Tagged

by Mara Purnhagen

  “Let’s hope this gets you into a really, really good school.”

  He laughed. “That would be nice.”

  “Did they ask you about Tiffany’s car?”

  “Yeah. I confessed.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “Lan said she and Brady did it.”

  “They did, but I figured since I was already in so much trouble, I might as well take the blame for it.”

  “That was decent of you,” I said. Eli was a good guy, I thought. But one thing still bothered me. “Why were you in Oklahoma for so long?” I asked. “And why did you wait so long to contact me? Couldn’t you have told me most of this last week?”

  “Oklahoma was crazy,” Eli said, shaking his head. “We had to wait to see how my brother would be charged. My parents had him out on bail, which was good, but then we had to wait for a court date, and they decided we were going to stay together as a family. They didn’t want to let either one of us out of their sight for a minute.”

  “Were they worried you and Ben would go on a painting spree?”

  Eli smiled. “I guess.” His expression turned serious once again. “As for not contacting you…Kate, I really wanted to. But I was worried about putting you in the middle. I didn’t know if your dad was involved with the investigation, and I wanted to keep you out of it just in case he was.”

  A car pulled up to the window and I stood. When the driver ordered four banana lattes, Eli went to work steaming milk while I took the customer’s money. For a moment, it was just like old times.

  After the customer left, I thanked Eli for helping me. “You know, I’ve never actually tried a banana latte,” I confessed.

  “Then I’ll make one for you,” Eli said with a flourish of his arm, “and it will be the greatest drink you have ever tasted.”

  I giggled and sat down to watch him work. He was wearing a purple T-shirt and I loved the way it clung to his back. It would be so nice, I thought, if we could just erase the past few weeks and go back to that moment in the car when we first kissed. But we couldn’t, and no matter how much I wanted things to be perfect between the two of us, the simple fact was that they weren’t.

  Eli handed me the warm cup and pulled his chair closer to mine.

  “I’ve reached my latte limit for the day,” I joked. I didn’t take a sip right away. I wanted it to cool off a little first.

  “So, are we okay now?” He was staring at me, and I self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “I would like everything to be okay,” I said, looking into his brown eyes. “But the truth is, I’m having a hard time with all this. You were secretive and distant and I was totally confused and hurt for a while. Those feelings aren’t just going to vanish instantly.”

  “I understand.” Eli nodded sadly.

  “But there are also the feelings I had for you before all of this happened, and those aren’t going to vanish, either.”

  He grinned. “I’m glad to hear that. So where does that leave us now?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I reached for his hand. “You know what I want? I want a relationship that starts off right, that doesn’t include a lot of baggage or angry exes or damaged feelings.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, though, over time. Think we can start over?”

  He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’d love to.”

  ELI STAYED WITH ME throughout the rest of my shift. Bonnie was thrilled to see him. Eli told her that he would need to come back to work soon. “I have a lot of fines I need to pay,” he explained.

  “There’s always a place for you here, dear,” Bonnie said, hugging him. “And I never paid you for the new sign, did I? So maybe that will help.”

  “New sign?” I asked.

  Bonnie gave Eli a worried look. “Does she know?”

  Eli nodded. “Tell her.”

  “I knew Eli was painting the gorillas so I asked him to paint me one. I thought it would help business.” She smiled and patted Eli’s shoulder. “And it has, dear. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “How did you know it was him?” I asked.

  “Call it a hunch.” She winked. “That and he left his computer open one day.”

  I was happy that I would be working with Eli again, especially since he was grounded and work would be the only time we would be spending together until the end of the school year.

  Both my parents came to pick me up after my shift so we could drive to dinner. They saw me kiss Eli on the cheek, and as soon as I got in the car, they bombarded me with a million questions. I calmly told them that Eli and I were just friends, but there was a chance we would start dating in a few months.

  “Too bad he’s a vandal.” Dad sighed. “I might have really liked him.”

  Mom gave him a playful punch to the shoulder. “I think he’s sweet. He took responsibility for his actions. And he wasn’t doing it to be malicious.”

  “That doesn’t mean he needs to date my daughter,” Dad grumbled, but I knew he wasn’t really angry. He was only doing the concerned dad thing.

  “We’re just friends right now,” I reminded them. “Nothing else.”

  We ate dinner at Mom’s favorite Italian restaurant and talked about other things. I was full from lasagna and salad and bread but was considering a thick slab of tiramisu when Dad asked about school and I remembered the history paper. I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  As soon as we got home, I went to my computer. I spent hours on it, writing and rewriting several drafts, but nothing sounded satisfactory to me. I couldn’t express what I really wanted to say and I was beyond frustrated. It wasn’t just that I wanted a good grade. I felt like I had something to say about art, that it was personal and mattered to me. I wanted to define art more for myself than for Mr. Gildea’s class.

