So I tell her, “Grams, you're going.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are. You can't walk on that foot, no buses come by here, we already know that a cab's real expensive, and he's staying right across from the apartment. Just get on that thing and go.”
She just stands there with big ol' owl eyes.
“Unless you want me to get Hudson to come to your rescue?”
“No!” she says, then turns to Lance. “Promise me you won't take chances with my life. I have a granddaughter I want to see get married someday, you know.”
He grins at me, then says to her, “You have my word, ma'am.”
He gives her his helmet, helps snap it in place, then kicks on the Harley, brummm-bum-bum-bum-bum.
Then he flips down her foot pegs, and my grams—in her patent-leather pumps and A-line skirt—swings onto the back of the Harley and rolls down the driveway, showing leg like I've never seen.
TWENTY-THREE
I didn't race Grams and the Bandit home or anything. I needed to take a detour to break the news to the “Silver Knight” before he heard it from someone else. I was actually pretty worried about telling him. I mean, being as smart as Hudson and being fooled by a purple-eyed phony, well, it wasn't going to be easy for him to take.
I found him reading a book on his porch. “Hey, Hudson!” I called as I turned up his walkway.
“Sammy?” He put the book down. “I was afraid you might not visit for a while.”
I plopped down in the seat next to him. “Abandon my favorite place in the world?” I grinned at him. “Nah.”
He looked at me like he was noticing something new about me. Like you do when you've known someone your whole life and never really noticed they have freckles.
So I said, “I'm sorry I called you old. I didn't mean it like that and—”
“I overreacted, Sammy. And I've been feeling bad about it since. You were just trying to help, I know that.”
“Hudson?”
“Yes, my friend?”
I cringed a little. “I've got some bad news.”
He sat up a little. “Is Rita all right?”
“Yeah, she's fine. She busted a window, pinned a pretender, twisted her ankle, and broke her shoe. But other than that, she's fine.”
He sat up even straighter. “Sammy, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Hudson,” I said gently, “you're in love with an impostor.”
Very carefully, he says, “I never said I was in love.”
“You didn't have to.”
He could tell something serious had happened. So he sat there and listened as I told him the story. And when I broke it to him that all the paintings were destroyed, his chin quivered and he whispered, “No … !”
“I'm sorry, Hudson. I tried to save them, but they're gone.”
He was quiet for the longest time. Then finally he said, “How could I have been so blind?” He turned to me. “And how on earth did you manage to see?”
I shrugged. “Thank Tammy Finnial.”
“Come again?”
So I told him about picking up Tammy's still life by mistake and how my mind had wandered off about names and about what a big difference a single letter can make. But when I started in about Icky and all of that, he says, “Sammy? Sammy, please. What does Ichabod Regulski have to do with this?”
“Well, Ichabod changed his name when he started school. At least that's what everybody says. But he had a reason to change it then. So I started thinking about Diane. I mean, she was born Elizabeth, she went by Lizzy her whole life—why did she switch to Diane? At first I figured it was because she had a reputation as a rejected artist, but Reijden is such an unusual name, so what good would that really do?
“And then I started thinking about her. How she's so, you know, perfect. Her hands, her nails, her hair, her clothes. Remember on the day we went over there how she was wearing that pouffy white blouse with long ruffled cuffs?”
He nods, but then shakes his head. “I'm not making some connection, Sammy, forgive me.”
“She didn't have a spot on her! Anywhere! My art teacher gets paint everywhere—in her hair, under her nails, on her clothes—she's like, permanently stained. And then I started thinking about how Diane's house smelled like cinnamon and oranges. Every time I was there, that's what it smelled like. It didn't smell like paint or turpentine or linseed oil—even her studio didn't smell a thing like art class.
“But the big thing was the fence. And the tree.”
“What fence? What tree?” he asked.
“Do you remember in Awakening how there's a little tree beside a meadow of grass and tiny yellow flowers?”
“Of course.”
“And in the background, there's a little picket fence?”
“I suppose …”
“It's kinda subtle, because it was an olive green color and it blended with the grass. But the more I looked at that painting, the more I started thinking it was the same fence that was in Diane's yard. So I went over there and scraped through the white paint—”
“And?”
“And it was yellow underneath.”
“But under that?”
“Was green.”
Very slowly, his head goes up and down. “So it was green a long, long time ago. Long enough that a sapling grew into a giant walnut tree.”
“Exactly. And I should have figured it out right then and there, but I didn't. I kept thinking that she must have been remembering her childhood. But the eyes of the girl in Whispers were brown, so that threw me. Then I thought maybe she had worked from a photograph, but she said she didn't do that, either. It wasn't until I picked up Tammy's paper that things started coming together.”
“The spark that finally lit the fuse, huh?”
I cringed, remembering the fire. “Man! Why didn't I put it together sooner? I could have saved the paintings, I could have—”
“Sammy, you did more than the rest of us. At least you managed to save some proof.”
I sighed. “Which will help Lance make sure they don't print up lithographs.”
“Hmmm.” He turned to me. “They can alter the negatives, you know.”
