The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “Yale, then Powel Law.” No With luck or I hope or even If all goes as decreed.

  “Wow. It must be nice to be so certain in your path.” I didn’t mean to sound snide. I really didn’t. “No starving artistry in your future, that’s for sure.”

  Occasional stupid Mafia comments aside, Alex is no dummy. “It must be nice to be so certain in your convictions. No moral low road for you, that’s for sure.”

  I felt myself blushing, felt that Blood Surge of Humiliation beginning. But then I realized how silly the whole thing was. I sighed. “I guess I take art very seriously.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “I . . . can’t.”

  There was a soft cough behind us. I turned to see Tina framed in the upper half of the door. “Your food’s out,” she told Alex.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right. I guess I should go in.”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t think of any possible universe where wrapping myself around his knees to keep him in place would be construed as anything other than psychotic.

  “Okay.” He unfolded himself from the stoop, six feet of splendid, and actually held out his hand.

  For a second I thought he wanted to shake. I levered myself halfway up before realizing he was offering to help me up. What a gent. What a spaz. Me, that is. I crouched there, helpless, sat back down a little, then realized how incredibly stupid that must look, started up again. By the time I finally took his hand, I was almost upright, and if I hadn’t let go almost immediately, I would have looked even more ridiculous than I felt.

  “So, I’ll see you Monday, maybe,” he announced. “On the floor somewhere.”

  “Not unlikely,” I managed. “I can often be found on floors.” Whatever that meant. I winced inwardly. Then compounded the idiocy. “I watched a Brady Bunch marathon once when I had strep throat.”

  He laughed. “Nice try, Grasshopper, but no dice.” He held the screen door open for me and followed me into the kitchen. “Thanks,” he said to a hovering Tina. He nodded to my father and Ricky, and stepped through the swinging door into the dining room.

  I stood in the middle of the floor, not sure what to do.

  Tina gave my wrist a squeeze as she walked past. “I gotta go back out. I’ll see if they need anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tina took over for me for a while, and nobody commented. The Bainbridges got their check early. No coffee, no dessert. We watched through the back door as Karina slid her slim legs into the Porsche. “I bet that one’s never seen anything like the inside of one of your nonna’s cannoli,” Dad said a little sadly.

  “Betcha cannoli’s never seen the inside of that one,” Tina said with a snort.

  She told me later that Paul Bainbridge had left a thirty-dollar tip on an eighty-dollar meal. She gave me five of it.

  10

  THE OPPORTUNITY

  I don’t mind Mondays, more than is absolutely necessary, anyway. After history, which I occasionally enjoy, and French, which I très don’t, I have double art. The art studio hasn’t been changed in, like, a hundred years. The floors are battered and creaky and covered with so many layers of dried paint that it looks like Jackson Pollock Was Here, minus the cigarette butts.

  Apparently, past generations of Willing Art Girls had tossed their cigarettes onto the tiled window well outside rather than onto the floor. “They were more ladylike,” Cat Vernon told me once, pointing out the window beside her easel. The butts are gone, but there are burn marks, scattered like leopard spots, over the terra-cotta surface.

  Cat was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the art studio was deserted except for me and one Juicy-clad senior whose space was forever filled with colored-pencil drawings of frothy gowns. She was on her way to Paris, I’d heard her tell Ms. Evers, as soon as the ink on her diploma was dry. Apparently, there’s a spot waiting for her at Dior.

  She ignored me, as always. Ordinarily, I didn’t mind, but I was quietly dying to ask her if my lipstick was too pink. She would know.

  I had my door sketch in front of me. One little devil was making me crazy. He kept coming out cute, rather than menacing. The corners of his mouth kept turning up in an unmistakably adorable way. I thought about erasing again, but couldn’t really be bothered to draw in yet another sneer that wasn’t. Truth be told, I was just killing time until the end of the period, when I could go lurk in the entrance hall.

