The Art of Us

Chapter Fourteen

Kal

Kal watched in fascination as Ireland wrote her message on the student mural. She painted the letters with deft precision, as if she were creating a brand-new typeface, which she totally was. From a design standpoint, the font was full-on fire. How she’d managed such a thing with a paintbrush and paint was nothing short of miraculous. In spite of his art skills, Kal had rather crappy penmanship. It was one of those things that he always meant to work on and never did. Wasden had given an art assignment at the beginning of the year that involved creating pictures out of words they wrote. He’d done a guitar out of words that were lyrics to a song he’d written. He was still proud of how that project had gone down—even if his penmanship sucked.

Kal realized he was hovering over Ireland when she hesitated for a long moment. He went back to the art table to make sure the tubes of acrylic had their lids put back on. No reason to let the paint dry up.

He saw that someone had drawn a bird flipping the bird. They had to think they were being pretty clever with that, but it made him mad since this person could ruin the mural for everyone. He’d promised Wasden that he’d help monitor the wall to make sure nothing inappropriate went up. He and the other members of the art club had sworn to do their parts to keep the project positive, which meant if something ugly went up, they had to take it down. Kal swirled a brush in the red that had been squeezed out onto a paper plate and then left to dry because someone squeezed out too much.

This was the second time something needed to be painted over, and if he hadn’t been paying close attention, he might have missed it, since it was pretty subtle. Wasden had found the other one. It had been subtle too.

Kal had complained about it to Cooper and Asha when they were practicing in the back building one day. Asha had been peeved that someone would screw up the mural while Cooper had stayed quiet about it. Cooper usually had an opinion on everything, which meant it was probably someone he knew who’d done it. Probably one of his drinking buddies. Any one of the trust-fund frat boys Cooper hung out with could have been the guilty party.

Kal couldn’t prove it was one of those guys though.

“Hey,” he said to Ireland. “I’ll see you in class, okay?” He wanted to talk to Cooper.

She didn’t look up as she worked on her message, which she was now painting in the grass. “Sure.” Ireland was a woman of few words. Where he could take ten seconds to say something, she could take two words and get the same point across. Sometimes it made him feel a little insecure that he talked so much. But she didn’t seem to mind, and he didn’t mind that she talked so little. It made them good friends. Easy friends. He liked it. And her kissing him made them ... well, he wasn’t sure what it made them, but he liked the kissing part of her too.

Kal turned to go outside, where Cooper would be warming up for track like he did every day.

But from the hallway as he approached the doors leading outside, Kal overheard Cooper’s voice coming from a classroom. It was low enough that he couldn’t discern what was being said, but he knew Cooper’s tones. The conversation sounded serious. It was early—too early for Cooper to be showing up to meet with a teacher unless he was flunking out of a class, which Cooper’s dad would never let him do. Kal didn’t want to interrupt something serious and had decided to go back to the mural and walk to his first class with Ireland when he heard something that made him stop.

“I’m not sure what I saw, but it looked like he was forcing himself on you.”

Who was Cooper talking to? What in the actual ...

It was a girl’s voice that responded, one that sounded familiar to Kal, but she spoke quieter than Cooper, so Kal couldn’t quite place it.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Cooper said. “Every time I’ve seen you since then you’ve acted like you were fine, but then when he was talking to the guys last night, I just thought maybe what I’d seen was right.”

“You need to mind your business.” This time the girl spoke loud enough to understand what she was saying.

“But I don’t think I’m wrong about what I saw. You need to tell someone. If you don’t, I’m going to.”

“You seriously just need to leave me alone.” Footsteps were coming to the classroom door. Whoever the girl was, she’d had enough of dealing with Cooper. Kal quickly ducked into the boys’ bathroom so he wouldn’t get caught eavesdropping.

He stayed there until the first bell rang because he wasn’t really sure what he’d overheard, and he felt oddly unsettled about it. Whatever it was hadn’t been good.

He made his way to class and slid into the seat next to Ireland. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. She was definitely goofy, but goofy had never looked more amazing than it did on her. “Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey.” She grinned at him. She seemed happier than before.

The moment with Ireland made Kal forget whatever had been going on with Cooper. “We should go on a real date sometime, one where you aren’t stuck listening to me play.”

“I like hearing you play.”

Mr. Nichols had stood and was moving to the front of the class.

“You might like hearing me play, but I want you to be my girlfriend, not my groupie.”

Her smile vanished and her eyes dropped to her hands on her desk. He realized what he’d said. He’d used the “girlfriend” word. Ridiculous.

But did she think he was ridiculous?

Maybe not.

He kept staring at her even after Mr. Nichols brushed back his comb-over and began the class. After a moment, Ireland pulled out some paper and a pencil. She scribbled something on it and then slid it over so Kal could see.

“I’m in. When and where is this date? Please say we’re finally going to pull off the great candy-jar heist.”

He laughed out loud.

All eyes in the classroom turned to him.

“Did you have something you wanted to add to the discussion, Mr. Ellis?” Mr. Nichols asked. What discussion had Mr. Nichols been talking about? It was history class, so chances were good Mr. Nichols hadn’t said anything worth laughing at, which meant Kal had no reason to laugh. School never covered the funny parts of history. Surely there had to be some funny parts, didn’t there?

Kal cleared his throat and said, “Umm. No, sir?”

“Is that a question? Do you not know if you have something to add?” Wow. Mr. Nichols must have been shorted some sugar packets in his coffee that morning.

“I don’t have anything to add, sir. Except that your choice of tie is fire today.” Kal pointed to Mr. Nichol’s tie, which was emblazoned with Thor’s hammer. “You can never go wrong with Thor, can you? I mean, historically speaking.”

“Thor is not a historical figure, Mr. Ellis.”

“Oh yeah. I know, but certain people in history believed he was a real figure.”

Now several people were laughing. Mr. Nichols sent Kal a withering stare but ultimately must have decided it wasn’t worth the effort because he went back to his lecture.

Ireland pulled back the paper, scrawled something new, and then moved it so he could see what she’d written. “Nice save.”

His eyes caught what she’d written before. “I’m in.” Did that mean she was in on the candy-jar heist or that she was in with the plan of her being his girlfriend? He really hoped it was the girlfriend option because that would be more fire than a Thor tie.

He wrote on his own paper and turned it so she could see. “Is tonight too soon?”

The smile that curved her lips was his answer.

“Pick u up at 6?”

She nodded.

It was a date. Kal had a date with the most enigmatic, incredible person he’d ever met.