  My parents knew I was with Kaz and that we were going somewhere for an afterparty. I don’t know what Gillian’s parents thought of the plan. They probably thought Gillian was safely tucked up in her bed when instead, she was crushed up against the passenger door, laughing at Jeremy, who was smooshed into the jumpseat behind us.

  Gillian against the door, you say? In that case, who was sitting next to Kaz?

  That would be me, shoes kicked off, trying to keep my sky-blue skirts from wrapping around the gear shift. While Kaz and Jeremy sang along to the raucous Switchfoot song in the CD changer, I leaned a subtle elbow into Gillian’s side.

  “Mind telling me what’s going on here?”

  “You haven’t figured it out?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. Are you going out with him or not?”

  “Not, of course, you goof. It was all a clever ploy to make you jealous.”

  “Very clever. It totally worked. You’re lucky to be alive and not in little pieces in the rain tunnel.”

  She laughed and joined in the singing while the taillights of the Camaro crested the last hill and headed toward the silver sheet of the ocean below. As the truck went up and over the crest behind it, I felt like flying up into the sky and bursting into fireworks. Maybe I’d be mad at them later for messing with my mind, but right now I was too happy. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning of the first day of life after high school, which meant it was a time for forgiveness and new beginnings.

  And a beach fire and moonlight.

  And nearly all of my favorite people in the world.

  We parked in an empty lot perched on an overlook. Danyel and Kaz had come prepared with blankets and sticks of wood to build a fire, and Brett pulled a picnic basket out of the trunk. Wow.

  “I think this was planned,” I murmured to Carly.

  “I think it’s sweet of them. Not to mention Mrs. L. She put together the food.”

  We settled onto the blankets as the boys got the fire going. I know, I know. I’m perfectly capable of building a beach fire. But somehow it was all part of the beauty of the night—the wash of the waves, the moon riding high in the sky, and the guys we cared about being all manly and taking care of us as we spread the skirts of our pretty dresses on the blankets.

  Danyel had brought his guitar, of course. I’ll never hear “Seven Spanish Angels” again without hearing Shani’s sweet harmony blending with his voice, the waves beating slow time in the background, and seeing the firelight sparkling in Gillian’s and Carly’s eyes.

  Jeremy sat next to Gillian, but there was no awkwardness between them. I me
an, she’d gone to Cotillion as Kaz’s date, and you’d sort of think that would bother him, wouldn’t you? But Jeremy is made of strong stuff. Gillian had drawn the line, not without pain for both of them, and her friendship was so important to him that he was willing to live on the other side of it, extending a hand for support.

  So the fact that they were easy with each other made me feel easy, too. Not that I was completely relaxed. How could I be, with Kaz lounging next to me close enough to touch? I leaned back on my hands, singing when I remembered the words, and humming when I didn’t, aware every second of his hand two inches from mine.

  Was he leaving the next step up to me? Or should I go along with the gallant theme of the evening and let him make the first move?

  I felt like one of those cliff divers in Acapulco. Imagine taking your first real dive, standing there on the rocks and looking down what seems to be miles to the surface of the ocean. Sure, you’d know that generations of divers had done it before you, but this is you, with practice behind you but no real experience. You’d be the one to either plunge in, or be the one to find a submerged rock that would end your hopes for good.

  So you make a choice. You can retrace your steps back up the path and give up cliff diving forever. Or you can close your eyes, take a big breath, and launch yourself in a perfect swan dive, out into the black.

  I moved my fingers and touched Kaz’s hand.

  The cliff diver finds himself falling, falling, and then being embraced by the deep water. It’s you. It’s me. It’s us.

  Kaz’s hand opened with no hesitation at all, his fingers sliding along mine in a clasp that was warm and sure and erased the last of the insecurity and doubt lurking in the dark corners of my heart.

  On the other side of the fire, Carly looked from our linked hands to my face. Her eyes sparkled as she caught Shani’s and Gillian’s attention. Danyel and Brett were singing now, which meant they were conveniently distracted as Carly transmitted the good news with a lift of her eyebrow and a smile.