The Earth Painter (17 page)

I walked back to the Bantam Chef. Anthony was sitting alone at a table shoveling down a plate of barbeque as fast as he could. He spotted me and motioned for me to join him without slowing down. I walked over and plopped down at his table.

“This is only my second day, but as far as I know they don’t have a time limit. You can take time to taste it before you swallow.”

“No I can’t. My mom sent me here to give you these.” He handed me a manila folder. “She’s serving meatless raw veggie and spelt burgers for dinner. I need to shovel this down before she suspects I’m eating an unauthorized meal.”

I flipped the folder open. “What is it?”

Anthony chugged down a glass of tea before he spoke. “
It’s
soil sample records from back when the school was built in the fifties. There was an unknown trace mineral then, too. So in her mind, it proves whatever is in the well is safe or at least doesn’t pose an immediate risk to the students.”

I flipped through the documents trying to make it out, but it was all geological jargon. “Why doesn’t she present it herself? I’m sure she can understand all this better than I can.”

“She’s trying not to look like the hippie the board thinks she is,” he said just before inhaling a piece of barbeque bread.

“Why do they think that she’s a hippie?”

“Because she’s a hippie…. When she left the big law firm and married my all natural stepdad, she got a bit extreme. She ran for the school board and would show up dressed in African style robes and propose things like having the schools grow their own organic gardens and that the students
be
required to take a horticulture class each day to care for it. She said it would supply fresh food for the school without affecting the budget. They started treating her like a joke after that. When she had my sisters and gave them names with real meaning…” he emphasized it by making quotation signs with his hands, “she wanted to change mine to Trust, but I refused to go along with it. Now she’s trying to be taken seriously by playing it a little more standard and normal, but she still wants to bring environmental awareness in, bit by bit.”

Shelby walked up just as Anthony was jumping up to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and ran out the door.

“This was the longest day” Shelby said as we headed for the door. “I’m going out with Brad tonight. Seeing him always makes things better.”

“Could you pick me up and drop me off at the school? I’m supposed to meet up with some others there.”

“Sure. Mom thinks I’m going to a movie with you anyway.”

“What’s your mom got against Brad?”

“They work together. He’s older than me. I don’t turn eighteen until this summer so if she found out, she could get the cops involved. She says he acts just like my dad did when they were
younger. She’s never been woman enough to admit that she’s the reason he would get so mad. Ugh…. I don’t want to talk about her right now. It makes me too angry.”

We arrived at my house, and I jumped out of the car. “See you in a little while.”

Mom and Dad were gone to a cookout at my aunt’s up at Chimney Rock. Dad had left me a note. I guess Mom was still too mad to text me.

I was kind of surprised when I went to my room. I’d expected Mom to have at least primed over my beautiful walls. But no, my Charleston was still there. I sat on my bed and looked out over my beautiful sea. I breathed in deeply and let it out. I could feel the weight of the day exit with the breath. Theo was right. I did need a place like this—a place to calm me.
My special place.
Why could he see that and my own mother couldn’t?

“You look nice,” Shelby said as I got in her car.

“Thanks.
You, too.”
But she always did. She was almost as meticulous about her appearance as my mom.

“So what’s going on at the school with the drama gee
…
I mean kids.”

I pretended not to hear that slip up.
“Just hanging out in the auditorium.
You know… to bond.”

“Cool. You know we always do the hair and makeup for the big production. I could give you a spray tan. I’m taking a class one weekend to learn how.”

“Thanks, but it’s a renaissance play. Pale was kind of the thing then.”

“What time can you come by to get me?” I asked, getting out at the school.

“It’s a school night so I’ll be back by 10:00? We’re going to a party in a field over in Gaffney. Any later than that and my mom flips out.”

I waited for Shelby to drive off before I snuck into the auditorium and up to the catwalk. I walked in, and it looked like a night club with all the lightning flashing. Bio and Geo were gawking at the sky disapprovingly and talking to Theo and Walden.

“Physics isn’t going like this at all. This isn’t a place to play cards. How are we to concentrate with all this nonsense?” Bio’s hands were on his hips holding back his suit jacket.

Geo sat on one of the chairs as if to check the place out. “Those flashes are too distracting. They’ll make a glare on the cards,” his bass voice boomed.

They still hadn’t noticed me. Theo smirked as Walden brushed her shoulder against his and winked. I was standing just inside the doorway trying to decide if I was going to stay, when I heard a woman’s voice behind me.

“No! No! Hell No!”

I turned around to see a mocha colored woman with one hand on her hip and one waving in the air. Her blondish hair matched her golden strappy fitted dress that stopped just above the knee.

“Physics!”
Theo shouted and rushed to her, brushing past me. “We were just talking about you.”

The woman, who if she were human, I would describe as African-American looked like a hip-hop singer ready to make a video.

She crossed her arms and glared at Theo in silence before finally speaking. “How am I supposed to concentrate on the game in this mess?” Her arms were waving wildly now as her voice raised an octave.

Physics strutted past Theo and up to Walden, who was biting her lips to hold back a giggle. Physics put her finger in Walden’s face. “This was your doing. I can smell it. This is your way of getting back at me for changing your ideas out there. But what you don’t understand is even if things can be
different,
you can’t just change the rules or pretend they aren’t there. Laws are universal.”

She pulled back and looked at the clear and starry night accompanied by flashes of lightning and shook her head.
“
Mmm
….mmm….mmm.
Say it
ain’t
so. Say it
ain’t
so.”

