Art & Soul

  Yes.

  A lot.

  All the time.

  But I didn’t tell Dr. Ward that. I stayed quiet, and he never pushed me for more details.

  * * *

  Monday morning I walked to the bus stop and smiled seeing Simon holding four balloons that read Happy Birthday in his hand. “Happy birthday!” he shouted, handing me the balloons.

  “Thanks!” I laughed.

  Levi walked over to us frowning, staring at the balloons. “I didn’t know it was your birthday.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “It’s okay, really. No big deal.”

  “It is a big deal!” Simon exclaimed. “Because you, my friend, are no longer sixteen. Which means you are no longer sixteen and pregnant, which means—”

  I definitely knew what it meant. “I am no longer a statistic! Well, I’m still a teen pregnancy statistic, but! I’m not the MTV television show kind of statistic!”

  “I think this calls for a dance,” Simon said.

  “Thriller?”

  “No. I think it’s hammer time.” He and I proceeded to partake in the weirdest M.C. Hammer dance right there on the sidewalk, cracking up with one another while Levi stared at us as if we were psycho, before he joined in with the dancing.

  And I swear at one point, my heart swooned a little.

  * * *

  “Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday,” Levi said as we left calculus. He had said it at least thirty times since he found out this morning.

  “You can stop feeling bad now. I can feel the love.” I snickered.

  “As you should. Oh, hey. Did you hear why they never have beer at math parties?” he asked as we stood by my locker. “I guess they don’t want people to drink and derive.”

  Bad math puns from an odd, Southern boy.

  Birthday officially made.

  Before he headed off to his next class, he handed me a folded piece of paper. I opened it and couldn’t stop the butterflies that weren’t supposed to be in my stomach.

  Happy Birthday, Art!

  From Soul.

  There was even a terrible drawing of what was supposed to be me eating cake or something. He was as bad at drawing as I was at the drums. Luckily we balanced each other out.

  “Happy Birthday,” James said from behind me, sending the butterflies in my stomach fluttering away.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, closing my locker and walking away.

  James hurried beside me, clearly on a mission to ruin my birthday that was just made a few minutes ago. “Listen, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, but I heard a rumor that Levi was messing around with Heather Randall. I just thought you should know.”

  “Why do you have so much interest in Levi?” I said, rolling my eyes. I could see the jealousy that James somehow had over Levi befriending me. It was annoying to say the least.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Well, aren’t you just the caring type?”

  Before he could reply, Nadine came bouncing down the hallway and wrapped her arms around James’ waist. “Hey, you guys! What’s going on?”

  James broke his stare from me and gave his girlfriend his smile. “Nothing, just checking in on Aria.”

  Nadine smiled toward me. “He’s such a sweetheart. Speaking of sweet…what’s the deal with you and the Southern Casanova, Aria? He’s cute!”

  James laughed nervously. “I doubt dating is the biggest thing on her mind right now, Na. Besides, rumor has it that he has a thing going on with Heather.”

  Oh-my-gosh-I-want-to-punch-you-in-the-penis!

  Instead, I gave a fake smile to Nadine. “Levi and I are just friends.”

  James sighed—relieved. That annoyed me, too.

  “Mhmm. I’m just saying if it were me and the baby’s father wasn’t in the picture, I wouldn’t be turned off by the attention from Levi Myers. Plus, the way he looks at you is very different than the way he looks at any other girl here.” She smiled, pulling an annoyed James off toward their next class.

  Was that true, though? Did Levi look at me differently?

  I looked down at my protruding belly, rubbing my palms over the bump.

  It doesn’t matter.

  It didn’t matter how Levi looked at me. I wasn’t allowed to think of him in any way other than a friend. In a few months, I would be having a baby and my life would be forever changed.

  20 Levi

  On Wednesday, Simon invited me over to his house for ‘guy time’ as he called it. When I took the shortest walk ever across the street to Simon’s house, his mom answered.

  “Hi, can I help you?” She smiled.

  “Hey, yeah. I’m Levi, Simon’s friend. We were going to hang out for a bit.”

  Her face lit up, and she placed her hands on her hips. “You’re Simon’s friend?!”

  “Yeah, we met at school and—”

  “Who’s at the door?” an older guy said, walking into their foyer.

  “This is Levi. Simon’s new friend.”

  The guy’s face lit up, too. “Simon’s friend?”

  “I know! Isn’t it wonderful?! Come in, Levi,” the woman said, grabbing my arm and pulling me inside. “I’m Keira and this is my husband, Paul. Si, come on out, you have a friend here. And it’s not Aria!”

  It would’ve seemed very strange and a bit rude how dramatic his parents were acting about Simon having another friend, but really they were just…overjoyed.

  Simon came running out of his room and groaned. “You don’t have to scare him off, guys. Hey, Levi, what’s up? You can come hang out in my room.”

  “I’ll order pizza!” Keira shouted. “And I’ll make some brownies! Levi, do you like brownies?”

  “Mommm, chill out. We’re just playing video games for a while.”

  Keira turned around to Paul. “Did you hear that?! They are playing video games!”

