Drawn

  “I slept great,” I said. “Till about 4:30. Then I just couldn’t close my eyes.”

  Mark drummed his fingertips on the table and stared at me. “Fine. I slept fine.”

  Mom took a long drink of coffee, then put it down and looked at me. “Juliet. That’s a beautiful sweater. I love the buttons. Where did you get that?”

  “It’s a hand-me-down.” I smiled at Mark.

  “That was so nice of Ginger to give you her old clothes. That looks good as new. Stand up.”

  I did. I spun around but kept my eyes on my brother. You cretin.

  “Look at you!” Mom exclaimed. “You look about five years older. Those jeans are almost too sexy for school.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked and looked down at myself. The studded glass gems cast colored sparkles on the wall.

  “They just hug you a little snug. I didn’t realize you’d gotten some hips.”

  Mark put his elbows on the table with his fists clenched. “Aren’t you going to be a little hot in that sweater?”

  “Why, Mark? Are you hot?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting a little hot.”

  “Maybe a cold shower would help.”

  I finished my cereal, grabbed my bag and headed for the bus.

  “Juliet, what shoes are you wearing with that?” Mom asked.

  “My black ones.”

  “Those are only for church.”

  “I’m wearing them to school.” I turned around and shot a look that I’d never given her straight on before. “Jack said he liked them.”

  She turned white and her nostrils opened up like camera shutters.

  “Who’s Jack?” Mark asked.

  I didn’t wait to hear her answer. I slipped on my Mary Janes, which looked pretty darn good with Ginger’s jeans and whoever’s sweater I had on.

  And I walked out like the homecoming queen.

  * * * * *

  My jaw, my neck, my back, my everything felt locked in ice until I walked into homeroom and saw Damon. He smiled at me and all the brittleness in my body shattered like a thin sheet of glass.

  “Wow.” He looked me up and down as I walked the aisle to my seat.

  Erik growled. “Yowza, J.B.”

  I could barely hold back a full-on Cheshire cat smile.

  “Sit in Pam’s seat,” Damon said. “Athaca, switch with me.”

  Erik looked at Damon, kind of surprised, then he looked at me. I shrugged and moved into Pam’s seat. Erik moved back and Damon came forward. Bethany and Tori stared. Bethany shot daggers with her eyeballs.

  “Here,” Damon said and handed me a paper lunch sack.

  “What’s this?” I started to pull it out, but he stopped me.

  “It’s the book we were talking about. Last night.”

  Right. We didn’t need anyone to see him give me a copy of Romeo and Juliet. “Thanks.”

  Pam slipped into class with the bell. When she saw me in her seat her eyes flitted back and forth between Damon and me. She sat in front of me, turned around and puckered her lips.

  I understood everything that went on in algebra that morning, and when class ended Damon waited for me and walked me to my locker. Pam whisper-sang, “Juliet and Damon, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” and elbowed me as she went past.

  “Don’t you need to go to yours?” I asked while I switched books.

  “I have time. Social studies is right next to it.” He leaned against the locker next to mine. “What do you have next?”

  “Study hall.” I closed my locker. “I actually have nothing to do there. I finished my homework this morning.”

  He took my bag from me and we headed toward the cafeteria. “Then draw something for me.”

  Too bad I left the tape recorder in my bedroom. “Like what?”

  “Anything. I like the way you draw.”

  “I need a subject.”

  “Like ‘something sacred’?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t have to be a big theme. Just an idea. A thing.”

  “I don’t know. A tree?”

  “A tree? Really?”

  We reached the cafeteria and he handed me my bag. “Whatever you want to draw.”

  Sweeney’s gravelly tenor boomed across the cafeteria. “One minute till the bell. If you don’t belong here, get where you do belong!”

  Damon looked at my cheek, and for a second I thought he might pull a Drew and kiss me there. “See you at lunch?”

  I nodded. He slipped into the current of bodies and I watched the back of his head float above them down the hall.

  Nothing at all like Drew.

