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R
ED STREAMERS HUNG FROM
the gray cafeteria ceiling, draped in between metallic pink hearts. I took a few pictures as several freshmen boys tried to jump up and pull the dangling hearts down, but the boys were too short and didn't even come close. Some people applauded their efforts while others booed, attracting the attention of one of the vice principals. The boys scurried away before they could get in trouble.

It was Monday, and Valentine's Day was less than a week away. Lan and I were eating lunch with Eden Alder, who was trying to sort through a stack of “Heart Grams,” her big fundraiser for the newspaper. She sold little heart-shaped ads, and people could write a few sentences to someone. The message would appear in a special section of the paper. Most of the messages were anonymous, but a lot of people bought them for their friends. Lan and I always got one for each other with a simple message, like “You Rock,” or something.

“I just cannot believe how many ads people bought for Tiffany,” Eden said as she flipped through a stack of paper slips, looking for mean or gross messages. There were always a few, and her job was to weed them out before the paper was pub
lished. She had missed an insult the year before, and Principal Carter had gone ballistic.

Lan rolled her eyes. “How many?”

“So far, twenty-seven. And I'm not done counting. We're going to have to add an extra page.”

Eden had been invited to the party so she could write about it for the paper, but when she found out that her loyal assistant, Austin, didn't get an invitation, she angrily confronted Tiffany. Eden said that if Austin wasn't at the party, she wasn't coming and, if she wasn't there, Tiffany could forget about having a feature article in the
Cleary Chronicle
. Tiffany backed down, and Austin received his invitation the next day. I wished that I had the clout to do that so I could demand that Lan be invited. Of course, I still didn't know why I had been invited in the first place.

“Twenty-seven? Is that some kind of record?” I asked.

“I think so. Trent usually gets a dozen, and he's always had the most.”

“What do the ads say?” Lan asked.

“They're stupid. ‘You're the best,' ‘You're so cool,' that kind of thing.”

“So lies, basically,” Lan muttered. Eden didn't seem to have heard her, but Eden was good at staying neutral, as long as it was a topic that didn't affect the paper.

I looked across the room at Trent's table and spotted Eli. Reva was sitting next to him, one hand running up and down his arm in a slow caress. I sighed. It didn't look like they had broken up, after all. I had selfishly hoped that their fight on Tuesday would be the end of them as a couple.

“Who are you looking at?” Lan asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, no one.”

Lan smiled. “Okay.”

“Later,” I whispered, shooting a glance at Eden. She seemed too immersed in her stack of Heart Grams to notice, though.

“I still have to turn in my Valentine's message,” I said to Eden.

“No, I've got it.”

I was confused. “I paid for it, but I haven't turned in the slip yet.”

Eden looked up, a red pen poised in her hand. “The ad for Lan, right? I saw it this morning.”

I frowned. “I haven't turned it in yet.”

Eden shrugged. “I guess someone else bought her a Love Gram, then,” she mumbled as she returned to reading her papers.

I looked at Lan. We usually knew ahead of time if someone was buying us an ad. Sometimes a group would go in and buy a message for someone to cheer them up, especially if one of our friends was immersed in the aftermath of a breakup, which happened a lot. I had a theory that guys purposely dumped their girlfriends just before Valentine's Day so they wouldn't have to buy them expensive chocolate or neon teddy bears or cheap, sparkly jewelry. A lot of couples seemed to fall apart around February 12, only to get back together a week later.

The lunch bell rang and we stood up and headed for the doors.

“Who do you think bought me a Love Gram?” Lan asked.

“Could be anybody,” I replied, but I suspected that Brady was making his first move.

As we were squeezing ourselves out of the narrow cafeteria doorway, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Actually, it was more like
a sharp poke, and at first I thought it was just part of the cattle mentality: someone from the back of the herd needed desperately to get to the front so they could use the bathroom before class started. I shifted to the side to let whoever it was get through before they were trampled or had an embarrassing accident.

“Ahem. Kate?”

I was out in the hallway now. Lan had already turned the corner on her way to fourth period English. It was still crowded, but at least I could no longer feel someone's breath on my neck. I turned around. Tiffany was standing there, causing a traffic jam just outside the cafeteria doorway. People maneuvered around her like ants trying to crawl around a rock. If it had been anyone else, the departing crowd would have shoved her aside with an annoyed grunt.

