I stand dumbly, unmoving. I can’t be caught. I can’t be caught. It becomes a mantra.
“Come on, we don’t have all night. What size shoe do you wear?”
Holding her clothing lamely in my hands, I shift from foot to foot. “Sorel, I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“Just chill. It’s your birthday. I thought you were from NYC. When I met you, it looked like you’d seen some shit. Rough around the edges. Not like the rest of the pampered girls here. Let’s live a little.”
Up until my time at Laurel Hill, I did do what I wanted when I wanted. I didn’t have a curfew or lights-out. I came and went as I pleased, with the exception of when JJ, on mind-altering substances, ensnared me. I haven’t thought much about what it means to live with rules. I just accept them as part of the room-and-board package here at Laurel Hill. Losing those two simple necessities terrifies me. Nevertheless, under Sorel’s demanding stare, I pull the jeans over my pajamas. She gives me a withering look.
“It’s flippin’ cold out,” I say defensively.
She shakes her head. “Shoes. What size?”
“Eight and a half,” I answer.
“Sasquatch.”
“Shut up. What size do you wear?” I retort.
“Nine,” she says with defiance in her voice.
“Sasquatch, is that the best you can do?”
She tries not to laugh. “Come on, they’ll be waiting.”
I slide my feet easily into the fleece lining of Sorel’s oversized boots. She wordlessly guides me out her window and onto the bulkhead to the basement that acts like a ramp.
“I chose this room for the easy exit. Senior privilege. We have to be quiet and steer clear of the lights on the motion detectors.”
The first instruction is obvious, the second causes me to worry, but she navigates easily enough.
I catch sight of the moon between the spindly branches of the naked trees, and my shoulders relax. I spent so many nights roaming the streets of New York, if only to avoid the scene at home. I take a drink of the still air.
Sorel smiles. “What you needed, right?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Want to throw rocks at the security trucks from the bushes?” she dares me.
“Nah.”
I still don’t know her story, but it doesn’t approximate mine. She came from a family, with a mom and dad. I get the feeling there’s some tension there, along with rules to break and expectations to flout. Unless Sorel really gets herself into trouble, I imagine she’ll graduate from college and have a successful career. What she does at Laurel Hill is merely a game to her, and tonight, apparently, I’m her pawn.
Chapter 10
We arrive at the boys’ dorm beneath a checkerboard of windows. Within a minute, one on the ground floor, two from the right, slides open. Pepper’s pale face appears in the darkness, and he lets a rope ladder down.
“He brought that from his tree house back home,” Sorel says with a rare giggle. It’s clear she wears the pants in the relationship. In the same petulant way she let my mother’s dress slip to the floor, she orders him to get her more ketchup, carry her backpack, and act at her disposal.
Sorel puts her foot on the bottom rung, but before pulling herself up, she turns around and whispers, “Grant’s waiting for the birthday girl.”
The combination of the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting from Sorel’s sweatshirt that I’m wearing along with her dirty socks from the dorm room makes me feel most unlike myself.
What if I act like an idiot?
What if we’re caught?
What am I doing here?
After drawing the shades, Pepper flips on a night-light, which casts light dimly in their cookie-cutter dorm room. Around the corner of a bureau jutting out, forming a partition wall, Grant sits on his bed, under a reading light attached to his headboard. The folded newspaper he holds suggests he’s doing a crossword puzzle. Before I know it, Sorel and Pepper are all over each other, leaving me on my own.
“Hey,” Grant says sleepily. I slink closer to his bed as he pushes himself to the edge. “Happy birthday.” He gets to his feet and bites his lip.
I bite mine. “Thanks. The card—” I whisper. I’m not sure if the ticking I hear is a clock or my heart.
Grant glances down shyly, as if it was easier to put his desires into words, on paper, than it is to say what he wants out loud.
“Do you take printmaking with Pepper?” I say to diffuse my discomfort.
“Yeah. It’s cool. I’m not super arty, but as Pepper would say, the teacher is chill. Doesn’t mind if we’re late, that kind of thing. You have Shale, huh?”
“Yep. Pretty much the opposite of laid-back.”
“Hardcore.”
“Hardcore,” I repeat.
“So, do you paint, draw? What goes on in the art tower?” Grant asks with a laugh.
I can’t even muster a smile. “You mean art dungeon. Humiliation, yelling, disgust . . .”
“He’s as bad as they say?”
“Worse.”
“You should do printing.”
“Then I’d see what you make before you can surprise me. The birthday card,” I say, helping him along, bringing us back to what we both want.
“Yeah,” he says, looking up from his hands.
“So, what are you waiting for?” I ask.
He leans in, and our lips press together. The little planets that make up my personal inner universe stop spinning. I think of the sizzle of the sparklers back on Halloween. This is like fireworks, filling the starless night, blanketing the little planets, lighting up the universe.
We linger, the warmth radiating from our skin magnetic, before we pull apart.
“First time sneaking out?” he asks, sitting on his bed.
“Sorta.” I lower myself down next to him, the mattress giving softly. My heart twitters.
