The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (24 page)

Alex reached up and wrapped a strand around his finger. “I like your hair,” he said quietly, “but I think you'd look great whatever you did with it.”

Here's the thing. He looked like he meant it, and like it had been the most natural thing in the world to say. I blinked at him.

“Okay,” I said. “You want to know something about me that I don't really want to tell you? How about this. I don't get it. This. I hate that I don't. I wish I were the kind of girl who took guys like you as my sovereign right in life. But I don't.”

“Yeah, I've sorta figured that out, too.” He let go of my hair and put his hand on my waist, so his thumb was against my skin. I shivered. “Here's my first reveal for the night. One day, not so long ago, I'm just sitting in the dining room, digesting, minding my own business—literally. Trying to decide whether the second hamburger had been such a good idea and whether to break up with my girlfriend of a year and a half. Then I try to stand up, and suddenly there's this really pretty girl doubled over and looking at my book like it was covered with crap—”

“I wasn't.”

“Yeah. You were. So there you were, with that amazing face and a yard of hair that smelled like flowers, and all this stuff drawn on your jeans. I really liked that.”

“You liked my jeans.”

“Among other things. But, jeez, Ella. After that, if you weren't making me feel like I had the IQ of a stone, your friends were looking at me like I'd crawled out from under one. I won't even go into what you obviously think of
my
friends.”

“Chase Vere is a reptile.”

“Chase Vere has been my friend since we were nine. Hey,” he said when I made a face, “the thing about friends is that we pick them for ourselves and don't worry too much about what other people think. Right?”

I got the pointed point, but couldn't help asking, “Do you have any friends who aren't Phillites?”

He scowled at me. “I hate that word. I really hate it.”

“Why?” I asked, genuinely confused. I gestured around the room, with its leather furniture and slick electronics. “It fits.”

“So do Speedos, but I don't want to wear those, either.” He stared at me through narrowed eyes. “Let's try this: You tell me something you actually like about me.”

I snuggled into his lap. “I like everything about you.”

“Except my friends and socioeconomic status.”

I looked up at him. “Are you mad?”

“No, Ella, I'm not mad.”

I wasn't entirely sure I believed him. He looked a little grim. I felt a tug of worry. “I like your mouth,” I whispered, tracing his lips with my fingertip, coaxing them up at the corner. “Among many, many other things.”

The mouth was a good start. I especially liked what he did with it. So much that I didn't realize what his hands were doing until I felt cool air.

“Alex—”

“Come on, Ella. Let me. Please.”

I scooted away from him, pushing at his hands. My sweater fell back to my waist. “No. Just . . . no.”

“Let me get this straight. I can touch. Here.” His palm was warm, even through the cabled cotton. “But I can't look? That's a little messed up, isn't it?”

“Maybe, but that's me.”

He sighed. “You're going to have to let me see sometime.”

I wasn't quite as sure, but kept that to myself. “Not tonight.”
Or tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow.

“Okay.” He wrapped both hands around my waist and tugged until I was in his lap again. “But you still have to tell me a third thing. You only did two tonight.”

I tried to come up with something light and innocuous. It wasn't easy, with his hands on me and my knee aching again. All I could think of was the fact that, like the piano or French or pulling quarters out of people's ears, lying was easier the more you practiced.

“I'm changing . . .” I said.

“Don't do that,” Alex said into my hair. Then he scooped me up and over so I was below him, his knees bracketing mine, his arms curving around my head. “Don't change.”

Truth:
When he kissed me again, I couldn't have cared less about being a good person. I felt amazing.

28

THE CORNER

Sadie surprised me at the top of the stairs when I came up from French. “Well?”

“Eighty-seven.” I waved the quiz at her.

“Yay!” She actually bounced up and down for a sec. For a French quiz. “Yay, you! Yay, Alex!”

“Yeah, well.” I gave all my attention to folding the paper perfectly in half. “It's a start.”

“It's a B-plus. C'mon, let's celebrate. I have a real, true Famous Fourth Street cookie in my lunch. I was going to share it with Jared, but how often is it that one's best friend conquers the French?”

“
Merci, mademoiselle
. But you should share with the cute boy. I have to go sort through charcoal in the art studio.”

“Need help?”

“Sades, you're wearing white.” She actually was. “You look great.”

Jared tended to rush in and out of the dining room; he had Willing worlds to conquer every day. But he made sure to stop in the doorway on his way out and give Sadie a huge, flourishing farewell bow. It stopped traffic.

I spun her to face the other way. “You do not want to miss lunch,” I told her, and gave her a helpful shove.

“But, Ella, really. It's no big deal. Friends . . .”

I went the other way.

“This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch,” Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.

I stared him back into submission. “Wait.”

The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and locks up. Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.

A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool, Alex was posed on the ancient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. It was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand, listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already, Ella, and come here.

“I don't like this,” he complained. He'd been complaining since I'd scooted off the chaise ten minutes earlier, leaving him on it.

