The Fruit of My Lipstick
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Scriptures noted KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version
®.
NIV
®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2008 by Shelley Adina
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: August 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-53800-8
Contents
A Preview of “Be Strong and Curvaceous”
For Camy Tang, Jackie Yau, and Nancy Kato—
When you laugh, I hear Gillian.
My thanks go to Jim Birdsong, science teacher at Monta Vista High School, who gave me so much help by answering my questions about high school physics and the Physics Olympiad.
To Karina Hou and Gen Wei Zhuo, longtime friends who give me just the right Mandarin words when I need them, no matter how weird the questions are.
Xie-xie!
To the Looney Bin (Catherine Mulvany, Tina Ferraro, Cindy Procter-King, Susan Gable, Anita Staley, and Diana Duncan), thank you for brainstorming, endless inspiration and support, and the Top Five list.
To my team at FaithWords—Anne Goldsmith Horch and Katie Moore for editorial; Jody Waldrup and his team in the art department for the covers; Lori Quinn, Preston Cannon, and Heather Stevens in Marketing; and Bob Castillo in production—you’re amazing. Thanks so much for all the work behind the scenes.
To my agent, Jennifer Jackson, who is as good at pulling me down off the chandelier as she is at handing me virtual roses. Thanks aren’t enough.
To Jeff, who gives me grilled salmon on a cedar plank, a brand-new chicken chateau, and excellent proofreading. A man of parts.
Wo ai ni.
“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”
—Hebrews 13:15–16 (KJV)
Top Five Clues That He’s the One
1. He’s smart, which is why he’s dating you and not the queen of the snob mob.
2. He knows he’s hot, but he thinks you’re hotter.
3. He’d rather listen to you than to himself.
4. You’re in on his jokes—not the butt of them.
5. He always gives you the last cookie in the box.
T
HE NEW YEAR
. . . when a young girl’s heart turns to new beginnings, weight loss, and a new term of
chemistry!
Whew! Got that little squee out of my system. But you may as well know right now that science and music are what I do, and they tend to come up a lot in conversation. Sometimes my friends think this is good, like when I’m helping them cram for an exam. Sometimes they just think I’m a geek. But that’s okay. My name is Gillian Frances Jiao-Lan Chang, and since Lissa was brave enough to fall on her sword and spill what happened last fall, I guess I can’t do anything less.
I’m kidding about the sword. You know that, right?
Term was set to start on the first Wednesday in January, so I flew into SFO first class from JFK on Monday. I thought I’d packed pretty efficiently, but I still exceeded the weight limit by fifty pounds. It took some doing to get me and my bags into the limo, let me tell you. But I’d found last term that I couldn’t live without certain things, so they came with me. Like my sheet music and some more of my books. And warmer clothes.
You say
California
and everyone thinks
L.A.
The reality of San Francisco in the winter is that it’s cold, whether the sun is shining or the fog is stealing in through the Golden Gate and blanketing the bay. A perfect excuse for a trip to Barney’s to get Vera Wang’s tulip-hem black wool coat, right?
I thought so, too.
Dorm, sweet dorm
. I staggered through the door of the room I share with Lissa Mansfield. It’s up to us to get our stuff into our rooms, so here’s where it pays to be on the rowing team, I guess. Biceps are good for hauling bulging Louis Vuittons up marble staircases. But I am
so
not the athletic type. I leave that to John, the youngest of my three older brothers. He’s been into gymnastics since he was, like, four, and he’s training hard to make the U.S. Olympic team. I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen—he trains with a coach out in Arizona.
My oldest brother, Richard, is twenty-six and works for my dad at the bank, and the second oldest, Darren—the one I’m closest to—is graduating next spring from Harvard and going straight into medical school after that.
Yeah, we’re a family of overachievers. Don’t hate me, okay?
I heard a thump in the hall outside and got the door open just in time to come face-to-face with a huge piece of striped fiberglass with three fins.
I stood aside to let Lissa into the room with her surfboard. She was practically bowed at the knees with the weight of the duffel slung over her shoulder, and another duffel with a big O’Neill logo waited outside. I grabbed it and swung it onto her bed.
“Welcome back, girlfriend!”
She stood the board against the wall, let the duffel drop to the floor with a thud that probably shook the chandelier in the room below us, and pulled me into a hug.
“I am so glad to see you!” Her perfect Nordic face lit up with happiness. “How was your Christmas—the parts you didn’t tell me about on e-mail?”
“The usual. Too many family parties. Mom and Nai-Nai made way too much food, two of my brothers fought over the remote like they were ten years old, my dad and oldest brother bailed to go back to work early, and, oh, Nai-Nai wanted to know at least twice a day why I didn’t have a boyfriend.” I considered the chaos we’d just made of our pristine room. “The typical Chang holiday. What about you? Did Scotland improve after the first couple of days?”
“It was fre-e-e-e-zing.” She slipped off her coat and tam. “And I don’t just mean rainy-freezing. I mean sleet-and-icicles freezing. The first time I wore my high-heeled Louboutin boots, I nearly broke my ankle. As it was, I landed flat on my butt in the middle of the Royal Mile. Totally embarrassing.”
