Page 18 of The Art of Us

Mara’s friends didn’t seem to notice Mara’s hesitation when she answered. How could they not see that “fine” was hardly what anyone called a glowing endorsement? But the others seemed to take the word “fine” and apply to it all sorts of innuendos and meanings besides the one Ireland felt sure it actually had.

“I bet it wasfine.” That voice was Tinsley’s. “To get cozy in thatsweet ride with his hot breath all over you!” She squealed as if living out an actual fantasy. “He did kiss you, right? Please tell me he kissed you. What’s the point if he didn’t?”

“Come on, guys. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Don’t be so extra, Mara,” Tinsley said. “It’s not like kissing Rowan is some sacred event that must be kept to yourself. We’re your friends. We have the right to know.”

Ireland wanted to snort at that. They had a right to know? If being friends with someone gave them a right to know every detail about your private life, Ireland was glad she’d never really had friends.

“I bet he was a good kisser,” Tinsley continued.

Ugh and blech! Were the shrew, hag, and harpy going to talk forever? Ireland knew she should just turn the corner and walk on past them. But after they’d been ten kinds of horrible to her when she’d carried the cleaning supplies home, she wasn’t up to dealing with their ridicule. As it was, she’d had to go to school early the day she’d returned the supplies so they wouldn’t see her. She looked down the hall. The only other way she could go was out the back door and all the way around the school to come in through the front. But maybe that would be worth it? She didn’t budge though. Something felt weird about the whole conversation she was overhearing. She didn’t know why; something was justoff.

Mara gave a shaky laugh. “Well, of course he was. How could he be anything but?”

Ireland heard the lie. Sometimes she felt like a human lie detector—the hazard of growing up with a father who ate dishonesty for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—at least on those days when he got three meals.

Not that being a lie detector had ever really done her any good. It’s not like anybody handed out awards or cash prizes for such a thing. It never got her a better place to sleep. It never gaveher more nutritious food. And in her current situation, it was certainly not going to get these girls to be her friends.

That decided it. She turned to go out the back door. Even though Ireland felt pretty certain Mara wasn’tlikeher friends, exactly, she also wasn’t strong enough to standupto her friends. The whole hierarchy of that friend group confused Ireland. Mara was the queen bee of the group. She was the pretty one. Well. Okay. They were all gorgeous in their own ways. But Mara was definitely the most beautiful of them. However, Mara didn’t gravitate toward them; they gravitated toward her—which practically required others to see them when they were with her. Mara welcomed them into her circle but never seemed to notice if others were watching or not. Ireland suspected that, had Mara been left to her own devices and welcomed nicer people into her circle, she’d probably qualify as a nice human too.

“But the world will never know.” Ireland said this out loud and then looked around to make sure nobody had caught her talking to herself and was glad she’d moved far enough from the corner where the girls were to avoid them overhearing her. She really had to stop doing that. Just because she spent a lot of time on her own didn’t mean she could act like an eccentric hermit person when she was in public.

She exited the school and walked around the entire building. She hoped Kal was still waiting for her. She’d taken enough time to get to him that he might have thought she’d bailed on him. If the shrew, hag, and harpy made her miss a chance to spend time with Kal, she was going to ... well, she didn’t know what. She wondered: if she’d had the same opportunities that Mara and her friends had been privileged with, would she be shallow, vapid, and offhandedly savage like them?

“The world will never know,” she repeated. And for the first time ever, she felt grateful to have had her own experiences because she suspected that savagery lurked in her as well.

Chapter Six

Kal

Mr. Wasden loved the idea of the student mural when Kal ran it past him. He had all sorts of ideas for it and had spent the afternoon talking to the principal to get approval. Now Mr. Wasden and the principal, Mrs. Parker, stood in the front hall with Kal debating the use of the wall Wasden wanted.

Kal saw Ireland pulling the door open and hurried over to meet her. “Where are you coming from? Cutting class?”

“What?” She blinked, clearly confused, until she looked behind her and said, “Oh. You mean because I’m coming from outside. Right. I ...” Her eyebrows furrowed together as if trying to come up with a reason, but instead of explaining anything, she just shrugged and pointed to Wasden and Mrs. Parker. “What’s going on here?”

Since the art teacher and the principal seemed to be in a hot debate, it was no wonder she felt curious. “Eh. There are concerns.”

“Like what?”

“Like, can we trust the student body with art supplies like paints and not expect them to graffiti the whole school? Can we trust the student body to not be hateful, crude, or vulgar if we give them free run of a wall and art supplies? Do we really want that to be the first thing people see when they enter the school, and isn’t there a wall better suited to such things, like the one in the art hall instead?”

Ireland laughed. “She’s got a point. I wouldn’t trust any of us with unsupervised access to all this.”

Kal hadn’t expected Ireland to be on the principal’s side. He’d thought the woman was overreacting, but Ireland shrugging off his mockery made him rethink his stance. Kal had once called Mrs. Parker a handwringer since she seemed chronically worried, but both of his parents had chastised him and said he had no idea the amount of pressure that was placed on a principal.

They were right. He didn’t have any idea, which helped keep him from beingtoocritical. Even so, he thought she was being overly dramatic about the mural. It’s not like he was asking if they could play with fireworks and matches in the front hall.

He surveyed Ireland a moment before saying, “Let’s go do some peace talks between those two. Maybe you can help me broker a deal.” He almost reached out to take her hand when he pulled back, feeling dumb for not thinking that through. She barely knew him and had ditched him at Geppetto’s. Why would she want him to take her hand?

Kal tucked his hands into his pockets and led the way back to the adults disagreeing loudly enough to be fighting.

“I was thinking that maybe giving this a framework would solve most of your concerns,” Kal said.

Both adults went quiet and turned to him to listen. He had to hand it to them for being cool enough to care what the teenager had to say.

“Yeah. Framework,” he continued. “Like maybe we do a large outline of the school’s mountain lion mascot lying under our local defining feature, a redwood tree, while staring out at our other local defining feature, the ocean. It ties in a lot of things that feel important to our area while also showing school pride. It helps us incorporate a lot of colors, too, so we can paint the outline in the sorts of colors each area requires, and maybe oneof the rules is that students can only use those colors that tie into the outlined area. Like various shades of greens for the treetop, earth tones for the trunk, and blues for the ocean. It’ll keep it from being an eyesore.”

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