The Art of Us

Chapter One

Ireland

Being a homeless teenager wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

“Totally one of your top-ten lies,” Ireland Raine muttered to herself. She scowled into the dark and tugged the sleeping bag she’d bought from the thrift store more tightly around her. The cold of the public bathroom seeped from the poorly painted cement floor beneath her and the cinder block walls around her and into her bones. She chuckled darkly. So many metaphors applied to her situation. The one that made her laugh was “my life is in the toilet.” It shouldn’t have been funny, but ...

The bathroom floor was big enough for her to stretch out on while lying down—which was good because even though at five feet, eight and a half inches she wasn’t exactly the tallest human alive, she wasn’t the shortest either. And she had never been able to sleep while curled up. The bathroom allowed her that space even if it didn’t offer much more. It sat at the edge of the woods located on the outskirts of the town of Arcata, California. The bathroom was practically forgotten since it wasn’t on the primary trails. Ireland had been sleeping there for the past several weeks, and, so far, no one had bothered trying to use it—at least, she didn’t think so. So she kept going back, finding a routine in her circumstances that were not exactly ideal but not as bad as she had first thought.

Sure, the dirty walls and spiderwebs in the corners by the small windows near the roofline were not fantastic. And, sure, if the devil showed up with his horned head and fanged mouth offering her a deal to trade her soul for a comfortable bed, a hot meal, and a hotter bath, she’d consider it a bargain. “At least I’m safe,” she whispered to herself. Safe-ish, anyway.

Not everyone in the world could say that.

The first day after Ireland’s dad left her had passed in a blind panic. The opened letter on the counter next to the bowl of cold, congealed ramen noodles gave her all the information she needed: the landlord was done with her dad’s excuses. A couple of guys would be coming that night to remove them from the apartment. By force, if necessary. The landlord was the criminal sort of greasy, weaselly guy who would consider busting out kneecaps and breaking fingers “necessary” if anyone was still found within the walls of the apartment when they showed up.

So her dad had done what he did best. He skipped town.

He just forgot to take Ireland with him this time. Her chest tightened at the betrayal she felt when she thought about it too long. He’d left her. Just left. Like it was nothing.

She knew he was gone for good because his stuff—meager and insignificant as it all was—had also disappeared. Some of her stuff had turned up missing too. She was sure he’d scavenged through her belongings in the hope of finding a few bucks or something valuable enough to sell.

Joke’s on him, she thought for the millionth time. He hadn’t found her money before he’d left. She’d kept her extra cash in a jar outside behind a rock that was almost invisible due to the overgrown weeds. Experience had taught her that her dad couldn’t be trusted around her money. He’d used it to buy cigarettes, alcohol, or both when she’d left enough lying around.

So what if he’d left? He hadn’t gotten his hands on that last bit of cash. Her chest swelled with satisfaction.

Of course, there would be more satisfaction if she’d managed to squirrel away more in her jar.

Eighteen bucks and a handful of pennies that didn’t even add up to a quarter.

Ireland had remembered the jar after the first wave of panic over her father leaving had passed and she was able to think rationally. Her current school was a good one. She was doing well, the teachers liked her, and her dad had done her the favor of applying for the free lunch program, so she was guaranteed one meal every weekday until she graduated in June. That was six months of food. Staying and finishing school would go a long way toward securing her independence. She would turn eighteen in a couple of months, so at least no one could put her in the system if her situation were discovered. Being a homeless legal adult was better than being a homeless child.

Lie?

Maybe.

Ireland had found the sleeping bag at Goodwill for six dollars and forty-seven cents. When she’d first seen it, the slightly suspicious stains, the zipper that didn’t work so it could never be unzipped, and the fact that it would take a third of her available finances made her turn up her nose at it.