“Alter the … what good would that do?”
“They can change Diane back into Duane. They can do it pretty easily.”
“Really?”
He tried to smile. “Would you like a print of Whispers? I could see if I could get you one.”
I thought about it a minute, then shook my head. “It wouldn't be the same.”
He sighed, then nodded. “I know. It's not. But it would be something, at least.”
“No, Hudson, I don't want one. Diane—or I guess, Elizabeth—was right about one thing—I was better off not knowing. I mean, now that I've figured all this out, the painting's pretty much ruined for me.”
“It doesn't have to be.”
I gave a little shrug. “Well, it is. I mean, that's her in the painting.” A lump was suddenly gathering in my throat. Gathering hard and fast. “How could she do that to someone who loved her so much?”
He studied me as I tried to blink back the tears.
“You're thinking that her father must have loved her enormously, to capture her that way?”
I nodded and choked out, “What would that be like?” I slapped away some tears and sat up a little straighter. “Doesn't matter. I've got to focus on what I do have, not on what I'll never know.”
“Now, don't say that, Samantha. You can't predict what the future holds.”
I let out a choppy laugh. “Right.”
“You can't.” He looks out over the rooftops, thinking, then finally turns back to me and says, “Well, I'm sorry Whispers is ruined for you. The whole situation really is a tragedy.”
He looked tired. Older than I'd ever seen him look. So I said, “I'm sorry for you, too, Hudson. And I didn't come here to try and say I told you so or anything. I just didn't want you to hear about this from someone else.??
?
“I know, Sammy.”
“And I know you really believed that falling in love with the artist was a logical extension of falling in love with the art, but Grams was right—you fell for her looks.” I laughed. “I mean, if it was just the art, you'd have to be in love with an old dead guy right now.”
He gave me a wry look. “You're right on that count.”
“So now you have to decide—is she worth it?”
“Oh, no. If what you say is true—and I have no doubt that it is—then I want nothing more to do with the woman.”
He was staring straight ahead, looking sort of hurt, sort of angry, and very tired. So I tried to get him to talk about it. “Well, did you have a good time going out with her?”
He shook his head. “It was very odd, actually.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, she refused to talk about painting. Her work or anyone else's. She just moved around the room, being charming and gracious and, of course, beautiful. But it was all just chitchat.” He sighed. “It makes a lot more sense to me now.”
So we sat there, being quiet. Being friends. And inside I was feeling better again. Feeling happy. My favorite place in the whole wide world, with my favorite seventy-two-year-old, just being us, warts and all.
And then I heard the best sound I'd heard in days— Hudson's chuckle.
“What?” I asked him.
“She threw that statue through the window?”
I grinned. “Uh-huh.”
“She tackled her?”
I could feel my heart swell with pride. “She may not have Liz Taylor eyes,” I told him, “but there's no one like my grams.” Then I laughed. “You should have seen her, riding off on the back of that Harley.”
He sat bolt upright. “What's that?”
“Oh, didn't I tell you? Lance Reijden gave her a ride home. Sort of rescued her from her dress shoes.”
“She's not … she's not interested in that hooligan, is she?”
I shrugged. “She has a thing about Harleys.”
“Your grandmother does?”
I grinned at him, then stood up and grabbed my stuff. “There's a lot about my grandmother you don't know. Shoot, there's a lot about her I don't know.” I hopped down his steps and said, “But I tell you what—I'm looking forward to finding out more.”
On the way home I decided to stop by the mall. I knew that Marissa was probably long gone from playing at the arcade, but I wanted to check in anyway.
And lo and behold, there she was, annihilating electro–bad guys. And, it turns out, one cool and suave eighth grader.
She spots me watching and says, “Sammy!” then actually gives up the round to talk to me. “They said you went home sick—what's going on?”
Danny was sort of hovering, so I shrugged and said, “I don't want to interrupt….”
“That's okay! Tell me what happened.”
“It's kind of a long story.”
She looks at Danny, then back at me. “Well, in a nutshell—what's going on?”
“In a nutshell? Well, in a nutshell, I'm fine, but I kinda need your advice.”
“About?”
“Clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Yeah. I, um … I want to do a little shopping.”
“You?” She laughs, “I'm there!” She turns to Danny and says, “Sorry, but I've got to go.”
“You want to play tomorrow?” Danny asks her.
“That'd be fun,” she says, then gives me a private grin and calls over her shoulder, “Maybe I'll see you here.”
We left the arcade and, believe me, my eyes were pretty buggy. “Wow,” I whispered. “Was that you in there?”
“He may be cute,” she says with a grin, “but no way is he my best friend.”
It took us almost two hours to find what I was looking for. They had to be just right. Not too trendy, not too frumpy, not too expensive. And because I didn't actually have any money on me, I put what we found on a twenty-four-hour hold and then went home.
When I snuck through the apartment door, I discovered that Grams had company. Not the Harley dude—that would have been very weird, let me tell you. No, for the first time ever, Hudson Graham was in our living room.
