“Because,” he said calmly, “in all the time I’ve known you, you have never once said those words.”
“What words?”
“‘There is nothing wrong with me.’”
“Oh, don’t—”
“Never. You are a walking litany of imaginary flaws. So.” Frankie unfolded himself and rested his elbows on the table. It wobbled. He didn’t. He studied me over his tented fingers. “Truth or Dare?”
“It’s Sadie’s turn to ask.”
“She passes,” he snapped.
“Hey,” I protested.
“Hey.” Sadie actually waved a hand between us. “Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow.”
“We could,” Frankie replied with suspicious agreeability. “Except I want to do it now. So, here’s the question, Marino. What—”
“Dare.”
“Sorry?” he said.
“Dare. I’ll take a dare.”
“Really?” he demanded.
“As long as it takes ten minutes or less. I have to go.” All I wanted, really, was to leave.
Frankie didn’t say anything—or move—for the longest time. He just stared at me. Then, finally, he blinked, lowered his hands, and shrugged. “Sing.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Sing,” he repeated. “You know how. Or concede.”
That, I thought, would be so easy. It would also break something precious. In all our time together, none of us had ever conceded a dare. “Sadie. Sing with me?”
She nodded, but Frankie shook a finger at her. “You will not. Marino, you’re on your own here.”
I pretty much stomped my way to the stage. Stavros’s son Nic was manning the karaoke machine. His brows shot up when he saw me. “A first.”
It wasn’t, actually. Frankie had bullied me into doing a duet on Sadie’s birthday. We sang—surprise surprise—“Birthday” by the Beatles. It might have bombed, but it turned out that a third-string player for the Flyers was celebrating his birthday that day, too, so we ended up sharing the stage with four drunk hockey players, two female hockey groupies, and a die-hard Ringo fan. The crowd loved it.
“I have to do this,” I muttered. “I can do this.”
I didn’t realize I was shaking slightly until Nic tapped my hand. “You want some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Choose one of these.” He flipped to a battered page. “And undo a few buttons.”
I didn’t know if he was serious about the buttons—I suspected he probably was—but he’d given me a page full of crowd-pleasers. I contemplated “Good Riddance,” “Forget You,” and “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.” Only I didn’t know that one, and wasn’t really out to stick it to Frankie. Well, maybe just a little.
“I can do this,” I said, pointing.
“Kill ’em” was Nic’s comment as I hit the stage.
I took one look at Frankie’s sulky face before settling my gaze on the back of the room. I could do this, because when I was done, I could go.
The music started. I hit the cue. “‘You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht . . .’”
I wasn’t bad. A little wavery in places, but pretty confident on. “‘I bet you think this song is about you, don’t you?’” When I was done, a group of girls who reminded me of Cat Vernon and her crowd cheered loudly in back. Sadie was whistling, that two-fingers-in-the-mouth trick that I’ve always wanted to be able to do. She uses it for taxis and for Chloe’s. On the very rare occasions that I am in a cab, Sadie is there, too, so I figure I’ll live without that particular skill. It was nice, though, to hear her over the polite applause.
Frankie, I noticed as I flipped the mic up to its normal position, was staring at me through narrowed eyes, clapping so slowly that I could actually measure the silence in between beats.
I felt about three inches tall as I stepped off the stage.
• • •
“. . . and went down like a rock. Bam.”
“Oh, man. What did you do?”
“What could I do?” I shrugged. “I hopped up, took a bow, and ran. I was late to meet you.”
Alex was gently rubbing my bare knee. I’d rolled up my jeans leg to show him the bruise already blossoming there. “I would have caught you,” he said, fingers sliding to the inside of my leg and making my insides feel like jelly.
“Not likely, O Gallant One. The stage is only a foot high.”
“I gotta see this place sometime.”
“Sure.” I knew better, somehow. I wasn’t going to take him. I couldn’t, for more reasons than I wanted to list. Not that I could even picture him sitting there while people sang bad covers on a plywood stage, the food smells battling with polish and shoe leather.
We were sitting on the big, nice-smelling leather sofa in his den, me with my legs across his, a plate balanced in my lap. We’d stopped at Hikaru on our way from my house to his. I’ve walked by it enough times when I’d been to Head House Books or Hepburn’s, the vintage clothing store across the street. But sushi isn’t a big part of my life; Frankie and I inevitably vote Sadie down in favor of the South Street Diner. She always offers to pay. We always tell her that isn’t the point. Even if it kind of is.
“What looks good?” Alex asked as we scanned the menu. Then, “Just no blowfish.” And, “I’m buying.”
I hadn’t even heard of most of the options: fluke, conger, porgy. And those I had—mackerel, abalone, octopus—weren’t all that appealing raw. “Um. Tempura?” I suggested, thinking you couldn’t go too terribly wrong with something dipped and fried.
He shook his head. “This from a girl who likes anchovies?” He shared a sympathetic smile with the very nice waitress, then proceeded to order octopus, mackerel, yellowtail, and several different kinds of tuna. Raw.
“I am not eating that,” I told him in the den as he held out his chopsticks, loaded with a slice of octopus that had visible tentacles. I’d been fine with the tuna (I am the Tuna King of the Sea’s great-great-granddaughter, after all), but had to draw the line somewhere.
“You have to trust me here. Come on. Be a brave girl. Open up.”
Duh. I am not a brave girl. But I opened my mouth and let him feed me. “Mmm.”
“See? Excellent stuff.”
Actually, it was like eating a pencil eraser. With a vaguely fishy taste. “Delicious,” I managed after much chewing.
“All right. Fine. I give up.” Alex ate the remainder of the octopus and most of the pickled ginger in quick bites. Then he removed the plate from my thighs. I snagged the last piece of ginger before it was out of my reach. That I liked. “So, what shall we do now?”
Oh, the possibilities. I wiggled my eyebrows at him. He laughed.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he agreed. “But first . . . three things . . .”
He was determined. Every time we were together, we traded revelations and did some French. It wasn’t usually the first thing, but eventually we got around to it. “You are an enigma wrapped in a mystery,” he teased me once. “And you’re failing French.”
Of all the things I am, I don’t think enigmatic is one of them. But I liked that he used the word. So I leaned back against the arm of the sofa and thought. “I don’t know what you want to know.”
“Well, that’s easy. Everything.”
“No. You don’t. No one wants to know everything about . . .” I found myself at a loss for words. His girlfriend? His pupil with benefits? We weren’t at the noun stage. I wasn’t sure if I would recognize the noun stage if I landed in it. “. . . another person. Mystery is good.”
He drummed his fingertips on my thigh. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll let it go. How about this: If I were to open the top drawer of your dresser, what would I find?”
“Are we back to discussing my underwear again?”
“Only in graphic detail . . .” He flicked my sore knee, but not where the bruise was. “I keep loose change and my oldest comic books in mine. Some people have journals or p
hotographs or awards . . .”
“Okay, okay.” I sighed. “Underwear,” I said. “Two ancient swimsuits, and a magazine file.”
“Of . . . ?”
“Pictures I’ve pulled out of magazines.”
“Yes, thank you. I gathered that. What’s in it?”
I squirmed a little and contemplated lying. Travel pix, shoes, hints on getting glue off of Ultrasuede . . . “Mostly pictures of models with short hair,” I confessed finally. “It’s sort of a goal of mine.”
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.”
The Fine Art of Truth or Dare Page 24
