Art & Soul

  “What’s up, Connor?” I said, turning to face him. From the dazed look in his eyes, he was already drunk.

  “What’s up, Connor?” he echoed, shoving me in the shoulder. “Can you believe this, Matt? He said what’s up.” He shoved the guy standing beside him, who looked confused as hell. Connor turned back to me. “Look, Alabama, I know you want to try to be seen with me right now at this party because I’m a big fucking deal, but it’s too late. You can’t just wander back over to me. I got a new partner in crime. Meet Matt. He’s the new ‘it’ guy. He’s from a foreign country, doesn’t speak English, and the ladies can’t keep their eyes off of him.”

  “Dude. I’m from Canada.” Matt sighed. “And I speak English.”

  “Not if you ever plan to get laid,” Connor scolded. “Sorry, Alabama. You’re old news.”

  “Oxymoron,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Old news, you can’t be old and news. That’s just stupid.”

  Connor frowned and patted me on the back. “You were such a contender before and now the oddities tainted you. Goodbye, Alabama. Goodbye.” They walked off in the direction of Simon, who was in the kitchen surrounded by a few people who all had a row of four shots in front of them and were chanting, ‘Four for Four! Four for Four!’

  * * *

  I wondered the whole night if Simon knew that everyone at the party was mocking him or if he was just so wasted that he didn’t care. Most of the party I stood in the living room, talking about pointless things with pointless people, watching to make sure Simon didn’t completely fall apart. He was currently reordering the cabinets in the kitchen so all of the cups and plates were in groups of four. The assholes were recording him, asking him to explain the importance of color organizing his clothes. But Simon was having a ball with it all, so I wouldn’t interfere unless I found it completely necessary.

  Out of nowhere, a drunken guy walked up to me and patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, holding a beer can in his hands. “I’m James Martin,” he slurred. “And you are?”

  “Levi Myers,” I replied, giving him my famous fake smile.

  “Let’s go get you a drink, Levi,” he offered, nudging me toward the kitchen. I shook my head.

  “I’m not a drinker.”

  “Not a drinker.” He laughed and took a gulp from his beer can before slamming it down against the ground. “You’re funny. I like that. But you know what I don’t like? I don’t like you screwing around with Aria’s feelings. See that boy over there?” He gestured to some guy with a girl on his lap. “That’s my best friend, Mike. He’s like a brother to me. And seeing how he’s Aria’s brother that makes her a sister to me. So if you hurt her, I’ll,” he poked me in the chest, “kick your fucking ass.”

  “James,” a girl said, stepping behind the guy. “You’re drunk.” She sighed heavily.

  He turned toward her, giving her a big smile. “Of course I’m drunk, Nadine. It’s a fucking party. Only lame assholes wouldn’t be drunk at a party.”

  Nadine gave me an apologetic smile. “Maybe you should step outside for air, James,” she offered.

  He sneered. “And leave you here with Casanova? That is what you called him, right? The Southern Casanova? As if you don’t already have a fucking boyfriend.” His words were slurring, leaving him looking like a big asshole.

  “You’re acting like a jerk,” she whispered.

  “Whatever, Nadine. Maybe you need a drink, too. Then you wouldn’t be as lame as Casanova.” He wandered off to the other side of the living room where a keg was stationed.

  Nadine blushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about him. He’s not always like that. Only when he drinks.”

  “No big deal. Alcohol has a way of making the nicest people turn into assholes sometimes.”

  She frowned. “Yeah. Pretty much. Anyway, I think it’s great the way you treat Aria.”

  “She’s something special.” I nodded, wishing that my night involved her instead of this party.

  “She is. But, I actually came over here to tell you that Simon is kind of a few minutes away from drunkville in the kitchen.” Unlike everyone else, she didn’t call him Four.

  My eyes moved to the kitchen where I saw Simon standing on the countertop, holding four plates in his hands before dropping them one by one to the ground, making them shatter. “Opa!” he screamed.

  For fuck’s sake!

  * * *

  Simon was completely shitfaced by midnight. His glasses were bent, his shirt was covered in spilled drinks, and his words were slurred more than seemed humanly possible.

  “C-c-can you be-be-believe that? She said no to me! Awkward Abbbigaail turned ME down!” he shouted. Instead of swooshing in on Tori, he spent most of the night talking about Abigail. “But I am now on-on-on to better things,” he slurred. “I’m popular!” People were standing around, recording his drunken breakdown, snickering. “I’m fucking popular!”

  “Okay, Mr. Popular. Let’s get going,” I muttered, holding his body up as we walked through the house.

  The people who were recording Simon followed us the whole way until someone shouted, “FIGHT!” and they hurried off to the living room, where a guy was being tossed across the room and onto a coffee table. Another guy flew over to the one on the coffee table and started swinging nonstop, punching the dude repeatedly while everyone cheered, including Simon.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he shouted, jumping up and down. “Kick his ass, Mike!” Simon yelled toward the guy fighting.

  Shit.

