The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth (23 page)

THE LAST MONTH
of senior year is supposed to be this triumphal ride to the finish, drenched in sunshine and victory and teachers easing up on homework.

I peered at the sky as I crossed the playing field, heading back to the dorm after Phys.Ed. Yep. Sunshine. Everything else? Not so much.

Not for me, anyway. Carly’s life seemed to be back on track, at least. In the two weeks since her mom’s wedding on Memorial Day weekend, she and Brett had become tighter than ever. In between fittings and festivities out there in New Mexico, they’d spent a lot of time talking, and by the time Alicia had become Mrs. Richard Vigil, Brett had made up his mind to register at UCLA instead of Stanford. How he managed to break this to his father, I don’t know. But somehow I figured that Mrs. Loyola, weighing a Carly-less Brett going to Stanford versus a happy Brett going to UCLA, would use her influence to work on her husband’s disappointment.

Since my disastrous phone call with Kaz, I couldn’t seem to shake the regret and loss that hung over my emotions like a gray smog. In the mornings, I’d gaze at my yogurt and fruit, a sick lump in my stomach.

“Lissa, not eating isn’t going to make it better,” Gillian said after about three mornings of the same, but I just couldn’t.

“Are we going to have to force-feed you?” Shani’s tone was no-nonsense, but worry lurked in her eyes.

Not even the prospect of shopping for a Cotillion dress could pull me out of it, because if he wasn’t going to be there, it didn’t matter what I wore. Oh, I got one, don’t worry. Gillian and Shani made sure of that, delivering me to Robin Brouillette’s studio one day after school, where the designer made me a beautiful sky-blue confection with a rose-petal bodice that, under normal circumstances, would have had me babbling with happiness.

But circumstances weren’t normal. I’d made an awful mistake and now I was paying for it.

How could I have been so stupid? That final click of the phone in my ear seemed to have set off an explosion of neurons all connecting at once in my brain. I’d handled the whole thing badly, had misunderstood everything he’d said because I was too mired in my own thinking to get what he was trying to say.

What was the matter with me? “We operate on a different level,” I’d said fatuously, when that was the whole point. He wanted to take our relationship to a different level, and there I was, stuck in the way we’d been since elementary school. Well, I’d grown up in a hurry, hadn’t I?

Even a flying trip to Santa Barbara the weekend before finals didn’t do any good. Kaz’s dad met me on the front porch of their house, his face slack with surprise.

“Hey, Lissa, I didn’t expect to see you here. Have you graduated already?”

“No, not yet. I just thought I’d fly down to see my dad.” I craned a little to look behind him into the Spanish-style living room. “Is Kaz home?”

“No, not right now.”

“Will he be back before dinner?”

“I don’t think so. He went eco-camping with a bunch of the guys. Something to do with their environmental science class, they said, but it’s more to do with having fun and getting a Friday off school, if you ask me.”

“Oh.” I turned away, disappointment such a heavy weight that I could hardly keep my shoulders from slumping.

“Lissa, are you okay?” Mr. Griffin asked behind me. “Do you want to leave a message for him?”

“Um, no. It wasn’t important. I just thought I’d stop by, since I was in town.”

As I drove home, places we’d hung out in elementary school and junior high jumped out at me. The playground at Willows where he’d set me spinning on the merry-go-round and I’d tumbled off it and thrown up from dizziness. The pond in the neighbor’s backyard where we’d watched tadpoles become frogs. The beach where we’d learned to surf and, later, where we’d sat up late and solved the problems of the universe.

Every place was so familiar, and yet… that was the problem. They were all scenes from childhood—something I’d left behind too late.

What was that line from
A Room with a View
? I’d quoted it myself in the term paper I had to turn in next Wednesday: “But to Cecil, now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable.”

I was Cecil Vyse, the idiot. I’d pinned a bunch of my own childish notions all over Kaz and told myself that he was my friend. And why? Because it was safe. Because with Kaz, I’d never face the humiliation dished out by people like Aidan Mitchell and Callum McCloud, two guys who’d worn the label
boyfriend
for me. I’d kept Kaz in his place, and now that he’d burst out of it by speaking to me with total honesty, I’d tried to push him back in and lost him in the process.