He was sitting in a chair across from the couch, and he was looking very awkward. There were some drooping wildflowers wrapped in wet paper towels and aluminum foil lying on the coffee table, and Grams was reclining on the couch with her foot propped up.
“Well, hi,” I whispered as I put down my board and stripped out of my backpack. They just sort of sat there, mum, so I took the flowers, put them in a vase, and placed them on an end table so they wouldn't be dwarfed by the big bouquet Hudson had sent before. Then I whispered, “Should I go to your room, Grams?”
She shook her head and said, “No, Samantha, of course not. Hudson and I have had a very nice conversation—”
He nodded. “Revolving around what a fool I've been.”
“Ah,” I said, sitting down. “So is the air clear, or are we still filtering?”
Hudson sighed and stood up, saying, “I think it's as clear as it can get.”
“For now, anyway,” Grams said. “I appreciate the apology, the flowers, and the concern. But as you can see, I'm going to be just fine.”
I walked him to the door, and right before I opened it, I did something I'd never done before—I gave Hudson a hug. An enormous hug. And I whispered, “Everything'll be fine, Hudson.”
He nodded, then did something he'd never done before—he kissed me on the forehead and whispered, “Thank you, sweetheart. Come by and see me sometime soon.”
“Of course!” I said, then let him out the door.
When I went back into the living room, I sighed and said, “So. How do you feel?”
Grams sat up and said, “Good. No, great. Better than I have in decades.”
“Tackling bad guys can do that for you.”
“That must be it,” she said. “It also gives you a big appetite—I'm famished!”
“I'll make dinner. What do you feel like having?”
She thought a minute, then gave me a mischievous grin. “I believe the events of today deserve something, uh, god-like.”
I laughed, “Mac 'n' salsa, coming up!” and headed for the kitchen thinking it was true—there's nobody on this planet like my grams.
After dinner, I got busy on my homework. Most of it was easy, but the whole time I was doing it, I was sort of dreading the one assignment that I knew would be hard—my art report.
And really, I didn't know where to start. I mean, I had all the beautiful interview answers, but I'd interviewed a fake! Not that Miss Kuzkowski would know about that.
Yet.
No, chances were good she wouldn't hear about anything that had happened until after she'd graded the reports. Besides, who said I knew she was a fake before I wrote it?
I could get away with it.
Trouble is, I didn't want to. Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to Miss Kuzkowski about things. Not about Diane so much as about art. I wanted to confess that I didn't think joy was a psycho pink eye. Wanted to tell her that I did think Tess was wearing no clothes. I even wanted to tell her that Merriam-Webster—which has answers to everything—was clueless about art. I mean, ol' Merriam thinks art is “skill acquired by experience, study, or observation,” “a branch of learning,” or “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination in the production of aesthetic objects.”
Please. That's like saying a human being is bones, blood, and muscle.
No, to me art had become much more than an object or a definition. It had become a search. A way to teach me more about myself.
And just thinking about art that way made me realize that I also wanted to thank Miss Kuzkowski. I mean, if she hadn't given us the wacky assignment in the first place, I probably would still think of art as being just, you know, decoration.
So I decided, okay—I would at least try to explain what
I was thinking. First I wrote up my interview with Diane, then I tacked on a note for Miss Kuzkowski that said I needed to talk to her in person about something. And then I took out a fresh piece of paper and started writing down all my thoughts about art.
Now, maybe Miss Kuzkowski will understand what I'm trying to say, and maybe she won't. What I can almost guarantee, though, is that she won't agree.
After all, I'm a seventh grader. And her mentor, Tess? Well, she's got a Ph.D.
You just gotta hope that someday she'll also get some clothes.
TWENTY-FOUR
At school the next day, things were normal—quiet, calm, almost peaceful.
Which is to say, they were completely abnormal.
At least it wasn't weird running in to Casey—we just said hey to each other and kinda grinned. And I didn't even see Heather, so I think she was out on another one of her R&R days. They can mean big trouble for me, but you know what? I'm not worrying about it.
And it wasn't until lunch that it hit me that it wasn't just the kids at school that were mellow, it was the whole place. The teachers, the campus, the trash … I mean, wrappers and papers weren't whipping around campus like they had been all week. They were just lying on the ground, still.
And then I noticed that the trees weren't bending over sideways and the dirt from the fields wasn't tornadoing around. For the first time in weeks, there was absolutely no wind.
It was like the Big Bad Wolf had packed up his big bad lungs and gone home.
After school, Marissa and I rode to the mall together, but instead of hanging out to watch her play video games, I went around and picked up my twenty-four-hour holds and cruised home. And when I snuck through the apartment door and whispered, “Hi, Grams!” she looked up from her book and said, “You've been shopping?”
“Uh-huh. For you.”
“For … what on earth?”
I made her sit next to me on the couch, the bags right beside me. “Don't say no right away, okay?”
She just looked at me, worried.
“Here,” I said, handing over the first bag.
She opened it like it had a cobra inside. “Blue jeans?”
“That's right. And they go with …” I put the box from the second bag in her lap.