Ink Is Thicker Than Water (3 page)

Sara’s the one I go to for all advice, but I’ve let that stop where guys are concerned. Probably by now I should have cultivated the kind of relationship with her where we talked about sex or dating or at least guys in general, but I’m just about positive the way to start that shouldn’t be,
hey, this one time I almost did your boyfriend’s brother
.

And Oliver isn’t just
her boyfriend’s brother
. Oliver is…well, he’s Oliver! He’s in college, and he cares about philosophy, and he isn’t flashy about things like Dexter is, but I know he got great grades in high school, too. Oliver is
somebody
. I’m still kind of hanging out hoping my somebodyness kicks in soon. So if I admit to Sara what happened all those months ago, how is she going to take that? I’ve had my whole life to get used to being the average to her stellar, but Sara’s the one person who’s never actually called that out. What if me professing my true and completely dorky feelings for Oliver finally brings that out of her? Ugh, I can’t stand thinking it.

Anyway, even if we were incredibly open about guy stuff, like girls in a yogurt commercial, Sara clearly isn’t in Advice-Giving mode if she is in Skipping-Brunch mode. And I might be the younger sister and I might not be the one who’s got it
together
, but with big, important life stuff, I want to seem like I know what I’m doing.

Especially when I really, really don’t.

So instead of begging for advice, I help Mom with laundry and watch cartoons with Finn and sort of do my homework and pretend—even if maybe something is up with my family—that Oliver’s text isn’t the only actual thing on my mind.

Chapter Three

Ticknor Day School is not exactly an imposing institution of learning. Sara goes to a different, far more normal school across town, and of course even if I’d never been there, I do watch enough TV to know high schools generally look just a couple steps up from, I don’t know, asylums. Just with fewer padded walls. Harsh lighting and bright white walls and forced school spirit.

I, on the other hand, step into a mural-covered corridor every morning. The hallways are organized by color and painted accordingly, up to and including the lockers, and spare wall space is crowded with flyers and posters and announcements galore. It is amazingly current, too. Today I notice the drama club’s announcements (all right, technically the Ticknor Day Thespian Brigade) have been swapped out with bright red and white posters asking anyone over eighteen to donate blood. As I turn out of the orange wing to the blue one, where my locker resides, it looks like the Fourth of July.

Kaitlyn’s waiting for me, like usual. “Sorry I didn’t text you back yesterday. I just slept a lot and tried to forget all boys exist.”

I lean past her into my locker. “
All
boys? Even Channing Tatum?”

“Duh, no, of course not him. He’s still on my good side.”

“You look fancy,” I say, because she does, a skirt instead of jeans and a lacy cream-colored shirt that looks like the demure version of the top she wore to Saturday night’s party. “Do you have to go somewhere after school?”

“Some of us just care about how we look, you know.”

I figure that might be a comment on my jeans and faux-vintage mod symbol T-shirt, but I let it go. Really I
don’t
care very much about how I look, at least at school.

For a split second, I think of asking her what I should do about Oliver’s text, but in order to get that advice, I’d have to tell a bunch of truths that are pretty inconvenient. Or at least embarrassing. “Did you get anywhere with your geometry?”

“Here.” She hands me her notebook. “But look at how I did the work, don’t just copy.”

Of course I’m just going to copy, even though I promise her otherwise. “Thanks. So I was thinking this weekend we could—”

“Hey, Kellie.” My English teacher, Jennifer, walks up to us, bearing this huge grin. That’s right,
Jennifer
. Our hippie school thinks forcing kids to address their teachers by prefix and last name creates an unfair power dynamic, so we’re all on a first-name basis here. Jennifer’s the kind of person who’s always trying way too hard. No one has ever been that happy to see
anyone
unless it was someone returning to his great love post-wartime. “Do you have a few minutes before class? I’d love to talk to you.”

I assume this has something to do with the paper and my potential as their new op/ed writer. So even though I would rather spend my last minutes of morning freedom talking to Kaitlyn, I follow Jennifer farther down the blue wing to her classroom.

