Page 23 of The Art of Us

“Hey!”

Kal held it out of her reach. “You mean to say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I was being a cranky head.’”

Mara stood up and lunged for the tub until she’d all but tackled Kal in her effort to get it. “Using words like ‘cranky head’ proves youdohave a blankie on your person somewhere,” she said with a laugh.

A weird twinge of discomfort twisted in Ireland’s stomach. She looked down at her hands instead of at Mara with Kal. It’s not like she had anything against Mara, exactly, but she didn’t love watching Kal flirt with the prettiest girl in school when that same girl hadn’t done anything to prove herself worthy of a guy like Kal.

There. That explained it. Ireland wasn’t jealous. She was simply trying to protect Kal’s interests.

How would that particular lie rank? Top one hundred? Top fifty? Maybe higher. Oh well. She was sticking to it. Honesty to oneself could be overrated sometimes. That was another lie that was easily in the top twenty. She really had to stop lying to herself.

Ireland forced herself to look up and smile at the antics. Mara was gloating over the hummus dip that she’d wrangled fromKal’s grip and settling herself back on her chair as if she were a queen and had won a scepter instead of a tub of mashed-up chickpeas.

Kal’s grin, which normally fluttered Ireland’s insides like a monarch migration, instead irritated her and made her kind of want to throw a carrot stick at his head.

“Are you two done flirting, or can we vote now?” Charisma asked, not even looking at the food in the center of the table because she had her phone out and was likely texting her boyfriend. She’d already declared she had plans with him that afternoon and had been antsy to get going.

Ireland really liked Charisma, even if the girl had confirmed Ireland’s fears that maybe Mara and Kalhadbeen flirting with each other.

“Sorry,” Kal said. “We’re voting now.” Mara had handed out slips of paper to each of the club members when they’d come in. They all bent their heads to write the number of their favorite of the design finalists. The designs were based on the thumbnails that Wasden had already selected.

Mara stood and put her own slip of paper in a tulip-dotted white handbag. “Give it to Kate,” she sang.

“Kate?” Sophie whispered over to Cooper, echoing Ireland’s thought.

“Spade,” Cooper said with a smirk.

He said it like it meant something significant, which meant the rather trite-looking bag was expensive.

Mara shook the bag up and dumped it on the table in front of Kal. He tallied the votes and then declared, “Okay, we have a winner! It looks like Julianna Kessler’s design is pretty much everybody’s choice.” Everyone nodded as if there had been no question. It was the one Ireland had voted for. The use of different colors and open spaces within the tree, mountain lion, and ocean gave creative opportunities for the student body andmade it feel like it would accomplish the unification that Mr. Wasden had wanted.

“With the exception of Charisma, who has a date, let’s get started.” All of the prep work had already been done. Mr. Wasden wanted them to get the outlines done that afternoon so the mural could dry and be ready for the rest of the student body on Monday morning. The back wall had already been cleared and was ready for them. Mara, as art club vice president, assigned each person the space they would be working on so they weren’t tripping over each other, and they got to work.

Ireland had been assigned the tree trunk while Kal had been assigned the treetop. Part of her wondered if Mara had assigned her the less complicated part of the sketch on purpose because she didn’t trust Ireland with anything else, but she decided she didn’t care because the way things were, she got to work alongside Kal while Mara was clear on the opposite end of the wall.

“Who is the most memorable stranger you’ve ever met?” Kal asked after he’d pulled himself up on the small scaffolding they’d set up and had begun working. He had a tendency to ask those sorts of questions a lot—the kind that led to sharing full stories. “And I mean in a good way. I don’t feel like talking about skeezy strangers.”

“Good thing you clarified. There were tons of skeezy strangers. Um ... well, my dad and I moved around a lot, and there was this one time when we’d just barely moved into a new apartment, and, apparently, the next-door neighbor lady had a key to our place. She let herself in that first morning and started making breakfast. I woke up to the smell of pancakes, eggs, and bacon for, like, the first time ever in my life.” Ireland didn’t add that it was theonlytime ever in her life because that was just pathetic.

Ireland penciled in the outline of the tree trunk. Unlike Kal,who had started his outlines in paint, she wanted to make sure the lines were the way she liked before she committed to them with the permanence of paint. “Anyway, I get up—thinking it was my dad—and walked into the kitchen and screamed when I saw her. She was this really grandma-looking old lady with a full-on bun and little half glasses, so my screaming was completely ... well, ten degrees of stupid. She could have been Mrs. Claus with her sweet, round red cheeks and soft eyes. Baby bunnies are more terrifying than that woman. When I screamed, she did too. It took a while to get both of us to calm down.”

Ireland finally traded her pencil for the paintbrush, carefully painting over her pencil marks in brushstrokes. “Turns out, the previous tenant had been her friend, and she was moving, so she wanted to cook her friend breakfast as a sort of goodbye. She didn’t realize her friend had already moved because she’d been out of town visiting her son. She was sad to have her friend gone, and her genuine concern for that other person was sweet. We ended up eating breakfast together.” Ireland paused, her paintbrush hovering over the mural. “I think about that lady with the bun sometimes and wonder where she is and how she’s doing, and who she’s making breakfast for now.”

“How old were you?” Kal had stopped working too and was looking down at her through the scaffolding brackets.

“Seven? Maybe eight.” At the time, Ireland had wanted this woman to adopt her and make her breakfast all the time, but they had only been in the apartment a week before her dad had to pack up and flee in the middle of the night. He’d grifted the wrong person—a guy with mob connections—and had to run for his life, and hers too.

“That’s amazing that you were this little kid eating breakfast with a random lady.” Kal was laughing. “Where was your dad in all this? Did he freak out to see you at the table with some strange woman?”

“He tends to sleep like the dead. He slept right through it.” Ireland didn’t mention that her dad was likely hungover or possibly just not home from being out all night. She didn’t really remember, but either scenario was likely. “I guess between zombie dad and the breaking-and-entering breakfast lady, it was a pretty eventful day. What about you? Who’s your most memorable stranger?”

Kal grinned and dropped his paintbrush in a water can, then sat on the scaffolding, probably realizing he wasn’t going to paint and talk at the same time. “So there I was, shopping with my mom and dad, and they sent me to the freezer section to get some ice cream. I was like nine at the time. So there I am, carefully reviewing the choices because ice cream is a big deal, and I wanted to make sure I got the right flavor, when this older guy comes up, and he’s looking at all the choices too. He shifted in a way that felt familiar—from one foot to the next and back again, just like I do, so I stopped looking at the ice cream and looked at him instead. He was old, like fifty maybe, but seriously, the guy looked just like me when I do one of those age-up filters online.”

Kal’s eyes lit up as he told his story, getting warm and soft as he seemed to be searching back through his memories. “So we started talking, and it turns out his name is Ellis, like mine. We both picked the same ice cream, and, as he left, he said, ‘Live the good life, kid.’ And then he walked away and whistled a tune from my favorite video game. And then it hit me: I had probably been talking to my future self, which means I’m gonna get to time travel someday, which is pretty cool.”

Ireland burst out laughing. “You think he was you?”

“I don’t think. I’m pretty sure itwasme. And don’t be laughing, or maybe I won’t come visit you when I’m time traveling.”

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