The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth

by Shelley Adina

  After a second of impulse control, I asked, “What about the baby’s dad? What are you going to do about that?”

  “One thing at a time.”

  “He deserves to know, Vanessa. What if he wants the baby?”

  A laugh burst from her. “You’re kidding.”

  Nobody likes to be laughed at. I’d controlled my tongue for long enough. “Well, if you think so little of him, why’d you sleep with him?”

  Again the laugh, but it sounded more for show than because she meant it. “The obvious reasons, you ninny.”

  “Don’t call me names. Help me understand.”

  “For one thing, he’s gorgeous.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “You think I pick them only for their looks?”

  “If you don’t think he’d care about his own kid, that’s a logical conclusion.”

  “Harsh, aren’t you?”

  “Honest.”

  “You can say that because you don’t know him. He’s amazing. His family are the landscape architects for our villa in Italy.”

  “So you did sleep with the gardener’s son, like everyone says.” And here I’d thought the rumor mill was just being nasty.

  “No, Lissa,” she said in a surprising display of patience. “I mean he’s the heir to one of the foremost landscape design companies in the country. They specialize in the equivalent of National Trust houses, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pietro can design a garden you’d swear had been approved by Louis Quatorze.”

  “Oh.” I regretted the residual cattiness that had made me share the gossip. “He sounds very talented.”

  “He is.” Her tone softened as we rounded the last corner and the school gates came into view in the distance. “He’s talented and beautiful and five years older than me, and my mother would have a pink furry fit if she ever found out about it. She has the same view you did about the gardener’s son.”

  “Your family still doesn’t know?”

  “Please.” She made a face. “The Principessa di Firenze would never live down the shame. Of course, the fact that she’s paid a fortune in hush money about the two babies she aborted that aren’t my father’s or my stepfather’s will never come up in that discussion.”

  I swallowed carefully. Imagine facing this kind of battle on two fronts—between your church’s views, which you’d come to believe were right, and what your own mother obviously thought was expedient. And this was the maternal example Vanessa had to look up to? Yikes.

  “I didn’t know your dad was still alive,” I said lamely, for lack of anything else.

  “He isn’t. He died in a speedboat crash when I was nine. I still miss him, every single day.”

  I couldn’t imagine losing my dad. The very thought made a chill run through me. “If it’s a boy, you could name him after him.”

  “No point in that if I’m giving him up for adoption.”

  “Listen to us, talking as if it’s a boy.”

  “It is,” she said. “I had an ultrasound, too.”

  Oh, my. First she felt him swimming inside her; now she knew what he looked like. “That’s going to be tough, giving him up.”

  “I know.”

  “You should tell Pietro.”

  “I know.”

  “He deserves the chance to be part of the choice, too, especially if he’s as lovely inside as you say.”

  “I know. Can we not talk about this anymore?”

  We’d reached the gates anyway. A breeze had sprung up, coming up the hill off the water. It felt good, cooling our backs, but it snuck under her white Aquascutum topper and blew it open from below. She shivered, and from behind a tree, a shutter snapped.

  Vanessa cursed and snatched the coat closed around her. “I hate those people. Why don’t they get a life?”

  “We should have come in by the rain tunnel.”

  “I’m glad I wore a coat, at least. And I had my hair trimmed yesterday.”

  This sounded so much like the old Vanessa that I had to smile. “Talk to you later,” I said. “I’m going to go find my roommate.”

  She nodded and pushed open the front doors. The fact that she let them swing shut in my face didn’t even faze me. She might be willing to confide in me, but she was still Vanessa.

  Some rules didn’t apply to her.

  Chapter 17

  AS DINNER WRAPPED UP, I caught Ashley Polk’s eye at the next table and waved. “Want to get dessert and join me?” I mouthed, pointing at the toothsome display of ganache-covered chocolate layer cakes across the room.

  Her face went blank and she motioned vaguely to her ear. What did that mean? She turned away and began to talk to someone else.

  Hmm. Maybe I’d been too optimistic about the cell phone picture. I hadn’t been around all weekend—anything could have gotten out to cause trouble. Well, public or not, I wanted to clear the air between Ashley and me, which would then clear the path to Derrik and me, if that was meant to be.

  Derrik and Lissa. Didn’t that sound weird? Clunky, like a car with a flat tire. Not smooth, like Kaz and Lissa.

  But that was stupid. There was no Kaz and Lissa, and never had been. No pair. No couple. Just friends, circling around each other independently. Not a bicycle. More like a gyroscope, with wheels inside wheels.

  Never mind. Focus.

  I abandoned dessert (with less than a month to go until Cotillion, it was time to knock off the sugar and bump up the water and fruit intake, anyway) and dogged Ashley out of the dining room. She moved in a circle of juniors, some of whom were on the Committee, who would probably take over the table in the window next year after we had graduated and were out of the way.