“Just a little longer. I know it's not your sofa, but it's not that bad.”

He grimaced. “It smells like wet dog. But what I meant was that I don't think I like posing. How do I know you're not going to give me a beer gut or a third eye?”

“I've always thought a third eye would be pretty useful.” I pictured the Indian miniature art Cat Vernon had introduced me to and imagined Alex blue, with multiple arms. It was, probably, just what he expected. “And in what universe would there be an even remotely compelling reason for me to give you any sort of gut whatsoever? You're gonna have to trust me, Sushi Boy.”

I don't usually draw people. Too many angles. But this was Alex coming through my pencil: the little lifts at the corners of his mouth, the almost invisible bump on his nose where an errant lacrosse ball took a funny bounce (“I was on the sidelines—took me a whole year to convince my mother that I didn't need to wear a helmet twenty-four/seven . . .”), the lean muscles in his bent arm. I was pretty clear on the fact that I wouldn't always have the original, so I was serious about the copy.

“Put down the pencil, already, Ella. Come here.”

“Five minutes.”

“We only have ten before the end of the period.”

“So we'll each get five.” But I stopped drawing and rested the sketchbook on my knees. “I'm going to the art museum tomorrow. Do you want to come with me? They have some good Japanese woodblock prints.”

I wanted to pay a visit to the Willing collection. It had been a while. Nothing that the Sheridan-Brown had was helpful. I thought I would try the Big House. But what I was really thinking of was the hushed room tucked into the depths of the museum with the real Japanese teahouse. It was one of my favorite places to go in the museum, with its cool stone floor and running water. It felt private, even if it wasn't. I wanted to be there with Alex.

“Wish I could, but I have something I have to do.” He sat up and rolled his shoulders.

“So I won't see you tomorrow?”

“Not after school. But we'll do something Saturday, right? Maybe my house?”

“No parents again?”

He shrugged. “Last days of the congressional session for my dad. Mom's doing a piece on holiday shopping. We on?”

“Sure. But no sushi.”

“Whatever you want,” he said. “Will you please come here now?”

I slipped a piece of protective tissue over my drawing and flipped the book closed. A piece of blue scratch paper slid out, the line I'd copied from Edward's poetry book. “Hey. Translate for me, Monsieur Bainbridge
.
”

I set the sketchbook on my stool and joined him on the chaise. He tugged me onto his lap and read over my head. “
‘Qu'ieu sui avinen, leu lo sai.'
‘That I am handsome, I know.'”

“Very funny.”

“Very true.” He grinned. “The translation. That's what it says. Old-fashionedly.”

I thought of Edward's notation on the page, the reminder to read the poem to Diana in bed, and rolled my eyes.
You're so vain. I bet you think this song is about you
 . . . “Boys and their egos.”

Alex cupped my face in his hands.
“Que tu est belle, tu le sais.”

“Oh, I am not—”

“Shh,” he shushed me, and leaned in.

The first bell came way too soon. I reluctantly loosened my grip on his shirt and ran my hands over my hair. He promptly thrust both hands in and messed it up again. “Stop,” I scolded, but without much force.

“I have physics,” he told me. “We're studying weak interaction.”

I sandwiched his open hand between mine. “You know absolutely nothing about that.”

“Don't be so quick to accept the obvious,” he mock-scolded me. “Weak interaction can actually change the flavor of quarks.”

The flavor of quirks, I thought, and vaguely remembered something about being charmed. I'd sat through a term of introductory physics before switching to basic biology. I'd forgotten most of that as soon as I'd been tested on it, too.

“I gotta go.” Alex pushed me to my feet and followed. “Last person to get to class always gets the first question, and I didn't do the reading.”

“Go,” I told him. “I have history. By definition, we get to history late.”

“Ha-ha. I'll talk to you later.” He kissed me again, then walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and picked up my sketchbook. By the time I'd locked the room and rehidden the key in the antique wall sconce, he was long gone. I could hear the patter of feet and voices in another part of the floor, but the hall around me was empty. There isn't much on the corridor except for the art rooms and a girls' bathroom that is usually empty except for the occasional senior Phillite or two using a forbidden phone (apparently the reception was great and the only teacher around was the one least likely to care). I headed for it.

I got there just as the Hannandas and Chase Vere rounded the corner. There was a scattered moment when Anna tried to cover her iPad with a textbook and I tried to decide if I should turn around and run the other way. Then Chase looked up.

“Hey. Freddy,” he greeted me affably.

In the second it took the Hannandas to realize who I was, and that I wasn't exactly a threat to the new toy, I made it all of one step backward.

“Freak.” Amanda wrinkled her nose in the imaginary stink diss of the unimaginative.

I made a quick choice and started to walk past them. In a world of fight or flight, I was the one with feathers.

She stepped into my path. “I thought I told you to stay away from me, skank.” Her repertoire was definitely both limited and predictable, but that realization didn't make her any less scary. “Are you stalking me? There is no reason for you to be in this corridor.”

