The Art of Us

Chapter Seven

Ireland

He’d held her hand. Kalvin Ellis had held her hand. Hers! Not somebody else’s, but hers . It had been four days, and it was all she could think about. He had held her hand like it was no big deal, like he wasn’t touching some sort of pariah. He had held it like it was something natural and normal, but when his fingers made contact with hers, she’d felt anything but normal and all sorts of wonderfully absurd. Absurd in that she felt like breaking into song like one of those over-the-top actors from a musical.

It had been days, but she still wanted to grab people by the shoulders and shout, “Kalvin Ellis held my hand!” She was sure she hadn’t stopped grinning since the moment she’d left his house after they’d created the thumbnails. In spite of the fact that they’d spent a lot of time together since then, he hadn’t done it again. She kept waiting for him to extend his fingers in her direction, but so far, no luck.

Not that they’d had tons of time to be doing any handholding. They’d been working pretty much nonstop to get the murals project up and running smoothly. The art club meetings were not worth the amped-up anxiety Ireland had felt before the first one. Since someone as high in the social pecking order as Mara Washington was in the club, how likely would it be that the rest of the club would accept someone like Ireland?

But then ... Kal had accepted her, so why wouldn’t they?

She’d also worried about being used as Mara’s punching bag, but Mara had been completely civil. Ireland figured it was because the hag and harpy weren’t around. She was sure that if those two had been present, Ireland would’ve been a target.

The nice thing was that the other people in the art club didn’t seem too perplexed when Ireland showed up. They made space for her within their group. Literally. As in, the first day, when Ireland showed up late, people scooted aside their chairs to make room for her at the table. The table was a little extra cozy with her and the six actual art club members, but they hadn’t minded smooshing together for her. Of the six, three of them were part of Kal’s band—Asha, Cooper, and, of course, Kal. The other three were Mara and two other girls: blue-eyed Sophie and red-bespectacled Charisma. Charisma was the girl who had smiled at her on that first day she’d decided to start trying to make friends, and Ireland still loved her for it.

Ireland felt a sense of belonging for the first time in her life. And she had Kal to thank for it.

Beyond the emotional boost he’d become in her life, Ireland hadn’t felt hungry since they’d started hanging out. It seemed like food was a big deal to Kal. Whenever Kal was with her outside of class, they were eating. He’d show up with a fancy cooler bag filled with meat-and-cheese sandwiches similar to those they’d had that first time at his house, or he’d have his backpack half-full of snacks, and he’d dump them unceremoniously on the table where they were working. She would have wondered what his ulterior motives were, except for the fact that he always ate with her and declared himself to be completely starving. It didn’t feel as if he was treating her like some sort of charity case. How could he? It’s not like he knew what was going on in her life. He was just a nice person who didn’t enjoy eating in front of others without sharing. He always brought enough to share with several people. He wasn’t just feeding her but everyone who came to the meetings on the mural. It took a lot of the weirdness factor out of the situation for her.

It was as he dropped the cooler bag on the table where the group of art club kids had gathered to do the final vote for the mural that Asha from Kal’s band flipped back her long blue-green hair and said, “You really need to tell your mom how much I love her. Maybe ask if she’ll adopt me. My mom’s idea of fixing me lunch is buying me a gift card to fast-food.”

Several chuckles and murmurs of agreement followed.

“ Your family can adopt me too,” Asha continued as she pointed toward Mara. “Your dad’s triple-chocolate croissant is a thing of legend.”

Mara scoffed. “You’d rethink that whole adoption concept if you were the one waking up at three o’clock in the morning on Saturdays to help him make dough.”

Asha was undeterred. She shrugged. “Maybe. But you get to eat what you make, and that would absolutely make it worth it. Plus, I’m guessing he shares his secret recipes with you.”

“The secret is hard work and getting up at three in the morning on Saturdays.” Mara grumbled this while she peered into Kal’s cooler and pulled out carrot sticks and a tub of some sort of dip.

Asha tilted her head and inspected Mara. “You think he does that to keep you from staying out too late on Friday night?”

“No idea,” Mara said. “I only know I get tomorrow off because of the Heartbeat dance.”

“Are you going with Rowan?” Sophie asked.

“No!” The sharp answer all but sliced the air, but no one except Ireland seemed to be shocked by it. Or maybe they just weren’t commenting on it, like Ireland wasn’t. The Heartbeat formal had been the topic of a good many conversations between the club members. Ireland had hung on to every word to see if Kal was going to the dance, but it seemed he hadn’t asked anyone and had no intention of going on his own.