  Erik already had his algebra book open and Drew’s face rested in the crook of his elbow. I sat down, pulled out my sketchbook, and flipped to a blank page.

  The bell rang and Erik looked at me with a strange expression.

  “What?” I whispered.

  He half-smiled. “You and Damon?”

  I looked down at the table and my face lit up with fire.

  “That’s cool. He’s a good guy. I just wouldn’t have thought he’d be your type.”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever.”

  “What do you think my type is, anyway?”

  He tapped his eraser against his temple. “I guess someone quiet and artsy, like you. Jimmy, maybe.”

  “Jimmy?” My best friend since kindergarten? Jimmy Teele?

  “You guys are always together.”

  I’d never actually thought of Jimmy as a boy. At least, not in that way. I pictured him trying to kiss me. I’d have to be sitting down.

  Um, no.

  Then I imagined Damon kissing me.

  Oh, yeah.

  I rubbed the sides of my pencil lead around on a scrap sheet of paper to get the right tip on it, then sketched the silhouette of a tree from bottom to top, where the wood disappears into the foliage. A clear picture of the kind I wanted materialized in my vision. A smooth, straight trunk with a few notches of curly-peeled bark. Clusters of long, slim leaves, dotted with small, white, five-petal flowers.

  And Damon sat under the tree. He leaned against the trunk in the shade with a book propped against his knees.

  Then I realized I’d placed the tree off-center on the page. How did that happen?

  The picture would need another element to balance it. A house came to mind. I sketched light, airy lines behind and to the left of the tree, and made one of the windows open with a flower pot on the sill. On a whim I added the fuzzy outline of a cat on the corner of the roof.

  We still had twenty minutes of study hall left, so I pulled out my colored pencils. The tree’s waxy leaves took on several shades of green with undertones of gold and red. Just a few dots of indigo showed Damon’s eyes, and I finished the house in white with Wedgewood blue trim and some brown accents on the roof and windows. The cat I tinted several layers of orange.

  “J.A.B.” I penciled my initials in the bottom corner, then erased them again. I grabbed a blue-grey pencil and wrote “Julie”.

  “Don’t you have anything better on which to spend your time, Miss Brynn?”

  My shoulders seized up and I clenched my teeth together. I turned around to look up at Sweeney’s pinched, red face. “Not today.”

  “Then maybe you need more homework in your classes.” She leaned over and pounded her fist on the table. “Wake up, Mr. Barony! Get your beauty sleep elsewhere.”

  People all over the cafeteria jumped, but Drew just sighed, looked up at Sweeney, and sat up to stretch his arms. “Is it time for breakfast?”

  I bit my lip to stifle a snicker.

  Sweeney pointed her finger at Drew, then stomped away.

  “Do you like detention?” I whispered.

  He stretched across the table, reached for my arm and laid his head down again. “I like you, Juliet.”

  I snatched my arm away and cleaned up my pencils. “Knock it off, Drew.”

  A moment later the bell rang and I glanced bac
k at Drew. He’d fallen asleep again.

  * * * * *

  English, P.E., and art dragged on forever. When the bell finally rang for lunch I shoved everything in my bag and rushed to stuff it in my locker. I tore Damon’s sketch out of my book and folded it in half to take to the cafeteria.

  I tucked it under my elbow while I went through the lunch line, then put it on the table partway under my tray. I’d just taken a bite of fruit cocktail when Damon plopped down in the chair across from me.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Say something interesting and cool and sophisticated, I pled with myself. “Hey.”

  “Lunch looks lousy.”

  “It kind of is.” I slid the sketch out from under my tray. “I have your drawing.”

  He reached for it. “Cool.”

  I held onto it for a second, and we kind of did a tug-of-war. “Remember. You asked for a tree.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, it’s not a very interesting picture.”

  He pulled it through my fingers. “Let me see.”

  As he unfolded the paper I wished I’d done something else. Anything else.