She went back for it the next day, praying it was still available and almost weeping at the many degrees of gorgeousness that it still sat unclaimed on the shelf. A night of shivering without it and waking up so cold it took half of the next day to thaw out had also drastically thawed her frosty opinion. Of course, that had also been before she’d found her outhouse apartment, complete with electricity, running water—albeit cold—and a flushing toilet.

Ireland looked around in the dark and counted her lucky stars. At least she had shelter when it rained or got too windy—which, since it was January, was half of the time. At least she had a locking door.

As if to remind her that the lock wasn’t exactly substantial, something scratched around outside the bathroom door. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.

There is no such thing as vampires , she thought to herself. There was no werewolf wanting to chew on her jugular. There was no public-restroom poltergeist rattling chains of eternal toilet torment.

And, okay, there were serial killers and rapists and people who were the worst, but she’d decided not to think about them either. She was as safe from those societal monsters in this locked bathroom as she’d been in her locked apartment. So what if this door led directly to the outdoors? Didn’t all houses have doors that led to the outside? This was no different.

Total lie. Maybe not on the top-ten list, but it was up there. Top twenty. Maybe twenty-five.

The scratching sound, which was probably just a raccoon, finally stopped. Ireland let out the shaky breath she’d been holding despite telling herself there was nothing to be afraid of.

“I need a job,” she whispered to the dark. She whispered in case there was someone outside her door. Just in case a vampire, werewolf, specter, or serial killer decided to answer that they were hiring.

She needed a job that would allow her to save enough money to live somewhere near the college campus, where rentals were slightly cheaper and her being on her own would be just like everyone else instead of something strange.

She would rise above this situation. Her last name, Raine, was French for “queen.” At least, that’s what her dad had always told her. Whenever she felt like she was drowning in her situation, she reminded herself that she would rise above it, the way a queen was meant to do.

Of course, her dad was probably lying about what their name meant. And then there was the chance that Raine wasn’t really her last name but something he’d made up one day and then decided to make official by changing the paperwork. He was the kind of guy who changed the world around him to suit whatever mood he was in.

She hated that about him.

Ireland finally closed her eyes and imagined summertime flowers and sunshine soaking into her skin, all while playing the tune of one of her favorite songs, “Daylight from a Single Candle,” in her head. The indie band Cosmic Cloak had a soulful poignancy that tended to calm her. She finally relaxed enough that she was able to sleep.

The sound of the melodic birdcall alarm from her phone made her pop an eye open to see that the new day had indeed come.

“See?” she asked herself. No werewolves after all. It was always easier to believe herself in the daylight. Ireland had no desire to leave the warmth of the sleeping bag to face the icy air, but the birdcall alarm was still going, reminding her that she had to get to school. She’d specifically chosen the nature sound to keep any nearby hiker or jogger from hearing a typical phone alarm and getting curious. She was grateful for the phone and the link it gave her to the outside world, but her father had only covered service to the end of the month. She’d have to figure out how to pay for an extension on that service or do without. Frowning at that thought, she turned off her alarm and forced herself up.

If getting out of the sleeping bag could be considered a mouse-sized effort, the task of washing her face could be considered an elephant-sized one.

Ireland braced herself against the ice-cold water from the sink and rinsed the sleep from her eyes and the grime of the floor from her face and hair. She huffed out several breaths, as if she could expel the shock of the cold water, before she pulled out a toothbrush and looked at her warped image in the metal front of the empty towel dispenser. “You look seriously sick,” she told herself. Not sick as in cool or awesome, but sick as in “grab your plague mask.” Next to her dark hair, her fair skin always looked pale, but it seemed worse lately. “Get a pillow,” she added out loud to her reflection, since her normally clear blue eyes were bloodshot due to the lack of quality sleep. She frowned at the military-grade duffel bag her father had deemed too worthless to take with him. She would have to find a really small pillow, or it wouldn’t fit in the pack without popping out of the zippered confines.

Ireland sighed and spit in the sink. Small it would be, then.