“Kellie, I wanted to congratulate you,” she says, and I feel myself grinning even though I’d told myself not to care about this too much. “We got a lot of applications, but the editor and I thought yours was one of the most impressive.”

“I’m the new op/ed writer,” I say like I’m telling myself. I still have to figure out the least dorky way to do this thing, after all.

“Well…not exactly.” She laughs and riffles through the stack of papers on her desk. “Your take on cafeteria selections, well, your style is perfect for us. But not for the op/ed column. We actually already chose a new op/ed writer, so we’ve decided we’re going to add a humor column to the
Ticknor Voice
. It’ll be the same kind of topics explored in the op/ed column, but with a funnier angle. And you are the perfect writer for it.”

“Um, thanks.” I can’t believe I’m getting called something so impressive as a writer based off of a goofy piece about the quality of chicken nuggets and fruit cocktail. I also can’t believe that my life is changing and I’ve actually achieved something, and all I could think to say was
um, thanks
. I smile just short of maniacally so Jennifer will know my feelings run deeper.

“Our next meeting’s tomorrow, right after school. See you then.”

“I’ll actually see you in five minutes,” I say. “In class. But, yeah, I’ll be here tomorrow.”

I duck out of the room so I can finish getting my stuff out of my locker, and when I head back into Jennifer’s classroom, it hits me that I’m still smiling.

Mom texts me around lunchtime to go straight to the shop after school. According to the
Ticknor Day School Guidebook,
we aren’t supposed to have our phones on at all during the day, but every time I’ve gotten caught, I showed whatever teacher had spotted me that every single new message was from Mom and were all like,
Please pick up Finn on your way home
or,
Can you please buy vegan hot dogs after school?
or even,
I love you, Kellie baby!!
and then whichever school official would just smile and say something cheesy about The American Family and Its Beauty, and I’d be off the hook.

So once my last class is dismissed (just like colleges, we don’t believe in bells at Ticknor), I drive to South Grand. I love living in Webster, with its storybook houses and hatred of chain stores and the cute college boys bicycling everywhere who I always pray go to the university down the street and not the seminary next to it. But despite Webster’s many charms, it just can’t compete with South Grand.

I find parking right around the corner from the shop. The breeze shifts as I walk up to Grand Avenue, bringing with it a rush of aroma from Sara’s favorite Thai place. Always dangerous to walk in this neighborhood on an empty stomach. There are restaurants and markets representing just about every country in Asia, my favorite diner in the world, and Italian so yummy you don’t even mind waiting forever to be seated.

I walk past the antique shop, where one of the owners spots me through the window and gives me a wave. I wave back before letting myself in Mom and Russell’s shop, The Family Ink.

“Hey, Kellie.” Jimmy, who works the front desk and cleans the shop and does all of the boring work no one else wants to do, grins as I walk in. Jimmy looks like a rock god from the 1980s, with black hair that grows wild. He’s always clad in T-shirts from concerts that are as old as I am. “How’s eleventh grade going?”

Jimmy is always so proud he knows what grade I’m in. Like that isn’t weird.

“It’s fine,” I say. “How’s your band?”

Jimmy is, of course, in this band that covers heavy metal hits, and even Mom and Russell can’t figure out if it’s ironic or not.

“Going good, yeah. We got a gig next weekend, but it’s twenty-one and up, so I can’t put you on the list.”

“It’s okay. Well, Mom wanted to see me, so…” I make my way to Mom’s station, where she’s engrossed in inking a naked Bettie Page on a guy’s bicep. “Hey.”

“Hi, baby,” she says without looking up. “I’m almost finished, then I thought we could walk down and get coffee.”

“Crap, don’t let her see this,” the guy says, as if I haven’t seen hundreds of naked Bettie Pages by now. She’s probably the person I’ve seen naked the most times, next to myself.

“I don’t think there’s anything about a naked woman that’s going to shock her.” Mom sits back for a moment and smiles up at me. “How was school?”

“I’m on the school newspaper. It’s a long story,” I say, even though it isn’t.