“What’s a Royal Mile? Princesses by the square foot?”
“This big broad avenue that goes through the old part of Edinburgh toward the queen’s castle. Good shopping. Restaurants. Tourists. Ice.” She unzipped the duffel and began pulling things out of it. “Dad was away a lot at the locations for this movie. Sometimes I went with him, and sometimes I hung out with this really adorable guy who was supposed to be somebody’s production assistant but who wound up being my guide the whole time.”
“It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.”
“I made it worth his while.” She flashed me a wicked grin, but behind it I saw something else. Pain, and memory. “So.” She spread her hands. “What’s new around here?”
I shrugged. “I just walked in myself a few minutes ago. You probably passed the limo leaving. But if what you really want to know is whether the webcam incident is over and done with, I don’t know yet.”
She turned away, but not before I saw her flush pink and then blink really fast, like her contacts had just been flooded. “Let’s hope so.”
“You made it through last term.” I tried to be encouraging. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“It made one thing stronger.” She pulled a cashmere scarf out of the duffel and stroked it as though it were a kitten. “I never prayed so hard in my life. Especially during finals week, remember? When those two idiots seriously thought they could force me into that storage closet and get away with it?”
“Before we left, I heard the short one was going to be on crutches for six weeks.” I grinned at her. Fact of the day: Surfers are pretty good athletes. Don’t mess with them. “Maybe it should be, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes your relationship with God stronger.’”
“That I’ll agree with. Do you know if Carly’s here yet?”
“Her dad was driving her up in time for supper, so she should be calling any second.”
Sure enough, within a few minutes, someone knocked. “That’s gotta be her.” I jumped for the door and swung it open.
“Hey,
chicas!
” Carly hugged me and then Lissa. “Did you miss me?”
“Like chips miss guacamole.” Lissa grinned at her. “Good break?”
She grimaced, her soft brown eyes a little sad. Clearly Christmas break isn’t what it’s cracked up to be in
anybody’s
world.
“Dad had to go straighten out some computer chip thing in Singapore, so Antony and I got shipped off to Veracruz. It was great to see my mom and the grandparents, but you know . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“What?” I asked. “Did you have a fight?” That’s what happens at our house.
“No.” She sighed, then lifted her head to look at both of us. “I think my mom has a boyfriend.”
“Ewww,” Lissa and I said together, with identical grimaces.
“I always kind of hoped my mom and dad would figure it out, you know? And get back together. But it looks like that’s not going to happen.”
I hugged her again. “I’m sorry, Carly. That stinks.”
“Yeah.” She straightened up, and my arm slid from her shoulders. “So, enough about me. What about you guys?”
With a quick recap, we put her in the picture. “So do you have something going with this Scottish guy?” Carly asked Lissa.
Lissa shook her head, a curtain of blonde hair falling to partially hide her face—a trick I’ve never quite been able to master, even though my hair hangs past my shoulders. But it’s so thick and coarse, it never does what I want on the best of days. It has to be beaten into submission by a professional.
“I think I liked his accent most of all,” she said. “I could just sit there and listen to him talk all day. In fact, I did. What he doesn’t know about murders and wars and Edinburgh Castle and Lord This and Earl That would probably fit in my lip gloss tube.”
I contrasted walking the cold streets of Edinburgh, listening to some guy drone on about history, with fighting with my brothers. Do we girls know how to have fun, or what? “Better you than me.”
“I’d have loved it,” Carly said. “Can you imagine walking through a castle with your own private tour guide? Especially if he’s cute. It doesn’t get better than that.”
“Um, okay.” Lissa gave her a sideways glance. “Miss A-plus in History.”
“Really?” I had A-pluses in AP Chem and Math, but with anything less in those subjects, I wouldn’t have been able to face my father at Christmas. As it was, he had a fit over my B in History, and the only reason I managed to achieve an A-minus in English was because of a certain person with the initials L. M.
Carly shrugged. “I like history. I like knowing what happened where, and who it happened to, and what they were wearing. Not that I’ve ever been anywhere very much, except Texas and Mexico.”
“You’d definitely have liked Alasdair, then,” Lissa said. “He knows all about what happened to whom. But the worst was having to go for tea at some freezing old stone castle that Dad was using for a set. I thought I’d lose my toes from frostbite.”
“Somebody lives in the castle?” Carly looked fascinated. “Who?”
“Some earl.” Lissa looked into the distance as she flipped through the PDA in her head. Then she blinked. “The Earl and Countess of Strathcairn.”
“Cool!”
“Very. Forty degrees, tops. He said he had a daughter about our age, but I never met her. She heard we were coming and took off on her horse.”
“
Mo guai nuer
,” I said. “Rude much?”
Lissa shrugged. “Alasdair knew the family. He said Lady Lindsay does what she wants, and clearly she didn’t want to meet us. Not that I cared. I was too busy having hypothermia. I’ve never been so glad to see the inside of a hotel room in my life. I’d have put my feet in my mug of tea if I could have.”