The Sea of Tranquility (19 page)

“I don’t know how well you can really know a girl who can’t talk,” she says sympathetically.

Doesn’t talk,
I silently correct.
Can, just won’t.
I know that one thing.

Mrs. Leighton’s attention is on me now. She’s trying to explain it for me as well as for herself. She wants to convince me, but she doesn’t need to. I already know. The answer is
you can’t
. You can’t know her at all; at least not Nastya, because she won’t give you anything, and what she gives you isn’t real. She may talk to me, but I don’t know her either.

“So how can you say you like her?” I’m not as angry now, but I want to know.

“She’s obviously a nice girl. She has manners. She never comes to dinner empty-handed.” I don’t know how manners and nice are equal, but I keep my mouth shut because being mad at Sarah is one thing, but being mad at Drew’s mom is something else. I don’t think she’s ever done anything to piss me off before. The feeling sucks. I don’t even know where it comes from. “Clearly, there’s something going on in her life and we can’t judge‌—‌”

“So what is it? You invite her because you feel sorry for her or because you’re using her to teach Sarah how to be a better person?” I had to cut her off. It was getting way too close to the point where the psychoanalysis was going to start and I didn’t want to let it happen. I didn’t want to hear it. It would feel too much like I was being psychoanalyzed, letting them tear me open and pick apart every action and choice and motivation, so they can feel superior and sane. I didn’t want them to do it to her while she wasn’t even here. Of course, I feel like I’ve just ripped myself open for them, spared them the trouble and dumped out my feelings so they can lay them across the dining room table and poke around in them with a stick.

“Josh.” She says a lot with that word. Like I’m being called out and judged and questioned and pitied. Everyone’s looking at me. I can’t blame them. I invited it by being the stupid bastard who couldn’t keep my mouth shut. It’s not even an outburst. I never even raised my voice. I don’t even think my tone changed at all, but they still aren’t used to it. It’s the Josh Bennett equivalent of tattooing her name across my chest. Regrettable, moronic, and really fucking embarrassing.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Leighton continues, and now I can tell she thinks I’m deluding myself. But I’m not the one taking in strays. I’m not trying to save anyone.

“She’s not a side show,” I cut her off again because I don’t want Mrs. Leighton’s apologies. She doesn’t owe them to me. I should quit while I’m ahead, but that would be smart, and I’m not being smart tonight.

“She dresses like one.” Obviously Sarah isn’t being smart either.

“I like the way she dresses.” I don’t know if Drew is trying to get everyone back on track by reminding us all what an idiot he is, or if he really is just an idiot.

“Less work for you,” she retorts.

“What is your problem Sarah?” I demand.

“What’s yours? My parents aren’t allowed to be nice to her and I’m not allowed to not be nice. You’re the one with the issue.” Sarah has no problem raising her voice. The worst part about it is that she’s right. I am the one with the issue and I don’t even know what the issue is.

I don’t know how this whole dinner devolved into the mess we’re in now, but I have a feeling I’m to blame for it. I could have kept my mouth shut, listened to them play a nice game of
Solve Sunshine
and let it go. But I didn’t.

***

Mrs. Leighton manages to corner me at my truck before I can leave, and I wish she’d just leave me alone like everyone else. Apparently I’ve been claimed by this woman whether I like it or not.

“Which one of you is dating that girl?”

“I don’t think either of us is.” Maybe Drew is, but I don’t think so. At least dating wouldn’t be the word for it, but I don’t want to think about that so much. “Drew, I guess.”

“I doubt that.” She looks knowingly at me.

“Then why ask?”

“Josh.” I wish she would stop saying my name like that. Soft and tentative, like she’s licking broken glass. “Look at the way she dresses, the way she covers her face with that make-up and the fact that she doesn’t speak. She might be silent, but she is screaming for help.”

I feel like I’m watching an episode of General Hospital.

“So why doesn’t someone give it to her?”

“Maybe nobody knows how. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend nothing is wrong than to face the fact that everything is wrong, but you’re powerless to do anything about it.” I wonder if she’s talking about me and she thinks she’s being subtle.

