The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth Page 2

  People murmured “amen” and Gillian leaned over and bumped my shoulder gently with hers. Thank you. With a smile, my eyes closed, I bumped her back. Don’t mention it.

  A laptop snapped open, and a second later I heard Danyel Johnstone’s familiar voice. He sent Shani a podcast or a video every week so he could join us by proxy. As he prayed for all of us he knew by name, part of my mind wondered why Kaz never did that. I’d have loved to hear him pray with us. His voice had deepened as he got more mature, and I never got tired of hearing it. And what better way to use your voice than in prayer circle? I’d send him an e-mail as soon as I got back to our room, I decided. Maybe it had just never occurred to him.

  After we’d gone all around the circle, skipping over the crew guys, who never said a word when they came, Gillian played while we belted out her current favorite praise song.

  “I love listening to you sing that,” I told Shani as we collected our handbags. “I can’t believe they didn’t snap you up when you auditioned for the chorus.”

  “I’m not a chorus type,” she admitted. “I’m a soloist, and that wasn’t what they were looking for. I’m okay with it. I’d rather sing with my friends, anyway, than have a whole bunch of people staring at me.”

  “I hear ya. Especially since you gotta believe they’d be thinking of… you know.”

  The prince. He was like Brett’s hangers-on, only invisible. Everywhere Shani went, the story of the girl who had turned down the Lion Throne of Yasir went, too. You could ignore it, but you just couldn’t shake it.

  “Who’s coming to Starbucks?” Carly asked.

  It was a couple of blocks’ walk down one of San Francisco’s steeper hills, which is why I could knock back an entire grande-with-whip mocha and suffer no ill effects from the calories. The climb back up the hill to the school wiped them out as if they had never been.

  As we crowded out the double front doors and onto the stone steps that led down to the school’s gravel drive, Vanessa Talbot passed us on the way in. The limo she’d just climbed out of bowled away toward the gates, and she tugged her Furla shoulder bag higher and swung an Elie Tahari shopping bag onto the other arm.

  “Vanessa’s been out shopping alone?” I murmured to Carly. “Is that even possible? How can she function with no one to fetch her coffee and hold her bag while she tries things on?”

  Carly coughed to cover up a giggle. Sorry about the catty remarks. But Vanessa Talbot is a sore point with me, after what she did to me last year.

  “Finished praying for the night?” she asked sweetly as she passed us.

  “Yes.” Gillian’s reply was sarcasm-free. Sometimes that is the only way to deal with nastiness. “Unless you want us to put in a good word for you.”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Like I’d ever need anything from you losers. How does it feel to be on the outside again, looking in?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something as the door swung shut on the last word.

  “What?” Carly said. “It’s too late for that snappy comeback I see on the tip of your tongue.”

  “Did you see that?” I wagged a thumb over my shoulder as we walked down the drive toward the wrought-iron gates, where, sure enough, a photographer lounged in a beat-up subcompact, his telephoto lens propped on the open window frame. One or more were always there, trying to catch a thousand-dollar shot of one of the celebrity offspring or children of minor royalty like Vanessa. “Vanessa was wearing Apple Bottoms jeans.”

  Carly swung around to look at the front door, but of course the other girl was long gone. “Impossible. You must have been hallucinating.”

  “The mushrooms in the soup at supper were morels, not anything stronger,” I retorted. “I know my jeans, and that girl was not wearing her usual custom Stella McCartneys.”

  “She has been packing on the pounds,” Brett said as we headed down the hill. “But she always was too skinny.”

  Shani gave him a look. “Everyone knows that the camera puts twenty-five pounds on you. She’s photographed all the time. Of course she’s going to be skinny. If she were bigger than a size zero, she’d look like a Dumpster on SeenOn-dot-com.”

  “Whatever.” Brett obviously thought of body mass in terms of how much torque a person could put on an oar, not how they looked in front of a camera. “She just looks healthier with a few extra on her, that’s all.”

