The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth (25 page)

“Don’t sell yourself short, L-squared,” Dad said. “I’m surrounded by extremely competent females. You scare me sometimes.”

I had to smile at his nickname for me, which stands for Lissa-love. He’s such a softie.

“Better scary than scared,” I said. “Here’s our room. Come on in for a bit of calm before the storm.”

“Where’s Gillian?” Dad wanted to know as he and Mom sat on my bed, side by side. A happy little glow danced inside me at the sight of them. Even a few months ago, when we’d been together at Strathcairn for Christmas, I could do nothing but hope that they’d be able to figure out the distance that had grown up between them, including the trial separation that had frightened the life out of me. But something had happened at Strathcairn. I don’t know what it was, but the fact that Mom’s hand slipped into Dad’s so instinctively as they sat next to each other now told me that any distance left between them was closing fast—and was maybe even gone altogether.

“Her folks are staying at the Four Seasons, and her aunt and uncle and cousins came up from the peninsula for a big family breakfast, so she’s down at the hotel.” I left out the fact that I had to talk her into going. Being locked in a hotel room with her dad isn’t Gillian’s idea of a good time. “I think they were going to the Top of the Mark.”

“Lucky girl,” Mom said. “Where are we taking you for lunch?”

“Downstairs to the dining room, if you want. I don’t care where we go, as long as we’re together.”

As far as I was concerned, the food in the Spencer dining room was as good as any we’d find for a mile around, so that’s what we did. And then Gillian arrived with her family, and it was time to put on caps and gowns.

“Black so suits me,” Gillian said, turning in front of the mirror on the back of her wardrobe door. She wasn’t entirely in black, though… the light and dark purple National Chinese Honor Society cord with its Chinese knots hung around her neck, as did her Harvard key. And under both lay a Dean’s List stole like mine, in the Spencer colors.

“Not me,” I said from the bathroom, where I was squinting at the mirror and trying to get my cap to stay on straight with bobby pins. Who even used bobby pins anymore, except for holding on mortarboards? “But hey, today I’ll suffer with it just to get that diploma in my sweaty hand.”

There. I slipped in the last pin. Nothing would carry this thing off my head except a gale-force wind, and it wasn’t likely we’d see one of those in June.

“It was nice to meet your brothers.” I walked out of the bathroom unnaturally straight, and pulled my gown out of its plastic bag. “And your dad seemed to be on his best behavior.”

“He just closed a big funding deal before they flew out yesterday, so he’s happy. I’ll have to send the company a thank-you note.” She pirouetted in front of me. “Any creases?”

“Nope. Me?”

“You’re good. Ready?”

“I’ve been ready for twelve long years, girlfriend. Thirteen if you count kindergarten.”

Laughing, we met Carly and Shani outside their room—both of them looking fabu in caps, gowns, and Dean’s List stoles, and Shani in dangly diamond earrings that completely set off her sparkling eyes.

“Where did those come from?” Gillian wanted to know. “Rashid?”

Shani shook her head, making the twin diamond strings shimmy and dance. “Not every diamond in my life comes from him, you know. They’re from the old days. I just haven’t worn them in a long time.”

“I wish Danyel could see you.”
I wish Kaz could see me
. I pushed the thought away and whipped out my digital camera. “Come on, girls. Pose!”

So there in the light of the big windows over the stairs, we took pictures of each other—singly, in pairs, all together—every one of them showing us laughing, blessed in the power of our friendship, and most important, together at this turning point in our lives.

The bleachers had been turned into seating for parents and dignitaries as we got into a long line in alphabetical order and filed into our white chairs on the playing field. They announced the academic and sports awards first, and it was no surprise to anyone when Gillian won the Carrick Cup for the school’s highest GPA and Brett won the Bill Walsh Trophy for Sportsman of the Year. There were a couple dozen civic awards and scholarships, one of which Carly won, much to her joy. It would put a dent in the tuition at FIDM—and that would make her dad even happier.