“Why are you telling me this? Shouldn’t you be talking to Drew?”

“Drew doesn’t care.”

Her accusation is clear and I answer it.

“Neither do I.”

CHAPTER 20

Nastya

I hate my left hand. I hate to look at it. I hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. But I look at it anyway, because it also reminds me that I’m going to find the boy who took everything from me. I’m going to kill the boy who killed me, and when I kill him, I’m going to do it with my left hand.

***

Clay Whitaker is chasing me on my way to first period on Thursday, hair as disheveled as his clothes, looking every bit a refugee from the
Island of Misfit Boys
. His sketchbook is closed up and tucked under his arm the way it always is, like it’s attached to him or something. I would still love to see what’s in it. I wonder how many of those he goes through and how fast he fills them up. It can’t be the same book all the time. Maybe he goes through as many sketchbooks as I do black and white composition books. His closet probably has a stack of them from floor to ceiling, and I bet if you flipped through them you wouldn’t find the exact same picture on every page. Not like in my notebooks. His are probably like a photo album of memories, where he can look back and know exactly what place he was at in his mind when he drew the picture. Mine aren’t like that. I can’t flip the pages and read what I wrote and tell you what was happening in my life, in my mind, at that time. I can only tell you what happened on one particular day, and it’s the one I’m not supposed to remember.

“Hey, Nastya!” He’s panting when he reaches me, smiling through heavy breaths. I stop and step off to the side so we aren’t standing in the middle of the hallway. I’m curious because Clay will say hello to me if I run into him, but he never seeks me out.

“I wanted to ask a favor, and I figured since you kind of owe me, you’d say yes.”

Really?
I’m not worried about whatever favor he wants but I am trying to figure out what I owe him for. I narrow my eyes at him and his smile is still there.

“How many times have you gotten into the English wing at lunchtime because a certain book has been propping the door open? A book which, by the way, is dented to hell and I’m probably going to have to pay for, so you kind of owe me double.”

I’ll concede that.
Come on. Bring it.
I motion with my hand.

“I want to draw you.” Not what I was expecting but I hadn’t really stopped to think about what I was expecting. It’s not really an unusual request, considering that it’s coming from Clay Whitaker, but I don’t know why he wants me. I hope he doesn’t think I’d pose naked for him because that’s not happening. I tap on his sketchbook and motion for him to open it. I’ve been dying to see what he does and he couldn’t have handed me a more perfect excuse. If it’s possible, his smile gets even wider, but now it’s genuine, too. He’s not trying to sell me something anymore, even though that’s exactly what his drawings are going to do.

We’ve been facing each other but he moves over to stand next to me, leaning his back against the wall so he’s shoulder to shoulder with me. He drops his backpack to the ground and opens the sketchbook. The first drawing is of a woman, older, with a lined face and thin lips. Her eyes are sunken and it’s horribly depressing. I look over to him and he’s waiting for my reaction. I don’t know what reaction to give him so I motion for him to turn the page. The next picture is of a man’s face. He looks like an older version of Clay, and it must be his father, unless it’s some sort of future self-portrait. Just like the first drawing, it’s jarringly real. I swear I can look at the eyes and tell what they were thinking. It isn’t just inspired; it’s almost frightening. The next one is a woman with eyes I can tell are bloodshot even though the drawing is black and white and my reaction is almost visceral. I can feel it. I want to touch her and find out what’s wrong. But it’s nothing compared to the feeling I get when I see the page he flips to next.

I’m staring at myself. The picture is me but not me. It’s me he’s never seen. My face looks younger and my eyes are clear. There isn’t a trace of make up on me and my hair is smoothed back in a ponytail that is pulled over my right shoulder. This one I do touch. I can’t help it. My hand just goes there. I pull it away as soon as my fingers meet the paper. I wish he hadn’t shown this to me here. I can’t look at any more. I close the book and shove it back at him.

