Drawn

  “Or nothing,” I said.

  Erik shook his head. “I’m not okay with nothing.”

  “La Marchande it is,” Damon said.

  “Say that again,” I asked.

  He grinned. “La Marchande.”

  Erik shoved him. “Lamasharnd,” he slurred.

  Damon caught my hand in his and we started down the hallway.

  I wished we could ditch Erik.

  * * * * *

  The hostess looked at us a little funny. She probably didn’t see many kids there, and she sat us at a table near the back. We ordered appetizers, since that’s all we could really afford. Erik and Damon got these plates of different breads and cheese, and I had potato soup. It tasted nothing at all like the stuff out of a can, but had these spicy bits of greens and a topping of crusty cheese.

  The waitress didn’t speak English very well, so she and Damon spoke French whenever she came to the table. After we paid, she said something else and pointed back to the hallway and toward the left.

  “Merci. Nous irons le voir. She said if we have time we should go to the gallery. There’s a cool display that just went up this week,” Damon said.

  Erik cleaned up the last crumbs on his plate. “Not really my thing. Sorry, J.B.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “I’m going to find a vending machine,” he said.

  Damon turned to me. “Do you want to go see the paintings?”

  “Do we have time?”

  Erik checked his watch. “Hirsch said to meet in the foyer at a quarter to one. We’ve got twenty minutes.”

  “Let’s go,” Damon said.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “Get me something,” Damon told him and tossed Erik fifty cents. “You want a candy bar, Julie?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t even be sure the potato soup wouldn’t come back once the competition started again.

  Erik headed back to the elevators while Damon and I went down the opposite hall. We entered the gallery and I gasped.

  “What?”

  Jimmy’s comic book lay open on an easel just inside the archway. A man in a brown suit hung a powder blue tag from the base of the easel.

  “This is the Art as History contest,” I said. “That’s Jimmy’s!”

  “Welcome,” he said when he saw us. “You’re just in time. The awards were assigned this morning. Feel free to look around.”

  When he moved on to hang tags from other pieces, I knelt to read Jimmy’s. “Hart McSwain, by James O. Teele, Parnell Junior High, Honorable mention. Jimmy’s going to be disappointed.”

  “Did you enter?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Cool. Let’s look for yours.”

  We walked around the gallery, and as much as I wanted to find mine, I couldn’t help stopping to see the other entries. “There’s a lot of good stuff here.”

  Damon pulled me along. “I want to see yours. Come on.”

  An enormous twenty-by-thirty canvas hung on the main wall. Apart/hide depicted disturbing scenes of ransacked homes, beatings and courtroom scenes around a large, center image of a woman—was she black or white?—holding a dead child. The idea behind it made up for some of the poor technique.

  A choppy clay sculpture called Uncle Will showed a soldier, just shot through the stomach. He recoiled, half bent over, and balanced on the side of one foot, about to collapse on foreign soil.

  “Look at this one.” I pulled Damon to a stop. Hundreds of brightly patterned origami cranes, flowers and boxes covered a wire frame to create a three-dimensional mushroom cloud. Simply titled Hiroshima, the artist had fitted tiny paper balls in and among the origami forms, painted with faint, horrified faces.

  “Wow,” Damon said.

  “I think that’s what you’re supposed to say.”

  I turned away from the origami sculpture and came face-to-face with my entry. At first glance, it seemed small and unoriginal. I pulled on Damon’s hand. “There it is.”

  He turned around, and didn’t say anything right away. “It’s pretty.”

  I smiled and waited for him to look closer.

  He stepped toward it and bent down to read the tag. “Nonnie, by Juliet Brynn, Parnell Junior High, third place. That’s great!”

  “Yeah.”

  Damon looked back up at the painting. He leaned closer.

  I watched his eyes move around the painting.

  “Those aren’t flowers.”

