The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth Read Free Page B

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
    C ARLY 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