Then, she saw me. “Who’s this?”

Theo took my arm and pulled me to her. “This is Holly. She’s human, and she notices me without me doing a thing to cause it.”

She looked over at Bio and Geo. “What
kinda
mess you got going on here?”

The guys shrugged.

Astronomy showed up later, along with Chemistry. She was a waif of girl. Blond and tiny with black lined eyes and skinny jeans. I half expected her to pull out an acoustic guitar any moment and start singing a country song.

None of the sciences were willing to play cards. They said the lack of order to the environment was too distracting and gave the two painters too much of an advantage. I asked Theo where
Khai-Ree
was. He told me
Khai
-
Ree
-
Hloa
-Theo was showing
Khai
-
Ree
-
Hloa
-
Walden his filing system in the back. Neither of them wanted any part of the chaos the two painters had stirred up.

There wasn’t anything for me to do. The sciences were hanging out on one side complaining about the mess, the
Khai-Ree’s
were out back celebrating their superior sense of order and the painters—Theo and the lovely Walden were curled up together on a seat whispering to each other.

I sat and watched them talk and laugh and scoot closer. I didn’t notice Bio watching me—more like observing me or studying me as my eyes burned red from holding the salty tears in place, my nails digging deeper into my arms with each giggle shared between Theo and Walden.

“You know they used to live here together, right?” My head turned involuntarily towards the voice. Bio leaned against the post painted by the marvelously beautiful Walden.

“Yeah, I heard that.” It took all I had to make it sound as unemotional as possible. Still, I’m pretty sure I failed. “So why did she move out?
An argument?”

Bio smiled, and half laughed at my words. “No. Work took her away. But I’ve heard she’s back for good
now,
or at least until the next space mission or telescope makes her work necessary again. Astronomy’s pretty sure that will be another fifty years at least based on the rate human technology is progressing.”

“So, is it like a brother and sister thing?”

“No. I’m pretty sure it’s not like that.”

I couldn’t take it a minute longer. My heart felt like it was in my throat choking me. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

I bolted through the sciences gathered in front of the door and ran out onto the catwalk. I held my breath, almost afraid of the sounds that would come out with it. My eyes blurred as I descended into the deep darkness of the auditorium, hoping to disappear into the black.

When I finally made it out the door into the school yard, I couldn’t hold it back anymore. Something between the sound of a cry and a scream of pain bellowed from my gut and echoed back at me. I sat on the concrete steps crying until there wasn’t anything left. I sat sobbing with my head on my knees when I heard Theo’s voice beside me.

“Bio told me you were out here.” His voice was quiet and sober—very unlike himself.

“Yes, here I am. There was nothing up there for me. I’m not a painter, and I’m not a science or a
Khai-Ree
. I’m just a human. So I came back down here where we humans belong.”

Theo squatted and sat on the step beside me. He didn’t look at me at first. When he did, I couldn’t read his expression. “Bio told me what he said to you and why he thinks you came down here. He said, he made it sound like Walden and I have romantic feelings for each other. We don’t, and he knows that. He just said it to test a theory.”

A sprig of hope sprang up in my heart like a shoot from a cut down tree. I looked over at him, searching deep into the gray-blue. “What theory?”

“He thinks you’re jealous. That you have hopes of something romantic… with me.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

“But that’s not possible. Walden and I are close because we’re both painters. We understand each other. And we have to stick together. With Fritz abandoning us, we’re all that’s left of the original, creative beauty. But we don’t have romantic feelings for each other because we can’t.
It’s like taste buds and sketching. We were designed to serve
an
very specific purpose—to paint. Falling in love is not part of that. I can’t have those feelings for Walden or…anybody.”

I shut my eyes trying to shut out his words. But they were still there. Then there were more.

“Bio says I’m confusing you. That I need to stay away from you, so you can form those feelings for a human male like you were designed to do. Seeing just how much I’m hurting you right now…I think he’s right.”

I thought I was empty before, but that was a lie. Tears streamed out faster than my body could handle it. My whole frame shook with the force.

“Is there anything I can do to fix this?” I could hear the concern, but I didn’t care at that point.

“Just go.”

I waited in the parking lot for Shelby. When she showed up I lumbered to the car ready to go home, take a hot shower and crawl into bed. But when I got in, I knew my drama was nothing compared to hers. Shelby’s face was completely black and blue. Her clothes were covered in blood.

I could hardly make out her words because her lips were so swollen, but then I understood.

“I need you to help me wreck my car. Please! That’s the only way my mom won’t call the police on Brad. She has to think it was a car accident.”

Chapter 18

Shelby and I sat in her car while she told me the story. For the life of me, I could not grasp Shelby’s excuses and logic about Brad’s abuse.

She told me that she’d ran into one of her cousins—a marine home from Iraq. She ran up and hugged him at the party as soon as she saw him. Brad saw it, not knowing he was her cousin and stormed off to his truck. She followed him in her car to explain, but when he stopped on the side of the road, and she got out, he hit her multiple times before she could tell him the whole story.

“I’m not wrecking your car with you! Are you crazy?” My head was throbbing before Shelby got there. Now it was about to split open. “He shouldn’t have hit you. How can you make excuses for him?”

Shelby’s words were slurred through her swelling lips. “He felt so sorry after. He was crying harder than me when I explained. He said
,
he’s just so scared that one day he’s going to lose me to someone more deserving.”