Mara sucked in a deep breath and smiled as if she hadn’t done a snapping turtle impression when responding about going to the formal with Rowan. She continued her conversation with Asha. “Your best bet is to have Superman’s family adopt you. That way you’d get your mommy to pack you snacks and lunch every day.” She squinted into the cooler again. “I’ll bet if we look hard enough in here, we’ll find his blankie and stuffed animal as well. I bet he has a stuffed elephant.” Mara put down the bag and stared at Kal with a smirk.

Kal swiped away the tub of dip at the same time that Mara reached for it.

“Hey!”

Kal held it out of her reach. “You mean to say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I was being a cranky head.’”

Mara stood up and lunged for the tub until she’d all but tackled Kal in her effort to get it. “Using words like ‘cranky head’ proves you do have a blankie on your person somewhere,” she said with a laugh.

A weird twinge of discomfort twisted in Ireland’s stomach. She looked down at her hands instead of at Mara with Kal. It’s not like she had anything against Mara, exactly, but she didn’t love watching Kal flirt with the prettiest girl in school when that same girl hadn’t done anything to prove herself worthy of a guy like Kal.

There. That explained it. Ireland wasn’t jealous. She was simply trying to protect Kal’s interests.

How would that particular lie rank? Top one hundred? Top fifty? Maybe higher. Oh well. She was sticking to it. Honesty to oneself could be overrated sometimes. That was another lie that was easily in the top twenty. She really had to stop lying to herself.

Ireland forced herself to look up and smile at the antics. Mara was gloating over the hummus dip that she’d wrangled from Kal’s grip and settling herself back on her chair as if she were a queen and had won a scepter instead of a tub of mashed-up chickpeas.

Kal’s grin, which normally fluttered Ireland’s insides like a monarch migration, instead irritated her and made her kind of want to throw a carrot stick at his head.

“Are you two done flirting, or can we vote now?” Charisma asked, not even looking at the food in the center of the table because she had her phone out and was likely texting her boyfriend. She’d already declared she had plans with him that afternoon and had been antsy to get going.

Ireland really liked Charisma, even if the girl had confirmed Ireland’s fears that maybe Mara and Kal had been flirting with each other.

“Sorry,” Kal said. “We’re voting now.” Mara had handed out slips of paper to each of the club members when they’d come in. They all bent their heads to write the number of their favorite of the design finalists. The designs were based on the thumbnails that Wasden had already selected.

Mara stood and put her own slip of paper in a tulip-dotted white handbag. “Give it to Kate,” she sang.

“Kate?” Sophie whispered over to Cooper, echoing Ireland’s thought.

“Spade,” Cooper said with a smirk.

He said it like it meant something significant, which meant the rather trite-looking bag was expensive.

Mara shook the bag up and dumped it on the table in front of Kal. He tallied the votes and then declared, “Okay, we have a winner! It looks like Julianna Kessler’s design is pretty much everybody’s choice.” Everyone nodded as if there had been no question. It was the one Ireland had voted for. The use of different colors and open spaces within the tree, mountain lion, and ocean gave creative opportunities for the student body and made it feel like it would accomplish the unification that Mr. Wasden had wanted.

“With the exception of Charisma, who has a date, let’s get started.” All of the prep work had already been done. Mr. Wasden wanted them to get the outlines done that afternoon so the mural could dry and be ready for the rest of the student body on Monday morning. The back wall had already been cleared and was ready for them. Mara, as art club vice president, assigned each person the space they would be working on so they weren’t tripping over each other, and they got to work.

Ireland had been assigned the tree trunk while Kal had been assigned the treetop. Part of her wondered if Mara had assigned her the less complicated part of the sketch on purpose because she didn’t trust Ireland with anything else, but she decided she didn’t care because the way things were, she got to work alongside Kal while Mara was clear on the opposite end of the wall.

“Who is the most memorable stranger you’ve ever met?” Kal asked after he’d pulled himself up on the small scaffolding they’d set up and had begun working. He had a tendency to ask those sorts of questions a lot—the kind that led to sharing full stories. “And I mean in a good way. I don’t feel like talking about skeezy strangers.”