“Yes?” I wasn't sure if she was speaking to me, but she was just rooted there with Monica and Mallory close behind.

“First of all, I'm so glad that you can make it to my party,” Tiffany began. I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not. I glanced at Monica and Mallory. They weren't smirking or laughing, so I thought maybe Tiffany was being serious.

“And it's
so
nice of your dad to help out with security and all.” Tiffany began to twirl a strand of her shiny auburn hair. I was aware that people were looking at us. They were probably wondering what Tiffany had to say to me that was so important. Was she uninviting me to the party?

“I mean, keeping the roads safe is a
really
important job.” Tiffany gave me a wide-eyed look which I guess she thought made her look sincere. I knew she was trying to make a point, but I didn't get it yet.

“Right,” I said. I tried to calculate how many minutes I had until the bell rang. Three, maybe.

“But maybe you could do me a little favor? You know, as a
friend?
”

I immediately understood two things: one, that Tiffany had invited me to her party knowing that she would be asking me for something in return; and two, that this would be my one chance to secure an invitation for Lan. I tried to stand a little taller.

“Maybe,” I said, hoping I sounded bored and indifferent.

“Well, it's just that I'm sure the police department has
way
more important things to do than sit around by the side of the road waiting for speeding cars, right? I mean, there are real criminals out there.”

“There's a maniac spray-painting every building in town,” Mallory said. Monica was nodding like a bobblehead doll, although bobbleheads, I thought, somehow looked more intelligent.

“So maybe you could ask your dad to back off a little? I mean, my parents will be there, and we have our own security team, so it can't get
too
crazy, you know?”

I tried to appear naive yet serious. It's a difficult look to achieve because it involves furrowing your brow like you're thinking really hard and kind of biting your lower lip like you're uncertain about something important.

“I could probably do that,” I said slowly.

Tiffany smiled. “I knew you'd be cool about it.” She began to walk away. Monica and Mallory followed, their heels clicking against the tile floor.

“Of course, it might not be easy.”

Tiffany stopped and turned around. Her smile was plastered
to her face, but there was something about the way her eyes were slanted that told me she was not pleased. She walked toward me, almost stomping in her black suede heels.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I mean, my dad doesn't always listen to me. He may need some serious convincing.”

“And how can I help you with that?” Tiffany asked. I could tell she was seething. Her smile was fading, and her right eye twitched.

“Well, Lan is really good at talking to him. If she was going to the party, I know she could help me convince him.”

Something flickered across Tiffany's face. Monica's mouth hung open and Mallory was blinking like she had sand in her eye. It was like they were all in disbelief that lowly Kate Morgan had dared to ask for something from the mighty Tiffany Werner.

“I see,” Tiffany said carefully. “Well, I'll tell you what. If you can get Lan to back off during history class, maybe I can find one last invitation.”

“Good.”

“It may be tough, though.” Tiffany sighed. “My parents are being really strict about the number of people I can invite, and I'm already over the limit.”

“Yeah, my parents are strict, too,” I said. “Especially my dad.”

I felt like we were in some sort of duel and I was struggling to keep the upper hand. She wanted something from me and I wanted something from her, but I got the sense that she was trying to get what she wanted without coming through for me.

“I guess we'll see,” Tiffany said.

“I guess so.”

She walked away and I waited a minute before heading to class. We were going in the same direction and I didn't want it to look like I was following her.

I was thrilled—maybe I had gotten Lan an invitation, after all. I knew Tiffany was just using me. Of course, I also knew there was no way Dad would back down from watching the roads near Tiffany's party. But Tiffany didn't know that.

I met Lan at her car after school. I had the day off from work, and we had made plans to go to the mall. Lan had the heat blasting as I got in and I put my hands directly in front of the vent to warm up.

“I think I know how to get you invited to the party,” I told her as we sat at a red light. I described my encounter with Tiffany. “So all you have to do is not, you know, go after her during history class.”

“Is that all?” Lan said sarcastically.

“What's wrong?”

“She basically said the price of admission to her party is to smile and keep my mouth shut?”

I squirmed in my seat. Lan was not as happy as I thought she'd be.

“I guess,” I said. “I mean, it's just for a few weeks.”

Lan made a left onto the main road. I could see Something's Brewing in the distance. It looked like there was quite a line of cars pulling into the parking lot.