She looked in the mirror again and noticed a stain in the shirt she wore—an accident from eating lunch yesterday. There wasn’t anything she could do about it since her other few shirts smelled like death due to her lack of deodorant, and her frigid sink-baths made it hard to properly clean herself. Maybe no one would notice the stain, in the same way she hoped they wouldn’t notice the fact that she wore the same clothes over and over. But they would for sure notice her if they could smell her.

She needed a shower. A real shower with hot water. It seemed she couldn’t get the acrid smell of body and street and bathroom out of her clothes and off of her person. “You stink,” she told the mirror.

With a grunt of irritation, Ireland pulled her shirt down to the sink and began scratching at it under the water. A few tears leaked from her eyes as a few curse words leaked from her mouth. She finished and glared back at the mirror, daring it to give her a bad review. Better? Maybe. The shirt would dry on her walk to school. She would use the last bit of bar soap she had to wash her clothes in the sink as soon as school was out. Hopefully, it would all dry during the night. If she had to pack it away wet in the duffel, it would mildew, which would be a different problem.

After twisting her hair into a sloppy bun that she tied off with a ponytail holder, she turned to gather her things and carefully pack them away.

Her phone chirped again. Ireland cursed under her breath. She had to hurry, or she wouldn’t make it to school on time. She lugged the duffel to a tree behind the bathroom, looped the rope she’d previously set up through the straps, and tugged until the duffel disappeared into the foliage. She tied off the rope, picked up her backpack with the things she needed for school, and hurried to the animal trail that led into town.

When she finally approached the front doors of the school, she had to weave through pockets of students gathered to socialize. Some wore jackets, but several sported cargo shorts and T-shirts with beanies as their only protection against the cold.

I do not understand you people.

Ireland hoped she hadn’t said that out loud but really didn’t know if she had or hadn’t. Not that it mattered in relation to the truthfulness of her thought. The fashion trend of a beanie and shorts made no sense to her when she was doing everything she could to stay warm. She tugged on the door handle and heaved a sigh of relief when the warm air from the heated building hit her skin.

Better. So much better.

Ireland threaded through the student body mosaic of her school as she made her way to her first class.

“Hey, girl!” An overly ecstatic female voice called out, but Ireland didn’t bother to turn and see who it was. No one would be talking to her. And she wasn’t stupid enough to feel sad or slighted by that fact. She didn’t try to strike up conversations with anyone, so why would they try with her?

It wasn’t that she didn’t want friends, but with a dad who could decide to make a hasty exit at any moment due to not paying rent or due to people hunting him down to try to collect money he owed them for one weird venture or another, she didn’t think attachments were a good idea. They never had been in the past.

If she’d known her dad was going to ditch her, she would have tried for friendships. Maybe a friend would have let her crash on their couch until she could figure something out.

“Never too late to start,” she muttered to herself. Maybe if she made friends now, she could still get a couch-crash invite.

She smiled as she passed a group of girls in the hall. One of them, the tall, thin Black girl with red-rimmed glasses, smiled back. Sure, it wasn’t like the girl had stopped to talk or anything, but a smile felt promising—promising enough to empower her to try speaking to someone else. Someone in particular. Someone she had wanted to talk to ever since he’d transferred to their school five months ago: Kal Ellis.

He’d moved from Arizona. He’d said as much during an oral report he’d given on his personal history. The personal history report she’d given had been total fiction. She had no idea about her family history, and her personal story was just messed up. Not like Kal’s at all.

Ireland had liked listening to his story. He came from a good family and had moved to California to be closer to his grandpa. He was a nice-looking guy. She wasn’t such a total mutant that she didn’t notice things like that. He kept his dark hair short but long enough to style it with hair product of some sort. He had deep dimples when he smiled. And his olive complexion made him look the part of a California surfer.

But it wasn’t because of his looks, sigh worthy as they were, that she liked him. He was the quiet, studious type who kept his serious brown eyes focused up front where the teacher was lecturing rather than on the leggy cheerleader in the seat on the other side of him. His above-average intelligence meant he was the one who screwed up the curve for everyone else in class. He also had an artistic side to him that appealed to her.