  Aria’s brother was the one throwing the punches, and he was also getting a few hits to his own face. “Call my sister a whore again! I swear to God, do it, asshole!” Mike said, slamming his hand against the guy’s jaw.

  I hurried over and pulled Mike off of the guy.

  His eyes were wild with anger and he looked at me once before storming off. Simon clapped his hands together, excited with the craziness of his first house party, and then he kindly bent over and threw up on my shoes.

  What a perfect freaking night.

  * * *

  I was happy that the weekend from party hell was over Monday morning. Simon texted me telling me he had the time of his life, which was good for him. It was weird knowing so much more about him and how much blame he put on himself for what happened to his sister, therefore I was kind of happy I was able to aid in his night of freedom.

  He kept talking about the party for the next three days, trying his best to not say anything about it around Aria, but I knew he would slip up soon enough.

  “We’re skipping school today, Art,” I stated on Thursday as Aria walked up to me in the woods at 5:55 A.M. She was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and yawning in her sweatshirt and pajama pants.

  She’d been joining me for the morning deer feedings almost every day when she wasn’t feeling sick. Whenever she didn’t show up, I would leave a pack of saltine crackers on her windowsill.

  “Did you get my best friend wasted this past weekend?” She yawned.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She gave me a knowing grin.

  “Okay. He might have been wasted this past weekend, and I might have been there with him.” I smirked. “He was a bit heartbroken over Abigail rejecting him, so he asked me to go out for a manly night with him.”

  “But I thought she liked him?”

  “I know. Freakin’ women, I tell ya.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Watch it. Hormonal pregnant female here.” She chuckled.

  “I also almost got my ass kicked by a guy who thought I was screwing you over.”

  “What? By who?”

  “James Martin. He told me that if I was screwing with your emotions, he would kick my ass because you’re like a sister to him. Later that night he also told me that I was messing around with some girl named Heather, which was a surprise to me seeing how I’d never heard of her.”

  Aria’s mouth
dropped. “Seriously? He said I was like a sister to him?”

  “Yeah. He seemed to really care about you. Which I can’t fault him for.” I smiled.

  She didn’t. She huffed. “Oh my God. I’m going to kill him.”

  “I’m going to place the murdering side of you in the pile of hormonal pregnant things, too.”

  “No. That’s not hormonal. That’s just the facts. I am going to kill him.”

  “Oh. Well, then I am a bit terrified, yet oddly turned on by this dark side of you. If killing him is your goal, that’s fine and dandy. But just not today. Today we’re skipping school.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, reaching for a few berries for the deer from my tin bucket.

  “We’re. Skipping. School. Today,” I repeated, this time slower.

  “Don’t be silly,” she replied, leaning against a tree. I leaned against the one beside her.

  “I’m not being silly.”

  “You are.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “The girl who’s skipping school today?”

  “No, the girl who’s not skipping school today because she’s already behind in her classes.”

  I sighed. “I’ll help you with homework,” I offered.

  “You hardly do your own homework.”

  “Homework is overrated.”

  “Maybe.”

  Maybe.

  “I’m sad we aren’t skipping school,” I said.

  “Why would we skip anyway?”

  I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a pair of tickets. Aria’s eyes fell to the tickets. “It’s your birthday present.”

  She snatched them out of my hands. “Shut up.”

  I shut up.

  “You got tickets to the Jackson Pollock exhibition?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Are these for real?”

  Silence from me.

  “Why aren’t you talking?!”

  “You told me to shut up.”

  “Well, talk now.”

  “Okay. I got us tickets to the Jackson Pollock exhibition, but today’s the last day.”

  She frowned. “It’s in Richman. That’s a two hour train ride away.”

  “Then we better leave soon.”

  “I have a therapy appointment after school.”

  “Then we better return early.”

  “You really want to skip school?” she asked, a bit of hope in her voice.

  Only if you do. “Yes.”

  She didn’t reply right away. She stared at the tickets in her hands while I stared at her. I tried to count each freckle on her nose, and when I lost count, I started over.

  “I’ve never skipped school on purpose.”

  “There’s always a natural high doing something for the first time.”

  Her lips turned up. “We’re totally skipping school today.”

  I wanted to do a dance, but she would’ve thought I was a dork.

  But then again, she already thought I was a dork, so I did a jig anyway.

  “You’re such a dork.”

  Then she danced with me.

  She was the only one who could call me a dork and make me feel like Superman at the same time.

  22 Aria

  Levi called into school pretending to be my dad, stating that I was out sick. Then fifteen minutes later, he called pretending to be his father, stating that he was going to be missing school due to a family emergency.

  “That was a very impressive Midwest accent, Mr. Myers.”

  He held an invisible award. “I’d like to thank the Academy.”

  I chuckled.

  “All right, we have about a thirty minute walk to the next town to make it to the train station. Do you think you can handle that?” he asked sheepishly, zipping up two backpacks. “I didn’t really think this all the way through.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

  I didn’t tell him that my back had been hurting lately and that my feet had been swollen, because I was certain he would’ve canceled our secret adventure, and canceling a trip to see Jackson Pollock’s abstract paintings was against the law. Or at least it should have been.