I thought I was so mature. But it had taken this last couple of weeks, learning what loss really was, to make me finally grow up. Now I knew where the term
growing pains
came from. It had nothing to do with calcium deficiency, and everything to do with the mind and emotions.

How did people learn to live with this gray haze of “I’m sorry”? To realize how wonderful the other person was, and never be able to act on it?

“You’ve got to try to focus on something else,” Gillian finally told me on Sunday, the first day of our last week of high school. “Agonizing over it and beating yourself up over what you said or didn’t say isn’t going to change anything. Trust me, I know.”

We’d had the car drop us in Sausalito after church, and she, Shani, and I sat at a sunny table overlooking the Bay, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice while we waited for our brunch orders to arrive.

“You and Jeremy are still friends, though,” Shani pointed out. “Kaz won’t even talk to Lissa, on the phone or in person.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t regret it,” Gillian said.

“Jeremy would take you back,” I told her softly. “I know he would.”

“I know, too. But I can’t. It would be like trying to surgically attach an arm you’d just removed.”

Shani flinched. “Spare me the romantic images, girl.”

“It took everything I had to say those things to him and make the break.” Even a month down the road, the memory had the power to make her mouth tremble. “I can’t go back and undo it. I have to go on. He goes to Davis and we go to Harvard.”

“And we all go to the Cotillion wishing we were with the guys we’ve chased away.” The thought of it overlaid the sunny day with gloom.

“Speak for yourself,” Shani said briskly. “Y’all better not have these long faces next weekend, or Danyel really will be chased away. And I’m not having that.”

“This is all we have to look forward to?” I moaned. “Pity dances from Danyel and Brett? I knew I should have said yes to Derrik Vaughan when I had the chance.”

“If you had, I’d have gone around you and broken it up,” Shani informed me. “I’m not putting in all this work for Public Speaking and having you mess it up because you want a date.”

She was right, of course. That boat had sailed, and Ashley Polk had been working her fingers down to nubs for us.

“I heard Ashley was going to Cotillion with him,” Gillian said.

“Does Derrik know he was the prize in this whole exercise?” Shani asked.

“Oh, I told him,” I said. “I didn’t tell him who liked him, but when he didn’t get why my friendship with Ashley would make me turn him down, I changed gears and told him my grade depended on me not going out with him. Boys are so weird. He thought that was a compliment.”

“Guys love it when girls fight over them.” The waitress put Gillian’s plate down in front of her and she paused until we all had our food: fruit salad and Brie—the smallest thing on the menu—for me, an omelette and hash browns for Shani, and
huevos rancheros
with fresh
pico de gallo
for Gillian. “I don’t see why. One guy is enough trouble. Having two fighting over me would make me run screaming for the hills.”

“Jeremy wasn’t trouble,” Shani said softly. “He was lovely, as Mac would say.”

“He was,” Gillian agreed. “I’m glad we’re still friends. I still plan to dance with him, mercy or not.”

“Have you heard from Mac?” I asked. “Google Alerts sent me a link to an article a couple of days ago about the big grand opening at Strathcairn happening in September.”

“I got an e-mail last night,” Shani said. “Their school year is over and she’s back at the castle, ‘working like a draught horse,’ she says. Whatever that is. Carly would know. Anyway, she sent me pictures of the commercial kitchen they had put in. It’s pretty amazing. And that
Naked Chef
guy from London is coming to open it on the big day.”

“Jamie Oliver?” I asked. “He’s cute. What’s not to like about a guy who can cook?”

“Carly’s invited over before college starts,” Shani went on. “Wouldn’t it be fun to go, too?”

“Why don’t we?” Gillian knocked back her orange juice. “We can help them get things ready.”

A long, Kazless summer stretched out before me. A few weeks in Scotland working like a draught horse sounded enormously appealing in comparison. “Suits me. I’ll go. Shani, I’ll pick up your ticket and Gillian can cover Carly’s.”

“Deal. I’ll owe you.”

“Of course you won’t. It’s a graduation present.”

“Only five more days.” Gillian sighed, chin on hand as she looked out over the sparkling Bay. “Can you believe it?”

“Five more days of backbreaking work and managing contractors and crisis control,” I told her. “Five more days of wondering if we passed our finals and having to sit in class anyway.” Five more days until I had to pack up my stuff and go back to Santa Barbara, where memories would ambush me at every turn.