And he was nice to people. Genuinely nice. She had once watched as he stopped in a crowded hallway to help a kid, who had tripped and fallen, to pick up the myriad fantasy paperback books, papers, and cell phone fragments (the kid’s phone had splintered into a few pieces). Helping a stranger pick up scattered debris in the hall was the classic high school good deed. Classic even though she’d never seen it happen in real life before that moment.

She liked that Kal Ellis didn’t mind being classic.

“Hi,” Ireland said to him as soon as she arrived in her first-hour class—history. He seemed startled that she addressed him.

“Hi?”

She tried at a grin, knowing her social skills to be less than polished but determined to forge ahead regardless. “Is that a question?”

He gave her a sort of smirk that proved he had a good sense of humor. “Probably. You just distorted my whole belief system regarding you.”

“Wow. A belief system, huh? I don’t know that I deserve a whole belief system.”

“It’s nothing complicated. You’ve been sitting next to me since September. That’s what? Five months? I just wasn’t aware you had a voice box until right now.”

Direct hit. Ten points for honesty. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not talkative.”

Kal shifted in his seat so he was facing her more. “You aren’t talkative in the way a tree isn’t talkative.”

Oof. He was not pulling his punches. “Maybe you just hang out with the wrong sorts of trees?”

He laughed at that, a sound that vibrated deeply and melodically. Could a guy’s voice be called melodic? Ireland decided that it could. Why not? Kal lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “You’ll have to introduce me to some of your trees sometime. I’ll bring my phone because talking trees? Might be worth something. It’s Ireland, right?”

“Right. And you’re Kal?” She said it like she was asking, but she wasn’t. She’d thought about talking to him since the first day he chose the seat next to her and smiled at her. She hadn’t smiled back at the time, which now seemed like a shrew kind of move. But she hadn’t thought she’d be in school with him for as long as she had been. Once she’d started off being a little prickly, she hadn’t been sure how to do a course correction even as the weeks of sitting next to him turned to actual months. Now she knew she was in the school until the summer break. She couldn’t keep up her solitude; she needed to talk to someone besides the spiders in her bathroom. And she wanted the someone to be Kal.

There are two types of new students in high school: the ones who gain immediate popularity because they ooze charismatic vibes and the ones who are completely overlooked. She definitely belonged in the camp of the uncelebrated, while Kal basked in the glow of effortless acceptance. A guy like him could have easily let that acceptance go to his head, but Kal didn’t. Again, he was a genuinely nice guy.

“So why now?” he asked.

She shrugged, her fingernails nervously scraping up the side of the raised letters on the Bic pen she’d found on the ground near her gym locker. It was a glide gel type that wrote smoothly and made even hurried, sloppy handwriting look a little tidier. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be sticking around long enough to get to know people.”

The excuse sounded weak, but sometimes the truth was weak.

His smirk widened into a grin. “It took you half the year to decide you were sticking around?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. Well, good. Your art rocks.”

Her face warmed. He’d seen her art?

Though she hadn’t asked the question, he answered as if she had. “Whenever Mr. Nichols is droning, you sketch in your sketchbook. You’ve got some mad skills.”

He’d noticed her sketching. The warmth that someone was paying attention to her trickled from her head and down her spine until she felt entirely filled with the sensation. She’d always assumed she was basically invisible, but he’d seen her. “Mr. Wasden gave me the sketchbook. We turn it in every few weeks for a grade.”

Kal laughed. “Wasden’s all right. But don’t shred what you do by saying you only do it for a grade. That kind of skill comes from doing it more often than you’d need to for homework.”

“Maybe,” Ireland said and then decided that if he could be so forward, so could she. Because the truth was that she paid attention to his comings and goings in more than just the history class they shared. “I guess it’s the same with you and music? Your band is really good.”