  “I love brownies,” I cut in. A wise person would never turn down the opportunity for homemade brownies.

  Simon rolled his eyes as I laughed. He took me to the hallway leading to his bedroom. I noticed all of the family portraits on the walls, and couldn’t help but wonder about one thing that didn’t fit into the story of the person I was growing to know each day. When we stepped into his bedroom, he quickly shut his door behind us. “Can you tell that I don’t get many visitors?”

  “No big deal.”

  “No big deal? My parents just had a heart attack because someone came over to visit me. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, because I need your input.”

  I glanced around at his extremely clean room. Nothing was out of place. His clothes were organized by color in his closet. He had his video games organized on his shelf in alphabetical order. He had more cleaning supplies than I’d ever seen.

  He walked into his closet. “So we can play games and all of that stuff, but I really called you over for O.G.A.A.”

  “Oh, right, of course. I figured that’s what we were going to be doing anyway.” I nodded, sitting in one of his beanbag chairs. “By the way, what’s O.G.A.A.?”

  He walked out of his closet with a bulletin board. He flipped it around, and I stared at a crayon drawing of a girl with four groups of four note cards.

  “Operation Get Awkward Abigail.”

  “That’s a drawing of Abigail?” I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes.

  He fiddled with his hands. “I didn’t get her nose right.”

  “Her body proportion is a little off. Not that Abigail’s fat, but she’s a little bigger than that.”

  “Well, clearly she’s not really a stick person, Levi. Aria is the artist. I’m just the weird red-haired best friend.”

  “Oh, well. All right. Sorry, but I thought last time we spoke on this subject you were anti-Abigail.”

  “But then I ate her cookies.”

  “And you liked her cookies,” I said with a wide grin.

  “They melted in my mouth.” He sighed heavily
, sitting on his bed. “I loved her cookies.”

  “That explains why we are in O.G.A.A. What’s on the notecards?”

  “Different scenarios of how I ask her out on a date.”

  I walked over to examine the board. “Sky diving? Hiking? A sign on a blimp balloon? These are your ideas for asking her out?”

  “Yes! Think about it. You’re jumping out of a plane, falling, falling, falling, minutes away from your death because your parachute is stuck, you look over at those blue eyes of hers and say, ‘Awkward Abigail, will you go out with me for a milkshake if we make it to the ground?’ And then she would say yes and we would obviously live happily ever after.”

  “Unless you died from the, you know, impact of slamming into the ground.”

  He smirked. “Well, yeah, there’s that.”

  “Have you thought of, I don’t know, just asking her to go out with you?”

  “Like, in person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Face to face?”

  “Uh huh.”

  He started laughing hysterically, turning redder and redder. Then he went deadpan. “You know what, that might work.” He dropped his board to the ground. “Video games?”

  I laughed.

  We started playing some game where we shot a bunch of things, then we switched to a game where we killed a bunch of things, and then we switched to a game where we shot and killed some more things.

  Trying to be nonchalant, in the middle of some kind of battle field where Simon and I were blowing off the heads of zombies, I said, “I saw your family pictures in the hallway.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Mom’s a picture addict.”

  “I didn’t know you had a little sister.”

  He continued playing the video game as he spoke. “When I was five, I begged my mom to take Lizzie and me out for ice cream, even though she was already tired from working at the diner. When we went, we were in a bad car accident and Lizzie ended up being in a coma for weeks. The doctors told us that for a three-year-old she fought hard, but wasn’t going to make it. Then one day, she was just gone.”

  “God. I’m so sorry, Si.”

  He kept playing the game, but his focus was elsewhere. “Then they found out Mom would have trouble getting pregnant again due to the same accident, so they spent years trying to have another.”

  “You blame yourself?”

  “Wouldn’t you? If it wasn’t for me, my little sister would still be here. And Mom and Dad would’ve had more kids, and they wouldn’t have been going through hell these past years. I’m the reason their lives are screwed up.”

  “Dude, you were just a kid. You didn’t cause the accident.”

  “Didn’t I, though? We should’ve never even been out. We should’ve…” I could see the guilt in his eyes as he tapped the triangle button on the controller four times hard, before he moved to the square button and hit it four times, too. “Next topic?” he asked, not wanting to talk about it anymore. I wouldn’t push him to keep talking. Therefore I went to a lighter subject.

  “So, I was thinking about Aria—”

  “Well, duh.” He smirked, growing comfortable again.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that every second of every day you’re eye-loving the hell out of her.”

  “Dude, shut up. I’m not. Anyway, I need an idea for her birthday gift since I missed it.”

  Simon arched a brow. “And you’re asking my advice?” I nodded. “Well, get her anything related to art. She was actually talking about this one thing, but it’s kind of expensive.”

  “What is it?”

  He proceeded to tell me, and the price made me cringe. I hadn’t seen that kind of money in a long time, but it was the perfect gift, which only left me one option.

  * * *

  “I need eighty dollars,” I said to Lance after school one day as he moved things around his shop. Whenever Dad didn’t want me around the house, I would go to Lance’s music store and mess around with some of the instruments.

  “For what?”

  “A school project.”

  “What kind of school project makes you pay eighty bucks?”