  He looked at me warily, so I put on a cheesy grin and changed the subject. “What’s in the backpacks?”

  “Oh,” he said, his concern transformed into excitement. “It’s our art kits. I was reading online that all the cool, hip kids take art kits with them to art museums and fall into deep, soulful thoughts.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “All of the basics. A sketch book, pens and pencils, a water bottle, a dirty magazine for me, a Jane Austen novel for you, and double stuffed Oreos.”

  I laughed. “Sounds about right.”

  * * *

  When we reached the train station I’d already eaten all of my Oreos, and two of Levi’s. He offered me all of them, but I refused, saying I wasn’t greedy. My feet were pounding and I felt as if standing was a task straight from hell. I’d never been so happy to see a train pull up into the station. When we sat on the train I ate the rest of his Oreos.

  He laughed at my black teeth.

  * * *

  At the art museum, I wanted to look at each piece and stay until the museum closed. Then, after it closed, I wanted to sneak back in and sit in front of Jackson Pollock’s paintings and lose myself completely so I could find myself again.

  A person who never truly lost themselves could never truly find themselves, either.

  Art was everything right and wrong in the world. It understood what words couldn’t say.

  “Oxymoron,” Levi said as we sat and gawked in amazement at Pollock’s work of art. “Greyed Rainbow.”

  “Maybe it was his favorite word, too.” Pollock’s painting was twisted with mostly black, white, gray, and silver paint, but across the bottom of the canvas were tiny strands of yellows, greens, oranges, blues, and purples. “He hardly used paint brushes. He used sticks and knives and all kinds of different tools for his splattering and dripping paint techniques.”

  “I get it now, Art. I get why you love abstract: at first it just looks messy, but then you realize that it is messy, but at the same time it’s not. It’s controlled chaos.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “That’s what we should do for our final piece. We should do three live abstract paintings in front of the crowd. Each piece will be a different oxymoron. The first one you’ll paint loud and I’ll play the music soft. Second we could do an angry painting, and I’ll play happy. Then we could do love and I’ll play hate. And you could paint using sticks, rocks, and leaves from the woods. Tapping into your own Pollock.”

  I turned to him and couldn’t stop smiling.

  Brilliant.

  He didn’t look at me, but he kept staring at Pollock’s work. “I like the way your brain works, Levi.”

  “I’ve been thinking about kissing you,” he blurted out, still staring ahead. “I think about kissing you a lot. Then I feel bad that I’m thinking about kissing you because you’re going through some things, and hell, I’m going through some things, and the last thing you need to know is that I’m thinking about kissing you because that’s pointless. It’s so nonsensical, but very, very true, and that’s not all I think about.”

  “What else?”

  “I think about how you have forty-two freckles across your nose and how I want to kiss every single one forty-two times. I think about how you are the only one who laughs at Mr. Jones’ bad math jokes, and whenever I hear your laugh, I laugh too. I think about how you touch your stomach and smile when nobody’s looking. It’s like it’s your personal secret that the baby makes you happy, and you get to keep that to yourself. I feel bad that I noticed because it seemed like your secret, but I couldn’t help it.”

  I swallowed hard and rubbed my arms as he continued.

  “I think about how you’re beautiful when you’re sad and it makes me angry when you’r
e mad. I hate whoever made you untouchable, because if there’s anything I would want to do more than kiss you, it would be to hold you. I like you, Aria. I know I’m not supposed to for certain reasons, but I don’t care. I like you, and I hope that’s okay because I don’t know how to stop. I’m not asking for anything from you. I swear I’m not. Just…take your time, that’s all.”

  My heart skipped, twisted, cartwheeled, and cried.

  He was quiet before he said, “I hope you liked your birthday gift. Sorry it was late.”

  But it wasn’t. It was right on time.

  Our hands rested against the bench as we sat staring at the Greyed Rainbow.

  Slowly I edged my pinkie toward his hand.

  Slowly he edged his pinkie toward my hand.

  Slowly, nervously, quietly, our pinkies locked together.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  * * *

  Somehow we managed to return to the train station with two hours to spare before school let out. That meant that after our thirty minute walk back into town, I’d be able to spend eighth hour with Levi working on our foolproof project.

  Mainly I just wanted to spend more time with him.

  Being around him felt like being around someone who saw your scars and called them beautiful when you only saw your past mistakes.

  “You know your brother got into a big fight on Saturday?” Levi asked.

  “Mike? Yeah, well. He and his friends are always acting like idiots.”

  “It was about you,” he said, making me pause. “Someone called you a whore, and he literally kicked their ass.”

  “I thought he hated me,” I whispered as I started walking again.

  “Quite the opposite.” He glanced down at the ground. “Your feet are swollen,” Levi said as we walked down the streets toward Mayfair Heights.

  “They’re fine.”

  “We can take a break,” he offered. I refused.

  “Oh! Before I forget, here.” He stopped walking and unzipped his backpack. He pulled out three packages wrapped in newspaper. “This one is for you, this one is for Avocado—”