Fan Art (26 page)

“Sure,” she says, and walks to the cash register. She punches a few keys and says, “A dollar six.”

I hand her the five and she counts out my change.

“You need a bag?”

I shake my head and take the change and my receipt.

“What’d you get?” Eden asks from her seat on the floor.

“Nothing,” I say, but show her the quarter-size button.

“Pretty,” she says with a smile. “And so not nothing.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FORTY-ONE

“You can answer that,” Eden tells
me when my phone rings.

“But—”

“Here.” Eden grabs my phone.

“Good afternoon,” she answers like a secretary. “Jamie Peterson’s phone.”

She listens for a moment, then asks me, “Where the hell are you?”

“Downtown, with you,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “I thought you wanted me to lie.”

I take the phone back.

“You’re with Eden?” Mason asks, sounding a little wounded.

“We were going to study at Flying M, but the market’s going on,” I explain.

“So we’re shopping,” Eden says.

“Yeah, um,” Mason says. “I was wondering if you
wanted to catch a movie.”

Eden wiggles like a happy puppy.
Yes
, she mouths through a big grin.

But I feel kind of bad, dumping her for him. And I’m not sure I want to be alone with him. “Can Eden come?” I ask.

Eden’s face switches channels. She shakes her head.

I shoot her a give-me-a-break look as Mason says, “Yeah, that’d be great. Meet you there? I’ve got my mom’s car.”

Back in my car, Eden says she shouldn’t be chaperoning our date.

“It isn’t a date. Besides, I was avoiding him,” I tell her. “Until you answered my phone.”

“You aren’t good at avoiding people,” she says. “Especially Mason.”

I sigh. She’s right. Part of me can’t wait to see him, can’t wait to feel his fingers rub my head as he messes up my hair.

“So you gonna talk to him? About what you said in government?”

I wonder, briefly, how she knows. But remember everyone knows. “Um, no.”

“But what if this is
the date
? What if he does one of these?” She yawns and stretches, letting her fingers fall on the back of my neck.

“Why would he do that?” I ask.

“Um, because he likes you?”

We just went over this. We agreed to drop it. I sigh and decide to put an end to this conversation. “I saw him kiss a girl. On the mouth. With—never mind.”

I don’t need to look at Eden to know she’s shocked. “He was sitting in a tree? With who?”

“Bahti.”

“No way!”

“Yes way.”

“Not important.” Eden dismisses my reasoning. “Lots of gay boys kiss girls. It’s lips-are-lips logic.”

I’ve never heard of that. “I don’t kiss girls,” I tell her.

“That’s because you’re saving yourself.”

“No,” I say, and almost say exactly why I don’t kiss girls—it’s gross—but stop before I hurt her feelings. “I don’t like lip gloss.”

“Maybe Bahti wasn’t wearing lip-gloss. . . .” Eden trails off.

Mason meets us with an ear-to-ear grin. He’s wearing a cowboy-inspired plaid shirt that’s a little tight across his shoulders—something that didn’t migrate from Gabe’s side of the closet in time—and cargo shorts.

My stomach does a little dance—happy and sickening—and I smile back.

“Jamie!” he says, giving me a hug-slash-thump on the back that has Eden shooting me I-told-you-so glances
over her shoulder as we walk toward the theatre.

“Alien invasion?” Mason asks, stopping to read the movie titles on the marquis. “Or rom-com?”

“Aliens,” I answer before Eden has a chance to. She’d probably choose the romantic comedy and try to make this into that date that’s never going to happen.

Although, contrary to my not-a-date plan, I do bum some money for a ticket and a soda off of Mason, but I’ll pay him back.

Mason is in his movie zone and I am in mine. He’s got his large bucket of popcorn, extra butter, on his lap and an orange soda in a cup holder on the far side. I’m slouched low with my sneakers wedged between the seats in front of us, sipping on my soda while the aliens plot to take over the planet. Eden is sitting on my other side, snuggled deep in her seat and leaning close to me. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses—probably because she doesn’t see to many rated R-movies and these aliens are creep-tastic.

I steal a handful of popcorn from Mason without asking and eat it all at once. Then I focus on the movie, secretly wishing that the cute guy won’t bite the dust or make out with the hot chick.

Cute guy is frying aliens with his laser gun when Mason’s bare arm brushes mine. It zaps me out of the moment and into the next galaxy.

My heartbeat quickens. I jerk away.

“Dude,” Mason says. “That scared you?” He means the slimy alien that just jumped up behind the cute guy in the movie, not the touch of his arm.

But I just nod.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FORTY-TWO

Our government exam is on Tuesday
afternoon, so I know I’ll see Mason at school. Basically, we haven’t been alone together, so my plan is working. We haven’t talked about my declaration or about
Gumshoe.
And that’s okay with me.

I’m putting my notebook and my phone in my locker—we can’t have anything in the exam room but pencils and a water bottle—when Mason plops down on the floor at my feet.

He leans back against the lockers and says, “I’m starving.”

“Hey.”

“You hungry?” he asks, and opens a plastic bag from the grocery store where his mother works.

“Yeah,” I say. Stupidly, the cafeteria is closed during exam week, and I forgot about it. So I didn’t have lunch.

