by Sarah Sutton
The “probably” didn’t instill the most confidence. “You don’t have to help,” I told her. “It’s kind of messy.”
Mom raised an eyebrow at me. “Remi, my job is practically one big arts and crafts project. Plus, I’m sure I can do a better snowflake than your father. Did you want to take my car?”
“No, that’s okay.” I grabbed my boots and hurried past her toward the back door. The library wasn’t a far walk from our house, and I was being a little manipulative. If I didn’t take Mom’s car, Elijah would no doubt offer to drive me home. Sneaky, right? “I won’t be long, I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It was a little after seven o’clock, so the sun that had been hidden behind the clouds today was now completely eclipsed from view. Snow fell as I hurried down the street, flipping my hood up. Despite the wintery chill, it was a beautiful night to be outside. The streetlights guided me to the library, flurries from the snowbanks catching in the wind.
The scene was something from a movie, because at that moment, everything just felt right. My snowflakes were almost finished. I’d finished my dumb clay sculpture for my final exam in art. Mom and I were bonding much more. Elijah and I were finding our groove again, more or less. Lunch earlier today was just me being a brat—he had the right to hang out with whoever he wanted, Jeremy or not.
There were a few cars parked outside the library when I walked up to it. The brick structure glowed from within, like a candle lit to a flame. People flickered around that flame, moving in front of the windows, along the stacks of books. A sign was propped in the library’s front yard: FENTON COUNTY ART CONTEST.
It smelled like warm sugar and old paper as I pulled open the door, revealing the people and setups within. A table stood right at the front door, offering cookies and punch. Though they were tempting, I shrugged off my jacket and made my way farther inside, eyes peeled for a certain shock of blond hair. A wave of anticipation went through me at the idea of finally getting to see his sculpture. The theme was “Family,” and I couldn’t wait to see what he crafted.
“Hello,” the librarian greeted as she walked up to me, her lips curved into a wide smile. “Are you here to vote in the contest? You’re just in time if you’d like to. The voting ends in five minutes, and then we’ll count them.”
Voting? Elijah hadn’t said anything about voting—he’d mentioned the contest, but I just assumed there would be judges. If I’d known it was a voting contest, I would’ve sung his praises to everyone I knew. “I absolutely want to vote. Where are the sculptures?”
The librarian steered my shoulders. “We have five entries over this way, behind the History section. There are papers in front of them that you can write the sculpture name on and stick it in the jar.”
I rubbed my chilly fingers along the thighs of my jeans as I walked farther into the depths of the library, trying to rise to my tiptoes to see over the shelves of books.
The displays were arranged in a straight line. Three of the five sculptures were made of clay, fired and glazed different colors, but clay nonetheless. I glanced at the name cards. Tonia, Ron, Clayton, Audrey—
I looked at the final sculpture posed on the table, taking a long moment just to figure out what sat before me. What I was looking at. The card held Elijah’s name, scrawled in his usual messy handwriting, but the sculpture…
It wasn’t made of clay, and that must have been what threw me the most. No, the material was papier-mâché, sturdy and thick, painted a pale color, shaped into a human figure. There were two legs, about as thick as a baby’s fist, poised on the cardboard platform. One foot wasn’t really taking a step but caught midway through the act.
The sculpture wasn’t just legs, though. The papier-mâché was a human figure, yes: a small baby, just beginning to walk. And it was titled, Help in Harmony.
I felt my fingers against my lips. His sculpture is of Harmony walking. All of the times Elijah had asked about Harmony these past weeks came rushing back to me, tickling my mind. This was why he always asked about her.
“You like it?” A familiar voice asked from behind me, and the breath I drew in faltered. “It took me a while, and it was so hard to hide it from you. But I knew your face when you saw the finished product would be worth it.”