  Why a dumb tree? And a boring house? Come on. That’s the stupidest, most meaningless, childish picture ever.

  Damon smiled at me, then looked down at the sketch. He stared at it for a long time. His smile evaporated and his eyes darted and lingered this way and that around the page. He sat back in his chair with the stoniest look on his face.

  I am such an idiot for drawing that.

  “Okay. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever done,” I said. “But you did say a tree.”

  He looked at me over the top of the sheet he gripped in both hands, his eyes cold as the blue ice inside an Arctic glacier. He shook his head.

  “What?”

  His gaze fell to the page again, and his eyebrows drew together on either side of an angry crease above the bridge of his nose. “How did you do this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He leaned forward, dropped the paper on the table and glared at me. “How did you do it?”

  My hands started to tremble. “It’s pencil. Colored pencils.”

  Damon stared at me like I’d turned into a monster or something, then he snatched the paper back up. The sketch shook in his fist and he gripped the edge of the table with his other hand.

  “Damon?”

  He stood up so fast his chair skidded backwards and fell over. He towered over me with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Fury? Hatred?

  Fear?

  Without another word he turned and stalked away, my drawing half crumpled between his fingertips and thumb.

  Tears erupted like hot lava, and streamed over my cheeks and lips before I could wipe them away.

  And I didn’t even know what I’d done.

  CHAPTER 21

  Three weeks passed before Damon spoke to me again.

  In that time Mia Teele dove headfirst into makeup, jewelry and boys; Pam and I both finished being grounded, and she started a full-out campaign to get my brother to fall in love with her; Mark, unfortunately for Pam, gave his silver ID bracelet to Ginger and went back to spending all his time with her; and the Academic Olympics team practiced each afternoon to get ready for regionals and state the second weekend in October.

  I’d gotten a lot better with the Olympics material, and even found I could answer some of the non-arts questions. Erik gave me a thumbs-up on the Wednesday before the competition when I beat him to a history answer.

  Then the late bell rang and we all packed up our stuff to leave.

  Hirsch swabbed both nostrils with a handkerchief-clad finger and waved at us with his free hand. “Three days, people. Saturday is it. We’ll leave the school parking lot at 7:00 a.m. sharp.”

  Kim stood up and slung her backpack over one shoulder. “Are we taking a bus?”

  “Nope. The wife’s station wagon.” Hirsch jammed the handkerchief into his pocket.

  “Seven people?” I asked.

  “Eight,” Mia answered with a grimace. “My mom’s chaperoning.”

  “It’ll be tight, but it’s only a couple of hours,” Hirsch said. “Start getting extra sleep at night. I want you all in top form on Saturday. And one bag each. One small bag. And don’t forget to bring your permission slips.”

  “And swimsuits,” Erik whispered when Hirsch sneezed again.

  Damon left first, without a look in my direction, as usual. At least I’d finally stopped erupting in tears every time he walked away. He’d probably be halfway home before I even got to my bike.

  Erik shrugged at me. Damon wouldn’t talk to him about it, either.

  Mia tossed her hair over her shoulder and leaned over to whisper to me. “I’m so ready for this to be over.”

  “The Olympics?”

  She nodded and rolled her eyes. “Boring.”

  I sighed. She acted more like Amica every day.

  “You should try some liner,” she said. “I got my makeup done at Dillon’s, and I loved what they did with my eyes.”

  “Who are you, Mia?”

  She scowled. “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re all…” I fluffed my hair and wiggled my hips.

  Mia took it as a compliment. “You changed my life, Juliet.”

  “I cut your hair.”

  “It’s like Samson. But in reverse.”

  “So hacking your hair gave you super strength?” We picked up our bags and walked out the door.

  She stopped and turned to me. “When you cut that awful mess, you gave me the strength to be who I want to be.”

  “I gave you a haircut.”

  Mia shook her head. “You gave me a lot. You gave me the strength to stand up to my mom. To quit spending all my time studying. To be me.”

  Were those all good things? Did I deserve credit for them? Did I want credit for them? I kind of preferred the old Mia.