“I can't do that, Kate,” Lan was saying. “I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm not going to stop expressing my opinions just to make someone I detest look good.”

“I thought you were just ‘expressing your opinion' to tick her off. I didn't think it really meant something to you.”

“Well, maybe that's why I started doing it, but I was talking to Brady the other day, and he said—”

“Wait. When were you talking to Brady?”

“Before class on Friday. Anyway, he said…”

We were almost to Something's Brewing. There were a ton of cars in the parking lot and a line all the way around the building. I knew Bonnie and Eli would have more work than they could handle by themselves. I wondered if I should just ask Lan to drop me off.

“…that he's not going, either. In fact, Brady thinks his whole group is going to boycott the thing. And I, for one, am glad. Tiffany has no power if we don't give it to her….”

That's when I saw it. The cars surrounding Something's Brewing were not waiting in line for drinks. They had been drawn there by something else entirely.

“Lan, pull over,” I said. I was staring out the window and she looked over to see what had caught my attention.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed.

She pulled the car over to the side of the street because there was no room left in the parking lot. Lan turned off the ignition and we sat there, looking at the side of one purple wall. Only, it wasn't really purple anymore. Painted across the wall, covering it from top to bottom, was a single, lifelike gorilla.

“
L
OOK, THERE'S
T
RENT
and Brady,” Lan said, pointing to a group gathered in the parking lot of Something's Brewing. The guys were leaned up against a car, talking. Lan turned off the ignition and reached for the door handle. “Let's go.”

I wanted to see the gorilla painted on the building up close, but I also wanted to go inside. I saw Reva standing with the guys, hugging her arms to her chest in the cold.

“I think I'll just go inside and see Bonnie,” I said. “I'll meet you out back in a few minutes.”

We got out of the car. Lan headed for the crowd while I went around to the back door of Something's Brewing. I tried the handle but it was locked, which was unusual. Just as I was about to knock, it opened.

“Saw you coming,” Eli explained, letting me in. He looked exhausted. His hair was flat, like he'd been wearing a hat all day, and his eyes seemed kind of dull.

“Is she really upset?” I asked him. Moving from the chilly outside air into the sweet-smelling warmth of Something's Brewing was a welcome change.

“Bonnie? No, she's not upset.”

I found that hard to believe. Her business was her life, and now someone had defaced it. I was angry for her.

“Bonnie!” I called as I walked down the short hallway to the main room.

She turned around, a tall cup of coffee in each hand. Her apron was a little lopsided and her usually perfect hair was messy. She looked frazzled.

“Oh, Kate, I'm so glad you're here! It's been crazy. Could you make me two double espressos? Thank you, dear.”

I rushed over to the espresso machine while Eli helped Bonnie. When I glanced out the window, I couldn't see an end to the trail of cars winding around the building.

“It's been like this for hours,” Bonnie explained as she opened the cash register. “Some are here to look at the artwork, but nearly everyone who stops by is getting a drink.” She laughed. “We've done more business in two hours than we have in the past two days.”

I understood why increased business would make Bonnie happy, but I wondered how she felt about the gorilla splashed across the wall. Would she be angry after everyone left?

Eli and I worked like crazy for the next half hour. I forgot about Lan until I heard a knock at the back door. Eli ran to see who it was while Bonnie and I finished half a dozen cinnamon cappuccinos.

Lan walked in, but stood in the hallway so she wouldn't be in our way.

“One sec,” I told Bonnie.

“Of course, dear. You've been such a help.”

I apologized to Lan for making her wait. “I don't think I can go to the mall,” I said, trying to prevent a thick curl of
hair from falling into my face. “Bonnie needs all the help she can get.” I searched my pockets for a rubber band. Lan reached into her purse and handed me two bobby pins.

“It's no problem,” she said. “Actually, Brady and I thought we'd get something to eat. When do you think you'll be done? I can swing by and pick you up later.”

I pushed a bobby pin through my hair. “No idea. It could be an hour or more.” I wanted to ask her about Brady, but I didn't want it to be a rushed conversation.

“Kate, I can give you a ride,” Eli hollered.

“You don't have a car,” I hollered back. Eli handed a completed order to Bonnie and hurried over to me and Lan.

“I can use Brady's car. He lets me borrow it. He'll know where to hide the keys.”