  After three hours I was ready to give up. No matter what I wrote, it wouldn’t be good enough. Then I spotted my digital camera. I opened up the picture files on my computer and searched through all the images I’d taken in the past few months, starting with first shots on Christmas morning, right after my parents gave the camera to me. I took the rest after school began in January. There was a photo of the gorillas on the wall. One picture showed Lan wearing a pink orchid pin she had made. In another, Eden bent over a stack of newspapers. I smiled. I wasn’t going to write a definition of art, after all. I was going to show it.

  20

  Three Months Later

  LAN ARRIVED AT MY HOUSE an hour early. “I made banana spring rolls,” she announced, holding a foil-covered casserole dish. Mom had set up a table for snacks, and I placed Lan’s dessert next to the bowls of chips and plates of sliced vegetables and cheese cubes. Mom had gone to a lot of work for just a few guests, but I knew why. Ever since she’d quit her job at Cleary Confections and started her own cake business, she’d been gone a lot, and making a fuss over my simple get-together was her way of trying to make it up to me.

  “The guys won’t be here for another hour,” I told Lan.

  “I know, but I wanted to see you. Don’t you have new pictures to show me?”

  I went to my room and came back with a fat envelope stuffed with photographs I had printed out earlier in the day. I handed the envelope to Lan, who began to sift through them.

  “This is a nice one,” she said, holding up a picture I took at prom. In it, Brady was beaming at Lan as they danced. She was looking right at the camera, a wide smile on her face.

  I nodded. “It’s yours. Keep it.”

  I had attended the prom with Trent Adams, of all people. Eli was grounded, but he thought I’d have fun with his friend at my side.

  “We’ll go together next year,” he promised.

  I wasn’t going to go at all, but Trent suggested we dress up like we were from the 1920s, which sounded fun. I wore a silver flapper dress and decorated my hair with feathers. Trent wore a white tux and top hat and drew a thin mustache above his lip. We were a hit.


  Prom was a success, despite the committee’s worries that Tiffany’s party would hurt attendance. Even Tiffany showed up, but all she did was comment on the girls’ clothes. If a girl wore the same dress to prom that she’d worn to the party—and most of them did—Tiffany loudly pointed it out. Some of the seniors eventually asked her to leave. As she stormed out of the room there was a sprinkling of applause, but within a minute everyone had returned to dancing and chatting as if Tiffany had never even been there.

  Once the camera crew left town and the party was a distant memory, Tiffany’s reputation lost some of its luster. When word got out that she was going to be suspended for a racially insensitive remark, it hurt her image even more, which I thought was kind of strange because the same people who ignored the incident when it happened were now loudly condemning her. In the end, Mr. Werner’s lawyer argued that she never finished saying whatever it was she was going to say and therefore it could have been anything. The suspension never happened, but Tiffany did have to write an essay on tolerance.

  “This is great,” Lan said, handing me another photograph.

  It was a picture of a group of seniors just before they walked onstage to receive their diplomas. I was standing behind them with my camera, and the way the lights were set up made it look like they were almost glowing. I took a profile shot, and Eden used a digital copy for the final edition of the newspaper. She also declared that I was going to be on her staff next year. She had been freaking out because her best photographer graduated and she didn’t have a replacement. I became the new photo editor before the bell rang on the last day of school.

  Lan was still looking through the stack of photos when the doorbell rang.

  “Come in!” I hollered. Eli and Brady walked into the den. Eli was carrying a banana latte for me. He kissed my cheek and handed me the drink.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a cautious sip to make sure it wasn’t too hot.

  “You’re addicted,” said Eli, shaking his head with a smile.

  “One a day isn’t addicted.”

  Brady sat next to Lan and looked at the pictures with her. I turned on the TV, but put it on Mute.

  “Half hour,” I announced. I sat on the floor, my back against the sofa. Eli sat down next to me.

  “You ready for this?”

  “Ready for it to be over,” I said, taking a deep drink.

  The promos had been airing for two weeks. “This princess has planned the perfect party,” a female announcer said dryly. There was a shot of Tiffany on her canopied bed, painting her toenails, followed by her trying on dresses in a boutique while her mother watched. “But will her fairy tale have a happy ending?”

  “This is not what I want!” Tiffany screamed into her phone. The next scene showed her shrieking as her new convertible pulled into view and someone in the crowd asking, “What happened to it?”