  “I don’t know. Public school is weird. They even make you eat cow intestines, I think.”

  “I definitely remember it being pig intestines when I went there. They sure are uppity nowadays. That’s the problem with your generation. You boneheads are eating like kings and queens.” He leaned back against a box and narrowed his eyes on me. “So really, what’s the money for?”

  “I want to take a friend somewhere.”

  “What friend?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “They don’t have a name, actually.”

  “Mhmm. Is it a girl friend?”

  “No gender, either.”

  “This is about that one girl, isn’t it?”

  “What girl?”

  “Art. The girl who played the drums like complete shit, and is the reason for that stupid grin on your face whenever I bring her up.”

  “Oh, her?”

  “Yes, her.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s about her.”

  “Once again slipping into the uncool uncle role: do you think that’s a good idea with the whole walking dead thing forming in her gut?”

  “You think she’s having a zombie baby?” The weekend before Lance had forced me to binge watch The Walking Dead with him. I couldn’t sleep for days after watching it, but shit, it was addicting.

  “Hell, maybe it is a zombie baby. I’ve been on LSD before, so I’ve seen some pretty weird shit. But seriously, Levi. Human hearts are like this.” He held up a plate of Daisy’s newest vegan cookies. “They are perfect when looking at them from a distance but then, when you pick them up,” he lifted a cookie and it began to crumble, “they have a way of breaking. You two are young. She already has a lot going on. You have a lot going on. So you both should protect your hearts.”

  I nodded, slowly. “So…about that eighty dollars…”

  He rolled his eyes. “Take out the trash, sweep the floors, and then we’ll talk.”

  That pretty much meant yes.

  21 Levi

  On Friday, Connor was annoying me once again during gym class. “We have to go to this party tomorrow night. You don’t understand the utmost importance of this,” Connor barked, bouncing a basketball around. “Tori Eisenhower parties are like taking a trip to the Playboy mansion. So many boobs.”

  “You’ve been to one of Tori’s parties?” I asked.

  “No, but I’ve heard. And she invited you?!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Only the top of the top get invited to her parties. We need to go.”

  “Sorry, man. Not interested.”

  Connor sighed and flipped me off as he walked away.

  Simon walked over to me with a basketball in his hands. “You were invited to Tori’s party this weekend? Tori Eisenhower?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going.”

  “No way. You have to go. And you have to take me with you,” he said, his eyes filled with hope.

  “What? What happened to O.G.A.A.?”

  “I asked her out, she declined, and I felt like a complete loser. Therefore, I need this party to happen.”

  “She said no?” That was shocking. I could’ve sworn Abigail was into Simon. “Why? What was her reason?”

  He cringed. “Let’s not keep talking about the way I was rejected. She wasn’t into it, so she said no. So instead, let’s go to this party.”

  “I didn’t take you as the party going type.”

  “That’s just because I haven’t been invited. Come on, it could be fun. Us men bonding over manly things,” he joked, shooting the basketball toward the hoop and missing by a mile. His finger pushed up his glasses. He cleared his throat, pointing toward his fantastically failed attempt at basketball. “I think the wind interfered with that one.”

  * * *

  When Satur
day night came, Simon was at his highest level of excitement. “Don’t tell Aria about this,” he said, walking up to Tori’s house. He told me that he’d taken a bottle of wine from his parents. “They won’t notice it’s missing. We have more wine in that house than needed.”

  “Simon, are you sure you want to do this?” I asked, knowing that this party wasn’t a good idea.

  He turned to me, wine bottle in his hand and started begging. “This is my one chance to swoosh in on Tori, Levi. Don’t back out on me now. Please. I need this.”

  The way he stared at me so pathetically showed me that this was the last thing we should’ve been doing, but I rang the doorbell anyway.

  Tori opened the door wearing a bikini top and shorts. “Alabama!” she squeaked, swaying back and forth. I had a feeling she wouldn’t need Simon’s wine. “I’m so happy you’re here!”

  “We’re,” I corrected her as I nudged a wide-toothed Simon. “We’re happy that we’re here, too.”

  “Who invited Four?” she said, staring at Simon. I was certain he was going to pass out from the excitement of being a few inches from her.

  “I thought we could bring friends?” I flashed a smile.

  She giggled. “Whatever. Come in! Let’s take a shot!”

  Tori led us through the house where everyone popular from our school was partying, drinking, or making out. Simon leaned in toward me. “Did you hear what she said? She nicknamed me.”

  “What?”

  “She called me Four!”

  “And…that’s a compliment?”

  “I know it’s probably easy for people like you to get a nickname the first day they arrive, Alabama, but for people like me—we dream of making it this far! We are pretty much waiting in a corner begging for our classmates to nickname us.” He patted me on the back. “Now, excuse me as I proceed to get ridiculously drunk.” Simon wandered off with his bottle of wine, muttering, “Holy shit. I’m in Tori Eisenhower’s house.”

  “Well, look here. If it isn’t Mr. Alabama at the party he swore he wouldn’t be attending.” I cringed at the sound of Connor’s voice. “And to think you brought one of the oddities with you.”