Lan smiled. “Great. I'll let him know. Brady and I will take my car.”

“Tell him I'll bring it back tonight,” Eli said. He turned to me. “I owe you one, remember?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, but Eli was already back at Bonnie's side.

Lan nudged me. “Have fun,” she whispered with a smile.

I returned to my post at the espresso machine and watched from the window as Lan and Brady went to her car. They were walking in step with one another, their heads close like they were sharing a secret.

I also caught a glimpse of Reva. She was still standing next to Trent, but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking directly at me, her arms folded across her chest, a look of pure hatred darkening her face. I quickly looked away,
but I could still feel her staring at me. I shuddered. No one had looked at me like that before, and it gave me the creeps.

We worked at warp speed for the next hour. Eli was constantly running to the storeroom for more napkins or cups or lids, and we nearly ran out of caramel syrup, but things slowed down slightly after a while, and I began to relax. Reva was long gone, as was most of the high school crowd that had gathered outside Something's Brewing, but when a TV van pulled into the parking lot, I knew we needed to brace for another rush of customers.

Bonnie lit right up when she saw the news van. “Do I look okay?” she asked me. She fussed with her hair while I made sure her hand-knit sweater, which was the same shade of purple as the building, was free of lint. I wet a napkin and dabbed at a little spot of whipped cream on her sleeve.

“Perfect,” I said.

Bonnie looked around. “I hate to leave you two when we're so busy.”

Eli told her not to worry. “We've got it under control. Just get out there and start smiling.”

“I'm giving you both a raise,” she said as she rushed out the back.

I laughed. “I think we've earned it today.”

A steady stream of customers poured through the parking lot for the rest of the day. Bonnie gave an interview to the local news in front of the gorilla mural. A cameraman came inside the building for a few minutes, but I was too busy to really pay attention to him. He stayed in the tiny hallway, and I doubted the footage would air on TV.

I called my dad to let him know I would be home late, and
he told me not to worry. “You mom's working, too,” he explained. “So we'll eat late tonight.” He knew about the graffiti, of course, and had already spoken with Bonnie. “She didn't seem to mind it,” he said. “In fact, she didn't want to fill out a police report, but you know, it was procedure.”

I told him we were swamped but that I had a ride home. I didn't tell him who my ride was, though, and I think he assumed it was Lan.

Something's Brewing stayed open an extra hour that day. The local news did a live feed at six, and minutes later the phone was ringing from all the people who had seen it, including my mom.

“You were on TV!” she exclaimed as soon as I picked up the wall phone.

“Oh, no,” I said, immediately putting a hand to my hair. I knew it looked terrible.

“You looked fine,” she reassured me. “When will you be home?”

“About an hour, I hope.”

“See you then!”

I glanced at the clock. It was almost seven. We had served over a hundred customers in just three hours. I was spent, but Bonnie beamed with delight.

“That gorilla was more effective than any new sign I could have come up with,” she said.

“You're really not mad?” I asked. The extra business was great, but it wouldn't last. Would Bonnie want to get rid of it once things went back to normal?

“Have you looked at it? It's quite something.”

“I haven't had a chance,” I admitted. It was already dark
outside. I would have to wait another day to really get a good look at the mural.

We cleaned up quickly and the three of us left together. Eli and I waved as Bonnie hopped into her silver minivan and took off, still smiling. The only car left in the lot was an old burgundy sedan.

“We call it ‘the Beast,'” Eli joked. He opened the driver-side door and fished around under the seat, pulling out a handful of burger wrappers, half a CD and the car keys.

“I don't want to know what else is under there,” I said as I got in, brushing crumbs from the passenger seat with my hand. The inside of the car smelled like cinnamon air freshener and wet socks.

Instead of leaving the parking lot of Something's Brewing, Eli turned the car around so it faced the side wall. “What are you doing?” I asked.

He just smiled. “Giving you a better look.” He flipped on the headlights and suddenly, there it was: the gorilla.

I gasped. I had seen the same image on the school and at the tuxedo shop, but not like this—at night, illuminated so that there was nothing else to see except the perfect black paint.

I stared at it for a while, grateful that Eli wasn't talking. The gorilla was flawless. Better than flawless—the eyes had that liquid look to them, and the mouth seemed to curl faintly at one corner, as if it was caught just before a smile erupted on its face. I noticed something else, too—what looked like words in the lower-left corner, near one of the gorilla's feet.