Now I’m not so certain that the second picture wasn’t actually a future self-portrait after all. I’m sure he could easily look at a face and age, not only the skin, but the person behind it. It’s what he did to me in reverse. He regressed me. Took the age and the days and the years and everything that happened in them away and drew me the way I used to be.

When I turn to face him, I don’t know what’s in my expression. It could be any of a thousand emotions I don’t want to try to sort out right now in the hallway before first period. The bell is going to ring soon and the corridor is filling up around us.

Clay is staring at me. He’s waiting and he’s not smiling anymore. He must have been watching the entire time I was looking at the book, gauging my reactions while he showed me his soul. No matter how proud he may be, I know that showing me his work still has to be like ripping off his clothes, spinning around in front of me naked and waiting for judgment. I used to feel the same way when I played anything I had composed.

“So?”

I pull a spiral notebook out of my backpack. The first of two pre-school warning bells just blasted through the hall and I have to get to class.
Time and place?
I write and hand it to him just as Yearbook Michelle comes running up and grabs his arm, pulling him away.

“Come on! We’re gonna be late!” I don’t think she even noticed that he was talking to me.

“Find me at lunch!” he yells over his shoulder as I walk off in the opposite direction, haunted by my own face.

***

“To the right. Just a little. Back more. Forget it. The light in here sucks. Let’s go back downstairs. The kitchen is the only room in this house with enough decent natural light.” Clay picks up his sketchpad, charcoal pencils and some other art crap, and I follow him back down the stairs of the townhouse I’ve spent the past three days in. He’s obsessed. I can’t blame him. I recognize it. I know the overwhelming need to create something. I watch him draw and hate him a little bit for it. I don’t feel bad about it. I feel justified. I miss it. I want it back so badly that I would break my hand apart all over again just to give myself something else to feel. Sometimes the wanting almost kills me again.

It’s a little bit devastating being surrounded by people who can do what you can’t anymore. People who create. People whose souls don’t live in their bodies anymore because they’ve leached so much of themselves into their work. Josh. Clay. My mother. I want to steal from them to let myself live.

“Back downstairs?” Maddie Whitaker has been here every day that I’ve come. She works doing data entry from home, so Clay says she’s always around. He sees his dad on the weekends on the other side of town which is why he’s been having me sit for him during the week.

“Crap light,” he says, and it’s enough of an answer for her.

I sit for the next hour, watching Clay, charcoal in hand, with his eyebrows pulled together the way they get when he’s concentrating. He hasn’t let me see anything he’s done yet. I don’t even know how many he’s drawn. I thought I was agreeing to one picture, maybe two, but we seem to have gone beyond that. By like eighty.

He finally takes pity on me and lets me up to use the bathroom.

“How many more?” I write down on a pad of sticky notes I find on the kitchen counter, because I’m stalling before I have to sit again.

“I don’t know. I’ll know when I’ve got them all, but I won’t know how many that is until I’m done.”

“Cryptic, much?” I scribble back. Because if I’m going to be spending this much time with him, I have to at least be able to communicate a little. Plus, Clay won’t sell me out.

“Not trying to be. Some people I can capture in one picture. For most, it’s two or three. For you, it’s more.”

Now he’s got me. I’m in.
Why does it take so many pictures to capture one face?

“I’m not trying to capture one face. I’m trying to capture all the faces.” He stops to see if I’m getting this. “Most people have more than one. You have more than most.”

He tears apart faces and puts them back together whole, like I would a piece of music. I could play it a hundred ways, imbue it with a different emotion every time and try to find the truth of it. He does that with faces, except he’s not putting the truth in, he’s drawing it out. He’s looking for the truth of me. I wonder if he’ll find it, and if he does, maybe he can show me where it is again.

CHAPTER 21

Josh

My router is acting up for the second night in a row. I thought I had it back in working order last night, but now it’s pissing me off again. I wanted to finish this chair by the end of the week because I have three more projects waiting that all should have taken priority over this. But I wanted to build the chair and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So now I’m behind and I’ll be living out here for the next couple of weeks, trying to get back to even. I don’t mind. There are worse places to be.