  “So this is you now?”

  She hugged me and turned the opposite way down the hall.

  I continued down the empty corridor toward the office. Dolph already had the floor buffer out and he tipped his cap to me as I passed. He switched the machine on and the motor raged like a tornado through a corn field. The buffer’s oval headlight streamed across the foyer and flashed multiple reflections at me in the front doors’ eight glass panes. Night fell earlier every day, and the far horizon had already lost its grip on the burnt-orange sun.

  Since I joined the Olympics team, and since Damon wouldn’t talk to me, much less give me a ride, I came to school on my bike so I wouldn’t have to walk home every evening. I hurried down the front steps and over to the rack.

  As I searched for the key to my U-lock a motorcycle growled up behind me and its single headlight lit me up.

  I turned around and squinted. The engine revved. I stepped back and held up my hand to block the glare.

  “Sorry,” he said, and turned the front wheel to tilt the headlight away.

  My stomach flip-flopped. “Adam?”

  He cut the engine. “Hey, Spooky.”

  “What are you doing here?” I swallowed hard and clenched my key in my fist.

  “Came to get you.”

  Fight? Flee? Flop down and play dead? “What for?”

  He crossed his arms over the handlebars and looked up at me. “Damon’s completely wrapped around the axle. You know that.”

  What?

  He just stared, holding up that ginormous motorcycle with his legs. His knee poked out of a hole in his faded jeans.

  Adam’s silent gaze, delivered through Damon’s eyes, made my limbs quiver and my stomach threaten to hurl. What do you want?

  “You need to talk to him.”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  “He’s pretty freaked.”

  I shook my head. “What about?”

  His eyebrows went up and he leaned back. “You don’t know?”

  “Like I said, he won’t talk to me.”

  Adam reach
ed forward for the handlebars. “Hop on.”

  Hop on?

  He sat there and looked at me like he fully expected me to get on his motorcycle.

  “No.” I crossed my arms.

  When Adam scowled he got the same crease between his eyebrows that Damon did. “Get on.”

  “I have to go home.”

  “You have to come with me.”

  Panic rose up my esophagus. “Damon’s not even home yet. He just left.”

  “I’m not taking you to our house. Damon won’t be there long.”

  “Then where are you taking me?” I sound like I’m going with him.

  “To get something to eat. Give Damon some time to get it out of his system. Then to the track.”

  I rubbed my fingers over my sweaty key. “The track?”

  “It’s open ride tonight.”

  I could not understand half of the things Adam said.

  “You won’t be late, I promise. The track shuts down at eight.”

  My feet took me down the steps without my permission. He handed me his helmet and I put it on. I fastened it, slung one leg over the bike and put my bag in front of me.

  Adam looked over his shoulder at me.

  “What?”

  “You’re a regular biker chick.”

  A warm tingle blossomed from the center of my stomach and I bit back a grin. “I’ve ridden with Damon.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.”

  But I wasn’t prepared for the roar that exploded from the motorcycle when Adam turned the key. I reached around my bag and grabbed onto him. He laughed, revved the engine and popped the front wheel off the ground as he peeled out of the school driveway.

  “Please don’t do that!” I screamed.

  He laughed and reached back to pat my knee. “Just showing you the ropes.”

  His red hair blazed like fire in the wind.

  “Don’t you have another helmet?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I’m too dumb to die.”

  * * * * *

  “You need to call home?” Adam pointed to the payphones beside the restrooms.

  Mom hadn’t brought Jack back to the house since that first time, but she had to work late almost every evening. Dad never got home much before bedtime, either, if he even came home at all. Mark and Ginger might be there, but they wouldn’t care where I was. Mark would probably prefer me gone.

  I shook my head.

  The food came and Adam stuffed several fries in his mouth. He stared at me as I took a bite of my cheeseburger.

  “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

  He shrugged. “You’re an enigma.”

  “Big word.”

  “It means mystery, contradiction.”