The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl (18 page)

Half
sister, I think, but now's not the time. "Mom, I swear to God I didn't plan this. She drove me home because I wanted to show her
Schemata.
I'm really, really sorry."

Mom leans back against the workbench and blows a little through her mouth, rubbing her belly. I focus on her face. It creeps me out to see her belly jump when the baby kicks.

"You showed her your comic book?"

"Yeah, Mom."

"I thought you weren't showing it to anyone yet. Not even Cal."

"Mom..."

She reaches out and touches my cheek, stroking one finger down to my jaw, and for just a second I'm seven years old again. I'm in the basement at the old house and Mom isn't pregnant and there's no Kyra and there's no
Schemata,
but that's OK because Dad is upstairs.

"I just want you to be happy, honey," she tells me. "I'm glad you have a friend you can share things with. But you can't have a girl in your bedroom with the door closed. You know better than that."

Oh, God,
this
again? "Mom, seriously!" I keep my voice down. I would not only die if Kyra heard this stuff, but I'd also be spontaneously resurrected just so that I could die a second time. "Mom, there's nothing happening.
Nothing!
"

She winces again as the baby kicks. She pushes against the workbench and huffs and puffs back to standing straight. Before I stop her, she grabs my face with both hands and pulls my head toward her and plants a kiss on my forehead.

"Door
open,
got it?"

"Got it."

She nods and waddles off. I wait until I hear her clomping up the stairs before I go back into my room. Kyra's sitting at the desk, sorting through rough drafts and half-finished pages.

She's absorbed in concentration, her tongue jutting out, a little pink afterthought.

"Hey."

"Hey," she says back. "Busted?"

"I guess."

"Do I have to leave?"

"No, but—" No. I'm not going to tell her that we have to keep the door open. That's just ridiculous.

"But what?"

"Nothing."

"You know what I think?"

"What?" I'm not sure I like the sudden devious look on her face.

"I think I noticed something mighty weird." The look gets even more devious.

"What?" I'm a broken record.

She holds up two pages from
Schemata.
Courteney's on both of them. "Notice anything?"

"No."

"Come on."

"What?" There I go again.

"Look closer."

"I
drew
the damn thing!"

"
Try.
"

I stare at the pages. "I don't know."

She puts them down and picks up two more. More prominent shots of Courteney. "See it?"

"No."

"She doesn't look familiar to you?"

"Jesus Christ, Kyra! I
drew
her!"

"Look!" She shoves a page closer to me. "Look at her! It's Dina Jurgens!"

"No, it's not!"

But it is. Holy crap, I never realized it before! Courteney's a dead ringer for Dina. Aged a little bit, wearing adult clothes, but still. It's Dina. I don't see how I could miss it. I don't see how
anyone
could miss it.

"Everyone is influenced by people around them," I say, somewhat lamely. Kyra's smirking. She's not buying it. "You draw
things
that you see. People you see."

"
Things
you see," Kyra taunts, tapping one black-nailed finger on Courteney's chest.

"People you see," I repeat. Man, this is the worst! Thank
God
I never showed this to anyone at school. "Artists use photo reference and models and—"

"Models? You had her model for you? Or do you just
want
her to?"

Whoa. That conjures all kinds of images I don't have time for right now. "I didn't say that."

Kyra sighs and drops the pages back into the stack. "What
is
it with you guys and Dina?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, please. You all act like she's sex personified or something."

"Jealous?" It comes out nastier and colder than I intended, but then again, I'm on the defensive and in hostile, unknown territory.

Kyra isn't fazed by nasty or cold. "As if! You think I want that kind of attention? You think I want brain-dead jocks following me around like horny puppy dogs?" She sniffs and raises her head high as if insulted by the very idea.

I can't help chuckling. "Not much chance of that, is there?"

Her eyes narrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hey, look, I didn't mean—"

"What
did
you mean?"

"I just meant that even if you
did
want guys following you around—"

"What? That they wouldn't? You follow me around fine, fanboy."

That
bitch!
"We're
friends.
That's different."

"So it's OK to say your friends are ugly?"

OK, I take back the whole bitch thing. Mental do-over. Jeez, I'm screwing up left and right. "I never said you're ugly. You're not ugly." Don't ask me if you're beautiful. Don't ask me if you're beautiful. Because you're not. You're not ugly, but you're not beautiful, and if I call you pretty or cute, I think you'll probably kill me.

She leans back in the chair, considering, watching. I know how gazelles feel on the Serengeti, how the adults felt when they encountered the lions in that Ray Bradbury movie they made us watch in English last year. "You don't think I'm ugly?"

"No.
I'm
ugly." It's pandering. It's changing the topic. It's also true.

It works. Her gaze softens. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, it's true. I know it's true." And I do. Let's get real: This isn't a new face for me. I've had it my whole life and I have to look at it at least a couple times a day. I see it. I know. No one besides my mom or my grandmother has ever called me handsome. No girl has ever looked at me like she was interested. I'm not stupid. I know what I look like. I try not to think about it, but I know.

"It's not a big deal," I tell her. "It's not like it's my fault or anything. I can't help the way I look."

"You really think you're ugly?"

"'Think' doesn't enter into it. I'm talking objective, empirical truth." I smile to show that it doesn't bother me, my most successful lie to her yet.

"You're not ugly." She says it softly. I can barely hear her, so I pretend that I didn't hear her at all. It's what I do when I don't want to continue the conversation. It's easier to pretend you didn't hear someone. I don't want to talk about it.