  The painting looked like a floral still-life. But each of the five thickest stems showed a kind of transportation my grandmother had taken in her life, and that represented the American immigrant experience. In the cargo hold of a boat across the ocean when she and my great uncle George were still children. A train all the way from New York, to move in with her aunt and uncle just before they died. An old Chevy with tin cans and daisies trailing behind it. The hearse to Grandpa’s funeral.

  The heads of the flowers showed scenes from her life. Holding a stillborn child. Working in the factory while Grandpa and Uncle George fought in the war. Canning the beets she hated so much, when all the other crops failed. Her beautiful, blond hair spilling from the jeweled barrette Uncle George gave her as a wedding gift.

  “That’s not even a vase,” Damon said. He looked at me a lot like he did when I gave him the tree drawing.

  The flowers all grew out of a twisted, black potato, rotted by blight.

  “My grandmother’s family left Ireland because of the potato famine in the 1800’s. She was born in London and started working in a cotton mill when she was five years old. Her parents both died before she was ten.”

  “Are you in here?” Damon pointed to the flower with Nonnie holding a curly-haired child. “This must be your mom.”

  I stepped up next to him and touched my fingernail to the doll the child clutched.

  He squinted, then looked at me. “I don’t like how you draw yourself. And it looks like your mom’s about to drop the doll on its head.”

  I looked closer. “Huh. I guess it does.”

  He looked at me again, with no trace of a smile.

  “Nonnie and I kind of got along better than Mom and I do. Or than she and Mom did, I guess.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  I shook my head. “She died, just a couple of years ago.”

  “What about your grandpa?”

  “Huh-uh. He died a long time ago. Mom was really little. She doesn’t even remember him.”

  Damon continued to look at the painting. “Was your mom their only child?”

  “The only one that lived. Nonnie lost a baby while Grandpa was overseas. During the war.”

  “World War II?”

  “Mm-hmm. Grandpa and Nonnie’s brother both got drafted. Uncle George moved out to the west coast after college, and got married out there. Then his wife came back here to live with Nonnie during the war, while their husbands were both gone. Nonnie was pregnant, but she lost the baby.”

  “Oh, man.”

  I traced the outline of the stillborn baby with the back of my finger. “Yeah. Nonnie told me it was right after that when she finally let Aunt Millie talk to her about God.”

  Damon tapped the back of my hand. “I thought you were never supposed to touch a painting.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “But it’s mine. So I guess I can if I want to.”

  “You must miss her, huh?”

  “I do. She really loved me.”

  He bent forward to look at the painting more closely. “I hope you didn’t make this one prophetic.”

  I reached for his hand, so easily I hardly realized I did it. “No. I finished this right before the prophecy thing started.”

  He squinted and leaned even closer. “What’s that?”

  A gold line extended between the finger and thumb of Nonnie’s right hand, in the flower with her antique barrette. Had I left a stray brush stroke, a goof I missed?

  Nonnie’s gaze should have stared into the distance,
like a memory captured her thoughts, but instead her eyes seemed to focus straight onto that smudge in her hand. I knelt closer.

  The paint streak looked just like a cylinder, like a gold bar in two sections.

  “What in the world?” I whispered.

  It looked just like the thing that fell out of Nonnie’s barrette.

  CHAPTER 25

  The regional finalists competed in the afternoon matches. The halls seemed quieter now, and Hirsch said that many of the early losers left after lunch. He showed us the chart of match-ups.

  “Ballard’s still in?” I asked. They would compete against a private school, and the winner of that one would go against the winner of our bracket.

  “They had a bad time against us this morning, but they trounced the next school,” Hirsch said. “Sometimes you get a bank of questions you’re not ready for. Don’t get cocky if we go up against them again.”

  We found our next room and took our places at the table. We lined up the same as the first match. Woodlawn’s team sat across the table. They actually smiled and wished us luck.

  The questions got harder the farther we advanced.

  “Name the original thirteen colonies of the United States.”

  Woodlawn got that one.

  “Give the equation known as the Pythagorean Theorem.”

  Damon buzzed first and scored.