Mason pulls out package of tortilla shells and another
of sliced cheese. He’s beginning to look like a godsend in a gray mechanic’s shirt. He spreads the plastic bag on the floor and puts his loot on top of it. He adds a bottle of orange soda, an apple, and a can of chiles.

I sit cross-legged on the floor, facing him.

He folds a piece of cheese into a tortilla and takes a bite.

I help myself to one, then ask about the can of chiles. “How are you gonna get that open?”

“Pocket knife,” he mumbles through the food in his mouth.

“A knife? In school? Are you crazy?”

He is. He shifts and pulls a Swiss Army knife from his pocket.

I look up and down the partially empty hall.

“They aren’t gonna do anything,” he tells me. “It’s the last exam.”

I give him a look. He might not have been in Principal Chambers’s office five times in the last two weeks, but I have.

“And, if they do, they’ll have to find someone else to speak at graduation.” He opens a little hook-shaped device from the knife and begins wiggling it around the rim of the can.

I watch in wonder. I’d never seen a can opened without a can opener. “I didn’t know you were a Boy Scout.”

He peels the lid back and fishes a pepper out with his
fingers. He makes another taco.

Then something he said sinks in. “Wait, you’re really speaking at graduation?” I ask.

“Salutatorian.”

“What are you gonna say?”

“Thanks, everyone, for slacking off this year and making me do this crappy job.”

“Huh?”

“I have no idea how I ended up second in the class,” he says. “Last semester I wasn’t even in the running. I mean, I’m in Mr. Purdy’s government class with you.”

“Um, thanks?”

“It’s not AP,” he explains. “You have to take all AP classes to get a perfect GPA.”

I nod. I had only AP calc, and it threatened to bring my grades down, not up.

“So a bunch of people must have screwed up last semester, or I’d never be where I am—not with a regular class.” He takes a swig of soda and hands me the bottle.

“Last semester?” I take a drink. “That was when the flu hit during exam week.”

Mason slaps his knee. “You’re right! Everyone was sick.”

“I was.”

“So I owe my class rank to the the flu?” Mason says. “Nice.”

“Does Bahti know?” I ask. Because she’s gonna know.
At graduation.

“I sure as hell didn’t tell her. It’s not like I’m going to Berkley,” he says.

There’s a sarcastic tone in his voice, and I know he’s kidding. But I can’t help thinking,
Why not? If you’re so smart, why not?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mason says, pulling another dripping chile from the can and adding it to his third taco.

I play dumb.

“I
want
to go to WSU, not some hoity-toity Ivy League school. Not for undergrad.”

That’s right. He’s going to grad school.

“Besides,” he says with a gooey, cheesy grin. “This way we get to go to college together.”

I smile back, my chest as light as a helium balloon.

Then, like a pin to my solar plexus, Mason asks, “You sell a lot of
Gumshoe
s?”

I deflate then mumble, “More than last year.”

“It was the graphic short, wasn’t it?”

I shrug then take a bite of taco shell and cheese.

“Jamie?”

My teeth clamp down on the inside of my cheek. I yelp in surprise.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod and cradle my face.

“It was good,” Mason says.

My mind whirs, trying to catch his meaning.

“Challis’s story?” he prompts.

“Not stellar,” I say, trying to throw him off my tracks. “Maybe a little lacking, plot wise.”

He looks confused. “You got a week of detention for something you didn’t even like?”

Damn it, he’s persistent.
I try another tactic. “Challis worked really hard on it, and I didn’t want to let her down.”

His eyes catch mine, hot-fudge pools that seem to say,
Talk to me.

“She’s a little weird,” I say about Challis because I can’t talk about myself. “But we’re sort-of friends—she’s in my art class—and I sort of asked her to draw me a story—told her I’d get it—”

“Jamie,” Mason gently interrupts my babbling. “You’re sort-of friends with everyone.”

“But I didn’t know what the comic was about until after I promised,” I say.

“Yeah?” It sounds like a question.

“Yeah,” I scoff, because that is the truth, the very last shred of it, but the truth nonetheless.

He smiles sadly and shakes his head.

He knows I’m lying about not liking it.

Mason stops pushing. “I wouldn’t want Challis to have it out for me, either.”

An Elegy to Lincoln High

by Brodie Hamilton

The stadium lights fade to blue

as night reclaims its rightful place—

the game played, the season over.

Six wins. Three losses.

My jersey no longer mine,

passed on to the next guy,

my seat in the cafeteria,

my locker and textbooks, too.

Old people say these are

the best days of our lives,

the times we’ll always remember—

as if the rest of life sucks.

Jealous people say

jocks like me peak in high school—

and end up selling mattresses,

cell phone plans, or used cars.

But I say farewell, Lincoln High.

Thanks for the football,

the rockin’ group of friends,

and the beautiful girls—

you know who you are.

Thanks for the starting gate,

the push out the door,

the drive to do something better,

bigger, and to leave you in the dust.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FORTY-THREE

Graduation is on Wednesday afternoon at
the big basketball stadium at Boise State.

I’m all decked out in a shirt and tie, the dress shoes my mom bought me when I told her I was wearing my Converse, and a black graduation gown that reminds me of a Hogwarts robe. I have my trumpet. (The band is playing the national anthem.) And my parents have successfully herded the twins into both dresses and their car seats.