“Five more days until Cotillion,” said the only one among us who had a date.

Oh happy thought.

L
IKE THE GLOWING EYES
of Jawas, the camera lenses of the video geeks—sorry, the students from Media & Communications—followed me, my event coordinator, and my teams everywhere. I’m sure I actually heard groans of ecstasy on Thursday as the rigging crews arrived, unloaded the flying light bridge off the truck, and fixed the thousand-watt lights to it before the hydraulic lifters moved it into place. This wasn’t a rock concert, but it was close. The event coordinator assured me that when the band arrived to do their sound checks Friday afternoon, all the structure work would be done, the lights would be ready to give us a club atmosphere, the draperies would be hanging from the walls of the ballroom, and the graduating class’s banner would be raised in all its glory at the back of the stage.

The big picture was my job. I had a whole team for the tables and seating, and another for flowers and decorations, one for sound, one for the band. But the whole look, not to mention having everything come together by eight o’clock on Friday night, was on my plate.

Can you say “bunch-o-work”? But I was glad. The more I had to do, the less I had to think. If anything could save me, it would be not thinking.

The event coordinator and I were joined at the hip this week—or at least, joined at the ear via Bluetooth. Not for the first time, I realized how much hanging out with my mom at charity events had prepared me for a role like this. I was even issuing instructions the same way she did: pleasantly, with a smile, and leaving absolutely no room for argument.

It was a good thing that certain instructors—my English prof, the Phys.Ed. coach, my art teacher—had pretty much given us all a pass for the week, because I didn’t have time to be in class. Some people, like Mr. Milsom, required that we be at our lab benches until the last minute of the last class of the last day. The guy was completely maddening. He didn’t have anything new to say, and the juniors could have done all the cleaning and spraying that he assigned to us. I’m sure it was a power play, designed to squeeze the last bit of agony out of his victims.

Shani, Vanessa, and I managed to squeeze an hour out of Wednesday afternoon—the time normally occupied by Public Speaking, as a matter of fact—to storyboard our video on my MacBook Air. Once we had all the raw footage, Ashley would upload it to the school server and Shani and I would edit it with Final Cut Pro. Then it would go to Vanessa for the voiceover we’d already scripted, and by Sunday night, hopefully it would be done.

“I swear, if this doesn’t get us all an A plus and a commemorative plaque, I’m going to hire a lawyer,” Shani grumbled. “How can one class be so much work?”

“I should have gone with the group doing a poetry reading down at City Lights Books,” Vanessa said. “One night, open and shut.”

“And completely forgettable,” I reminded her. “With this, you’ll be watched by generations of grateful juniors.”

She supported her spine with one hand as she stretched. “They’d better be grateful. If not, I’m coming back to haunt them all. And then I’ll demand royalties.”

When we got the storyboard done, Shani went back up to her room and I walked down the nearly empty corridor with Vanessa. Everyone who had any sense was outside on the lawn, or gone. I could have used some lawn time, myself. In fact, lying in the sun with an empty brain and nothing to do but turn over every hour seemed like the ultimate bliss.

“Come by my room, okay?” Vanessa said suddenly.

I blinked away my poolside fantasy. “Sorry. I was daydreaming about having nothing to do. Sure. What’s up?”

“I talked to Pietro. I thought you’d want to know.” She clattered down the staircase and, even though I had a distinct feeling that something on the punch list was getting away from me, I followed. After a cliffhanger like that, wouldn’t you?

She pushed open her door. “I finally got up the nerve to call him on—”

She stopped dead and I ran into her back. “Sorry. What’s—”

I stepped sideways into the room to see a woman sitting on the bed. Dressed in a black suit—ohmigosh, Prada, from the last show in Milan, only she’d had the collar redesigned—and killer Balenciaga pumps, she rose slowly. Someday, if she allowed herself twenty years of dissipated living, plastic surgery, and petulance, Vanessa might look like this.

But I sincerely hoped not.

“Mama,” she whispered.

The woman didn’t answer. Instead, her hawkish black gaze narrowed on the plaid jumper Vanessa wore since skirts with waistbands were getting uncomfortable. Her daughter’s hands moved to cover her belly, then hesitated and fell to her sides. “So. It’s true.”