Had she thought his smile was wide enough to be a grin before? Because now that smile split his face into two separate sections. And the dimples dug their way into the deepest regions of his cheeks. “You’ve heard us play?”

“It’s why I crave pizza on Friday nights.” Was she flirting? She thought that maybe she was and hoped she was doing it right. And she wasn’t even lying. She craved pizza even if she never actually bought any from the local pizza joint, Geppetto’s, where they played. Who had money for that sort of thing?

But she stopped in sometimes to hear them play. Since becoming homeless a few weeks prior, she’d gone into scavenger mode. She remembered from her few times of going out to eat that sometimes people left slices of untouched, uneaten food on their tables. She figured pizza would be the easiest to grab-and-go since the crust was like an edible plate and she didn’t need silverware. She’d scouted out a few pizza places and decided Geppetto’s was her best option because of its door locations and lighting. She’d gone there three times to forage for food. If she went in through the side door and made her way to their public restroom and waited a while, she just looked like a regular customer returning to her table. She chose the tables in back because it was darker there and around the corner from the main part of the restaurant.

She’d listen to Kal’s band, then sneak a few slices before leaving the same way she’d come in. She knew she couldn’t do that all the time because if she became too familiar to the workers, they might catch on to what she was doing. But on the nights she went to bed hungry, she could close her eyes and daydream about what it had been like to sleep on a full stomach.

Ireland hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. She had three hours and twenty-two minutes left until lunch. Her eyes must have glazed over as she imagined the food because Kal was looking at her as if he expected her to respond to something he had said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I must have wandered off a little.”

“Hazards of being an artist. I was wondering if you’d want to come listen tonight. It’s Friday, after all. Maybe hang around until our break. Joe, the owner, gives us free pizza for playing. So you can get dinner out of the deal.”

Did he know that she needed dinner? Had he seen her stealing slices of pizza from empty tables? But no. He couldn’t have. She’d been careful. She instantly felt defensive. Her immediate reaction was to say she was busy. But as she opened her mouth to decline his invitation, she remembered that she was trying to make friends for the first time in a long time. It was hard to do that if she was rejecting the hand of friendship when it was offered. Since the weekend was coming up, she had no solid plans for getting food. Kal’s generous offer filled more than the need for friends; it filled survival needs too. “Sounds great. Thanks.”

He only had time to smile in response because Mr. Nichols had finally stood to start class. Mr. Nichols grinned at them all, making his beard hair look bristled as he shoved the sleeves of his sweater past his elbows. He puffed out his pale cheeks and shoved his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. This stance meant he intended to lecture.

Ireland was self-conscious as she pulled out her sketchbook, knowing that Kal had been watching her draw. But she honestly had a hard time paying attention and focusing unless she was sketching at the same time. She didn’t know how else to learn.

Her art teacher, Mr. Wasden, had given her the book at the beginning of the year. He said everyone, artist or not, needed a sketchbook, a place where they could jot down their ideas, their worries, their thoughts, things that made them laugh, things they were grateful for. He didn’t care if the art students drew pictures or wrote words. He just wanted to see them fill the books with their own ideas.

She had to admit it had been pretty therapeutic, and it had taught her to focus in a way she’d never been able to do before. She was getting good grades for the first time ever.

She felt Kal’s stare on her as she filled in the lines of the sketch she’d made of the bathroom she now lived in. Did he always stare like that?

What did he think of her sketch?

She sucked in a hard breath and quickly flipped to the next blank page where she began doodling a spiral design. She didn’t want him to have clues about her circumstances. The longer the teacher went on and on and the more intently Kal stared, the more she worried.

Because there was a chance he had seen her stealing pizza. And there was a chance he understood her sketch of the bathroom was really a sketch of her new home. She suddenly regretted that today was the day she had decided to open up and make friends. She should have stayed silent and continued ghosting through the school.

Because now there was a chance Kal knew her secret, which was the absolute last thing she wanted.