  “For what style of painting is Pablo Picasso best known?”

  I tried, but a boy at Woodlawn beat me to the buzzer. “Cubism.”

  “That is correct. Point to Woodlawn. What do you call the painting technique wherein small dots of pure color are used to create an image?”

  I slammed on the buzzer.

  “Parnell.”

  “Pointillism.”

  “That is correct.”

  We won our first match, but not by much. The Woodlawn team shook our hands and congratulated us.

  We moved into the next room. Please, let it be the private school.

  The other team hadn’t arrived yet, so we sat on chairs next to the wall while we waited. Hirsch and Mrs. Teele sat a couple of chairs away, and talked about Parnell’s football team.

  Erik turned his back on them and whispered to the rest of us. “So, are we serious about a pool party tonight?”

  “Absolutely,” Lucas said.

  “How are we going to sneak out with them in our rooms?” Kim asked.

  Erik smiled. “Hirsch takes allergy pills every night. He sleeps like the dead. And snores like a lumberjack. Last year we tried to wake him up or roll him over, but no dice.”

  “Does one of you have to share a bed with him?” I asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “Hirsch takes the couch.”

  “What about your mom?” Kim asked Mia.

  She closed her eyes and grimaced. “She hears everything. Everything.”

  “Could we get some of Hirsch’s allergy pills and give them to her?” Lucas suggested.

  “Drug her?” I whispered.

  “I’m not talking anything illegal. Just Allergene.”

  The conference room door swung open and our opponents walked in.

  Great. More Mandy.

  We all moved to the table and sat down. Mandy smiled at Damon, then sneered at me.

  Calm. Cool. Laugh.

  I smiled at her and wished her good luck.

  “We don’t need luck,” she answered.

  The other girl’s eyes landed on Erik.

  “May the best team win,” the official began. “Which element is labeled Fe on the periodic table of elements?”

  Lucas pounded his buzzer. “Iron.”

  “A right angle is comprised of how many degrees?”

  A Ballard guy, Joseph, rang in first. “Ninety.”

  “The hero or heroine of a story is known by what literary term?”

  Kim and Polly, the other Ballard girl, both hit at the same time. “Ballard is behind and takes the question.”

  “The protagonist,” Polly said.

  We fought question by question, always tied or just a point ahead or behind.

  “On what continent is Australia?”

  No one buzzed on that right away. I looked at Damon.

  He scowled and that line formed between his eyebrows. He reached forward to tap his buzzer.

  “Parnell?”

  “Australia?”

  “That is correct. Australia is its own continent.”

  Then Ballard won several points in a row, and left us down by one.

  “How many milligrams are in ten kilograms?”

  Joseph pounded his buzzer. “One million.”

  “That’s incorrect. Does Parnell have a response?”

  Erik smiled and bounced his fingers on his buzzer. “One hundred million.”

  “That is also incorrect. The answer is ten million.” The official turned another page in his question book. “In which of Shakespeare’s plays is the following quotation found? ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.”

  Damon and I both hit our buzzers at the same time.

  “Juliet,” the official chose me with a quick glance at my nametag, then groaned, shook his head and looked away with a grin.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” I said.

  “‘O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright’,” he quoted as the others moaned. “Ballard and Parnell are tied with twenty-nine points each. The next school to correctly answer a question will take the match.”

  At that moment, I understood what Erik and Damon meant about adrenaline. I sat at the edge of my seat, my hand poised to strike the buzzer. The blood under my skin sizzled with electricity, and hummed through my veins like silky, silver energy. Mandy glared at me, and sweet victory beckoned, only a question away.

  We had to win.

  The official turned a page in his book. “For the match.” He cleared his throat. “If one parent has blue eyes and the other parent has brown eyes, statistically what is the greatest percentage of their children that might have blue eyes?”

  I knew this. I banged my buzzer with my open palm.

  “Parnell.”

  “Fifty percent.”

  “That is correct. Parnell wins this match and advances to the next round.”

