asked, but not like she was challenging me. Like she genuinely wanted to know.
I turned and pointed at the nearest statue: kid Leo reading Proust. “Like his shoelace on the left foot. It’s about to come untied. So many people would just make it so the shoelaces are the way you’d expect them to be, tied up neat, or maybe untied, because he’s a little kid. But about to become untied is kind of brilliant.”
I was talking too much. It’s a problem.
The woman in the white dress made a noise in the back of her throat. “You have a sharp eye. Do you sculpt?”
“I draw,” I explained. “Portraits, mostly.”
“Well, I’d love to see your work sometime,” she said.
This is something people say all the time, when they find out that you’re an artist: I’d love to see your work. Which always feels to me a bit presumptuous. Sharing your work is like showing people a piece of you. An intimate piece. But with this woman, the request felt different.
“Me,” I said. “Why?”
Diana Robinson chuckled. “She’s the gallery owner.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “Oh. Well, I don’t have anything I could . . . I’m not a professional artist or anything. I’m not—”
“But you obviously will be,” the woman said. “Take my card.”
I was worried she was going to spill red wine on her white dress while she dug into her bag, but she didn’t. She handed me a simple, heavy card, where cleanly printed in silver letters was the name Eileen Watts, Watts Gallery, and her phone number and email address.
Later I taped the card to my bedroom wall, where I always look at it and think, Someday.
“What else?” Leo asked after the conversation with Diana and Eileen moved to other things and I kind of backed away.
“Else?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “What other details did you notice?”
I bit my lip. “Let’s see. You have a mole on the side of your neck. Not anything big or hairy or gross, just a little dot halfway up on the left side.”
He turned his head and pulled back the collar of his hoodie to reveal the mole, just where I said it would be.
“Your second toe is a tiny bit longer than your big toe,” I said.
He grinned. I smiled, too, but I was embarrassed. Here I was describing parts of his body like I knew what was underneath his clothes.
“I promise I’m not a stalker,” I said. “I just pay attention to your mom’s work.”
“What else?” he said.
I laughed. It was the first time I’d ever used that laugh, the nervous one, which doesn’t really sound like me. I mentioned the cowlick.
“Do you want to come over to my house sometime?” Leo said then.
“Yes,” I squeaked.
God. I was so pathetic. I was so naive. I was so wrong.
9
I’ve been comforting myself by imagining a scenario in which Leo shows up on my front lawn and shouts I’m sorry up at my window, like a scene in a romantic comedy. He’ll also yell that he’s made a terrible mistake, and if I will just forgive him he’ll make it up to me, and Kayla doesn’t mean anything to him. Then I plan to open my window and scream back, You don’t mean anything to me, either! Go away, loser! and slam the window shut again. No kissing and making up for me. I don’t require a happy ending, only some small form of petty vengeance.
But, sadly, Leo never appears.
“What’s up with you?” Pop asks. “You’re being quieter than usual.”
“I’m a quiet person,” I say, although that’s not entirely true. I’m only quiet around people I don’t know. Around Pop I’m generally talkative. “I’m fine.”
Pop and Abby are in my bedroom, helping me pack for Hawaii. Although helping is not quite what Abby is doing. She keeps bouncing on the bed and suggesting weird stuff for me to bring, like my large wooden art easel that won’t have a prayer of fitting in my suitcase, or the white feather boa that’s draped over one of my bedposts, a leftover from a birthday party years ago. “To remind you of home,” Abby says, flinging it around my neck.
“We’re only going to be gone for like a week,” I remind her.
“How many days is a week?” Abby wants to know.
“Seven. But we’re going to be gone nine, counting the travel days.”
Abby counts it out on her fingers. “Nine days is a lot,” she decides.
Yes, it is. Thank god. It’s just what I need, nine days