  Healthy wasn’t the word for it. She hadn’t just been wearing Apple Bottoms. That babydoll top wasn’t the norm for her, either. It was neither sleek nor chic. Hm. “Guess that’s the reason for the emergency shopping trip,” I mused out loud as we passed the eclectic little shops on Fillmore Street. “Maybe someone commented on her recent wardrobe choices, and she had to take corrective action.”

  “What, like you?” Gillian said. “Stop obsessing, already.”

  I clamped my mouth shut on what would only sound defensive. I did not obsess about Vanessa. Why would I? She had her posse—or what was left of them. Dani Lavigne was doing an exchange term in Paris (and spending way more time clubbing with her famous cousin on her European tour than studying, if the tabs were to be believed). Emily Overton hovered on the fringes of our group. None of us were sure if she really wanted to be friends with us, or if, as Shani suspected, she was a deep-cover spy for the enemy. DeLayne Geary, who had been one of Vanessa’s second-tier friends, was about the only one left who had the right to walk down the corridors with her, or to sit at the prize table in the window in the dining room.

  I had no desire to sit there anymore. My friends were the real kind—like gold tried by fire. We’ve been through a lot together since junior year. A symbol like that table in the dining room was not only unnecessary, it was sort of silly.

  At Starbucks, I ordered the aforementioned grande-with-whip mocha and when we all had our drinks, we settled into the corner group of chairs around a low table. “So, Jeremy, when are you going up to UC Davis for orientation?” Carly asked him.

  “I can’t believe you’ve made up your mind,” Gillian moaned into her cup. “How can it be that easy?”

  “I’ve always known what I wanted to be,” Jeremy said simply. “And the best veterinary program is at Davis. All I had to do was get in.”

  “Augh.” Gillian gulped her caramel macchiato. “I have a spreadsheet of pros and cons. A cost/benefit analysis. Even a photo slideshow from every school’s “Student Life” page. And still I can’t make up my mind.”

  “It’s not about student life, though, is it?” Carly asked. “It’s about your life, and what God wants you to do with it.”

  “That’s the point I always arrive at,” Gillian admitted. “I want to wait on God, but I can’t wait too long or I miss the registration deadline. I mean, He gave me this brain for a reason. I just have to figure out the best place to use it.”

  “That’s gotta be hard,” Shani said. “I mean, granted, I’m new at being a Christian. But it never occurred to me to ask God what He wants me to do. I just went ahead and applied to Harvard Business School, got in, got my scholarship, and I’m good to go.”

  “You make that sound as easy as Jeremy did,” I said. “But I know you’ve been working like a demented person for months and months to get in. And don’t even talk to me about your application essay. That was grueling for all of us.”

  “And I appreciate every bit of help you guys gave me.” She flashed a rare Shani smile, the kind that lit her up and softened the cut planes of her face—the ones that had photographed so well in our People spread last fall—into real beauty. “But, Gillian, you’re, like, solid. Don’t you think you’re going to make the right decision just because you belong to God?”

  “Not necessarily.” Gillian’s gaze fell to Jeremy’s foot, crossed over his knee, his sneaker beginning to bounce up and down as the caffeine kicked in. “I wouldn’t want to make a big decision like this without knowing it was in His will for me. It’s fine to make up my mind on the little things, like what classes to take and stuff. But a
big thing like college? Nuh-uh.”

  “Even the classes are messing you up,” I pointed out. “Like taking art last year when you never did it seriously before. It showed you there was a fork in the road. That’s where all this angst started.”

  Gillian nodded and dimpled at me. “That Kaz. It’s all his fault. If it weren’t for him telling me I had talent, I’d have let that graphic arts class stay dropped when I dumped it for a personal trainer.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Brett put in. “I wouldn’t trade the portrait you did of Carly for anything.”

  “At least some good came out of Nazareth, then,” she quipped. “You can tell my parents all about that when they fly out here to lecture me personally.”