  If I were a freshman, I’d find some of them intimidating. Livvy Valentine belonged to a powerful Silicon Valley venture capital family who had financed the startups of many of the students’ parents. Dorian Escobar’s mom was dating George Clooney—one reason parental visits had waned this term. Two of the girls were Gettys and one was a Hilton.

  And at this moment all of them were ignoring me. “Ashley, wait up.”

  She turned, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Did you say something?”

  The other girls moved on a few steps, enough to give us the illusion of privacy while being able to hear every word.

  “Can I talk to you a minute? Privately.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything left to say, Lissa.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Not for you. Why should you care?”

  “If it’s what I think it is, your information is bad. That’s what I want to talk about.” I opened one of the waiting rooms outside one of the administrators’ offices. On Sunday night, it was empty. “Alone, okay?”

  With an annoyed huff of breath, she rolled her eyes toward her posse. “I’ll catch up with you guys in the common room. Mommy wants to give me a talking-to.”

  Oh, please. The girls giggled as they walked down the corridor, their Louboutin and D&G heels tapping out a message that told everyone, “We have it all and there’s nothing left for you.” I felt sorry for next year’s students.

  Inside the waiting room, Ashley leaned on the door, her whole body informing me I was a waste of her valuable time and she had somewhere way more fun to be.

  “It looks like you’ve seen a certain gossip-gram picture.”

  “What if I have?”

  “It explains this sudden change. I thought we were friends.”

  She dropped the pose and leaned forward, her temper snapping between one second and the next. “You promised! You told me you weren’t interested in Derrik, and the next thing I know, you’re plastered all over him!”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “It was. Ashley, listen. I tripped and fell on him at the vending machine and some trashmonger snapped the pic. You know how they are. They may as well be standing out at the gates with their cameras. Some kids get a thrill out of spread
ing stories that aren’t true.”

  “So you can look me in the eye and say you’re not going out with him?”

  I could, and did. “I’m not going out with him. But—”

  She wilted against the door. “Oh, thank goodness.”

  “He asked me to Cotillion.”

  Slowly, her knees straightened. “No. You didn’t just say that.”

  “This afternoon. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  She gazed at me, her eyes bleak as a winter’s day. “What’s it got to do with me? He asked you. Game over.”

  “I don’t think he knows you like him.”

  “So? That won’t make any difference now.”

  “But there’s more to it than that. Sure, I’d like a date to Cotillion, but—”

  “You said you had one.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “How can you be wrong about that?”

  “Long story. The thing is, it’s more important to me that you and I can work together. The dance needs to go off without a hitch, and I need all our teams pulling together, not the glossy posse making smart remarks in the halls and playing I’m-more-popular-than-you.” Her gaze faltered. “It would be pretty stupid of me to go with Derrik, wouldn’t it, knowing that it would hurt your feelings and ruin the Cotillion for both of us. Not to mention everyone around us.”

  I heard my own voice and realized I had just told myself the truth.

  If Kaz didn’t want to take me, I was going to go stag. I would do my job as senior consultant as brilliantly as I knew how. I would snag that A in Public Speaking. And I’d resist the temptation to take Derrik away from Ashley, because I wasn’t the needy person Callum McCloud had once accused me of being. I didn’t need the security of a date with a consolation guy to make myself feel better about being turned down by the one I really wanted. I could face a dance floor alone if I had to. After all, Gillian was in the same boat. If worse came to worst, we could get out there and shake it together.

  “You would really do that?” Ashley’s tone was returning to its usual warm but businesslike self. No snottiness. No freezing disdain. “Turn a guy like Derrik down for the sake of school?”

  “Not school. I don’t want to stab you in the back. Don’t get me wrong—Derrik is the nicest guy, and if circumstances were different, I’d probably tell him yes. But you and I were friends first, and I meant it when I said I wasn’t into him that way.”

  She gazed at me. “You are so mature.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that. So… when I talk to him, do you want me to tell him you’d go with him?”

  Color seeped into her face. “I’m not going to beg for a date. If he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t, that’s all. I can still ask him to dance even if he does take someone else.”

  An idea brushed through my brain. “When’s his next game?”

  “Tuesday at four, at home,” she said without even a glance at her planner.

  “Tell you what. Let’s go watch it together. You be your normal cheering self, and I’ll make myself invisible. You know how guys are. He’s going to notice the girl cheering for him, not the one doing her history homework.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. Come on. Your friends are probably thinking we’ve killed each other in a cat fight.”

  “Don’t worry about them.” She opened the door and motioned for me to precede her. “You know what? I skipped dessert. Think there’s any of that ganache left?”

  The improvements to my diet would have to wait until tomorrow. “Let’s go find out.”

  Chocolate: The glue that holds women together. It was nice to know there were things in this world you could still count on.

  ON TUESDAY NIGHT at prayer circle, Gillian nudged me and leaned close. “What’s up with Carly?”