“What does that say?” I asked Eli.

He leaned forward. “I don't see anything.”

I pointed. “Right there. I can see words.” I got out of the
car and knelt down by the wall. “Art lies,” I read aloud. I turned around, but Eli was still in the car, so I got back in.

“It says ‘Art lies.'”

“That's strange.”

I wondered if the same two words had been painted on the other murals. “Can we stop at the bank?”

“Which one?” Eli asked, shifting the car into Reverse.

“The one I haven't seen yet,” I replied. He understood, and soon we were headed toward the abandoned building.

We didn't talk much on the ride over. I glanced at the clock, knowing I had less than half an hour before I needed to be home. The bank wasn't far, though, and within minutes we were pulling into the empty parking lot. Eli drove around the building and parked in front of the mural, again using the headlights to light up the gorilla painted there.

“It's really something,” I murmured.

“When money speaks, the truth is silent,” Eli said, reading aloud the words painted above the gorilla's head.

“That sounds like a proverb or something,” I said. “Like the artist was quoting someone.”

I leaned forward in my seat so I could search for any words written into the gorilla's fur. I spotted them right away—the same words, painted in the same place near the feet:
Art Lies
. I pointed it out to Eli, who nodded. He seemed to be studying the painting just as closely as I was, as if it might hold other clues that we could find if we just stared hard enough.

“You know what's funny?” I said finally. The silence had started to become uncomfortable, and I wanted to break it.

“What's that?”

“My life is a lot like the bakery where my mom works.”

“Packed with refined sugar?”

I laughed. “No. It's just that everything seems to come in waves.” I explained how the store would get busy and hectic for an hour, then quiet and empty.

“Like right now, there's so much going on,” I said. “Everything in my life feels frantic, like one thing on top of another. I guess I'm wondering when it will slow down again.”

“Do you want it to slow down?” We were both still staring at the gorilla. It was so lifelike, I felt like it could really see us.

“No,” I said after a moment. “I think I like it like this.”

I sat back. Eli flicked off the headlights and we sat in the dark silence of Brady's car. I was about to comment on Lan and Brady going out to dinner together when Eli spoke up.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked softly.

It took me a second to register what he had just said. I turned to him, startled. I felt my heart beat faster as he looked at me. Even in the dark I could see his brown eyes and the soft smile on his face. I didn't say anything. Instead, I leaned closer to him. He put one arm against the small of my back, pulled me in and kissed me.

His mouth was warm and tasted like coffee and mint. Our kiss was slow and gentle and I felt like I was melting into him. My mind was racing. Here we were, kissing in Brady's car, parked at night behind the abandoned bank.

I pulled away abruptly.

“Are you okay?” Eli asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Kevin,” I said. It just popped out.

Eli frowned. “You were thinking about that guy you dated last year? The one who dumped you?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Not exactly.” I explained that Kevin and
I had once parked behind this same bank, quickly adding that nothing much had happened, and how he had broken up with me here, as well.

“So not the best place for our first kiss?” he asked. I was thrilled that he had referred to it as our first kiss, like there may be more in our near future, but the thought that had pulled me from him a moment earlier came crashing back to me.

“I didn't mean to say Kevin. I meant to say Reva.”

Eli looked down, but I continued talking.

“Kevin started dating someone before he broke up with me,” I explained. “That's what hurt—that he didn't have the decency to tell me it was over with us first. I don't understand what's going on with you and Reva, but if you haven't completely broken up with her, you need to before anything else can happen with us.”

“She knows it's over.” He looked me in the eyes. “We fight all the time. It's been over for a while.”

“Have you
told
her that?”

Lan told me once that guys always think the relationship is over before girls do. She said guys will start making plans and moving forward while girls think the relationship can still be salvaged. What girls interpret as a rough patch, guys see as the end.

Eli looked out the window. “It's complicated.”

“It always is.” I sighed. “I really like you, Eli. I want to be with you. But you need to talk with Reva and end things completely before we can be together.”

Part of me could not believe I was saying any of this. Reva hated me and here I was, trying to convince her boyfriend to
do the right thing when all I really wanted was to kiss him again. Another part of me knew that if I wanted to be with Eli, to really have something with him, then we needed to start off right, without a lot of baggage or loose ends.