The Art of Adapting (25 page)

“It is. Not a very effective means of travel, though,” Matt said.

Byron laughed, but he could see by Matt's face that he wasn't kidding. “No, it's not meant to be. More of a test of your strength, speed, and creativity. Each obstacle is like a puzzle you need to solve, only there's no one right answer. You can go over it, under it, around it, but you have to interact with it in some way, and you can't break stride, and we try not to do what everyone else has done.”

“So if I told you that all nine of you went over that railing, next time would you go under it?”

Byron turned to look at the railing beside the steps that they'd been launching across. “Sure,” he said, calculating how he'd do it.

“And the picnic table. Most of you slid across the surface. Only the man in the blue shirt jumped from one bench to the other without touching the table at all.”

Dale was the one in the blue shirt, Chelsea's ex-boyfriend and the leader of the group, and the one guy Byron both wanted to impress and show up.

“What else?” Byron asked.

“The fountain. The tree at the far end of the grass. The corner of the building there.” Matt pointed. “You all did the same thing. Everyone follows the leader. The blue shirt man. The big one. He's the leader?”

Byron shrugged. “Really, there isn't supposed to be a leader. It's an individual sport. Not a competitive one.” He was quoting a book he had at home. But he wasn't sure Dale saw it that way. Dale saw it as his world, his sport, his team.

Byron could see Matt calculating, pointing from object to object, designing a new course, moving his lips as he murmured the directions to himself.

“Okay,” Matt said. “Can I tell you the answer? Is that against the rules?”

“Nope,” Byron said. “Tell me.” He leaned against the truck and watched Matt point out a ballsy route he wasn't sure he could pull off. But it was worth a try.

“Do you have your phone?” Byron asked.

Matt held it out to him. “I have two hundred minutes of call time each month. Last month I only used sixteen minutes.”

“Does it have video? Can you film me?”

Matt fiddled with the phone and showed Byron that he was ready to shoot a video. Byron bolted from the truck at a dead run, the stairs in his sights. As he launched himself under the railing, barely skimming the concrete beneath, he heard Chelsea let out a cheer. He was up and over the steps in one move, as Matt had
suggested, saving his energy for the picnic table. He jumped onto the bench and flipped over the table, landing on the soft grass to one side. He did a forward roll across the bench, his momentum carrying him as he dropped to all fours and gripped the edge of the fountain, kicking his legs over his body. He spun horizontally, ended in a body roll across the grass, popped up just feet from the tree trunk. He launched upward, somehow managed to grasp the lowest branch, and swung himself toward the corner of the library, just at the right height for a wall jump back into the tree, this time grabbing a higher branch and swinging himself back toward the fountain. He landed solid on the concrete, finished a final cat pass across the edge of the fountain, and landed on the grass near the group.

He was winded and dizzy, but proud of his run. He flashed a smile at Matt, a good ending for the video. Then Chelsea took off toward him, cheering in her short blue shorts, for an even better finale. And then he spotted Betsy across the fountain, hands on curvy hips, lips curved into a smile, eyes cutting at Chelsea's approach. Byron didn't waste a second. He jumped up on the edge of the fountain and ran to Betsy, wrapped her in a hug, and, carried away on his high, ducked in for a kiss. She tipped her head back and grabbed his neck and he got lost in the softness of her lips, the whisper of her breath, her minty lip balm. When he pulled back they were both breathless and laughing, the whole crowd of guys was cheering, and Matt was still filming. There are good moments, and then there are perfect ones.

Betsy leaned back to look Byron over, and a wave of doubt washed over him. Then she smiled, shook her head, and punched him in the chest. “You really are a badass,” she said. She tipped her head back, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him in for another kiss.

Byron introduced her to the guys, proud to have a girl there just for him. Chelsea had disappeared, and that was for the best. Introducing them would've been awkward. Dale was ridiculously friendly toward Betsy, which was nice and put Betsy at ease, but Byron knew it was all about Chelsea. It didn't matter, though.
He was one of the guys now, on a college team with a college girl holding his hand. It was his birthday week, and he couldn't think of anything he wanted that he didn't already have in that moment.