  The studio door banged open. Dior Girl didn’t even flinch. She was listening to loud Europop through earbuds that looked like pearls. Ms. Evers came striding across the floor, three-inch boot heels clacking on the wood. She looked like Miss North Carolina. She always looks like Miss North Carolina, but this time it was Miss North Carolina after learning that Miss Alaska had a smack habit and would not be making it to Las Vegas this year.

  “I,” she announced with a thousand-watt smile, “am occasionally startled by my own cleverness.” I suspect lots and lots of people are startled by her cleverness. “C’mon, Ella. I’m waiting.” She tapped her foot and looked at me expectantly.

  “How clever are you?” I asked obediently. I waited for the bah dum ching.

  I half expected her to tell me that she’d finally arranged with the Powers That Be to turn the dusty trophy room into an art gallery. She’s been trying since she arrived at Willing. No one thinks it will ever happen. Dusty past glory trumps condom-wrapper collages every time.

  Instead, I heard, “I am so clever that I got you a backstage pass into the Willing Archive.”

  I got a chill. No one got into the Willing Archive except the occasional septuagenarian scholar from the Louvre or PhD candidate from Yale. The archive belongs to the Sheridan-Brown Museum of Modern Art. It is completely, fiercely unavailable to the general public. I didn’t know anyone who’d ever been there. I envisioned a steel-walled vault somewhere thirty feet below the museum, where molelike archivists had to submit to retina or armpit scans to open the doors.

  Apparently, Edward’s will was a little vague in places. I would assume he hadn’t expected to die at fifty-three. However it happened, the contents of his personal library were at the S-B. His books were there, the books he’d bought and held and maybe read as he sat beside Diana in the evening. His papers were there, too. Some letters to Diana. Some from Cézanne in French, and a series from Edith Wharton that were supposed to be so steamy that a never-ending lawsuit kept them under permanent lock and key.

  “So?” Ms. Evers was still tapping away.

  “But they never let students in.” Not since three Willing girls and one errant joint had set off the sprinkler system directly above the set of first-edition Trollopes they were perusing. That was thirty years ago. “How—”

  “I lied.” Only, it was “Ah lahd,” accompanied by a smile that hinted that Misses California, Texas, and Rhode Island were going down, too. “I told them you are doing some preliminary recon for a student-run cooperative retrospective between UArts, the Willing School, and, I hinted, the Maude Pugh Willing Foundation. Who, as it happens, are loaded.”

  It actually almost made sense. Revenue trumps dusty past glory every time.

  Still, this was me. “But I don’t know anything about any of that!” I admitted miserably.

  “So fake it.”

  I gaped at her.

  “Ella, you know Edward Willing better than his mother did. Spout some details about his inspiration and vision, and no one will be the wiser. It’s all about money in the museum world anyway.” She flapped her hands at me. “Go forth and Google. Memorize a few trustee names. Work on an expression of complete ignorance to be used when questioned on anything involving dollars. For heaven’s sake, wing it. Maxine Rothaus is expecting you at the archive Wednesday at four.”

  “This Wednesday. No—”

  “Absolutely. You may begin thanking me profusely now.”

  “Thank you.” I was going to the Willing Archive. “Thank you!” I was going to walk right into the hallowed halls i
n my battered Chucks and jeans, to sit among first-edition Trollopes—assuming they’d restored them. Walk right up to whatever heavily armed security troll was at the door and demand admittance.

  They wouldn’t let me over the threshold. “I’m not sure I can. I mean, I’m sixteen. I’m nobody—”

  “Ella.” Ms. Evers looked at me sternly. “If you don’t learn to carpe the diem, you will be, while most certainly not Nobody, something less than a Somebody. Now scoot. I have to talk to Lucinda here about gouache.”

  I scooted. I had to go find Frankie, who, at least, would tell me what to wear. My wardrobe would render any suggestions moot, but the suggesting would make him happy.

  I found him in his usual Monday prelunch spot in the curve of the main stairs. He was in full autumn splendor: camel cardigan, striped polo, gray flannel pants cuffed over vintage loafers. I’d managed to dodge him so far that day. I hadn’t wanted to explain the lipstick. Or the mascara. Or the skinny jeans I’d snagged from Sienna’s laundry and washed under cover of darkness and paired with a black turtleneck that a jaunt through the dryer had made, to be honest, a size too small. But this news about the Willing Archive trumped all of that.

