Fan Art (10 page)

“Eden?” I ask.

“Yeah.” She turns in her swing.

“Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“What? That you’re gay? It’s a little late for that.” She says this with a laugh.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Um, dot. Dot. Dot.”

“Eden?”

“Everyone knows, Jamie. I don’t have to tell them.”

“Not everyone,” I say, thinking of Mason.

“Almost everyone?”

“I haven’t told Mason,” I admit.

“Well, hurry up and tell him.”

I shake my head. She doesn’t understand. In fact, she’s probably one of those people who thinks coming out is as easy as a circling a day on a calendar. But coming out to Mason? Not exactly my idea of a national holiday. It looms like a dentist appointment—a dentist appointment where I’d have eight cavities, need a palette expander, a root canal, and my wisdom teeth pulled.

“You’re afraid he’ll reject you,” Eden says.

It isn’t a question.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

SIXTEEN

Wednesday, the
Gumshoe
staff has planned
to meet in Dr. Taylor’s classroom during lunch to go over
Gumshoe
edits.

“How’s it going?” I ask Michael
as I plunk my computer on a desk. He and I are the first ones here.

“Good.” He inhales. “But the limo thing, well, I did the math. It’s pretty expensive.”

“Yeah?” I ask. I’d almost forgotten about the limo. And now that Michael and I have a cheese grater in the middle of our quasifriendship, the thought of spending an evening with him and Lia makes me feel like I just ate too much school pizza.

“We’ve got three couples. But splitting the cost four or five ways would be more affordable.”

I nod in agreement, but Michael doesn’t seem to notice.

He’s counting off couples on his fingers. “Lia and I,
Holland and DeMarco, and you and Mason.”

I fight back the crawl of a hot blush. “And Eden and Bahti,” I say to correct his mistake.

“Eden and Bahti?” Michael repeats. And without missing a beat, “So we do have four couples—perfect!”

By the way he says this, I think he’s still confused. But I give him props for not going all Lia on the idea of another same-sex couple. “I’m going with Eden, and Mason’s going with Bahti.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Of course.”

“So, should we pay you now, or on prom night?” I ask.

“Let me get you the number for four couples, then you can pay me back whenever.”

“Cool.” I smile as I open my laptop and feel a little forgiveness form in my chest. Michael isn’t an awful person. We just disagreed. And I need to get over it.

I promised Mason we’d go get fitted for tuxedos after school, so we are inching along through mall traffic, trying to find a men’s clothing store neither of us have been to before. He’s humming the tune to “I Remember Clifford,” the piece I’m playing in the concert next week, and drumming his fingers on the dash to keep the beat. I’d been a little late getting out of band, and he had been listening to us practice.

“What color is Bahti’s dress?” I ask. During art today,
Eden had shown me a picture of a dress in a prom magazine. It was neon pink. Then she proceeded to tell me that I was required to wear the same color tie and cummerbund. Having seen my fair share of the color on account of my sisters, I protested. “No pink!”

Eden had exploded in a fit of giggles and nearly fell off her chair. “I’m kidding,” she said when she finally caught her breath. “This isn’t my dress. Mine’s black with white trim.”

“Cornflower,” Mason says.

“Cornflower?” I ask. “What’s cornflower?”

“Sort of blue sort of lavender—that’s what she said.”

“Not bad,” I say, and repeat Eden’s joke.

It follows us into the store, Mason pointing out pink things as we browse.

“Not bright enough,” I tell him about a shiny vest.

“How about this?” he asks, pointing to a Boise State orange tuxedo. “I bet we can order one in pink.”

The thing is so hideous it has me running back to the rows of safe black jackets. I find a salesman and ask which ones are rentals.

“Prom?” he asks.

“Yeah. I want something, um—” My brain freezes. He’s classically handsome—square jaw, blue jean eyes. And very well dressed. “Um, traditional. Black and white.”

The sales guy juts his chin at Mason, who is still
checking out the orange tux. “Good choice. Your date will look fab in color, but it’ll just wash you out.”