“She’s over here at least three nights a week.” His expression puckers as if he’s eaten a lemon, like he’s heard too much out of the two of them for his liking. “But I’m glad you came,” he says, meeting my eyes.
In his, I see so much blue, a fathomless sky, an endless ocean.
“Thanks. I mean, me too.” Ugh. My tongue ties around the things I want: Grant and not to be expelled. Part of me keeps wondering when we’ll go back to Viv Brooks, even though we just got here. I want to slip between the crisp sheets of my hard-won bed and wake up tomorrow as if I haven’t given myself the opportunity to be kicked out. Then I remind myself that I’m with Sorel and somehow she’s managed to avoid trouble. Yet each creak of the old building settling or gust of wind from outside makes me flinch.
Grant shifts on the bed, leaning so close his edges get blurry. He takes my head in his hands, pulling my lips toward his, and we kiss again, erasing my worry, fulfilling my craving.
When we pull apart, he tucks a wisp of my hair behind my ear, studying me as though realizing I’m a piece to his puzzle. He hesitates for a fraction of a breath, as if wanting another confirmation of how perfectly our lips fit together, but instead he reclines along the short side of his bed, his knees bent and feet on the floor. He cradles his head in his hands like a hammock. His shirt creeps up, revealing the sliver of skin above the slim waist of his jeans. I debate whether to join him. I could easily just lean back, and we’d both be lying on his bed. Together. I inhale sharply. If someone discovers us, expulsion for sure. His fingertips gently test out the top of my hand, then find their counterparts, and they twine together. I lie down on my side, bringing my knees up between the two of us.
“I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to talk,” he says, echoing his card. I wonder if he’s really an artist, just modest. “It makes things complicated. But your voice, it’s like music, a husky melody. Tell me something. Anything. Talk to me about New York
City,” he says, turning his head toward me, but the words don’t come. Instead, he kisses me and kisses me and kisses me until the fireworks become stars.
I wish I had my sketchbook. If I’d known what tonight was, the dress would be off the shoulder, with shining threads in silver and copper, amethyst and indigo. Safely wearing this dress in my imagination, a memory appears.
One sleepless night, while I was curled up in an armchair in a squat, a condemned building my uncle would volunteer to bulldoze, my mother, in another room, did lines of coke or, from the smell of it, smoked it. As I rested my head on the wings of the chair, I peered between crumbled brick at the lights layering the city. Part of me wanted to get up and go, leave that mess behind me, but then I considered where. Instead, I just sat there.
After a time, my eyes got heavy, blurring, and I realized that when a person doesn’t have a proper home, one with a roof and four walls, preferably heat and electricity, and a family in that place to love them, a broader place becomes home, in my case Manhattan. I know the streets, the stores, the restaurants, and the museums like the lines drawn on my own hand. Only I often was on the outside looking in but always, always under a blanket of stars.
I don’t say this aloud and wonder if this whole night is a dream, but my eyes flutter open—
“Where’d you go?” Grant asks, and when my eyes meet his, I smile.
“I’m right here,” I say, relieved memories are only abstract recordings of history, nothing more. And right now, I’m making new ones.
He nips my lip, kisses my neck, and I forget the streets and stale memories. I don’t care about being friends or talking; I just want to do this, forever.
As our lips tire, Grant moves slower, sleepily. His hand still holds mine, and we remain that way, warm and interlaced, until I hear my name.
“We’ve got to get back. Now,” Sorel demands.
My eyes fly open, and for one groggy instant, I forget where I am. “Sorry, I must have—”
She cuts me off. “Come on.”
I glance at Grant, his face peacefully asleep, filling me with longing to stay there, get under the covers, even. Instead, I bungle through the window, and we jog back to our dorm, the early morning sky, heather and oatmeal, easing awake along the horizon.
“We all fell asleep. Cardinal rule of sneaking out, never fall asleep. Hurry up,” she says.
I stumble through the following day with exhaustion as my constant companion. Shale is unforgiving and instructs me in my still life by standing over my shoulder as I paint. It’s nerve-racking, and the inquisitive looks from my classmates make me wonder if he’s done this to everyone and at some point he’s going to startle me, causing me to smear paint across the canvas or do some other horrible thing to embarrass me and test my patience.
By the evening, my steps are heavy and my head swims in the peculiar twilight that happens just before sleep. The only thing keeping me upright as I do homework is the stolen moment on Grant’s bed, our lips outlining constellations and distant galaxies.
Chapter 11
Later that evening final-exam preparation transforms me into Charmindy’s twin and study buddy. She explains a memorizing technique involving encoding, storage, and retrieval.
“I’m overwhelming you, aren’t I?” she asks when my eyes dip toward closed.
“I’m just tired,” I say with a yawn.
Her sharp eyes land on my mouth. I hope she didn’t wake up and find my bed empty.
“Tea?” she asks, warming up her hot pot. She continues to impart intense study tips, including color-coded highlighting with coordinating sticky notes, repetition, and lots of nudges to keep me awake.
