The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  “Yeah. Tired, I guess. But I really appreciate you doing this. Driving me.”

  “Do you?” he said. He parked outside her dad’s apartment and stared out the windshield. A lady was following her toddler down the sidewalk. The kid looked pretty unstable to be out there on the concrete without a helmet or padding, like any minute the cute little stroll was going to end in bloodshed. It was exactly how Abby felt at that moment.

  “I do. Especially considering you’ll probably catch hell from Caitlin for it.”

  Gabe shrugged and turned toward her. He was wearing sunglasses and they made it hard to read his expression. “Don’t worry about her.”

  “She’s the kind of girl you don’t want to make angry,” Abby said.

  Gabe nodded. “She’s called me about six times in the last hour.”

  Abby shook her head. “Maybe you need to get that whole thing figured out.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Gabe took off his sunglasses. “Sorry to drag you into it.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. I got a ride home. And now I know Byron’s big secret. Two secrets, if you count the girl and the college sport stuff separately. I’m sure I can use that to my advantage somehow. Plus I got to hang out with you.”

  Gabe smiled at her. “I like hanging out with you,” he said. “But you’re right. I need to deal with this.” He held up his phone and shook his head. “Make that seven calls, nine texts.”

  Abby sighed. Why did the Caitlins of the world always get the Gabes of the world? It just wasn’t fair. “Good luck with that,” she said. She started to open the car door, turned back to say goodbye, and found herself wrapped in Gabe’s long warm arms, his earthy boy scent and trace of lavender, his shoulder against her cheek and his heartbeat against her chest. She held her breath. It was all she could do not to cry.

  “Thanks,” he whispered into her hair. “For understanding. I’ll call you.”

  He let her go and she got out of the car and walked toward her dad’s place on shaky legs. She looked back when she got to the staircase that led to her dad’s upstairs unit, but Gabe was already gone.

  She let herself into her dad’s apartment, where the stale cooking-oil smell that was always there was the only thing to greet her. She opened the windows to let some fresh air in and sat on the hard couch, just staring at her phone for a while. Then she started typing a message to Mr. Franks’s anorexic daughter Celeste.

  20

  * * *

  Byron

  Byron put Matt’s truck in reverse and backed out of the parking space, turning a little too hard and making the power steering squeal.

  “Sorry,” he said, but Matt seemed unaffected. He was much calmer than Lana with the whole driving thing. He never held on to the dash like he was bracing for a crash, or gripped the handle over his door like he was expecting to be thrown from the car. Byron drove in a large loop around the empty parking lot, picking up speed.

  “Slow down before the turns. Accelerate once you’re past the midpoint of the curve,” Matt said. Matt stared out the window like he was just on a leisurely drive enjoying the scenery and not in the empty, off-season lot of the Del Mar horse-racing track. Byron slowed down for the next curve, then pressed on the gas once he was halfway through the turn, and the truck glided out at a better speed, with less pull.

  “Good,” Matt said. Good was not something Lana or Graham ever said while Byron was driving.

  Byron took another lap around the lot. Matt looked up at the ceiling of the truck like he was calculating something. And he probably was. “Parallel parking and three-point turns,” Matt said. He held his index finger in the air, putting some thought on hold. Matt had memorized the whole driver’s-test handbook and he was taking Byron through it page by page. “Over there.” He pointed at a curb and Byron drove toward it.

  They spent the next fifteen minutes suffering through Byron’s attempts at parallel parking. Matt got out of the pickup and measured Byron’s distance from the curb after each try. Matt didn’t seem to care how many times Byron messed up. He wasn’t frustrated or impatient. He was just along for the ride, as if there were nowhere he’d rather be than setting up cones for Byron to knock over again and again as he failed to squeeze in between them. Once he finally got it, Matt didn’t make him keep trying like Graham always did. Graham wanted three perfect tries before calling it a success. Matt was happy with one.

  “Three-point turns,” Matt said, sliding back into the passenger seat, the orange cones balanced on his lap. They were cheap plastic cones that Byron and Trent used to set up skateboarding courses, and they were mangled beyond saving now. “When you look back, put your hand on the headrest of my seat. That helps you turn around. Never back up without looking behind you. There could be a dog back there.”