Elijah stood with his hands in his pants pockets, his pale thumbs poking out against the dark fabric. He’d pushed his hair out of his face for tonight, kept it behind his ears. The shirt he wore was one I’d never seen before, a button-up that made him look different, older. Like Terry. I looked toward his hands again, noticing how he hid them. I would’ve bet money on the fact that there was still clay underneath his nails, paint smudging his cuticles or something, and he felt embarrassed by it. By how he could never get them quite clean.
His expression looked guarded, nervous. “Well, Rem?”
“You did a papier-mâché of Harmony,” I said slowly, softly, turning back to the sculpture. “Why—how—”
“Funny story, I actually was originally going to sculpt something else, something clay. The night Terry was arrested, I…I broke it.” His lips curved, but his cheeks pinked with heat. I remembered that night, finding him in his room, with the unfired clay pieces scattered around his room. Ends gnarled as if he’d ripped them apart. “It took me a bit to figure out what I wanted to sculpt, but I took my inspiration from you.”
Why does my chest feel so tight? “And Harmony.”
“And Harmony.” He shifted on his feet, withdrawing a hand to gesture at the sculptures. “Everyone did a really great job, though.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that it was a voting contest?” I asked, turning back to the Harmony sculpture and grabbing a sliver of paper, ready to write down the name. “I would’ve been putting out social media ads like crazy.”
“I wanted it to be just about the art. At least on my end. Mrs. Keller stopped by earlier, though. My parents, too, on their way to a date, strangely enough. It’s the first time since Terry.”
“That’s good, right?” I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s progress.” A part of me felt bad that I’d called out Mrs. Greybeck the other day, but maybe it had encouraged her to get back to her life. Imagining that made me feel a little bit better. “Did Savannah stop by?”
“No,” he said. “She didn’t.”
Now I turned around fully, the piece of paper crinkling between my fingers. “What?”
“She didn’t come. It’s fine.” Elijah frowned a little as he looked at me, something passing over his expression. “We fight a lot, about a lot of things. Stupid things, really. So it’s okay that she didn’t come to this.”
My eyebrows came together. “I’ve never notice you guys fighting.”
“We don’t fight in public. God forbid anyone thinks we’re not a ‘good couple.’” Elijah’s chest lifted and fell harshly, the movement prominent enough for me to notice out of the corner of my eye. “I just…I don’t know if we’re right for each other.”
A part of my brain wanted to rally behind that sentiment, scream, yes, dump her! Date me!
But, amazingly enough, I held back. I leaned against one of the display tables, making sure not to put too much of my weight on it. “Maybe you just need to talk it out, or…I’m not the best in the realm of relationship advice.”
“Yeah, but you’re smart. I don’t know how you’re failing art, because you’re just so smart.”
“You don’t have to be smart to be good at art,” I said, glancing at his sculpture. “I mean, look at you.”
He made a choking noise, and even without looking, I knew it was a laugh.
It felt easy talking to him like this, with neither one of us facing each other. Maybe it was because like this, in this secluded corner of the library, it almost felt like I was speaking to myself. And as I spoke, my chest no longer felt pinched or heavy, and though the weirdness of the past few weeks still existed, in this moment, it didn’t feel nearly as impossible to overcome.
“Te
rry would’ve loved this,” I said. “He always loved it when you got into art shows and stuff like this. Remember that one last year at the street fair? How he told everyone who walked past to come check out your sculpture?”
“Remi,” Elijah said as if I hadn’t spoken, taking a step closer. His feet were soundless on the carpet. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“I’m not mad about you taking Jeremy and Haisley,” I told him, knowing what his serious tone was about. “I know I was being a brat about it earlier, but I’m not mad. I mean, I’ll get over it. And I’ll get a ride with Eloise, which will be better because she’s going to do my hair anyway. It’ll be fine.”
“Remi.” His mouth was tight around the edges, more serious than I thought.
“Elijah,” the librarian called as she walked into the History section, bringing a trail of voters behind her. I stepped out of the way to let them look at the sculptures. “There’s an art professor from Fenton County Community College out front. Would you like to come speak with him?”
“I’ll be right there,” Elijah said, reaching to touch my arm. “Don’t leave, okay?”