  I knew everyone from school would be watching the episode and I was thankful that at least I wouldn’t have to face them the next day—school had been out for over a week. Even after I had been cleared of everything, people still looked at me differently. The general assumption seemed to be that my dad had pulled some strings to get me out of trouble. I knew I couldn’t convince everyone of the truth, so I gave up trying. It was liberating, in a way. I began raising my hand more often in class and expressing my opinion. I figured that if people didn’t like what I had to say, so what. I felt like I could handle anything.

  Eli was officially ungrounded; however, he had to work mornings at Something’s Brewing and afternoons at the school. I only saw him a few times a week, but we talked on the phone every night. I loved to lie in the dark, staring at the stars on my ceiling as I sank into the sound of his voice.

  “Can I have this one?” Brady asked. He held up one of the pictures from prom of him and Lan.

  “Absolutely,” I said. I was pleased that people liked my pictures. I enjoyed taking them, and I felt like it was something I could be really good at doing. Eli was using some shots I took of his artwork for his college portfolio.

  Lan cleared her throat. “I almost hate to bring this up, but guess what I heard about Reva?”

  Eli shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like hearing her name, but for me she was an unpleasant memory and nothing more.

  “Her grandma enrolled her at that private academy across town, the one with the uniforms.”

  I laughed. “Are you telling me that she’s going to have to wear a blazer and a plaid skirt every day of her senior year?”

  “Yep. And they have a really strict code about makeup and jewelry, too.”

  Even Eli laughed. “Is it wrong to feel just a little sorry for her?”

  A promo flashed across the screen and we watched it without turning on the sound. I felt my stomach tighten. I knew I would be a part of Tiffany’s episode and I knew it wouldn’t be good. I was hoping that they didn’t focus too much on me, although Brady said he thought it would be funny if I stole the show.

  Eli squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered.

  I squeezed back. My most awful moment was about to be broadcast to the world but, sitting with Eli and Lan and Brady, it didn’t feel quite so bad. It was amazing, I thought, how my worst moment had led to some of my best.

  Lan picked up the remote. “It’s time,” she said. “This is kind of exciting, really. We get to see everyone we know.”

  The show’s theme song began and the credits rolled across the screen. I leaned into Eli, who wrapped one arm around my shoulder.

  The show opened with a shot in front of our school and panned over to show the gorillas painted on the wall. We cheered when we saw it. Before the scene changed, there was a split-second shot of Mr. Gildea leaving the building.

  When I turned in my history paper to Mr. Gildea months earlier, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Instead of writing a long essay, I compiled ten of my favorite pictures into a booklet and used the same caption for each one. “This is art,” I wrote beneath the photos. One showed Bonnie at work, knitting a blue sweater. Another one featured my mom icing an elaborate cake. I also included photos of my friends doing the things they loved most.

  I concluded with a shot of the gorillas. Beneath that picture, I wrote that art is what we create with feeling. “Anyone who puts genuine and honest thought into something is an artist,” I wrote.

  Mr. Gildea liked it. “Very unorthodox,” he said as he flipped through the pages. “But you make a clear point. Good job.” He gave me a B+ and recommended me for a summer photography course open to high school students at the community college.

  Eli reached for my hand as the invitation ceremony flashed across the screen. Tiffany called out names through her bullhorn. Some people squealed excitedly while others shook their heads and walked away. I felt like I should be paying more attention to the show, but my mind kept going back to my pictures and the essay, which I planned on using in my own college portfolio. I was proud of my work. I felt like I had gone beyond the assignment to find an answer I had needed for a long time.

  I wasn’t defining art.

  I was defining myself.

  Acknowledgments

  I could offer a thousand thanks to the following people and it would not be enough, but I’ll try anyway.

  Thank you to Robert Lettrick, “inventor” of the banana latte and diligent reader of first drafts.

  Thank you to Kristi Purnhagen, who offered a critical eye and sound suggestions.

  Thank you to all the strong and supportive women in my life, including Barbara Bresock, Mary Ruth Bresock, Abby Elliot, Barbara Lohrstorfer, Nancy McDaniel, Sayrah Namaste, Maxine Purnhagen, Christine Sagan, Jeanne Schaal, Janet Sekerak and Lillian Tupes.

  Thank you to Diane Bishop, my high school English teacher.

  Thank you to the entire staff at the Middle Tyger Library in Duncan, South Carolina.

  Thank you to Henry and Quinn, who inspired me to get serious about all this book stuff.

  And f
inally, thank you to Joe, who always saw me as a writer.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4970-1

  TAGGED

  Copyright © 2010 by Mara Purnhagen

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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