  Matt used dog in the same scenario that Lana always described, except she always said baby. Byron had a hard time picturing a world where people let babies crawl across streets left and right, but he definitely could picture a dog darting out without warning.

  “I think you might be a better teacher than Mom,” Byron said.

  “Your mom is a teacher,” Matt said. “But she doesn’t teach driver’s training.”

  He had a point there. The three-point turn portion of the lesson was a fiasco, because Byron kept turning the wheel the wrong way when going in reverse, making each one into more of a six-point turn. They quit after that. Byron had just over an hour to make it to campus for the parkour club. Matt caught him checking the time on his cell phone.

  “It’s against the law to text while driving,” Matt said.

  “I’m not texting. And I won’t. I was looking at the time. I need to get going. I have to take the bus all the way downtown. Two buses, actually. So can you drop me off at the bus stop on your way home?”

  Byron and Matt switched seats and Matt carefully readjusted the seat and mirrors. Matt had just bought the little red Toyota pickup, but he only seemed to drive it with Byron. It wasn’t like Matt had a lot of places to go or people to see. Byron was hoping he’d offer to share the truck with him once he had his license. Maybe Matt would even sell it to him once he realized he didn’t actually need a car. Byron could pay him a little each week over the summer. He had a job lined up at a smoothie shop owned by the family of one of his track teammates. It was down near the beach and the perfect place to meet girls. Not that Byron seemed to be having trouble in that department anymore. Now that Chelsea was using him to make Dale jealous, and he was hoping to use Chelsea to make Betsy jealous, and Trina was jealous even though Byron no longer wanted her, he had all the girls he could handle.

  “Why don’t I drive you there?” Matt said. “Driving is much faster than the bus. We’d have time to get something to eat. There’s a restaurant downtown. It has old cars from the fifties inside.”

  “Corvette Diner,” Byron said. “Have you been?”

  “No, I don’t like to eat in restaurants. There are a lot of germs,” Matt said.

  “But you want to go? To see it?”

  “Could we?” Matt asked.

  He was a strange uncle, but he was Byron’s only one. Matt finished his preflight check, then drove straight there as if he had the route memorized. And of course he probably did.

  Byron got a Rory Burger with peanut butter, extra protein for the workout ahead, and Matt just sat and stared at the decorations in the place. He wouldn’t even drink the water they brought him. But he seemed happy just looking around and pointing stuff out. He knew everything about the cars: what year they were, how many had been made, which movie stars had died in one just like it. Afterward he dropped Byron off.

  “You can take the bus home?” Matt said.

  “Yeah, of course. See you there.”

  Matt waved and put the truck in reverse. He hadn’t even asked why Byron was going to campus. One thing about Matt, you could never call him nosy. Byron was halfway through the workout, breathing hard and regretting the burger and fries, feeling sluggish from
the extra weight in his gut instead of energized by the load of calories, when he spotted the rust-colored Toyota pickup still sitting in the lot. Matt had moved the truck from the loading zone over to one of the real parking spaces in the shade, but Byron was sure it was him. Had he forgotten the way home? Was he having one of his episodes? Byron hadn’t seen Matt lose it, but his mom had warned him that Matt could freak out without warning. She was worried that it might happen while they were in the car together.

  Byron sprinted over to the driver’s side of the truck, and Matt looked at him through the closed window.

  “Everything okay?” Byron asked. Matt just blinked at him, squinting into the sun. Byron made a motion of rolling down the window and Matt tried, but the truck was off and the power windows refused to budge. Matt looked panicked by this, clicking the button repeatedly to no avail, so Byron opened the door. “Forgot, the windows won’t work when the car’s off,” Byron said. Matt turned the key and rolled down the window, even though it was no longer necessary, what with the door open.

  Matt nodded, looking relieved. “Everything’s okay,” he said.

  “I thought you were going to drive home,” Byron said.

  “I am,” Matt said. “What’s that you’re doing over there?”

  “Parkour. Or free running. You keep the body in constant motion. It’s great exercise.”

  “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 d
oesn’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.