“Um, yeah, no. He’s not my date.”
More like, I wish he was my date.

The salesman lowers his voice. “Too bad.”

I look back at Mason. He has the orange jacket on over his black They Might Be Giants T-shirt and is tugging at the lapels. He tilts his head and does a bad Elvis impression in the mirror. He looks ridiculous.

“He sure is cute,” the salesman says with a tsk.

My head jerks in his direction and back to Mason. And, yes, in his own geek-in-black-plastic-glasses way, he
is
cute. I feel a now-familiar tug at my heart. “Yeah.”

“So,” sales guy says. “Let’s get you measured.”

His fingers touch my shoulders as he holds a tape measures to the seams of my shirt, then they brush my skin as he measures my neck and arms, and by the time he’s measuring the outside seam of my jeans I find myself humming “I Remember Clifford” to divert my attention from the process. Then I shrug a black jacket over my shoulders and the sales guy smooths it into place. He checks the length of the sleeves and nods as if he’s satisfied.

I look in the mirror. Smile so my teeth show—perfectly straight and still strange to me, even though it has been two years since I got my braces off. The jacket looks good. I button it, then unbutton it. I put on a serious face
and say to myself, “Bond, James Bond.”

Mason appears in the mirror behind me. He has on a white jacket this time and a blue bowtie flopping over his shirt collar. He draws a fake pistol from the waistband of his jeans and aims it at me in the mirror.

I reach out, grab his wrist.

And he bursts out laughing and wriggles free. “Very 007.”

“Like you can talk?” I tell him, and sing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg. . . .”

He puffs up his chest, straightens his jacket in the mirror, and ignores me. “I think I look good in cornflower.”

I stare at his reflection. He could wear any color with that jacket and look amazing. The crisp white fabric makes his shoulders look broader, his skin glow like warm honey, and his curls shine inky indigo. Sales guy was right. He is cute. Dreamy even.

Even if I shouldn’t be thinking about it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

SEVENTEEN

I am armed with a sixteen-ounce
caramel mocha when I show up at my mom’s office on Thursday afternoon. I am eager to put
Gumshoe
to bed—i.e., getting the files ready for the printer—tomorrow at four p.m.

But first, I have to give it a good long look. The group of us has been editing onscreen, and with how puny my laptop is, we could have missed a comma, an apostrophe, or a dozen. I don’t want to hear about that from Dr. Taylor, so I’m printing a copy and inspecting it under the fluorescent lights.

“Hey there,” Mom greets me. She has a pencil behind one ear and a roll of blueprints under one arm. “You look ready to work.”

“Gonna finish it tonight if it kills me.”

“The back office is all yours. Let me know if you need the big table, okay?”

I nod. Mom doesn’t usually let me do school stuff here during office hours, but today is an exception. “Thanks.”

I plug in my computer, connect to the network, and select print. The printer hums to life in the next room and I hear the first page spit out. The cover, with its painting of a koi pond populated by tangerine-colored fish, is vivid, whereas the image on the back—a photo of a girl sitting on a pedestrian bridge over the Boise River—is more subdued. The paint on the bridge had faded in the sun, almost matching her copper-colored curls. Both the fish and the girl had been voted favorites, but the fish won out because of the title of the piece, “Decoys.” It went with our detective theme. And, in the end, the fish were a better cover.

I run my finger over the date and price. Four dollars. That alone was depressing. A year’s worth of killing ourselves for four dollars—four thousand dollars if we sold them all. But we probably wouldn’t. I think we sold about three hundred last year. Then we used some to apply for the award, and donated a bunch to other schools’ libraries. That was why we needed funding from the school. From taxpayers.
Gumshoe
wasn’t making a profit at four bucks a pop.
Why isn’t it five dollars? Or ten?

It takes me two hours to proofread every page, and another half hour to make the changes. Mom comes in
and looks at the pages spread out in front of me. “It looks great, honey.”

“Thanks.”

She gives my shoulders a squeeze. “I’m proud of you.”

“Enough,” I say, teasing.

“Never,” she replies, and hugs me again. “Lock the door when you leave.”

