Mr. Harkins lets me use the theater stage again, partially because my project wouldn’t fit on those art tables, and partially because I want to keep it a secret. Even from Jackson.
He watches me every day as I leave art class to work without him, but a quick smile from me lets him know I’m not avoiding him. He showed me a new life. He gave me hope. Without that hope, I don’t think I’d ever have had the strength to let go of Luis, not for real, not for good.
Right now, I’m still stuck inside the looks and these concrete halls, but I’m not trapped anymore. I’m not chained. I can walk away from this school, these people, and live an actual life. I don’t know what I’d do, but I could do it. I believe in my future. I believe in the people who love me.
Most of all, I believe in myself.
And I only know that because of the boy who danced in the park with me, who believed in me when he didn’t even know me.
I finish the final touches of my poster…and decide that I’m not done yet. This isn’t enough. I’m not so good at telling people how I feel, but maybe I can show them.
Maybe Mr. Harkins is onto something. Using art, any kind, can help me change the things I want to change.
I curl up my poster, ready to unveil it on Monday morning, and run back to the art room to ask for one more thing from Mr. Harkins. I’m going to write three notes, but I want more than just notebook paper. I want them to mean something.
He gladly gives me three pieces of thick parchment paper and a calligraphy pen. I put the pen into my purse and press the paper inside my history textbook. I’ll write my notes at home this weekend. For now, I sit by Jackson and write a list of the objects I’ll need.
1. A chain
2. A jar
3. A picture frame
Jackson looks over my shoulder. “What are you planning?”
I wink. “It’s a secret. But I promise this is a good one.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Monday morning comes too soon. I’m nervous as hell, and not just about the poster. I’m nervous about all of it.
I drink a cup of coffee with my mom and pretend to be leaving for school. She sends me a quick farewell, and then she turns back to the magazine she was reading at the table.
My heart thuds in my chest, but I know I have to do this.
I place a picture frame, the glass jar—now filled with lightning bugs, lighting up and fading out—and a note on the kitchen counter, and then I walk out the door.
Inside the frame is a picture of her and me before I ran away. I was eleven, my unruly curls flying into my face, but in the picture my mother doesn’t seem bothered by that. Our cheeks are pressed up against each other, and we’re both smiling cheesily.
The picture doesn’t take up the whole frame though, and below it is a piece of pink paper I cut out from my old journal. It has my sloppy bubble letters I used to think were cool in middle school, and in the entry, I talk about the trip my mom and I took to the fireworks over Inner Harbor in Baltimore one year. I talk about how much I loved spending time with her and how I wished we could do more things like that.
On the parchment paper, I wrote:
Mommy,
It might not seem like it, but I’m still your little girl. I want to start over and have the life we should have had together, catching fireflies and shopping and talking about boys. I did love you then, and I still love you now.
I’m sorry for hurting you. I hope you’ll forgive me, too.
Love
Anna
I stop at our mailbox and hold a gift for my father in my hand.
His gift was harder to come up with. It’s hard to forget about everything he did to my mom and me. It’s even harder to accept. I don’t know if he’ll ever change. But I know now that people can. If he ever decides to, I want him to know I believe in him.
So in the end, I decided the simplest gift would be the best. I wrote a letter.
Daddy,
I’m sorry I went away. I’m sorry I changed. I’m sorry I grew up.
Sometimes you have to let the things you love be free or they’ll suffocate.
I hope one day you can accept me for who I am.
Love
Anna
I put the letter into the mailbox and then practically run to the bus stop. My heart pounds while I wait for the bus, and it hasn’t seemed to slow by the time the bus arrives.
On the bus, Jackson flops down next to me, and I jump.
“Whoa. You okay?”
I laugh awkwardly. “Just nervous about today.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Do I finally get to see what you’ve been working on?”
“Yup. And this is going to be a looong day.”
He laughs. “I’ll be ready and waiting.”
I hold back a groan. I am so not ready for this.
We pull up to the school, and when we walk inside, I feel like my skin is on fire. Do these kids know how much of an effect they have on people? On each other? Do they know they have the power to destroy me today?
I shake the feelings and head to my locker. Today, I refuse to hide.
I finally take Mr. Harkins up on his offer of an escape inside the school. All my projects are done now, so I sit down at a table and just sketch a random face. It’s not very good, but it gets my mind off of what I’m doing today.
Because of Jackson, I’m going to wait until lunch to unveil my project, because I have one last thing to do during art class. I get permission to leave science a few minutes early, and I run into Mr. Harkins’s room to drop off Jackson’s gift and a note at his desk, and then book it down the hall to the theater room.
I hide out there for the rest of art period, where all I can imagine is Jackson as he sees my gift and reads my note.
Jackson,
I don’t think you’ll ever realize how much I needed you this year. You were the only light in the darkest time of my life. I have no idea how to thank you for that or how to make up for the horrible things I’ve let into your life. But I knew I had to tell you, somehow, how much you changed me.