  Knowing Gillian’s parents, I had a feeling she wasn’t kidding.

  Chapter 3

  CARLY CAUGHT UP with me after Phys.Ed.—volleyball for me, soccer for her. I hadn’t seen much of her since Tuesday, mostly because Gillian had to turn in a ten-page English midterm. If Gillian could have chained me by the ankle to my bed for twenty-four-hour coaching, she’d have done it. As it was, the poor girl was so stressed that I’d have done practically anything to make her feel better. Helping her with what she called “the dead white guys with verbal diarrhea” was the least I could do.

  Though I didn’t think Keats and Shelley had verbal diarrhea. I thought their poetry was beautiful.

  “I got a note from Mac this morning.” Carly swung her backpack onto her left shoulder as we crossed the playing field, heading for the dorm.

  “Yeah? I haven’t heard from her since last week. Cool that they got their grant from the whatever-it-was, huh?”

  “Society for Self-Sustaining Estates.”

  “Say that five times fast.”

  “So now her parents will be up to their eyes in torn-out plumbing and giant gas piping for the commercial kitchen. But that wasn’t what she wrote to me about this morning.”

  “What? Oh, wait.” I held up a hand. “Alasdair Gibson’s coming for the weekend.”

  “No such luck. I guess he’s studying pretty hard, and getting from Edinburgh to London isn’t so easy when you’re as poor as he is. She can’t wait to be finished with school. I’m sure she’s packed already.”

  “Of course she is. They sold the London townhouse, remember? So if it wasn’t Alasdair, what else is up?”

  Carly didn’t answer for a second. “I wrote to ask her about something. She was answering it.”

  I eyed her as we walked over the grass, still green and thick from the sprinklers and the San Francisco fog that kept it from burning up in the late spring and summer. “And that something would be…?”

  “You know how Gillian is all tweaked out about picking a college?”

  “Do I. I swear, her needle is buried in the red zone. I’m trying to feed her vitamin B complex to bring the stress levels down.”

  “Want to give me some?”

  I stopped walking and gazed at her in astonishment. “Not you, too. I thought you had it all figured out.”

  “There was a welcome letter from Parsons in my mail this morning.”

  “Parsons School of Design? That’s New York, right? Wow. Congratulations.”

  “But I already got the one from FIDM.”

  Pause. “Oh.” Now I got it. The campus of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising that Carly wanted to go to was in L.A. Brett planned to go to Stanford because Carly’s dad had his heart set on her going to Berkeley, like he did. In Brett’s mind, even on opposite sides of the Bay, they’d still be close enough to see each other.

  New York, on the other hand, was not close. Neither was L.A.

  “What does your gut tell you?” I asked her as we resumed trekking across the grass.

  “My gut and Mac both tell me I shouldn’t factor Brett into my decision. But my heart tells me something different.”

  “And the heart is the strongest part of the girl we know and love. Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you blush.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to Gillian. Maybe we can pray for each other and get the Lord’s attention that way. Because, honestly, I don’t know how to make up my mind and make everyone happy.”

  “You have to live with you. That’s the person you should make happy.”

  “And then there’s my dad,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You know how he is.”

  I did. “Have you given him the news flash about FIDM?”

  She shook her head. “Why invite trouble when I haven’t decided yet? Maybe I should tell him about Parsons. Then if I decide to go to L.A., it’ll look great in comparison.”

  “Man,” I said on a sigh. “Can adulthood be any more complicated than this?”

  “Meanwhile, there’s my mom.” Now it was Carly’s turn to give a big sigh, blowing it up through her wispy bangs.

  “Oh, help. Now what?”

  “She and Richard Vigil have picked a new date for their wedding.”

  “When, this summer?”

  “Not even. The Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. She says it’s so I can fly out and back without missing any school. Hint, hint.”

  “She’d be right… if you plan to go.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I waited for a second. “And? Do you?”