I click print again. While I wait, I put the marked-up pages in the recycling bin under the desk. From the shadows, a black-and-white sketch catches my attention. I pull the paper out from under the pages I just put in the bin.

It’s a page of Challis’s short—the one with the party invitation in the envelope and the little heart floating up. My heart feels warm in my ribs, like I am standing in a sunny window, as I read over the speech bubbles:

               
“But not me. It’s okay.”

               
“Just because I didn’t have your address. Here.”

Then, like algebra with Mr. Middlebrook, pieces of a plan begin to fall into place in my mind. I click into InDesign, find the pages from an old document, and copy them into my new one. After which, the document has an odd number of pages, something that doesn’t work when you’re laying out a magazine. And I know who can help
me even them back up again. Scrolling through my contacts on my cell phone, I find Eden’s number.

“Jamie!” she answers. “Did you get my corsage?”

“Yeah,” I say absentmindedly, even though I didn’t. And prom is Saturday.

“Can you get a phone number for me?” I ask.

“Sure,” she agrees before I tell her whose number I’m looking for.

Then, after I tell her, she asks, “What’s this about? Prom stuff?”

“Sorta,” I answer. “I want to ask her something.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

EIGHTEEN

Prom day is finally here. I
have showered, shaved, and found a matching pair of black socks. I’m working on buttoning the starchy shirt when one of the twins bangs on my bedroom door. The accompanying yelps tell me it’s Ann Marie.

I bend down to twin level, and then open the door. “Hi, Annie M.”

She’s wearing a tutu, a red Supergirl cape, and one of Mom’s high-heeled shoes. A purse swings in the crook of her arm. The other shoe is abandoned in the hallway. She flings her arms around my neck and that’s when I see my mom aiming her smartphone at us, obviously making a video.

“Ooff!” I say, and let Ann Marie knock me over.

She lands safely on my chest and crawls up me on all fours, losing her shoe. She kisses my face with a-little-too-wet kisses as Mom towers over us with the phone.

“Where’s Elisabeth?” I ask.

“Waiting to make her entrance,” Mom says. “We’re playing dress up, in honor of prom.”

“I noticed,” I say, sitting back up and cradling Ann Marie like a baby. She screeches and wiggles to an upright position on my lap.

“Elisabeth,” I call through the open door.

She doesn’t quite get the concept of making an entrance but rather runs down the hall with her arms flapping like she’s about to take off.

“Whoa,” I tell her. “I want to see how pretty you look.”

She screeches to a halt and stands still, her fingers twitching with the effort. She has on a purple satin dress-up gown over rainbow leg warmers and a pillowcase cape. A rhinestone tiara slides down her forehead and lands on her nose like sunglasses.

“Wow!” I say. “You look like a prom queen!” I hold out my free arm for a hug. She takes off her tiara and runs to me. Holding them both, I notice that Ann Marie is working up a pout. “And,” I tell her, “you look like a superhero princess.”

“And you need to finish getting dressed,” Mom says. She puts down her phone and helps me into my vest and jacket. I have the clip-on rent-a-tie, but I also bought a real bow tie. Mom sees it and exclaims, “Very classy!”

“Not that I know how to tie it.” I figured if I couldn’t
tie it, I’d wear it loose and pretend it was on purpose. The casual look. To go with my footwear. Converse. Of course.

“Let me,” she says.

So I sit on the edge of my bed and watch Mom’s face frown with concentration as her fingers work the loops and knot. At last she smiles, satisfied. Her eyes go a little misty and she kisses my cheek. “You look just like your father.”

I guess I do, but I haven’t seen him in years, so my memories are faded at the edges.

“We were your age when we met,” she says. “And he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

I press my hand over hers for a moment. “And Frank?” I ask.
Frank isn’t beautiful.

She shrugs. “Frank’s a good man. But he’s not you father—nothing ever quite compares to the first time you fall in love.”

I feel a blush creep up my neck. I study the creases on my slacks, the hole in my sock.
Some things I just don’t want to know.