Tonight, during Cotillion, I’d have the pleasure of announcing the “social” awards, like service to the school and that kind of thing. I blocked it out of my mind. This afternoon I was going to enjoy being in the now at my graduation and not miss a single second worrying about all the work that lay ahead of me.

And then the student orchestra began to play “Pomp and Circumstance.” We’ve all heard it a million times, right? But somehow it was different when it was me walking up there to the sound of my friends and family cheering, me shaking the dean’s hand and receiving his congratulations (he, at least, remembered I’d come in second for the Hearst Medal), me feeling that rolled-up piece of paper tied with satin ribbons in blue, white, and gold.

It was enough to make me choke up.

But I didn’t. Instead, I hollered “Yeeeehaaaaa!” and gave my parents the surfer’s “hang loose” wave as I ran from the stage, a free woman at last.

Are you there, life? It’s me, Lissa.

Ready or not, here I come!

“
CATERING, CHECK IN
.”

“Dining room’s ready to go, seating for five hundred is ready, and they’re putting the last of the flowers on the tables.” Summer Liang’s voice came through my earpiece loud and clear. Away at the back of the ballroom, the florist moved from table to table. Summer was totally on top of her game.

“Doors open at seven.”

“We’ll be ready, Lissa. I can’t wait!”

I disconnected and punched another number. “Sound and Stage, how are we doing?”

“Sound checks went fine at five o’clock,” reported Tinker Davis. “One of the band’s monitors fritzed out, so we borrowed one from the music department.”

“Is an engineer from the rigging company still onsite?”
He’d better be.

“Yes, he’s here tying up some cables.”

“Make sure he gets fed, okay?”

“Yes, Mom.”

I grinned and signed off, then dialed my event coordinator. “Hey, it’s Lissa. I’m in the ballroom doing final check before the doors open. Where are you?”

“
Where
is the valet service?” he snapped instead of answering.

“There isn’t one. The signs are up pointing people to the guest lot.” Wow, stress much?

“Lissa, we have to have valet parking for the VIPs.”

“If they’re VIPs, I’m sure they can read. Calm down, okay? The committee decided against valet parking months ago. All the seniors will be dancing and the juniors are too young to drive without an adult in the car.”

“But—”

I cut him off with a quick rundown of my checklist, concluding with, “I’m going to go make sure all the awards got moved backstage.”

“Has everyone who’s getting an award been briefed? They’ll be there, right?”

“No, they haven’t. That’s the point of doing it at the dance. It’s a surprise. Everyone in the school will be there, except for a few international students who left after graduation.”

“That’s crazy! What if your award winners are under the bleachers smoking dope when you call their names?”

“If that’s the case, we have a bigger problem than their not showing up.” I wondered how long this guy had been in the business. “Have you considered shots of vitamin B? Because your stress levels seem really high.” He was creating stress where it didn’t exist, but I couldn’t exactly say that to him. He’d only redline, and then where would I be? “Try and have a good time, okay? I plan to.”

When he disconnected, my phone rang again right away. “Ashley? I see cameras set up, but no operators. We want the final result of the teams’ work before everyone starts coming in.”

“They’re on their way,” Ashley reported. “The flower lady just left and that was our cue.”

I left her to her job and made my way backstage. The old Edwardian ballroom had probably never seen the likes of the flying bridge, the miles of cabling, the lights and strobes that would give us our club atmosphere. Behind me, the band’s instruments waited on stands, roadies still ducking and running as they did their own final checks. I made a mental note to ask Sound and Stage to see that they got fed as well.

In the anteroom behind the curtain, the silver boxes containing the awards were lined up on a table, in the same order they were to be presented after dinner and during the band’s break. I’d do the first, and Shani would do the second, both of us filling our Public Speaking requirement. Ms. Curzon would text me, Shani, and Ashley the list of winners just before I was ready to present. The names would be as much of a surprise to us as to everyone, but Ashley’s camera crew would have a few seconds to locate each winner and film them as they went up to the stage.