Betsy and Byron took their time walking around campus after that. She gave him the full tour, showing him where she usually ate lunch, where her favorite spots were for resting between classes, where the best coffee cart was stationed every morning. Byron had never had coffee before, but he figured he better learn to like it as part of his new life.

Betsy took him to her dorm, an ancient concrete block that needed sprucing up. Her room was a square of four gray walls and thin brown carpet about the size of Byron's room at home, but there were two beds, two dressers, two desks, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and heaps and heaps of crap squeezed into the space. Byron could see why she liked coming home so much.

There was a little girl on one of the beds, with ink-black hair and pale skin, raccoon-eye makeup and tattoos covering both of her arms. She looked up when they came in but said nothing. She had earbuds in and was writing in a journal. She didn't look happy.

“And this is my roommate, Magda. She's a poet.” Betsy turned toward Byron and smirked for his benefit.

“Hey,” Byron said. Magda peered up at him and pulled out one earbud.

“What?” she said.

“I just said hi. I'm Byron.”

“Byron's an artist,” Betsy said. Magda's scrunched rodent face relaxed a little.

“What kind of art?”

“Mostly sketches. Some painting.”

“I mean what style? Realist? Abstract? Impressionist? Pop?”

Byron started laughing. “I don't know. Landscapes. People.”

“Still life? Fruit bowls?” Magda asked. She seemed to be teasing him.

“No fruit bowls. And not still life. I like trying to capture people in motion.”

“He's in the parkour club,” Betsy said. “So he draws their stunts and stuff.”

“Cool,” Magda said. “Which classes have you taken so far?”

Byron hesitated, looked at Betsy. She smiled and shook her head.

“He doesn't go here. So I was thinking maybe you could let us into the art building. Show him how awesome it is. Maybe help me convince him to . . . transfer.”

Magda looked over her journal, sighed dramatically, and shrugged. “Yeah, sure.” She put on some weird rubbery-looking black boots and led the way, ring of keys dangling from her hand.

“Magda works in the printing press side of the art building, but she has access to the whole thing,” Betsy said.

“Book art, not printing press,” Magda said, laughing. Out in the sun Byron noticed she had a crystal nose piercing, and that under the thick black eye makeup and unflattering hair she was actually kind of pretty.

“She keeps explaining the difference, but I have no idea what she's talking about,” Betsy said.

Magda led them into a dark, quiet hallway that echoed their footsteps. The walls were lined with glass cabinets showcasing various art projects: metal sculptures, blown glass, papier-mâché, little figures assembled from toothpicks, bottle caps, and wire, a heap of multicolored cloths that vaguely resembled a human in a fetal position.

“This stuff's crazy,” Byron said. Magda shrugged, unimpressed, and waved him on. She led him to a case of small books with natural-fiber covers decorated in pressed flowers, hand-painted and stitch-bound and full of thick pages of calligraphy.

“That one's mine,” she said. “Book art. Not printing press.” She nudged Betsy and they both giggled. They'd neared the end of the hallway, where the room opened up into a warehouse-sized space of sculptures and paintings: colored plastic pieces hanging from the ceiling like a giant child's mobile, greasy metal car parts in a maze of small shiny mirrors in one corner, an endless spool of unraveled film in another corner, and colorfully decorated pottery lining one wall.

“Holy crap,” Byron said. “I had no idea there was this much . . . art in the world.”

Both girls nearly dropped to the floor cackling. Byron didn't care. He roamed the art projects, reading the little placards that told about the student, the inspiration, the materials used. He left the giggling girls behind and walked into a room of possibility. There were epic canvases of enormous paint splatters, solid hues with just a hint of another color in the right light, tightly controlled strokes of razor-sharp features that suggested an old man's face, long loose lines of pastels that gave the impression of a woman and child blending into flowers in a breeze, exaggerated cartoonish characters amid stark crooked buildings. Byron was speechless. He didn't know how much time passed, but at some point Betsy appeared beside him. She took his hand.

