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.”
“I don’t especially care.”
“Frankie—”
“Ah!” He gave me the Hand. “I came looking for you to see if you wanted to walk to history, stayed to save your ass, and now I am leaving.” He did a slick turn on his heel and started to walk away.
I caught up with him and grabbed his wrist with both hands. He let me pull him to a stop, but didn’t turn around. “I didn’t think you’d understand. You hate him. Besides, you made me promise—”
He jerked his hand free and snapped, “No way, Ella. No way I’m letting you turn this around and put it on me. You know me. You know me. Not telling has done infinitely more damage than just breaking a half-ass promise. Or even a full-ass one. Like promising to call me back, oh, a half-dozen times or so, and just not.”
I’ve seen Frankie angry plenty of times. Even once or twice at me, when I’d been having a good pity party or spilled something on his old cashmere. But I’d never seen him like this.
“I can imagine how it looks . . .” I began.
“How it looks?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Knowing you, you don’t have a clue. So let me tell you how it looks. It looks like you chose to lie to me, and to Sadie, to completely abandon friendship and honor for . . . what? The privilege of being available for Alex Bainbridge’s booty calls?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I? What is it you think you’re gonna get from him, Ella? A seat at the Phillite lunch table? A date for the prom? Small children with good teeth and tiny noses?” His mouth twisted. “You might want to rethink those expectations, because from where I’m standing, I don’t see him taking you for a walk between classrooms, let alone home to his parents.
“Face it,” he said coldly. “Vere was telling the truth. You’re a dirty little secret.”
29
THE COLD
I watched Frankie walk away from me, his frame so stiff that I knew if I threw myself at his back, I would bounce off before I could get my arms around him to hold on. In a long line of good exits, that was one of his best.
I cut history. And PE. And algebra. And really cut, no note this time. Willing teachers are famously forgiving in the week before winter or summer break. Exams were done, half the students were either already off on their skiing trip in the Alps or about to depart. But then, it was just as likely my parents would be getting a phone call from the headmaster’s office. I was a Willing Girl willing to take the chance.
I went to the museum, a day earlier than planned, and all by myself.
For the last couple of years, I’ve always started in the same place. It’s a little room, more like a little hallway, off one of the Impressionist galleries. That always bothered me. I mean, even in my most Edward-centric moments, I knew he didn’t merit a big room of his own. But to tack his work onto the wrong era, not to mention any conceivable style, always chafed.
The upside is that the Willing Room is usually empty. There are eighteen pictures there: seven canvases and eleven pencil sketches. There are two bronzes, too, a pair of portrait busts on pillars. I took a seat between them, on the one bench that fits in the space. The museum guard standing in the archway between this room and the next was shifting on her feet, probably waiting for a break. I knew no one was going to chase me for cutting school, especially not in a museum (“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing, hanging out in a cultural institution! Just wait till your parents hear about this!”), but I still felt a little twitchy.
More than that, I felt sad and pretty scared.
Truth: I had done some real damage to my relationship with Frankie, and I had no idea what I was going to do to fix it.
Hiding in the museum seemed like a perfectly good start.
I had Edward’s Collected Works closed on my lap. I’d pretty much expended its usefulness. All of the museum’s paintings but one were in it: a sunrise-over-water scene that even I, a devotee, thought verged on OTT. Untitled, the accompanying placard read, 1901, GIFT OF AN ANONYMOUS DONOR, 1942. Someone hadn’t wanted the painting on their wall, maybe, and didn’t want their name on the museum’s.
I’d never paid much attention to where the collection came from before. This time, I did. The paintings were varied, three purchased by the museum, including the one of the bicycle riders on Boathouse Row that had Her in the foreground. Two, portraits of pretty but bland Willings, were gifts from the family. Pretty arrogant, I’d always thought, donating a picture of yourself to major American museum. Another portrait, the pretty, unhappy Mrs. John Girard Hamilton on her pink sofa, was part of a bigger collection that had come to the museum.
And, of course, there was the one anonymous donation.
All eleven sketches had the same origin; they were, with Sad Sofa Lady, from the estate of Vera H. Erasmus, who, if one went by the acquisition dates, had died in 1997. I could have known her, this woman who was such an Edward fan. The bronzes, titled simply Mother and Child, had been hers, too. My book suggested they were Mary and Murray, Edward’s sister and nephew. He’d been kind. I’ve seen photographs of Mary and Murray Girvan. They weren’t that pretty. Of course, Edward hadn’t known that some years later they would do some terrible things with his personal papers.
As for the sketches themselves, they were a varied lot and spanned the last fifteen years of his life. Two were of dogs, three of what looked like a garden (I’d always liked the one of the stone bench), and six were of Her. For the first time, I realized it was the same woman in all of them. I’d never thought about it much on previous visits, just assumed they were different models, some clothed, some dressed, some visibly older and softer. Now I could see the similarities in the curve of her neck, the line of her arm and hip and profile.
Not one was of a face. None had names. None had dates. Only the throwaway word Study. It read like a command, even though I knew it just referred to the fact that they were quick sketches of what would be part of a larger work. But now, for the first time, I realized that none of the sketched figures were from Edward’s paintings. I knew Edward’s paintings—the ones that had been catalogued, anyway. These weren’t studies for other works. They were like snapshots, little pieces of his life after Diana. Of whatever his life with Her was.
Truth: Edward had painted this woman lovingly.
Truth: He’d never shown her face.
Probability: She was his dirty little secret.
I checked the notes I’d made. There weren’t many. A few dates, a few quick descriptions of the sketches, acquisition info. I had no idea how it was going to help. It seemed that Edward had very deliberately not left any clues to Her identity other than the art itself.
“One unpopular connection was enough for him, ya think?” I asked the bronze Mary above me. “If you Phillites are scary now, I can only imagine what you were like a hundred years ago.”
No shocker, she didn’t respond. The guard, however, gave me the hairy eyeball.
A couple stepped through the archway. They were older than me, early twenties, both blond, both wearing nerdy cool black specs and boots and black canvas clothing that reminded me of Sadie’s wardrobe—only infinitely better suited to the wearers. They were holding a map of the museum between them, talking softly in an unfamiliar language. I didn’t catch much, just a questioning “Villink?” and wondered if they were Russian. I didn’t think so. The language sounded more Germanic to me, maybe Dutch. They’d clearly never heard of Edward Willing.
They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy’s: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their att
ention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided.
He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there. Diana and the Moon. It was—surprise surprise—of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try.
The Dutch guy didn’t say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outstretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue. He took it and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn’t one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big.
Finally, they finished their examination of Diana and moved on. There wasn’t much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes.
She saw my book. “Excuse me. You know this artist?”
Intimately just didn’t seem as true anymore. “Pretty well,” I answered.
“He is famous here?”
“Not very.”
“I like him,” she said thoughtfully. “He has . . . oh, the word . . . personism?”
The Fine Art of Truth or Dare Page 25