  I dragged my attention from what I needed to say to Derrik Vaughan, who had just taken a seat two people away from me, and focused. Good question. Across our circle, Carly’s head was bowed, as if she were getting her spirit together before praying. But was it the overhead lighting that cast those dark circles under her eyes, or something more serious?

  “She’s been putting in a lot of hours on the dress,” I whispered back. “She even got a night pass from the dean to work after lights-out.”

  “There’s more to it than a few late nights,” Gillian said. “Notice who’s still not sitting beside her.”

  Brett had not come in with Carly, nor with Derrik. Had it only been a week since he’d shown interest in becoming a Christian? How toxic a week had it been: Carly and Brett weren’t talking, Gillian and Jeremy had broken up, and Kaz had turned me down. All I needed to hear now was that Shani and Danyel were fighting, or that Alasdair had gone to join the Foreign Legion instead of getting a summer job in Inniscairn to be close to Mac.

  Don’t let that happen. I’m not superstitious, but I knocked on the wood of my chair just to cover all the bases.

  After we’d all lifted each other up to God—Carly’s voice only wobbled once, when she said Brett’s name—and had sung the final praise song, I made up my mind. As people picked up handbags and backpacks on the way out the door, I made my way to her side.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” I could hardly hear her as she fussed with the clasp of her bag.

  “Are you putting in a lot of hours on the dress?”

  She nodded. “I’m leaving Thursday after school, and everything’s done but the petal hem. I decided to put in an underlayer of silk chiffon so the skirt would split and it would look like a new flower unfurling with every step she takes up the aisle. But every time you make a design change, it means another muslin and more work.”

  “Do you need help? I’m pretty good at picking up pins.”

  At last, there was the Carly smile. “It’s okay. I have a couple of sophomore minions who do that for extra credit. Technically I’m tutoring them in design, but it amounts to pin-picking a lot of the time. Or pressing seams. Or basting.”

  “Is it only the dress that’s giving you the Vuittons under your eyes?”

  “Does it show?” she asked plaintively. “So much for my new concealer.”

  “Only to people who know you. Gillian caught it first. And Shani’s looking pretty worried, too.”

  Everyone had left the room, including Shani and Gillian, who’d telegraphed “Update us later” on their way out the door.

  “At least Shani still has Danyel—” Her face crumpled and tears welled in her eyes.

  I pulled her down into one of the chairs by the piano. “It’s Brett, isn’t it? What is up with that guy?”

  “He can’t get over me choosing FIDM over him.”

  I handed her a tissue from the new packet in my bag. With the week we’d had, I’d thought it best to stock up.

  “Nothing I say makes any difference,” she said through the tissue, and blew her nose.

  “Would it help if I talked to him?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “I can’t stand to see you this way. The two of you belong together, like chips and salsa. Meatballs and tomato sauce.”

  “Who’s the meatball?” came muffled through the tissue.

  I took heart. “Him, of course. Anyone who doesn’t worship the ground you walk on is a total meatball.”

  She mopped her eyes and I got half a smile for my efforts. “If you want to talk to him, I guess it couldn’t hurt. He’s pretty private, though. He might think you’re butting into his business.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice at that lately.”

  “What, with Gillian?”

  “No. Vanessa. She’s not going to have an abortion. That’s something.”

  “So you’re still friends with her?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. But she needs to talk without being gossiped about or judged, and I’m there.”

  Carly was silent for a moment. “I think you’re doing the right thing. Jesus said we
should love and forgive. He was the guy reaching out to the tax collectors and that woman by the well at Samaria. People talked trash about them, and whispered about Him for doing it, but He still did it.” She glanced at me. “People are whispering about you, too, but that’s not stopping you. I think that’s good.”

  “Let them. It’s not the first time. And not doing what I think is right because I’m afraid of people talking is too junior high.” I reached around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “If you can forgive your mom for doing what she thinks is right for her, then Brett can man up and forgive you for doing what you think is right for you.”

  Carly’s brown gaze met mine. “That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? We’re all trying to do the right thing, and people get aggravated by it.”

  “I think Gillian sees my point of view, at least, and it’s just her protectiveness talking most of the time.” I got up. “Brett will come around. I’m going to find him right now, before I lose my nerve.”

  “You’ll tell me after, right?”

  I nodded. “Keep an ear out for your phone, in case I get back too close to lights-out.”

  I stepped into the corridor, and out of the corner of my eye, a big shadow moved behind the door. A second later I was glad I’d choked back a girly scream because it was only Derrik.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan.”

  I laughed and felt my heart settle back into its normal rhythm. Carly slipped out the door and headed toward the Life Sciences wing as Derrik fell into step beside me.

  “You didn’t go for coffee with the others?” I asked, and then wished I’d said something more intelligent.

  “I just wondered if you’d made up your mind about Cotillion, that’s all. You said a couple of days.”

  So I had. If last week was Toxic Week, this was shaping up to be Fallout Week. “I have made up my mind. I would have loved to go with you—” He began to smile, and I finished in a hurry. “But I can’t.”