“Badass enough for you?” she asked. Byron nodded. He wasn't sure what all he was seeing, but he had no doubt this was the world for him.

“Thank you,” he said.

Magda left them to it. After a final tour Byron hugged and kissed Betsy outside the art building. He didn't want to leave her or campus or the feeling of students here to party and make friends and fall in love and push themselves and learn about things they never even knew existed. He hated the thought of heading back to his dull old ill-fitting life of high school drama and pointless classes and, worst of all, no Betsy. But she had a class to go to and Byron had Matt, still sitting in the parking lot by the commons, waiting for him. He'd tried to send him home, but Matt had insisted on waiting. He said it was time for Byron to try freeway driving anyway.

“You get it now, right?” she said. “You're an artist. All the rest is part of who you are, but the art, that's the core.”

Byron nodded, kissed her again. “I get it,” he said. “I never would've known if you hadn't shown me this.”

“You would've figured it out, but I'm happy to help.”

“I can't believe I get to kiss you now,” he said.

Betsy started laughing. “You're adorable,” she said. Byron
didn't want to be adorable. But if it meant he got to kiss Betsy some more, then he'd take it.

“When can I see you again?” he asked.

Betsy shrugged, fluffed her hair. She picked up her backpack and smiled at him. “We'll figure something out,” she said. Byron wasn't sure if she was being flirty and coy, or blowing him off. He felt a surge of panic, like maybe she was already leaving him behind, ready to move on to some other project more interesting than showing a high school kid what art was.

“Okay,” he said, hoping she couldn't see his worries.

She turned like she was ready to go, then looked back at him. “What's the story with that girl? The short shorts.”

Byron shook his head. “Chelsea. Dale's girl. She likes to flirt with me to make him jealous, but there's nothing between us. Just a game with him. Hopefully you put it to rest today.”

Betsy nodded. She looked very serious. “I'm not interested in being someone's plaything,” she said.

“Me, either,” he said. “I don't feel like that about you.”

“How do you feel about me?” she asked, stepping very close to him.

“Like I kind of love you,” he said. She blinked and her mouth fell open. He'd done it. He'd said it. He ducked and kissed her, long and hard, then backed off. “How badass is that?” he asked. He felt giddy, weightless, like he might float right up to the sun. She was blushing, holding her breath. He backed away until he ran into some guys playing hacky sack in his path, then turned and ran, full of fear and power and more exhilarated than he'd ever felt.

When Byron made it back to Matt's truck he was too spacey to drive. Too tired from the Rory Burger and hard workout and too high on loving Betsy and art. Matt just shrugged and agreed to drive. On the drive home, as Byron nursed a sore hamstring, Matt rattled off modifications to the route Byron had tried.

“You're smaller and faster than the other guys, but they're stronger. You can't jump as high as the blue shirt guy, but you can swing your body farther when you use your arms, like in the tree.”

“His name's Dale,” Byron said. “The blue shirt guy. The leader.”

Matt shook his head. “You're the leader now.”

“Really, there isn't a leader . . .”

“There's always a leader,” Matt said. And of course he was right. Dale had given Byron a hard time about the flip over the picnic table, saying parkour wasn't about showboating, and flips had no place in it. But the other guys thought the flip was awesome. So maybe the other guys weren't following Dale's lead as much as they used to. Byron smiled and stretched his leg, massaging his pulled muscle.

“Okay, enough about parkour. Can we talk more about art?” Byron said.

Matt nodded. “Okay. I like art better. Can I show you the tadpoles?”

Byron laughed. Matt was a nutty conversationalist.

“Yeah. Tadpoles and art. Let's do it.”

Between Nick, Mitch, and Abbot, Lana had realized two things about herself. One, that the sleeping romantic in her had been reawakened. And two, that she wanted to be in better shape for whoever might actually see her naked again someday. She called her friend, neighbor, and former walking pal Camilla and left a desperate message: “I'm getting fat, Camilla. I need your help.” Camilla called back laughing, promising to make Lana feel thin by wearing bright purple leggings that showed off her cellulite.