She stared at me expectantly. I hadn't planned on saying anything, but it seemed required. “I was in the art room,” I offered.
With him
, I didn't say.

I don't know if it was that I unconsciously lifted my chin, or if there was something in my voice that her attack mode detected. Whatever the reason, Amanda's eyes narrowed, and her smile turned seriously evil. Before I could even think to protect myself, her arm darted out, fast as a snake, and grabbed my sketchbook. I went after it, but Chase, master defenseman that he is, blocked me with one hand.

Amanda was already flipping roughly through the pages, bending them as she went. It was like she knew what she was looking for. And then she found it.

“Oh. My. God. You are such a freak.” She laughed, horsey and startling. “You are worse than a stalker!”

She held up the picture of Alex. I felt the blood flowing into my face, my empty hands tightening into fists.

“I am so going to copy and post this. When Alex sees it—”

“Give it back to her.”

It was a toss-up who was more surprised, Amanda or me. We both ended up gaping at Anna. She was holding out the iPad, face completely blank.

In another story, the dauntless heroine would have peppered the mind-controlled Annamaria Lombardi with memories of her past, relentlessly insisting that she was
good
inside. That all she had to do was remember. Then, of course, the glowing red would fade from mind-controlled Annamaria's eyes. She would turn, literally and figuratively, and squash the Evil Amanda before crumpling to the ground, irrevocably weakened by the poison she'd been fed for so long. Her last words would be a plea for forgiveness and, “We always got the strawberry—”

“Ella was always a loser. She can't help it.” Anna pushed the iPad toward Amanda, who automatically took it. In that second, Anna pulled my book from Amanda's other hand and passed it back to me. She didn't look at me at all. “Come on. The invite to Harrison's party is on YouTube. He's hidden some stupid password thing in a video, and we need to find it. Adam says he's putting a doorman outside, and it's the last party before break.”

Amanda didn't move immediately. But then she flicked her ponytail, did the nostril thing again (I wondered why I'd never noticed exactly how much she resembled a horse), and tilted the iPad in my direction.

“Just in case you doubt it, I could ruin your life so easily.” She tapped the screen with a glossy gunmetal nail. “A few lines on Facebook that will follow you
forever
.” Then, as if she'd been discussing the weather, she shrugged and turned her back on me. “The signal sucks out here. Let's go in. You,” she said to Chase, “can wait.”

They filed into the bathroom, Anna and Hannah in their places. The door swung to with a heavy thump. And I came unfrozen. Unfortunately, Chase was a beat ahead. He stepped into my path, forcing me to stop, my back to the wall.

“Man, I thought you two were going to go at it like cats,” he announced, grinning. “She does not like you, Freddy. If she knew you were spending time under Bainbridge, she would have ripped you to shreds. You show up at Harrison's with him tomorrow night, and I'm standing back to watch.” He tilted his head and studied me through slightly bloodshot eyes. “You
are
doing him, aren't you?”

I didn't answer.

“Well, he's keeping you a dirty little secret. It's that smokin' little bod, right? I mean, what else would it be?”

With that, he reached for me, actually thrust out both hands out like some cartoon monster. I don't know if he would really have grabbed. Maybe not, but it didn't matter. I hit him with the sketchbook, slamming his left elbow hard enough to send him stumbling to his right. I'm small, but I had the advantage of surprise. As I pushed past him, I swung again, this time at his hip. I didn't wait around to see how quickly he regained his balance. I ran, down the few feet of hall and around the corner.

Almost right into Frankie. He was standing in the middle of the hallway, vintage dangerous from the fedora to the black overcoat to the weapon he had gripped in both hands.

“You okay?” he asked, even while he was stepping past me to look where I'd just been. I heard the thud of a weighted door. Chase, I thought, going into the girls' room with the Hannandas.

“Yeah,” I said after a shaky second. “Thanks.”

Frankie didn't look at me as he returned the fire extinguisher to its clip on the wall.

“I never thought I would see you armed.” I was trying for levity. It worked like a lead balloon. Frankie just frowned and reached into an inside coat pocket for one of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs. He used it to wipe something, dust maybe, from his hands.

“You think I was going to take on three bitchy girls empty-handed? I figured a good blast of this near their Uggs would get them moving the other way fast. Then I thought I could just throw it at Vere's head.”

“My hero,” I said. I meant it.

He shrugged. “Turns out you didn't need me. But then, you decided that a while ago, right?”

“Of course I need you. You're my best friend.”

“Kind of an interesting statement considering the circumstances, wouldn't you say?”

I could have played dumb. But with Frankie, it would only have made matters worse. “How much did you hear?”

“How much would you have rather I hadn't?” he shot back. “I heard it all. No”—he tucked the handkerchief away—“I saw and heard it all, starting with Alex Bainbridge whistling his way down the hall, zipping up his pants as he went.”

“He never unzipped them!” I protested, before realizing that Frankie was just being snarky. And that he was very, very angry. “I'm sorry.”