Over the course of exam week, Sorel badgers me about going to the woods. After our nighttime escapade, she practically begs me to go back with her each day, but I’ve managed to come up with a reasonable excuse—namely sleep—each time. It isn’t that I don’t want to see Grant again, and I’m not a Goody Two-shoes, but I’ve pledged these two years to school. I don’t want to give up meals and warm showers. Plus I don’t mind learning; I like it, even. The teachers here are passionate about educating, collaborating, and, as is the case with Shale, detonating. As time widens the crater between my old life and new, the alternative has me replenishing my sticky note supply at the school store.
On the last day of Painting IV before the break, Shale isn’t pacing his track along the creaky wooden floor when class starts. Expecting him to breeze through the door at any moment, we all promptly begin to put the finishing touches on our paintings. Except Charmindy. She stares at her canvas, her head tilted, dazed. She can’t organize or color code her way through this final.
I glance over my shoulder at the banner printed above Shale’s desk. Creativity takes courage. —Henri Matisse. Charmindy hasn’t moved out of her comfort zone. I go to the paint station and take squirts of bittersweet, tangerine, and cadmium. I pass them to her, pointing at the underside of some of her flowers. Her eyes light up, understanding the shadows need gradation.
In the doorway, Shale clears his throat. I turn back to my canvas, my fourth rendition of the same image. I don’t ever want to see a bowl of fruit again. He stalks over to Charmindy’s easel and surveys her work. He grunts and turns to the next person in the ring of easels lining the perimeter of the room. He dismisses each student after he accepts their work, some less kindly than others, until I’m the only person remaining.
He doesn’t even look at my painting, but leans against the workbench opposite and folds his arms in front of his chest. I don’t detect a smile beneath his beard, but amusement plays along the lines around his eyes. “Pearl Jaeger. What color is your blood?”
I don’t answer.
“What shade? Where are you on the spectrum?”
I remain quiet under his scrutiny, because I don’t have an answer and can’t bring myself to lie.
“Is paint your medium?”
I look out the window, the tops of trees bathed in the golden honey of morning. “No, usually I sketch, but I love painting. It’s great. My favorite artist is Frida . . . I mean—” My words mush like hash, and by the flat expression in his gray eyes, I can tell he doesn’t believe what I’m saying. I try again.
“I sketch because most days I’m afraid to commit to something as solid and permanent as oil, but—”
“A painter can add layers, hide mistakes or secrets under more paint. They’re still there.”
“Well, I’m here to paint, honestly.”
“Are you?” He grunts. “The solution is the skill in adding only what is necessary, creating a balance between sketching and painting.” He takes up a brush, and I sense that if the rest of the students were here, they’d gawk at him. Then he throws the brush down as if with disgust. “You may not help other students in this class, not even friends. Painting IV is about independence. However, I haven’t had a student follow through with three, much less four, renditions of a still life, ever. And I’ve been doing this a long time.” He braces his hands on the table. “So, what are you made of, tell me?”
“Half broken dreams, the other half, I’m not sure yet,” I say.
“No, not broken,” he says with what I think is tenderness in his voice. “Not yet.”
His eyes gleam, verging toward platinum. I hastily gather up my bag and coat.
“Every day, over holiday, make sure you have a brush, a pen, or some implement in your hand, creating, without fail. The only way to get better is to do the work, daily. There are no shortcuts. Not many people realize that.”
“Is that an assignment?” I ask.
“No. That’s an order.”
I exit the building at the same time as Brett—apparently, Terran’s claimed him as her territory. We’re walking at the same pace, so it would be awkward, not to mention rude, if we didn’t acknowledge each other.
“Almost done?”
I ask.
“Yep,” he answers. “You?”
“Charmindy schooled me in the fine art of successful studying. For once I think I’ve got this.”
His cheeks tint pink. “You’re roommates, right?” he asks. But I know he knows, because it’s been mentioned at the dining hall table when I sit with Charmindy’s crowd. “Is she going back to India for break?” He also knows the answer to this question.
“Yeah.”
“Um, so this might sound horrible, but I, um, does she already have like a boyfriend, or like—I don’t know exactly how it works.”
My forehead forms lines parallel to my eyebrows as I grimace at him.
“I know that sounded super ignorant. I just didn’t want to ask her and offend. Do you know what I mean?”
“You’re asking if she’s single? Available? You could have just said that.”
“I’m sorry. I walked her back to her dorm once, and I felt like she didn’t want me there. It’s hard to explain. I’ve hung out at her table, around the dorm. I don’t really know how to get her attention.”
I interrupt. “In a word, she’s fierce. So, the short answer is yes, she’s single. The long answer, unless you’re interested in spending ridiculous amounts of time in the library, studying, and would consider that quality time together, you don’t have a chance. She’s married to scholarship—”
His face matches his red North Face jacket. Down the sidewalk, I spot Terran, wearing a matching coat, but hers is in teal. As she nears, I feel the burn of her glare, and her bare hands form fists.
“But Charmindy is one of the coolest people I know. You should give it a shot,” I say quickly, with a reassuring smile. As I cross the lawn to my next class, I wave good-bye to Brett, shouting, “Good luck, lover boy.”
Pearl Page 8