The boxes sparkled in the light, each one clearly marked with the award engraved on the statuette inside.

The Debate Club’s Student of the Year.

The Values Award for the student who best exemplified the school’s values of Loyalty, Purity, and Intellect—though how they were going to prove Purity I wasn’t sure. Never mind. I’d just hand the thing over without comment.

Service to the School.

Board of Regents Honors.

Twelve boxes in all. I checked them off my list and headed out across the ballroom. T minus thirty and counting, and I wasn’t even dressed yet.

I took the stairs two at a time and slipped into our room to find Gillian, Carly, and Shani in a last-minute state of chaos.

“These shoes aren’t right,” Shani moaned, lifting the hem of her Lagerfeld and regarding the silver pumps in the mirror.

“No one’s going to see them,” Carly said. “Not like this bodice. What was I thinking when I put this tulle pleating over it?” She tugged it up and slipped on a matching bolero jacket.

“You look beautiful, and Brett will tell you so.” I kept my tone light and soothing as I dashed into the shower. When I got out, Shani and Carly were examining Gillian as she paced in front of two study lamps on the floor, turned to face up. “You can’t see through it,” I said over the sound of the hair dryer. “Even at two hundred watts you couldn’t.”

“I know, but ever since that
Gossip Girl
episode with the see-through dress, I’ve been paranoid.” Gillian spritzed her hair one more time and slipped a spray of feathers on a clip into it.

“That’s not from Tori Wu, is it?” I slipped into the strapless blue Brouillette and Carly zipped me up. “She usually amps up the trimmings more.”

“Plain is okay, isn’t it?” Gillian turned worried eyes on me, made even bigger by her skillful application of eye shadow.

“Of course it’s okay. It’s stunning. And that royal purple is perfect for you.”

“That’s what Jeremy said when I bought it,” Gillian murmured, turning to locate her Jimmy Choos.

Ouch
. I exchanged a pained glance with Carly.

“By the way, your parents left this for you.” Gillian handed me a little box. “They said they’d see you at the dance.”

I paused in the act of pulling off the pink ribbons. “Aren’t they going to be at the dinner? I reserved places for all of us at the tables closest to the stage.”

“While you were dashing around like a crazed person, Mrs. Loyola invited all our parents to their place for homemade ravioli,” Carly said. “Would you turn that down for Dining Services, no matter how good their food is?”

She had me there. The parents would probably have more fun at someone’s home, anyway, especially since Mom and Dad were staying there. Jolie had made arrangements to stay with a high school friend—she’d seen me graduate, but drew the line at coming to the Cotillion. “Posh as this place is, I’m never going to a high school dance again,” she’d told me with a kiss and a laugh.

I opened the box to see my grandmother’s Art Deco hair clip with its sixty-two pavé diamonds. “Oh, my.” Under it lay a note.

Darling,

Wear this and consider it yours. Your grandmother wanted you to have it, and I’ve been saving it for tonight.

Love, Mom

If anything could finish off a look, it was this, my favorite of all my mom’s pieces. Shani, who has magic in her hands when it comes to hair, wound my long mane into an Audrey Hepburn pouf, and anchored the clip at the front so it looked almost like a tiny tiara.

“Girlfriends, we are ready,” she announced, giving me a last mist of hairspray. “The guys are so not going to survive the sight of us.”

“I hope they do,” Carly said. “I’m planning to dance Brett’s feet right off.”

Gillian’s phone chimed and she glanced at the text message. “They’re here, right on time.”

They?

“Who knew?” Shani said, leading the way out the door. “They only had, like, three hours to get ready and get over here.”

“They who?” I asked.

But amid the laughter and clattering of expensive shoes, no one seemed to hear me. And the next minute I knew.