You, Jackson Griffin, helped me break my chains, so I gave you some to remind you of how amazing you are and how much power you have to help people.
You believed in me. Now I believe in you.
Love
Anna
Next to the note, I left a tiny little bottle topped with a cork and filled with a silver chain connected to a key chain hook. The key chain is brittle, cheap. But it’s supposed to be. I want him to always be able to touch it and feel how weak the chains we wear can be. All it takes is the courage to break them.
I end up lying back on the stage and staring up at the lights like I did that first day with Jackson. I was so different back then. So jaded. So lost.
Maybe I’m still lost, still pushing my way through a life I have no idea how to live, but I have my feet planted, and I’m moving toward something. One day, I’ll figure out what that is.
After one more excruciatingly long class, it’s finally lunch and time for me to sink or swim.
I leave my English class early—with the teacher’s permission—to hang my poster (teachers seem happy to let me break rules if it’s for another teacher). I want my poster ready before anyone arrives at lunch. Alex and Jen help me place it right next to the entrance of the cafeteria, where everyone will see it.
Mr. Harkins comes down to check it out himself before all the kids comes crashing down the hall. I’m very glad he did this, because I’m not positive it won’t be destroyed within a few minutes.
Three big words are written across the poster.
What’s Normal Anyway?
And to the side is a painting of a person with half her face covered with a mask. I thought about writing more words to explain what I mean, that secrets chain us and that we’re all the same underneath those masks we wear. But I decided I wanted everyone to come to their own conclusions.
While Alex, Jen, and Mr. Harkins watch, I walk up to the poster
with a permanent marker and write, I slept with men for money, and then I hand two more markers to Alex and Jen, hoping they’ll take my lead.
Jen walks up to the poster and writes, I didn’t want to have sex with him. He made me do it.
Tears fill my eyes at her honesty. Anyone could have written that note, so not everyone will know it was her, but it doesn’t matter. When she turns around with a light in her eyes I haven’t seen before, I know she’s free of it.
The bell rings, and right away bodies fill the lobby. Alex looks around for a second and then steps forward, in front of the kids now, stopping to watch before they enter the cafeteria. She writes, My father used to hit me. Now he’s in prison and I’m glad.
Everyone stops. More kids fill the lobby and stop to look.
Alex shrugs and hands the marker to someone else. “What’s your secret?” she asks the freshman boy. I want to hug her, for more than one reason.
Jen hands her marker to someone else, and I do the same.
“What’s your secret?” I ask.
Soon the lobby is packed. A few kids move past the crowd and head into the cafeteria, but most of them don’t. Maybe partially because the spectators are blocking the path for the rest. No one else steps forward to expose themselves.
Then I see Elizabeth, Eric, and the rest of their not-so-nice friends. Brandon smirks at us, our three secrets sitting there alone, exposed, in front of everyone.
Then Marissa steps forward. She practically rips a marker from the freshman I gave mine to and walks up to the poster.
She writes, I had a sex tape and Anna helped me destroy it.
I almost laugh out loud. Alex actually does.
Already the whispers are spreading, but Marissa is free of it. She walks right up to me and throws her arms around me.
“Whore!” someone coughs.
Marissa looks up. “Dick!” she coughs back, then winks at me and steps beside Alex to watch as more kids write their secrets on the walls.
Now more kids are walking up to the poster, hesitantly at first, but soon people are fighting for their chance to write something.
My parents hate me, one kid writes.
My dad is gay, a senior girl writes.
I make myself throw up.
I gave my virginity to a boy whose name I don’t know.
I’m still a virgin.
Secrets cover the board quickly, but just as quickly people head back into the cafeteria and back to their normal lives.
Alex picks up one of the fallen markers and walks back over to the poster. I thought she was done telling secrets. She writes, I wish I were more like Anna.
I blink. Me? Why would she want to be like me?
Alex smirks and hands the marker back to me. “You’re stronger than you think,” she says, and I want to say the same back to her, but she’s already walking back into the cafeteria with everyone else.
There are only a handful of people left. They’re reading the poster full of so many secrets, so many I doubt anyone will remember whose was whose.
Jackson walks over, and I watch him pick up a marker off the floor.
He finds a place in the corner of the poster and writes, Heroin killed my mom, but then he scoots a few feet over and finds another place right in the middle, underneath the word “normal,” and writes, My heart belongs to Anna.
I don’t know what to say. He smiles and crosses the room with big steps and wraps his arms around me. And then, in front of everyone, he gives me a kiss that feels like everything I’ve ever wanted and everything I’ll ever need.
I decide that this is my new favorite moment. No matter what happens between us, this will be the moment I remember forever.
Chapter Forty
Sometimes being interviewed is a chance to stop playing games. It’s just you, them, and the truth.
My palms sweat as I shift in the metal chair.
The room is quiet. Just me and a gray-haired woman in a blazer, sitting at her desk as she flips through my portfolio.
Why doesn’t she speak? Say something! I want to scream at her.