I made a face at him. “I’m not going anywhere.” He was my unofficial ride home.
It took him a moment to draw away from me, and at that moment, I couldn’t help imagining him drawing me closer, closer. But he didn’t. His lips twitched a little bit, but he turned away.
The people that had come into the section to look at the sculptures lingered, chatting about which they thought was best, which they thought took the longest, which might have been the hardest. I stood off to the side, eyes trailing over and over Elijah’s piece. This was his best work by far. And maybe I was biased, but I couldn’t deny it was the best one tonight.
And according to the people who flocked to his sculpture and copied down Help in Harmony, they thought so, too.
“This was a terrible idea.”
I grinned, reaching down for the lever underneath the seat to propel myself forward, feeling the car hum. “It’s a brilliant idea. I told you, I’m fine. It’s been two weeks since the concussion. I can drive.”
“You don’t even have your license.”
“I do too have a license.”
Elijah raised a skeptical eyebrow from the passenger seat of Terry’s truck, looking nervous. “On you?”
Ha. Well. “It’s only, like, three blocks. I’m not going to get pulled over in three blocks.”
“Great. You just sealed your fate.”
I reached over and clicked my seatbelt into place, touching the brake experimentally with my foot. “I haven’t driven in forever.”
“Could’ve kept that to yourself,” Elijah muttered as I grabbed the shifter, slipping it into reverse.
It wasn’t that Mom never let me use her car; it was just that she needed it almost every day, so I never bothered paying for a parking pass at school. That meant even on the days she was working from home and not using the car, I still couldn’t take it.
That explained the wide, almost manic grin on my face as I eased the truck onto the roadway. “Are you excited that you won?”
Elijah glanced down at the golden award in his lap, turning it over and over. “Golden” only because it was painted that color; the thing rang like hollowed plastic. “It’s fun. I didn’t participate to win, though.”
“Blah, blah. You can be excited, you know. I’ll be excited with you.”
“It’s not that I’m not happy. I’m just…thinking.”
“I wondered what smelled like it was burning.”
I watched as Elijah’s lips quirked, like an electric shock jumping the thin line and forcing it to twitch into a smile. It didn’t last long, though.
For some reason, his face made me think of that night so long ago. The night Terry had been arrested. I could still hear Elijah’s voice trembling over the phone. Can you come over? Please? I just…I need you. I need you.
“Your sculpture was pretty epic,” I told him, flipping on the blinker as I stopped at a light. “Papier-mâché was different from everyone else’s. And the subject matter—I know I’m biased, but that was pretty impressive.”
“That’s what the art professor said.”
The tires skidded a little as I put too much gas in the acceleration, and my fingers tightened on the worn steering wheel. “Why did you choose Harmony as a subject, anyway? What’s the meaning behind that?”
Elijah shifted in his seat and turned to me, his face bathed in the dashboard lights. I tried not to keep track of his movements, tried to focus on the road, but I couldn’t help but be hyperaware. “You said once that Harmony kept falling but she kept getting up. It took her time, but she learned to walk because she kept getting up. I…I really understood that. On the level with Terry. With me. And I realized how much your life affects mine.”
“In a good way?” I sounded hopeful.
“In the best way,” he returned, his voice lower than it usually sounded. I flipped on my blinker and started down Grisham Street. “Never question that, Remi. Always in the best way.”
“Beanie,” I said.
“What?”
I glanced over at him as we passed underneath a streetlamp, watching the glare of yellow streak across his face. “You don’t call me Beanie anymore. You haven’t called me Beanie in a while. Why?”
Elijah blinked once, twice, as if trying to remember the last time he’d said it. “I didn’t realize I’d stopped.”