  I thought about Christmas, when she’d flown to Scotland with us rather than be her mother’s bridesmaid at a Christmas Eve wedding. Mr. Aragon, her dad, tried to hide the fact that he was still in love with his ex-wife, even though she was trying to marry another guy, and Carly, loyal girl that she is, wouldn’t hurt her dad for anything. Yeah, he’s old-fashioned and sometimes heavy-handed and strict, but he loves her to pieces.

  “If I stand up in that church with her, I’ll be betraying my dad and everything he feels for her.”

  Carly’s not the betraying kind. Hence the problem.

  “But, leaving him out of the equation, how do you feel about her?”

  She glanced at me as we waited for the light. The playing field, the field house, and all the Phys.Ed. and dance classes are a block away from the main building. In the winter we take the rain tunnel back and forth, but on a beautiful day like today it felt great to be outside, with the San Francisco Bay sparkling in the sun in the distance.

  “That would be like taking Brett out of the school equation, Lissa. It can’t be done.”

  “Maybe you should try. If it weren’t for your dad’s feelings, would you do it?”

  After a long pause, she said slowly, “Probably. I mean, at least Richard Vigil stuck around after the Christmas debacle. And this house they bought—it has studio space, like he really means to support her art.”

  “Well, then? If the guy honestly cares about her, so what if he looks like Duran Duran on their reunion tour?”

  She made a face. “They’d make me be in the pictures. Imagine being in the same frame.”

  “That is the downside. But the upside is, you could have a relationship with her again. Maybe. If you wanted.”

  “That’s the upside?” She began to walk faster. “You’re talking about the woman who left me and Antony behind to go teach art on cruise ships and find herself. She didn’t do much thinking about a relationship then.”

  “Still.” Just how far could I butt into her business? At the same time, she’d brought it up. If she didn’t want me to give her my opinion, she wouldn’t have done that, right? “Think about it. The wedding, I mean. That’s only, like, three weeks away. Sometimes there’s a big difference between doing something out of love and doing something because it’s the right thing to do.”

  At the bottom of the stairs up to the girls’ dorm, she stopped. A muscle twitched in the smooth line of her jaw as she chewed the inside of her lip. I’m not sure I wanted to know what she wasn’t letting herself say. Her mom is Carly’s most vulnerable point, and talking about her is fraught with traps that you can’t avoid.

  “I know. ’Bye, Lissa.”

  “See you at l
unch? Got any plans this afternoon before you catch the train?”

  But she ran up the stairs and didn’t answer me.

  GILLIAN WASN’T IN our room, and when she didn’t answer my text, I figured she was busy with something more important than what to do with our Friday afternoon.

  I was thinking about the dress safari, myself. Spencer Academy doesn’t have a traditional prom or graduation dance. Instead, it has the Senior Cotillion, all the details of which are arranged by a committee of juniors under the management of one senior. And all of us had known who that would be from the moment school started in the fall.

  You guessed it. Vanessa Talbot.

  The mover and shaker. The social director of everything that was anything at the school. The ultimate control freak.

  Not that I wanted to be the one commanding the troops of wide-eyed juniors with a languid wave of my manicured fingers. Uh-uh. But it would have been nice to at least get the chance to put my name in the hat.

  As it was, Vanessa wore the hat. Period.

  Still, it meant my Friday afternoons and weekends were free for fun things like hanging out with my friends and shopping for a dress. I could even go home to Santa Barbara or plan a jaunt to Rodeo Drive with my mom if I felt like it. People who needed to be in the spotlight had deeper issues going on. I didn’t have issues. I had a life.

  Feeling better after this pep talk, I changed out of my plaid skirt and white button-down blouse and into a pair of comfortable jeans and a ruffled Free People tank. And since Fridays deserved to be celebrated, I put on a Badgley Mischka crystal necklace that filled the scoop neckline with sparkle.

  I ran down the stairs toward the dining room, slowing in the corridor when Emily Overton came out of the administrative office and fell into step beside me.