“Good thing you clarified. There were tons of skeezy strangers. Um ... well, my dad and I moved around a lot, and there was this one time when we’d just barely moved into a new apartment, and, apparently, the next-door neighbor lady had a key to our place. She let herself in that first morning and started making breakfast. I woke up to the smell of pancakes, eggs, and bacon for, like, the first time ever in my life.” Ireland didn’t add that it was the only time ever in her life because that was just pathetic.

Ireland penciled in the outline of the tree trunk. Unlike Kal, who had started his outlines in paint, she wanted to make sure the lines were the way she liked before she committed to them with the permanence of paint. “Anyway, I get up—thinking it was my dad—and walked into the kitchen and screamed when I saw her. She was this really grandma-looking old lady with a full-on bun and little half glasses, so my screaming was completely ... well, ten degrees of stupid. She could have been Mrs. Claus with her sweet, round red cheeks and soft eyes. Baby bunnies are more terrifying than that woman. When I screamed, she did too. It took a while to get both of us to calm down.”

Ireland finally traded her pencil for the paintbrush, carefully painting over her pencil marks in brushstrokes. “Turns out, the previous tenant had been her friend, and she was moving, so she wanted to cook her friend breakfast as a sort of goodbye. She didn’t realize her friend had already moved because she’d been out of town visiting her son. She was sad to have her friend gone, and her genuine concern for that other person was sweet. We ended up eating breakfast together.” Ireland paused, her paintbrush hovering over the mural. “I think about that lady with the bun sometimes and wonder where she is and how she’s doing, and who she’s making breakfast for now.”

“How old were you?” Kal had stopped working too and was looking down at her through the scaffolding brackets.

“Seven? Maybe eight.” At the time, Ireland had wanted this woman to adopt her and make her breakfast all the time, but they had only been in the apartment a week before her dad had to pack up and flee in the middle of the night. He’d grifted the wrong person—a guy with mob connections—and had to run for his life, and hers too.

“That’s amazing that you were this little kid eating breakfast with a random lady.” Kal was laughing. “Where was your dad in all this? Did he freak out to see you at the table with some strange woman?”

“He tends to sleep like the dead. He slept right through it.” Ireland didn’t mention that her dad was likely hungover or possibly just not home from being out all night. She didn’t really remember, but either scenario was likely. “I guess between zombie dad and the breaking-and-entering breakfast lady, it was a pretty eventful day. What about you? Who’s your most memorable stranger?”

Kal grinned and dropped his paintbrush in a water can, then sat on the scaffolding, probably realizing he wasn’t going to paint and talk at the same time. “So there I was, shopping with my mom and dad, and they sent me to the freezer section to get some ice cream. I was like nine at the time. So there I am, carefully reviewing the choices because ice cream is a big deal, and I wanted to make sure I got the right flavor, when this older guy comes up, and he’s looking at all the choices too. He shifted in a way that felt familiar—from one foot to the next and back again, just like I do, so I stopped looking at the ice cream and looked at him instead. He was old, like fifty maybe, but seriously, the guy looked just like me when I do one of those age-up filters online.”

Kal’s eyes lit up as he told his story, getting warm and soft as he seemed to be searching back through his memories. “So we started talking, and it turns out his name is Ellis, like mine. We both picked the same ice cream, and, as he left, he said, ‘Live the good life, kid.’ And then he walked away and whistled a tune from my favorite video game. And then it hit me: I had probably been talking to my future self, which means I’m gonna get to time travel someday, which is pretty cool.”

Ireland burst out laughing. “You think he was you?”

“I don’t think. I’m pretty sure it was me. And don’t be laughing, or maybe I won’t come visit you when I’m time traveling.”

She poked the tip of her paintbrush up at his nose, leaving a green dot. “If you time travel to visit me, make sure you bring me some future stats on companies I should invest in.”

Kal put his hand on his heart. “You wound me! The mockery!” Then he scrubbed at his nose to wipe off the paint and said, “You’re lucky I’m a gentleman, or you would be covered from head to toe in paint.” He pulled his brush out of the can and tapped out the excess water before dipping it back into the paint.

Ireland smiled to herself. He was such a good guy. She’d gotten to a point where when she wasn’t with him, she was thinking about him. Thoughts of him kept her company when she was alone in the woods. They made her feel less afraid—less lonely. She knew it was seriously stupid wishful thinking, but Ireland hoped if he did invent a time-traveling machine and went cruising through the years of history, he wouldn’t need to come visit her in the past. She hoped she would still be in his life in that future and that he’d take her to time travel the world with him.