  Erik high-fived me and Lucas bear-hugged both Kim and Mia at the same time. Hirsch pumped his fist into the air, then went to shake hands with the Ballard coach.

  Damon leaned back in his chair and draped his arm around mine. I turned to look at him. We just smiled. I didn’t need to say anything, and I guess he didn’t either. My pulse beat in my throat and I felt as short of breath as if I’d run a race.

  “You found your A-game!” Erik patted me on the back.

  “Is that what it’s like during a basketball game?”

  “Maybe. What did it feel like?”

  I closed my eyes. How to describe that rush?

  “Like riding a dragon?” Damon asked.

  A smile spread over my face. I saw him again, splitting the light and the dark with his bike on that jump. The fury of it, and the thrill.

  Yeah. Like riding a dragon.

  * * * * *

  By the end of the day we’d won first place in our region.

  “We’re going to the finals!” Lucas spiked an air football onto the ground and did an end-zone dance in the hotel lobby.

  Hirsch high-fived all of us. Then he stepped back, folded his arms and looked at me. “Miss Brynn, you took the cake today.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Talk about a dark horse. I just hoped you’d get us a point or two on those obscure arts questions. I never expected that level of competitiveness out of you.”

  Damon put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “I told you she’d come through.”

  I looked up at him.

  “Mr. Hirschman thought you were too shy. I told him you’re feistier than you look.”

  Hirsch bowed his head to me. “I am man enou
gh to admit when I am wrong.”

  We got our room keys and stashed our bags, then headed back to the station wagon to go to dinner. We arrived at Pizza Pete’s before I’d even had time to really enjoy the feeling of Damon’s arm around my shoulders. Then he took my hand to help me out of the car.

  This is the best day ever.

  At dinner we sat around a big circular table and rehashed the matches.

  “As soon as I said it, I knew I got it wrong.”

  “I couldn’t believe you beat me to it.”

  “I totally wanted to break that kid’s buzzer.”

  And Mia started sneezing. And coughing. By the time the pizza and sodas came she struggled to breathe through a full-on attack of something. She clutched her mother’s arm.

  “Sorry.” Mia dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “It’s just allergies.”

  “Allergies?” her mother said. “What kind of allergies? You’ve never had allergies.”

  Mia sniffled. “I don’t know. There must be something blooming around here that’s making me sneeze.”

  Erik turned to Damon, “What blooms in October?”

  Kim glared at him and shook her head, then she put her hand on her heart and turned to Mia. “Oh my gosh, Mia,” she whimpered. “I hope you’re not so sick you can’t sleep tonight. That would be terrible for the finals tomorrow.”

  “I know.” Mia sneezed again. “I know.”

  Lucas stuck his finger up like he’d had an epiphany. “Maybe Mr. Hirschman could give you some of his allergy pills.” He sounded like a bad actor reading off a bad script.

  Hirsch shook his head. “I can’t give medication to students. Even over-the-counter.”

  Mia sneezed three times in a row. “It’s okay. I’ll be all right.” She coughed again, and even squeezed out some tears.

  Damon’s fingers tapped on my back and I couldn’t look at him, because I knew I’d crack up. I reached for a piece of pizza and took a huge bite.

  Kim put her arm around Mia. “But your mom is here.” She turned to Hirsch. “If her mom says it’s okay, you could give her something, right?”

  “Well…”

  Mia shook her head. “It’s not that bad. Really. Just a little tickle in my throat. And nose. And eyes.”

  “Give her something, Mr. Hirschman. She can’t go on like this,” Kim urged.

  Hirsch looked at Mrs. Teele.

  “It’s all right with me,” she said and wiped Mia’s cheek with her napkin.

  Hirsch dug around in his jacket pocket and pulled out a blister pack. He tore off one of the perforated sections.

  “Better give me two,” Mia said. “I have a strong tolerance.”

  “And maybe two more for later, in case you have trouble sleeping,” Kim said.