“I didn’t know you were interested in journalism.” She leans back over the nearly completed tattoo, the buzz of the machine only slightly drowning out her words as she presses it to Bettie’s butt, shading to bring out her curves.

“I’m really not. It’s a humor column. And, like I said, it’s a long story.” The guy is glancing up at me still, so I figure he didn’t imagine this moment, whatever symbolism the naked pin-up girl means to him, in such a literal family way. So I give them some space and take a seat in the waiting area on the plush red sofa. Two of the front walls (painted the same sunny color as our kitchen because the leftover paint took up space in our storage shed forever) are covered with framed sheets of predesigned tattoo ideas. I can’t imagine being so boring you’d just walk in and point to something on a wall that hundreds of people have already gotten. The other wall holds framed articles and awards for the shop, and a big photo of the five of us where Finn’s arms are covered with temporary tattoos.

A girl who looks like she’s my age at most but must be at least eighteen, considering how strict Mom and Russell are about the law, and also how savvy they are about fake IDs, sits across from me. She drums the fingers of one hand on the arm of the couch to the beat of the old-school punk playing overhead, while she grasps a piece of paper tightly.

I figure she might have a nervous breakdown if she sits here alone in her own world of fear any longer. “What are you getting?”

She holds out the paper, and I examine the hand-drawn flowers looped together in crisp black ink. “Do you think they’re stupid?” she asks.

“No, it’s a good design. Did you do it?”

She nods. “Does it hurt a lot? I keep hearing that people faint.”

“I don’t have any,” I say. “But my mom says the only people who ever faint are dudes. Women are built for childbirth and cramps, so you’ll be fine. Who’s doing yours?”

The girl digs through her purse for her appointment card. “Russell.”

“Russell’s awesome,” I say, as the Bettie Page–inked guy walks out, his arm wrapped in plastic, just in front of Mom. “Good luck.”

Mom and I walk outside, and she hugs me tightly and kisses my forehead. “You’re always so good with our clients.”

I shrug, because being friendly to other humans seems like a no-brainer. Ooh, but— “Maybe I could work the front counter, then. Jimmy probably needs some nights and weekends off to focus on his Mötley Crüe covers.”

“I’m sure you’d be great, Kell-belle, but you don’t need to worry about a job.”

“I’m not
worried
about one, I just want one.” I’ve been brainstorming to come up with the perfect job, one where I wouldn’t have to work too hard and I’d still not only make a lot of money but meet interesting people. This will totally do. “And I’m hanging out there so much, couldn’t I at least be useful to you?”

“You can’t be useful without getting paid?” Mom laughs, and I know the subject—and my hopes—have been shot down.

We take off down the cracked sidewalk back the way I’d just come. I rush to keep up with Mom, who always moves like she’s in a hurry. We walk all the way to the coffee shop across from the park, which we would have done regardless, but it’s nice on an October afternoon still warm enough we don’t need jackets. I’m not one of those people who hates winter. What’s not to love? There’s crisp air and snowflakes and random days off school and Christmas. Complaining about any of that is like complaining about, I don’t know, love or free money or cuddly puppies. Still, it’s impossible not to love the fall.

“Are you hungry?” Mom asks as we walk inside. When I was younger, Mokabe’s was totally a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but now it’s two levels to easily fit all the people sitting around doing whatever people do in coffee shops: working on their laptops, playing games, and talking. Things have only changed
so
much though, because the décor is still kind of rag-tag/whatever must have been on hand, and the space behind the register remains practically wallpapered with bumper stickers that call for peace and equality and a bunch of other concepts I think are no-brainers but I guess are radical ideas to some. “We could split the quesadillas.”

“Hey, Melanie,” the cashier greets Mom. “Your usual?”

Mom has a usual everywhere we go.

“Thanks, Bonnie. That, an order of quesadillas, and whatever Kellie wants.”

I just want water, which I nearly drop because as Bonnie hands it to me, everything comes together: Dad at the house yesterday, Sara allowed to skip a meal, meeting Mom right after school.
Something
is going on.

“Mom?” I ask, feeling small and afraid. And I
hate
feeling either one of those things. “Is everything—”