Page 41 of The Art of Us

“You’re scowling again,” Kal said.

She glanced at him to find he was staring at her, his gaze heavy, as if he were puzzling her out. She could almost feel him moving her pieces around to try to lock them together to see the whole picture.

“Is it against the rules of the mural if I respond to this?” she asked.

He considered the question, then shrugged again, his shoulder brushing against hers once more in a rustle of cloth that made her involuntarily shiver. “I think a conversation on the wall could be interesting—even artistic—especially if you flow the words down the flower stem so it’s a clear response, and as long as it doesn’t violate any of the other rules.”

She nodded, then went to the table of art supplies to find a small, thin paintbrush. She wanted this person to know that they weren’t alone in whatever they were going through. They had come into her home and cried to her on her wall. And now, here they were again. “I’m listening,” she said out loud.

“What?” Kal asked.

She startled, realizing she’d spoken out loud. “Nothing. Just talking to myself. Again.”

He grinned. “It’s cute that you do that.”

“You don’t think it’s crazy?”

Kal shook his head. “Nah. Sometimes saying the stuff in our heads out loud helps keep us from spinning the words over and over and over until we’re dizzy and sick. It lets the stuff get out, you know? Escape. I think it can be healthy. I do it all the time.”

She nodded, grateful he wasn’t judging her. Kal Ellis had said she was cute—innocuous enough. But did he mean like puppy-dog-tripping-on-ears cute? Or endearingly charming, and I-want-to-kiss-you-again cute? She really liked him. Her heart had taken another step on that path to love. He was gentle and observant and smart and interesting. He was everything a person should be if a person could at all help it. He madeherwant to be a better person when she was with him. And if he liked her even half as much in return ... well,thatwould really be something. Jade had asked her if she had a crush on Kal after he’d left on Saturday. The word “crush” felt so juvenile. Ireland was practically a grown-up now. She’d even lived on her own. She was not a child who gave way to juvenile thinking. And she’d had crushes in the past, on boys who were interesting to her in some way or another, boys she’d liked from afar and made up stories about in her head. Ireland wondered if she was the only person who did such a thing or if there were others like her having whole relationships from first glance to breakup in their heads.

Or maybe there wasn’t anybody else doing that sort of thing, and she was just a little different in yet one other way from everybody else.

Either way, what she felt for Kal was so much more than a crush. And yet, at the same time, it felt exactly how a crushshould feel. Because she would be well and truly crushed if he ever went away.

Ireland twirled her paintbrush in the green paint and considered how she might respond to her vandal. She finally turned to answer the message on the wall.

“Most people only see the outside. Live your life like they can see the inside. Remember the moon has cycles. Soon it’ll turn its full light to your beauty.” She paused, having run out of space on the stem, wondering if she should end it there. But she decided to go into the grass because she had more to say. “Keep howling until your voice can find a different melody.”

Chapter Fourteen

Kal

Kal watched in fascination as Ireland wrote her message on the student mural. She painted the letters with deft precision, as if she were creating a brand-new typeface, which she totally was. From a design standpoint, the font was full-on fire. How she’d managed such a thing with a paintbrush and paint was nothing short of miraculous. In spite of his art skills, Kal had rather crappy penmanship. It was one of those things that he always meant to work on and never did. Wasden had given an art assignment at the beginning of the year that involved creating pictures out of words they wrote. He’d done a guitar out of words that were lyrics to a song he’d written. He was still proud of how that project had gone down—even if his penmanship sucked.

Kal realized he was hovering over Ireland when she hesitated for a long moment. He went back to the art table to make sure the tubes of acrylic had their lids put back on. No reason to let the paint dry up.

He saw that someone had drawn a bird flipping the bird. They had to think they were being pretty clever with that, but it made him mad since this person could ruin the mural for everyone. He’d promised Wasden that he’d help monitor the wall to make sure nothing inappropriate went up. He and the other members of the art club had sworn to do their parts to keep the project positive, which meant if something ugly went up, they had to take it down. Kal swirled a brush in the red that had beensqueezed out onto a paper plate and then left to dry because someone squeezed out too much.

This was the second time something needed to be painted over, and if he hadn’t been paying close attention, he might have missed it, since it was pretty subtle. Wasden had found the other one. It had been subtle too.

Kal had complained about it to Cooper and Asha when they were practicing in the back building one day. Asha had been peeved that someone would screw up the mural while Cooper had stayed quiet about it. Cooper usually had an opinion on everything, which meant it was probably someone he knew who’d done it. Probably one of his drinking buddies. Any one of the trust-fund frat boys Cooper hung out with could have been the guilty party.

Kal couldn’t prove it was one of those guys though.

“Hey,” he said to Ireland. “I’ll see you in class, okay?” He wanted to talk to Cooper.

She didn’t look up as she worked on her message, which she was now painting in the grass. “Sure.” Ireland was a woman of few words. Where he could take ten seconds to say something, she could take two words and get the same point across. Sometimes it made him feel a little insecure that he talked so much. But she didn’t seem to mind, and he didn’t mind that she talked so little. It made them good friends. Easy friends. He liked it. And her kissing him made them ... well, he wasn’t sure what it made them, but he liked the kissing part of her too.

Kal turned to go outside, where Cooper would be warming up for track like he did every day.

But from the hallway as he approached the doors leading outside, Kal overheard Cooper’s voice coming from a classroom. It was low enough that he couldn’t discern what was being said, but he knew Cooper’s tones. The conversation sounded serious. It was early—too early for Cooper to be showing up to meet witha teacher unless he was flunking out of a class, which Cooper’s dad would never let him do. Kal didn’t want to interrupt something serious and had decided to go back to the mural and walk to his first class with Ireland when he heard something that made him stop.

“I’m not sure what I saw, but it looked like he was forcing himself on you.”

Who was Cooper talking to? What in the actual ...

It was a girl’s voice that responded, one that sounded familiar to Kal, but she spoke quieter than Cooper, so Kal couldn’t quite place it.

---