The Dark Divine (27 page)

Daniel had asked me to spend my lunch breaks and after school with him and Barlow. I doubted that offer still stood—or that he’d actually expect me to stay now—and I cleared out to the library when the lunch bell rang, refusing April’s offer to join her and Jude at the café. I stayed until it was time to go back after lunch. When fifth period was over, I took off as quickly as I could for my next class.

“Wait up, Grace,” Pete Bradshaw called as I approached my locker.

“Hey, Pete.” I slowed my pace.

“You okay?” he asked. “I said your name three times before you noticed.”

“Sorry. I guess I was a little distracted.” I put down my backpack and turned the combination to my locker. “Did you need something?”

“Actually, I wanted to give you something.” He pulled a package out of a plastic bag. “Donuts.” He
handed me the box. “They’re a little stale, though. I brought them yesterday, but you weren’t here.”

“Thanks … um … What are these for?”

“Well, you still owe me a dozen from before Thanksgiving. So I thought if I got you some instead, you’d feel extra indebted to me.” Insert “triple threat” smile here.

“Indebted to do what?” I asked coyly.

Pete leaned forward. His voice was low as he spoke. “Is there something really going on between you and that Kalbi guy, or are you just friends?”

Something really going on?
Now I was sure people were talking about me.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t even think we’re friends.”

“Good.” He leaned back on his heels. “So these donuts are supposed to make you feel guilty enough to go to the Christmas dance with me.”

“The Christmas dance?” The dance hadn’t passed my mind in days. Did people who knew the secrets of the underworld go to dances? “Uh, yes. I would love to go,” I said. “On one condition, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Help me eat these donuts, or I’ll never fit into a dress.” Pete laughed. I opened the box and he snagged three donuts.

“Can I walk you to class?” he asked as I shut the box in my locker.

I smiled. It was such a 1950s-perfect-boyfriend thing to ask. “Sure,” I said, and hugged my books to my chest and pretended I was wearing a poodle skirt and oxford shoes. Pete wrapped his arm around my waist as we walked down the hall. He nodded to more than a few quizzical-looking people as we went.

Pete seemed so confident, so normal, so good.
He’s just what I need
, I thought as I watched him—but I couldn’t help noticing there was someone else watching me.

WEDNESDAY OF THE NEXT WEEK, JUST BEFORE LUNCH

I sat next to April in the art room working on a preliminary sketch from an old snapshot for a portfolio piece. It would eventually be a painting of Jude fishing behind Grandpa Kramer’s cabin. I loved the way the light swept in from the side of the photograph and glistened off the top of Jude’s bowed head like a halo. But for the moment, I was working with pencils, sketching out the basic lines and defining the negative and positive spaces. There was more shadow in the picture than I had realized, and the graphite of my pencil was worn down to a useless nub, but I was avoiding the pencil sharpener in the back of the room because Daniel’s seat was only three feet away from it.

A few minutes before the lunch bell, Mr. Barlow
made his way over to Daniel’s desk.

“Look at Lynn fume.” April nudged me.

Lynn Bishop glared at Daniel as Mr. Barlow stood beside him, watching him paint. She looked like she was trying to burn a hole in Daniel’s back with her eyes.

“Looks like Barlow’s got a new favorite. Poor Lynn,” April said with mock sympathy. “You’re totally better than she is anyway. You should have heard Barlow going on about that sketch of your house you turned in last week.” She pointed at my drawing and sighed. “I love this one, too. Jude looks
so
hot in that picture.”

“Hmm,” I said. I gathered up a couple of spent pencils and made a break for the back of the room while Daniel was occupied.

I put a pencil into the sharpener.

“Stop!” Barlow bellowed.

I jumped and looked behind me but Barlow had been speaking to Daniel.

Daniel held his brush midstroke. He looked up at Barlow.

“Leave it the way it is,” Barlow said.

I leaned sideways a bit to get a look at Daniel’s painting. It was of himself as a child—a subject Barlow had assigned the rest of us earlier in the year. So far, Daniel had a simple background of red hues and the flesh tones roughed in for his face. His lips were outlined in pale pink. And since Daniel always went about things in the hardest way possible, he’d finished the eyes before anything
else. They were dark and deep and confused like I had always remembered them.

“But it isn’t finished,” Daniel said. “All I’ve perfected are the eyes.”

“I know,” Barlow said. “That’s what makes it so right. Your eyes—your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That’s the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you’ve seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become.”

Daniel held the brush tightly between his long fingers. He glanced at me. We both knew what he had become.

I turned away.

“Trust me,” Barlow said. The Masonite board scraped against the table. I assumed he’d picked it up. “This will make a great portfolio piece.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniel mumbled.

“Are you done or what?” Lynn Bishop stood next to me with a fistful of colored pencils.

“Sorry,” I said, and moved out of her way with my still-dull pencil.

“I hear Pete asked you to the Christmas dance.” Lynn shoved a pink pencil into the sharpener.

“I guess word gets around.”

I heard Daniel’s chair sliding back over the ferocious gnawing of the sharpener.