  He gave me a careful once-over. “Well.”

  I sat down next to him, aiming for casual. I should have aimed my butt. I sat on his geometry book. “Well what?”

  “Don’t even. The day you become a good liar is the day I leave you for one of the Hannandas.”

  “I have an appointment at the Willing Archive.”

  I will say this for Frankie: He pays attention. “The utterly-off-limits, place-to-bury-your-face-in-Edward’s-old-knickers archive?”

  “Nice. But yes, that one. Ms. Evers got me in.”

  “About time someone did.” He bumped a shoulder against mine. “I really do hate to burst your bubble, Fiorella, but Edward is a century past appreciating the sight of you in tight jeans. So tell me whassup.”

  I squirmed a little.

  “What sort of idiot do you think I am?” He sighed. “You look good, but I am concerned about the inspiration.”

  “It’s not a big deal. It’s some makeup.”

  “When I want a boy to look at me, it’s a day that ends in y. You, it’s something else. It’s a big deal.”

  He dug in his bag for a real handkerchief. Usually, he finds them at his vintage stores, yellowing at the creases in their unopened boxes. Sadie and I bought him a brand-new set at Brooks Brothers for his birthday last year. They were fifteen dollars each. I bought two; Sadie the other ten. Frankie had had to use one (reverently) to wipe his eyes. This specimen was old and soft, monogrammed with a J in the corner. “Makes it interesting,” he told me once, after finding a box monogrammed with M for fifty cents at a sidewalk sale. “Was it Max or Michael? Maybe Marco . . .”

  “Here,” he said now. “You have lipstick halfway down to your chin.”

  Humiliated, I scrubbed at my face.

  Frankie held out his hand, palm up. “Okay, let’s have it.” I pulled the tube out of my pocket. “Not really my thing, madam, but since I’ve seen what happens when you don’t use a mirror . . .” I’m sure it helped that he was holding my face, but he read it like a pro. “You had a mirror.”

  “I did. I’m hopeless.”

  “Maybe. Open.” He squinted as he filled in my upper lip. “I don’t like this.”

  “The color? I knew it was too pink—”

  “Quiet. You’ll smear it. The color is fine. Better for Sienna, I’m sure . . .” He surveyed his handiwork. “I don’t like that you’re doing this for him.”

  “Don’t start. I told you how nice he was.”

  “In excruciating detail.”

  Given, the post-Bainbridge family dinner e-mail to Frankie and Sadie had been long. But excruciating stung, especially from the boy who’d used every possible synonym for hot in describing his Friday-night bookstore acquisition. No name, just detailed hotness and the play-by-play of their flirtation over the fantasy section.

  I reminded myself that Frankie had suffered some serious indignities at the hands of the Phillite boys. And I got that it kinda didn’t matter that Alex hadn’t been one of the frontmen. He’d been there. And he hadn’t made it stop.

  “He came to find me,” I offered, a small indication, maybe, that this was a Phillite boy who’d grown into doing the right thing.

  “I’ll give him that. He could have just sucked down his spaghetti and gone.” Frankie stuck the cap back on the lipstick. “You look very pretty in . . .” He flipped the tube over and read. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Poysonberry? Who comes up with this stuff? Anyway. I’m sure Alex Bainbridge will agree.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime. Just keep this in mind, if you would, please. I know that you look very pretty every day, with or without the ridiculously named wax products.”

  “Saint Francis,” I teased, feeling just delightfully poysonous enough in the glow of his approval. “Too good for this world.”

  “That’s just what Connor said.” Frankie’s most recent boy. They met in a bookstore.

  “Bookstore Connor of the fantasy realm?”

  Behind us, the gong went. Frankie started to scoop his stuff together. “Careful. His fantasies do not involve one-dimensional Phillites or dead men.”