I eased the truck down the road to Elijah’s driveway, twisting the wheel. The tires bumped as they met the divot in the sidewalk, jostling the two of us in the cab. Once we were at a complete stop, I slid the gearshift back into park, pulled the keys from the ignition. The chain Elijah kept them on rattled, and I looked to find the bracelet I’d given him still on a ring. BFFs FOUREVER was stitched into the bracelet, right beside my name. My seven-year-old self totally was unaware of how to spell. Seeing it, though, made me smile as I remembered all the past we had behind us.
“There, see? I told you everything would be fine,” I said, unclicking my seatbelt and turning to Elijah. “Thanks for letting me drive. I’ll have just enough time to finish my snowflakes.” I wondered how many Mom had finished since I’d left. Maybe one or two? It sounded simple, but that’d be a big help.
Elijah unlatched his seatbelt too, but his movements were slow. He didn’t reach for the door but merely sat still, gaze on his hands. Something was bothering him, different than things had been between us lately. Everything felt strange. Off.
“You wanted to tell me something?” I asked. “Earlier, at the library?”
He rubbed at his mouth, and even in the darkness, I could see that there were dark smudges along the sides of his fingers. I’d been right before, guessing about his hands. His hands were always like that. Stained. Dirty. Hinting at signs of previous creativity. Either from clay, graphite pencils, paint, glaze—always. He scrubbed and scrubbed, but it was never enough. Always a trace remained. “I—I don’t remember what we were talking about.”
“We talked about you fighting with Savannah.” I sat back in the seat, looking at the front of Elijah’s closed garage door. “What do you and Savannah fight about, anyway? Let me guess—you didn’t like the tie she picked out for the dance.”
In the journey from the library to his driveway, the truck hadn’t had time to properly warm up, so the chill of winter hung in the air. “We fight about you.”
Ha. Okay, I hadn’t expected that. “Is she trying to pressure you to stop being friends with me? Is it because I take you shopping with me? Because I can stop, I can—”
“Did you know that Savannah and Jeremy used to date?”
I blinked again, struggling to keep up with the subject change. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I knew that.” Jeremy always found a way to bring her up.
“Sophomore year. Seems like forever ago. I didn’t know about it until Savannah told me last Wednesday. That they used to date, I mean.”
Last Wednesday—that was the day we went on our double date. Was that why they’d acted so strange when they picked me up? I stared at his hands, struggling to figure out what he was getting at. “And that bothers you?”
“No.” His laugh sounded hollow, disappearing into the quietness of the cab. “Not a single bit.”
“I guess I don’t understand. If it doesn’t bother you, why are you bringing it up?”
Elijah raised his eyes to mine. Their brown centers were warm and melty, focused on me. In this light, though, they almost looked black. “My point,” he murmured, his voice dropping so low that the sound itself sounded like a prayer, “is that if I didn’t care about Jeremy being with her, why did the idea of him touching you nearly drive me mad?”
Everything stopped.
If I could’ve collected all the times my stomach had dropped over the course of the last two weeks and combined them together, it wouldn’t have even come close to the feeling that washed over me. Like I’d hit my head all over again, but instead of pain pulsing through my body, it was something else. The butterflies in my stomach spread to every inch of my body, filling me with heat and a fluttering sensation.
It felt like my last remaining brain cells had jumped ship. I was stupefied that I could open my mouth, let alone form a coherent word. “What?”
Elijah scrubbed a hand over his face, as if that could erase the trace of his words. “See, Remi, that is what we fight about. Not about dresses or shopping or ice cream. We fight about you because she knows how I feel.”
She knows how I feel.
And, you know, how was that, exactly?
He kept his hands pressed against his eyes. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about. Nonstop. Jeremy with you, Jeremy touching you, Jeremy kissing you. Like my brain’s on a loop, never-ending.”
I wanted to pull his hands away, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. I’d morphed into the truck seat; we were both frozen.
“I know it was you I kissed at Jeremy’s party,” Elijah said simply, quickly, as if tearing off a bandage. “I didn’t know it at first. Not until last Friday, when I took you to your dad’s. Not until I helped you out of Jeremy’s car. You—you smelled the same. The same as you did at his party. It all snapped into place.”