“You’ve had quite a life, Miss Rodriguez,” the woman says, monotone. I can’t tell if this is good or bad. She knows about my past. Will this mean she won’t want me in her school?
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
She finally looks up, and I see a tiny spark of life in her brown eyes. “Will you tell me about it?”
I swallow. “I was a teenage prostitute,” I say. It still sounds so strange to say, to admit out loud, but it’s no secret anymore.
She looks down at one of my paintings. One I keep in my portfolio just because I know how many people find it interesting. It’s of a girl sitting on the curb in a dark city, her arms curled around her legs, dark hair covering her face. She’s hiding, even from the view of the painting.
She flips the page to another, one I like much better than the street picture.
It’s a girl’s face, screaming while the world whizzes by around her. Everything is blurry except the girl.
“Tell me about this.”
“That’s always how I felt before and after my time on the streets. Like I was screaming for help, but no one would stop to help me. Like no one cared.”
“But you got out of that life.”
“Yes, ma’am. There are hopeful pictures in there, too. I use both the light and the dark of my past as inspiration.”
She nods. “You have quite a perspective, that’s for sure.” She pauses. “Tell me why you want to go to my school.”
My heart hammers, head pounds.
“Art is my outlet. It’s the way to express myself, the way I communicate with the world. I want to go to your school because I feel you can teach me the skills I need. Make me better. There’s nothing else I want more than to be an artist.”
The woman smiles. She actually smiles. I wasn’t sure she was capable for a second.
“Anna, it takes a lot more than skill to be an artist.” She folds her hands in front of her. “That being said, I’m hopeful that you have what it takes. I’d love an opportunity to see what else you have in you.”
My heart stops. “Does that mean I’m in?”
“I can’t make that call alone. It has to be decided by a committee. But they listen to my recommendations.” She chuckles. “So while I can’t guarantee anything, I’d be very surprised if we don’t see you this summer.”
She stands, and I stand, and she shakes my hand.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Good luck, Anna. You’ll hear from us soon.”
My head’s spinning, and I walk slowly toward the door. Once it’s shut behind me, I turn to my mother and Jackson, who are sitting on a bench outside the room, waiting for me.
They both jump up and hug me. It’s just a summer art school. Even if I get in, it probably won’t mean that much in the long run, but to me, it means everything. It’s a step toward a new future.
“I knew they’d love you,” Jackson says as we leave the building side by side, my mother behind us, smiling.
“I don’t have a yes yet. I won’t find out for sure for a few more weeks.”
“They’re crazy if they don’t let you in.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but you’re always optimistic. I’m a realist.”
“A realist who was totally wrong.”
I shrug. “They’ll just hate me once I start taking classes,” I say, but I can’t hide my huge grin.
“Probably,” he says.
I punch him in the arm, and he laughs.
Once we’re outside, my mom says, “Anna? Where’s the best sushi place around here?”
I stop at the corner of the street and think. Taxis fly by us; crowds of people walk past. I know New York better than my mother ever will. All of these places have memories connected to them. Not all of them the best memories. But today, the entire city feels like the place I always dreamed it could be. A city of hope.
“How about we try someplace new?
” I ask. Then I remember one place I’d always wanted to try. “What about some Indian food?”
“Ooh! Sounds delicious,” my mom says.
I’m not afraid of the past anymore, and I’ve opened up to Jackson and my mom more than I ever thought I could, but now I’m all about moving on. All about the new.
I have no idea what will happen now. If I’ll get my GED and go to college in the next year. If I’ll make it into this art school for the summer. But I’m not really worried about it.
I’m not perfect. I never will be. But I’m okay with that.
For once, I’m actually happy just being me.
Anna.
Acknowledgments
I am incredibly blessed to have my name, my words, in print. So many people had a hand in helping me to get here, some more direct than others, but they all deserve a huge thank you!
First, I have to thank my amazing and supportive husband, Sean…who I will never forget to thank again! ;) You were my very first fan and biggest supporter! I love you!
Plus the rest of my insane family! Love you guys!
A big, huge, massive thanks to my editor Stephen. Without you, this book might never have seen the light of day. Thank you for seeing its amazing potential and being willing to do whatever it took to get it where it needed to be! Thank you for all your hard work and thank you thank you for believing in me!
Thank you to all the writing friends I’ve made along the way. Each and every one of you has made an impact on me and my writing. Some specific thanks go to: Stacey Nash—you’re so giving and rarely ask for anything in return. Thank you! Naomi Hughes—thank you for your encouraging words and helpful critique when I was still just starting out on this crazy road to publication. Rebecca Yarros—I didn’t know you personally when you helped a little newbie writer back in the day, but now that I do I know you are even more incredible than I thought back then (which is saying something!). Laura Timms—thank you for your encouragement and reading my revision before it went off to the acquisitions board. Thank you to all my friends involved in Unborn Writers, my old writing group. It was an awesome time with all of you. And of course, thanks to all the friendly folks who helped me with my query and pitch. You guys rock!
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