  I tapped him on the tip of his perfect nose. He hates that. “How do you know? He might have a thing for dead, one-dimensional Phillites.”

  “Speaking of . . .”

  The first of the junior-senior lunchers flowed into the hall. Mostly Stars at first; they had food to scarf, meetings to attend. Without realizing I was doing it, I leaned forward, waiting.

  I saw Chase Vere first. Partly because he was wearing a vibrantly orange sweatshirt with the Princeton insignia splashed across the front. No secret where his aspirations lie. Partly, too, because, regardless of what Chase was looking for, his eyes found me. Force of habit had me looking away, but not before I saw him wink. By the time I glanced back, he was jostling another lacrosse player and not looking at me at all. Not that it mattered in any case. Alex was a couple of feet behind him, heading straight in my direction.

  I got up. It would be too easy to get completely lost in the flow, especially for someone like me. I knew when he saw me; I could see the moment of recognition on his face. I smiled, raised my hand, started to wave.

  Another member of their insular little team shoved him from behind. Alex turned and said something that made all of them laugh. They reminded me of the noisy, surging amoeba tag games the inept gym teachers made us play in sixth grade—where everyone caught had to join hands and move as a unit, hungrily swallowing the slow of foot (or eager to join the crush) as it went. I was chronically among the slow, but entire games would go by when I could stay on the edges of the gym and not be consumed. There were always classmates who were just as terrified of coming into close contact with my puckered skin as I was of being swallowed, and they would steer the teeming, laughing mass in other directions.

  I got a pretty good view of Alex’s profile as he walked by, surrounded by his friends. I was close enough to see that he’d shaved recently and maybe hurriedly. There was a nick at the corner of his jaw, healing, but fresh enough to look a little sore.

  I might have stood there for a long time, hand halfway up like a religious statue, if Frankie hadn’t gently pulled it down and held on.

  He stood behind me, vibrating with anger. “That is not an honorable man, Fiorella.”

  Without thinking, I lifted my free hand toward my neck. But I was wearing a turtleneck and my hair was down. There was nothing to see, and all my fingertips found was the rigid peak under my jaw.

  “Don’t do that,” Frankie hissed. “Don’t you dare. It’s not the scar and it’s abso-freakin-lutely not you.”

  I dropped my hand. “Yeah, right.” I sagged against him a little. For being skinny as he is, Frankie’s really solid. “It’s never me.”

  I felt his sigh against m
y shoulder blades. “‘We are young; heartache to heartache we stand.’”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Old Korean proverb.”

  “As if. Pat Benatar. ‘Love Is a Battlefield.’”

  I laughed. I had a feeling I might cry later, but not there and then. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Frankie wrapped his free arm around me so my chin rested on his forearm. “Enough, right? That was enough of Alex Bainbridge—for all of us. Promise?”

  “Yeah. Promise.”

  11

  THE ARCHIVE

  There was no retina scan or security troll. Just a small, round woman behind a desk at the museum’s back entrance who tiredly checked my name off a handwritten list and waved me down a long hall. “Elevator to the third floor, Room 312.”

  So no trip to the bowels of the building, either.

  Frankie had planned my imaginary ensemble for me with care. Sadly, I didn’t have an asymmetrical knit dress or distressed boots. So instead, I was wearing a skirt. Gray wool, boring and itchy, even through the tights I’d dug out from among the wear-only-when-everything-else-is-dirty underwear in the back of my drawer. My plain heels clacked loudly on the pale wood of the third floor, making me cringe as I walked. I passed a series of doors, indistinguishable except for their gold-painted numbers: 302, 308. 312. The Willing Archive. I took a deep breath and knocked.

  I waited, heart pounding. And waited.

  I knocked again.

  Across the hall, a door flew open. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! I am here.” She was definitely there, a six-foot Amazon in a black wool dress with a dramatically uneven hem. “Are you the Willing scout?” In the second it took me to try to decide exactly how to answer that, she expended her patience. “God, students and their brilliant ideas. I hate budgets.”

  She disappeared into the office. I stood right where I was, probably looking as completely clueless as I felt.