But she won't let me off the hook. "Did you hear me? Did you hear what I said?"

God damn it. God damn
her.
I want out of this conversation. I want it over. How did we get here? "Fine," I tell her. "Fine."

"No one else matters," she reminds me. "If they aren't helping, they're just in the way. You run over everyone else, right?"

"Sure."

"So what about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Am I ugly?"

It's the closest thing to insecurity that she's shown me since I met her. I want more than anything to tell her that she's the most beautiful creature on the planet, the hottest girl in school. It would be nice to tell her that. But she can always tell when I'm lying.

"You're not ugly." Which is the truth. She's not. She's not Dina, but she's not ugly.

"Then why couldn't I have guys following me around?"

I let out a breath, exasperated. Back to this again? "Oh, come on, Kyra!"

"What?" Tension evaporates as she blesses me with the ring-grin. We're on an even keel again. "Come on, fanboy. Tell me. Tell me how to get my own pack of drooling idiot-boys."

"You know how."

"No, I don't."

"Sure you do."

"Humor me, fanboy. Pretend I've decided to dye my hair blond and wear pink skirts and—"

"It's not
that.
"

"Then what is it?"

I glare at her in frustration while she just smiles back at me. She loves making me uncomfortable. What am I supposed to tell her?

"Come on. You know. It's ... It's..." I'm getting cold under her watch. She's torturing me. "Come on, Kyra. Guys are ... You know. Guys like ... Come on, Kyra." I'm perilously close to whining. Hell, if whining were a country, I'd be checking my passport right now, just to make sure my entry visa was in order.

She shakes her head in disappointment. "Yeah, I know all about guys. I know what guys like."

I shrug my shoulders triumphantly, if that's possible. "See? That's all." I catch myself before I say, "You just don't stack up in that department," because it's such a terrible, terrible pun. Instead, I say, "Some people are just born ... You know, just born ... fortunate, I guess. Like Cal is bigger than me and better-looking, and Dina just has—" I'm not going to say it. Forget it.

Kyra throws her hands up in the air as if I'm an eager, stupid dog that keeps peeing on the carpet. "Guys ... You guys are stupid about it. I mean, they can be pushed up. Or padded. Or pushed together."

"I know."

"Or
fake.
"

"I know."

"So what
is
it about this?" She points at her chest.

I hold back a snicker. Does she really not get it? She's my friend. I can't tell her this, can I? How would I? I mean, do I write a compare-and-contrast essay?
Similarities and Differences Between Dina Jurgens and Kyra Sellers.
First paragraph: Size matters.

I didn't say a word, but she's looking at me like I did. "You weren't listening. Weren't you listening to me?" She sounds pissed off.

"I was listening."

"They can be—"

"Pushed together. Or up. Yadda, yadda. I know. I got it."

She shakes her head. "No. You don't get it. God. If you can make them look bigger, you can do the opposite, too."

"What? Come on. What the hell does that have to do with this? What are you talking about? Why—"

I break off because she's just shaking her head, not even looking at me, looking down, shaking her head, and I realize that she's unbuttoning her blouse.

Oh. My. God.

T
HE DOOR IS OPEN
. That's all I can think:
The door is open.
Mom could come back down. She could see. The door is open.

The door is not the only thing open.

Kyra's shirt is open from neck to waist, black cloth parted over a smooth, dead white stretch of skin, interrupted only by the sterile white of her bra. There's almost no contrast: It's white on white. It's nothing like the Victoria's Secret catalog or the stuff on TV, but it's better somehow. Because she's only a couple steps away.

She's still looking down as she undoes the last button. She doesn't look up at me.

"What are you doing?" someone says. An unfamiliar voice. It's mine, I realize. I don't know why I asked. I don't know what answer I want.

She shrugs her shoulders as if to say, "Beats me," but she's really slipping her blouse down her arms, baring flawless, alabaster shoulders with almost painful bones described under the skin. Something's strange. Something's different. Something's not right. It's my artist's eye. Noticing something for the first time. Something...

She looks up at me, holds my gaze, stares unblinking at me. I can't look away from her eyes, but with my peripheral vision I catch her hands moving, then the bra falling away. I swallow hard, like something solid had been caught in my throat until now. I cannot tear my eyes away from her eyes.

Yes, I can. I'm a guy.

So there they are. And this is what was wrong: proportion. The baggy shirts and blouses, her thin frame ... It's all wrong for
this.
I mean, it's just all wrong. She's ... they're ... Wow. The door's open, but who cares? I'm burning memories into my brain.

"Not everyone flaunts it," she says, as if she's teaching.

"I understand." But I don't know if I do. I find myself taking a step forward. My fingers itch.

She sighs, and the sigh ... Good Lord, the sigh! Who would ever have thought that such a simple thing, a simple expulsion of air from the lungs, could be such a ... such a
magic
thing?

I take it back. She's beautiful. She is.

I take a step closer and she blinks; the bra somehow has come back together, squeezing, compressing, concealing. "You don't get to touch," she says.

"I wasn't going to." Honestly, I don't know if that's a lie or not. She knows, but she's not telling.

Nimble fingers button up the blouse, hiding away her skin. I feel woozy all of a sudden, and I realize that I'm uncomfortable
down there
and I sit on the bed, leaning forward awkwardly, necessarily.