“Yes, it does,” she said in her knowing, “I’ve got a juicy bit of gossip” tone. “Interesting he still asked you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Pete’s been friends with my brother for years.”

“Hmm.” Lynn removed her pencil and inspected the long, pointy pink tip. “I guess that explains it—an act of charity for your brother. Pete must be trying to bring you back to the land of the living.”

I was already cranky, and I didn’t need crap from the gossip queen of Holy Trinity—kind of an oxymoron if you think about it—but the lunch bell rang, stopping me from telling her what she should do with her pencil.

“Mind your own business,” I said, and walked away.

April picked up her backpack as I approached. “Do you think there are CliffsNotes to
Leaves of Grass?”

“I doubt it.” I put my pencils in my supply bucket.

April groaned. “Jude is going to quiz me on it after school, and I kind of told him I already read it.” She crinkled her nose and put the book in her bag.

“Nuh-uh!” I teased. “You’re so dead. Say good-bye to the Christmas dance. Jude hates liars.”

“Oh, no. Do you think he’ll be that mad?” She paused. “Wait, you said Christmas dance.” She pointed at me. “Did he say something to you? He
is
going to ask me, right? Hey, do you want to go shopping for dresses after school?”

I smiled, but I couldn’t help wondering if should I say something to April about Jude. She seemed head over heels for him, but I couldn’t help wondering if
my brother’s sudden interest in her was his way of rebounding—not from another relationship but from his own emotions. Or maybe it was April who was taking advantage of my brother. She sure did get over her shyness around him the second he seemed vulnerable. But the look on April’s face was genuinely eager.

“Don’t you think you should focus on studying for the English final before dress shopping?” I asked. “Didn’t your mother threaten to ground you if you don’t pass?”

“Ugh. Seriously, why did she have to start taking an interest in me now?”

“Hey, Grace,” a raspy voice said from behind me.

April’s eyebrows went up in double arches.

I turned toward the owner of the voice, already knowing whom it belonged to. I looked at his navy-blue sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his khaki pants, the slip of paper he held in his hands, the top of his hair that seemed to get lighter with every day that passed—I looked anywhere but his face, anywhere but his eyes. My gaze finally rested on his paint-smudged forearms.

“What do you want?” I asked. My voice came out colder than I expected.

“I need to talk to you,” Daniel said.

“I … I can’t.” I placed my drawing on top of my supply bucket and shoved it under my table. “Come on, April. Let’s go.”

“Grace, please.” Daniel held his hand out to me.

I flinched. His hands reminded me of the things he’d done to my brother. Would he have tried to do the same things to me if he’d known I was the one who turned his father in? “Go away.” I took April’s arm for strength.

“It’s important,” Daniel said.

I hesitated and let go of April.

“What, are you crazy?” she whispered. “You can’t stay with him. People are already talking.”

I stared at her. “Talking about what?”

April looked at her shoes.

“Hey, you girls coming?” Pete asked from the art-room doorway. Jude stood next to him, grinning at April. “We’ve gotta book if we want a booth.”

“Coming,” April said. She gave me a pointed look and then broke into a huge smile. “Hey, guys,” she said as Jude wrapped his arm around her waist.

“You coming, Grace?” Pete held his hand out to me just like Daniel.

I looked at the three of them in the doorway. April tilted her head and gestured for me to come. Jude looked at me and then glanced at Daniel; his smile faded into a thin, tight line.

“Let’s go, Gracie,” Jude said.

“Please stay,” Daniel said from behind me.

I couldn’t bring myself to glance at him. All Jude had ever asked me to do was stay away from Daniel. I failed in that promise originally, but I had to keep it now. I
couldn’t talk to Daniel. I couldn’t be with him.

I could not choose Daniel over my brother again.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Go somewhere else. You don’t belong here.”

I took Pete’s outstretched hand. He locked his fingers around mine and pulled me to his side, but his touch didn’t make me feel the way I did when I was close to Daniel.

AT THE CAFÉ

I was six bites into my veggie burger, Pete was on reason three of his “Five Ways Hockey Could Change the World” lecture, and April was squealing with delight because Jude had just given her a blueberry muffin with an invitation to the Christmas dance when it fully hit me: I told Daniel to get out of my life. I dropped my burger and ran for the restroom. I barely made it to one of the toilets before garlic and seaweed burned up my throat.

When I came out of the stall, Lynn Bishop was standing at the sink. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, her lips pursed but her eyes wide.

“Bad veggie burger,” I mumbled, and stuck my hands under the faucet.

“Whatever.” She chucked her paper towel into the trash and left.

THAT NIGHT

After dinner, I locked myself in my room. Cramming for my retake chem exam had eaten up most of my time last week, and I was still struggling to keep up with my other classes. With finals looming, I knew I was in trouble. I’d tried to study with April and Jude after school, but April had still been so giddy about Jude asking her to the dance, I realized it would be more effective if I worked on my own. But after a few hours of history and calc and a little Ralph Waldo Emerson, my weary gaze kept drifting down from my textbooks to the drawer in my desk.